The Cornhill magazine

mm

The Harris Family
Eldon House
London, Ont.

ANTONIO COULD SEE HER AS HE STOOD WATCHING FROM THE DOORWAY.

THE

COKNHILL MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI.

THE

COENHILL

MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI.

JANUAKY TO JUNE, 1875, $

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDEK & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE.

1875.

•Si1
^

cn

v.3l

\Tlie right of Publishing Translations of Articles in this Magazine is reserved.]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXXI.

Miss ANGEL.

PAGE

Chapter I. A Print of Sir Joshua's 1

„ II. Picture Galleries 4

III. Gondolas 9

IV. Palaces 13

„ V. Gold and Silver Fish 17

„ VI. Angel and her Friends 20

}| VII.- The Armenian Convent 231

VIII. Arcadia 235

IX. The « Annual Register" for 1766 242

X. Penello Volante 246

XL Fiori , 250

„ XII. "Hamlet" 254

„ XIII. " Take of this Grain which in my Garden Grows " 257

XIV. Put Out the Light 26*1

„ XV. Und mache all' mein Wiinschen wahr ^266

„ XVI. Through Winter-time to Spring 272

XVII. AGameof Cards 274

XVIII. Be the Fire Ashes 277

XIX. In Golden Square 489

„ XX. Those who are able to Kule in the City 494

„ XXI. " Musicians waiting ; enter Servants " . 499

„ XXII. I might forget my weaker Lot 505

XXIII. Sign 509

XXIV. The Pleiades 514

„ XXV. Ave Caesar 518

XXVI. Fourbe Fantaisie 522

„ XXVII. Now from the Capitol Steps 527

XXVIII. I knew the Eight, and did it 529

XXIX. Sorrow's keenest Wind 737

XXX. In Patience possess ye your Souls 742

XXXI. At Lowdenham Manor 747

XXXII. To Show False Art what Beauty was of Yore 749

XXXIII. And so Farewell 753

„ the Last. In the Church of S. Andrea delle Frate at Rome 753

THEEE FEATHERS.

Chapter XX. Tintagel's Walls 108

„ XXI. Confession 119

„ XXII. On Wings of Hope 125

vi CONTENTS.

T HREE FEATHERS — (continued.)

PAGE

Chapter XXIII. Love-making at Land's End 129

XXIV. The Cut Direct 138

„ XXV. Not the Last Word 143

XXVI. A Perilous Trace 366

„ XXVII. Further Entanglements 374

XXVIII. Farewell! 377

XXIX. Mabyn Dreams 386

„ XXX. Fern in die Welt 393

„ XXXI. " Blue is the Sweetest " 399

XXXII. The Exile's Eeturn 404

„ XXXIII. Some Old Friends 615

„ XXXIV. A Dark Conspiracy 626

„ XXXV. Under the White Stars 633

„ XXXVI. Into Captivity 641

„ XXXVII. An Angry Interview ...... 647

„ XXXVIII. The Old Half-forgotten Joke ,. 652

„ XXXIX. New Ambitions 657

„ XL. An Old Lady's Apology 664.

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

Chapter I. Moira seeks the Minister • 422

„ II. A Visit to Great People 426

„ III. A Meeting of Lovers 429

„ IV. The Good News ,..t 433

V, The Wedding 438

Arctic Expedition, The Coming , r 222

Ballad Poetry ,., 709

Blake, William 721

Catherine de Bourbon, Love and Marriage of 79

Charlia 40

Coming Arctic Expedition, The 222

Coming Eclipse and the Sun's Surroundings ., 297

Cost of Living * ..... 412

Dead, Disposal of the 329

Earlier Years of Shelley 184

Florence, Siege of < 316

Fountain, The, from the French of Theophile Gautier 148

Have we Two Brains? 149

Hazlitt, William 667

Helen of Troy 444

Hours in a Library — No. X. William Hazlitt 667

Hut, The, from the French of Theophile Gautier 315

CONTENTS. Vii

PAGE

" Lazarillo de Tormes " : The Spanish Comic Novel , 670

Life, Past and Future, in other Worlds 691

Living, Cost of 412

Love and Marriage of Catherine de Bourbon 79

Lowell's, Mr., Poems v 65

Luca Signorelli 457, 578

Medieval Italy, Keligious Eevival in 54

Past and Coming Transits of Venus 90

People who will Talk, On 24

Piero della Francesca 167

Poems, Mr. Lowell's 65

Poetry :— Ballads 709

„ Fountain, The, from the French of Theophile Grautier : 1 48

„ Hut, The, from the same 315

Siste Viator 220

Keligious Eevivals in Medieval Italy 54

Shelley's Earlier Years 184

Shelley: Politician, Atheist, Philanthropist 345

Siege of Florence 316

Siste Viator 220

Spanish Comic Novel, The, "Lazarillo de Tormes" 670

Success of the Transit Ikpeditions... , ... 597

Sun's Surroundings and the Coming Eclipse 297

•

Thoughts about Thinking 207

Topham Beauclerk 281

Transits of Venus, Past and Coming 90

.

Venus, Past and Coming, Transits of. '. 9,0

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,

TO PACK PAGE

ANTONIO COULD SEE HER AS HE STOOD WATCHING FROM THE. DOORWAY , \

"WHAT HAVE YOU HEARD?" HE! SAID, ABRUPTLY 108

" WHY DO YOU ALWAYS LOOK SO SAD "WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE SEA, WENNA ?" 1 29
MR. EEYNOLDS WAS IN FULL DRESS. HE WORE HIS RED VELVET COURT SUIT

AND -HIS SWORD. HE CAME UP CARRYING THE FLOWERS HE HAD ORDERED
IN THE MORNING, AND PRESENTED THEM WITH A LITTLE COMPLIMENT FULL

OF BONHOMIE AND GRACE !£. , 231

SHE HAD WANDERED OFF INTO THIS DAY-DREAM, AND ALMOST FORGOTTEN MR.

EEYNOLDS HIMSELF, WHO WAS STANDING PATIENTLY WATCHING THE BRIGHT

EXPRESSION OF THAT SMILING FACE , t ,, 257

SHE WENT FORWARD AND OFFERED HIM HER HAND 366

A VERY HANDSOME YOUNG LADY WAS COMING SMARTLY ALONG A WOODED LANE 38Q

THEN, BEFORE SHE COULD PREVENT HIM, HE FELL UPON HIS KNEES 489

"ARE YOU ALREADY MARRIED?" "AM NOT I YOUR WIFE?".. 533

"DON'T YOU KNOW THE GIRLS?" " OH YES, SIR PERCY" 621

" THEN EVERYBODY ADJOURNED TO A SNUG LITTLE SMOKING ROOM" 660

" HE PUT HIS ARM ROUND HER AS HE SPOKE, AND SHE LET HER HAND FALL « (

INTO HIS" , , ,.,. 7 "

.

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE

JANUARY, 1875.

CHAPTER I.

A PIIINT OF SIR JOSHUA'S.

ESTERDAY, lying on Mr.
Colnaghi's table, I saw a
print, the engraving of one
of Sir Joshua's portraits.
It was the picture of a lady
some five or six and twenty
years of age. The face is
peculiar, sprightly, tender,
a little obstinate. The eyes
are very charming and intel-
ligent. The features are
broadly marked ; there is
something at once homely
and dignified in their ex-
pression. The little head
is charmingly set upon its
frame. A few pearls are
mixed with the heavy loops
of hair ; two great curls fall
upon the sloping shoulders ;
the slim figure is draped in light folds fastened by jewelled bands, such as
people then wore. A loose scarf is tied round the waist. Being cold,
perhaps, sitting in Sir Joshua's great studio, the lady had partly wrapped
herself in a great fur cloak. The whole effect is very good, nor is it an
inconvenient dress to sit still and be painted in. How people lived
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 181. !•

2 MISS ANGEL.

habitually in such clothes I cannot understand. Bat although garments
may represent one phase after another of fashion ; loop, writhe, sweep,
flounce, wriggle themselves into strange forms, and into shapes prim or
romantic or practical, as the case may be, yet faces tell another story.
They scarcely alter even in expression from one generation to another ; the
familiar looks come travelling down to us in all sorts of ways and vehicles ;
by paint, by marble, by words, by the music the musician left behind him,
by inherited instincts. There is some secret understanding transmitted,
I do believe, from one set of human beings to another, from year to year,
from age to age, ever since Eve herself first opened her shining eyes upon
the Garden of Innocence and flung the apple to her descendants.

This little head, of which I am now writing, has certainly a character
of its own. Although it was great Sir Joshua himself who painted Miss
Angel — so her friends called her — and set the stamp of his own genius
upon the picture, although the engraver has again come between us to
reproduce the great master's impression, beyond their art and unconscious
influence, and across the century that separates the lady from the print
lying on Mr. Colnaghi's table, some feeling of her identity seems to reach
one as one stands there in the shop, after years of other things and people ;
an identity that seems to survive in that mysterious way in which people's
secret intangible feelings do outlive the past, the future, and death, and
failure, and even success itself. When I began to criticise the looks of
my black-and-white heroine and to ask myself if there was anything
wanting in her expression, any indescribable want of fine perceptive
humour, the eyes seemed suddenly to look reproachfully and to refute my
unspoken criticism.

Those outward signs that we call manners, and customs, and education
have changed since that quick heart ceased to beat, since Miss Angel lived
and ruled in her May-Fair kingdom ; but the true things and significations
that those signs express are not less true because they have lasted a
little longer and gone through a few more revolutions. It is only the
false impressions, the exaggerations and affectations that, by a natural
law, destroy themselves. How many did she live out in her appointed
span of life, and wear out one by one on her journey towards the truth ?
My poor Angel all her life was used to praise and blame, to be accused
of faults she never committed, to be admired for qualities that she scarcely
possessed. Art was art, and so indeed was nature, in the language of
signs — as it was practised by her and her companions. On the Continent
Arcadia was coming to an end ; shepherds and shepherdesses were strag-
gling off and driving their flocks before them. Long-legged deities, cupids,
and heroes in helmets or slashed silk hose were colonising English studios,
and Olympus was beginning to be in fashion. Fancy and natural feeling
are expressed by odes, by nymphs, and ovals, and mezzotints. Cipriani
teaches in his schools ; classic temples are rising in windy gardens (for
alas ! the climate does not lend itself to this golden age revival), and never
were winters more wintry, fogs more enduring, or frosts more nipping than
those at the end of the last century.

MISS ANGEL. 3

Perhaps to Miss Angel the darkness may have been but as a veil to
the sweet dazzling images of her early youth. She may have still seemed
to see the sunlight through the mists and fogs of the great city where she
had cast her lot, and her November may have been splendid still, and
set upon a golden background, while she found present sunshine in the
admiring eyes of her friends and lovers.

Some lives have in them a quality which may perhaps be compared
to that secret of which the early Venetians knew the mystery — some
secret of light, some sweet transparent gift of colouring, a hidden
treasure of hope shining through aftershadow.

I do not say that this is the highest among the gifts, that there are
not far greater things in art and in nature than sweet harmonies of colour ;
but it is a delightful quality in its way, in pictures and in the lives of
those who look at pictures and of those who paint them.

Angelica Kauffmann's is a life so tinted, warmed at the outset by some
such broad golden stream that flooded its youth with hope, and shone
on through a mid-life of storm and shadow. In later days tears and
languor dimmed those bright azure eyes and overmastered the brave spirit
that we must all respect and recognise ; but to the last moment hope
remained — hope for life's continuance when all else was gone ; false hope
indeed, only to be realised by a mightier revelation of life than ours.

Poor little Angelica ! so true to herself, so defeated in her highest
flights, so complete in her victory — not always over those things she set
herself to conquer, but over others by the road, along which she struggled
valiantly for sixty years. Over-praised, over-loved, deceived, and satisfied,
little by little she has grown up out of the dictionaries and guide-books,
out of the faithful old friend Kossi's careful sentences, out of the relics
scattered by her hand. She was no great genius, as people once thought,
no inspired painter of gods and men. Her heroes stand in satin pumps and
feathered toques ; her nymphs are futile and somewhat dislocated beings ; one
laughs at them, but one loves them too. Some of her portraits are charm-
ing, and still hold their own by the good right of grace and truthful feeling.

I think that, as far as it lay in her power, Angelica was true to her
perceptions. The artificial education of the day cast its constraints upon
her simple soul, and yet, with all its failings, her work is bright with a
womanly sympathy and transparence, a delicacy of rendering which holds
its own even now.

Religion, as Angelica painted her, still sits in the South Kensington
Museum surrounded by attendant virtues. There is Hope with her anchor,
Faith with her hands crossed upon her breast, Charity reclining in the place
of honour. They all have Greek profiles. The inspiration is something like
an apotheosis of some of Madame Tussaud's happiest compositions, and yet a
certain harmony and innocent enthusiasm redeems it all from utter absurdity,
and draws one into sympathy with the painter. One head, crowned and
gentle, seemed to shine with a real Italian brightness through the grim No-
vember vapours in the galleries, to which I have wandered across a century.

1—2

4 MISS ANGEL.

CHAPTER II.
PICTURE GALLERIES.

PICTURE galleries are strange and shifting places, where people come
to wonder, to envy, to study, talk nonsense ; sometimes it is to realize
their secret hearts painted out upon canvas and hanging up framed before
them — sometimes veils hang before the pictures. It is all there — you
see it, know it — and see and know nothing as you pass by untouched.
And then again some secret power has dispelled the mists, strange life
flashes along the walls, picture answers picture ; here and there some great
dominant chord breaks out in a burst of silent music, imposing its own
harmony upon the rest. One morning Miss Angel was tired, or cross, or
dissatisfied ; she had not slept the night before. Her father, as usual,
had left her at the gallery to work, bidding her be diligent, but she could
not work to good effect ; one thing and another disturbed her. Every now
and then their friend and fellow-lodger, Antonio, who was painting in
another room, had come in and vexed her by a criticism. "You waste
your time attempting such subjects," he had said; "it is not in your
grasp ; you should not accept such commissions."

" I must take what comes," said Angelica, pettishly. " I need not
complain when I am given a masterpiece to reproduce."

"To reproduce!" said Antonio, "you might as well try to paint the
sun;" and so he walked away, leaving her discouraged, out of tune.
Antonio was a delicate, a nervous-looking man, with worn hands and an
anxious, notte-looking head. His black brows nearly met over clear eyes,
full of thought and expression. He had a quantity of frizzed black hair,
which he used to push back wearily ; he was of middle size, slightly bent.
A word, a nothing at times would set him trembling. Sometimes how-
ever he had sudden bursts of confidence and good spirits. He did not
spare others, although he suffered so much himself from their criticisms.
There is a picture of St. John the Baptist in the Church of the Madonna
del Orto. Cima de Conegliano painted it two hundred years before
Antonio Zucchi was born, but it has gome look of this friend of
Angelica.

Haggard and tender stands St. John against the golden limpid sky
that still lights the chapel, where it has burnt for three hundred years.

"Ah!" said the custode, who showed the place to us, "I could
travel round the world with that picture. Look," he cried with enthusiasm,
41 see the Saint's hair, did you ever see such curls ? "

There were lines of care in Antonio's face and lines of grey in his
curls, though he was little over thirty years of age". Of these thirty years
he had known Angelica for twenty. Miss Angel could not imagine what
it would be like not to know Antonio, or not to be vexed with him. He
was the least satisfied of all her friends and the least satisfactory in his
criticisms.

It was but rarely that her sweet temper was so ruffled as to- day, and it

MISS ANGEL. 5

happened that when she was most angry with Antonio and with herself,
a stranger, young, stately, dressed in deepest mourning, had come up and,
with a glance at her picture, asked her if " the charming copy was for
sale ? " " Who is one to believe ? " thinks the poor little painter, as she
looks up demurely, poises her brush, and says, "It is an order, and
sold already."

" You must allow me, madam, to envy the fortunate possessor of such
a picture, copied by so fair a hand," said the stranger in a low voice,
bending his handsome head with one of the courteous flourishes then in
fashion, and he walked away with long black legs.

Then a priest came up to look ; then a couple of soldiers ; then a
new-married couple. " How beautiful," said the bride ; " I like the copy
better than the picture — it is a prettier size ; see how she has got it
all in."

Angel was not unused to compliments ; she was a princess in her own
little kingdom; but she did not care for them quite so broadly expressed
as this. She half hoped the black prince would come back and give her
an order and make her some more consoling speeches. There was
something in his manner which interested her. How different from
Antonio, with his rude abruptness and jealousy. Any one must altow that
lie was disagreeable. Angelica painted on quietly for some time, but she
made no progress. All about her the pictures had begun to glow with
light and to beguile her from her work. There was Tintoretto's autumnal-
tinted Eden, with Eve in her lovely glades ; Bonifazio's St. Catherine
began to stir with limpid streams of changing light — old Bonifazio can
paint light for his saints to glory in.

Presently comes a soft rustling and scent of perfume, and again the
girl looks up. A lady is standing beside her and looking at her copy of
the "Assumption." . She is evidently a personage of some importance, not
very young, but very beautiful, with a pale high brow and dreamy sweet
looks. She is dressed in the fashion of the day, in white watered silk with
grey fur trimmings and pearls. She wears long loose gloves upon her
arms. The gentle fragrance comes with each wave of her fan ; that great
flaunting fan with its jewelled sticks.

The lady does not speak, only smiles, as she moves away and passes
on, looking about her as she goes into another room : that where
Antonio is at work. She stops before Carpacio's "Presentation in the
Temple " and gazes distractedly.

The bells of Venice are jingling outside in the great hot, hot sunshine.

The innocent little violinist has paused for an instant — for ever — and
looks up rapt — listening perhaps for the measure. The golden angel is
piping on with sweet dreamy eyes, and the little mandolin-player is
struggling with the great mandolin. The lady looks and then turns away,
retracing her steps and smiling with gentle dignity as she sweeps past
Antonio in the doorway.

She scarcely sees the plain young man in his shabby coat and knee-
breeches, but the same thought is in both their minds. It is one same

6 MISS ANGEL.

living picure that they are both looking at with interest, that of Angelica,
who had put down her brushes thoughtfully, and left her seat.

I can see her, though it is a hundred years ago since she stood there,
as Antonio could see her as he stood watching from the doorway. The
light figure in its common faded dress standing before great Titian's altar
fires. Her head was a little bent with that gentle turn he knew so well,
her thick brown hair was all tied back with a brown ribbon. Her two
little feet stood somewhat far apart, springing, firm, and elastic, from the
polished floor. One hand was raised to shade the light from her eyes,
in the other — from habit carefully extended — she held her palette. There
she stood, for once pale and discouraged, and with dimmed eyes.
Her father would be furious if she were to tell him of Antonio's gibes, but
then her father was no critic where her work was concerned. This she
owned in her heart, and perhaps she agreed more often than she chose
to acknowledge with Antonio, the jealous, rude, tiresome friend. Ah !
how infinitely pleasanter are acquaintances than friends who live in the
house with you, who say anything that comes uppermost. The English
Signor Dance, whom they had met at Eome, how he had praised her work,
with what fervour and sincerity ! and the friendly priests in the villa at
Como, how they had exclaimed in -wonder at her portraits of the Cardinal
and his chaplain. If only Antonio would praise her work as they did,
it might give her some courage and interest to go on.

So there she stood, pale and discouraged, an inadequate little copyist
blinking at the sun, so she told herself. Presently her heart began to
beat, and the colour came into her cheeks as she forgot her own insignifi-
cance and caught some strange terrified emotion from the great achievement
before her. Some fancy came to her that she was one of the women in
the crowd looking on with the amazed Apostles, as they stretch their
astonished hands. The great mystery is being accomplished before their
eyes. The Virgin rises cloud-lifted to the jubilant chorus of angels and
cherubims ; simple, extatic, borne upward upon the resistless vapours.
The glories seemed to gather gold, the clouds to drift upon unseen winds, the
distance widens and intensifies. This strange great heaven floats and shines
again triumphant before the dazzled eyes of the mortals on the galleries.

One or two people had gathered round. Had anything occurred in
the great Assumption ? Little old dirty Pinuzzi had crept up to see from
his distant corner, where he manufactured little cherubs with his trem-
bling fingers. He stood clucking his admiration with odd noises and
shakings of the head. Then some one sighed deeply ; it was the strange
lady who had returned ; some magnetic thrill of sympathy possessed
them all, as when the bursts of silver trumpets come sounding along St.
Peter's, and the crowds respond.

At that moment a harsh angry voice calls Miss Angel very peremptorily
back to earth again. " Angelica, what doest thou ? where is thy morning's
work ? Why art thou wasting time and money ? " So the voice begins
in German, then the scolding turns into Italian as Antonio comes up once
more.

MISS ANGEL. 7

The' accuser is a tall, angry, grey old man who is gazing with dis-
pleasure at the easel, at the idle brush, and at his daughter in the crowd.
"Is this your manner of working?" he cries, oblivious of listeners.

" It is the best for her," said Antonio, interfering. " Hush, John
Joseph 1" he added, in a low voice ; " how can you speak to her so."

" Be quiet, Antonio ; you can afford, perhaps, to idle your life away.
Angelica cannot allow herself that luxury. What has she done all this
long morning ? "

" Nothing, father ! " said Angelica, turning round from habit to meet
him, and to soothe away his anger, as she could always do, with a word
and a fond look ; but to-day the sense of the Impossible had overmastered
the custom of the present, and she forgot her artless wiles and her father's
displeasure, in a sudden longing for some higher achievement and some
better ideal. Her face changed, the smile faded. " I was tired, father,
and no wonder," and with a sudden movement^he held out her palette to
him. " Look at this," she said, " and look at that 1 How can I do
it ? How can you ask me to do it ?" As she spoke, Antonio looked at
her with an approving flash from beneath his black eyebrows.

"What absurdity!" cried the old man. "Is it to-day that she is
to tell me she cannot paint ? After all the crowns she has won — after
all the sacrifices her mother and I have made — all the hopes we have
indulged in ! Why did you not say so to Giuseppe Morosco when he
gave you the order ? Ungrateful girl ! "

The tears which started to Angelica's eyes changed her future destiny
for years and years.

"Might I, a stranger, venture to ask a favour?" said the lady,
coming forward and addressing Angelica from her waves of satin, of
laces ; she spoke in a very sweet and melancholy voice. " I am leaving
Venice very shortly. I should regret my going less, if I might carry away
something to recall the happy hours I have spent."

Gently certain of herself, she looked from the father to the daughter.
She was not used to see life from any but her own aspect and level.
The father's reproaches, the daughter's tears, were a revelation to this
impressionable personage, who was not used to be thwarted, and who
had suddenly determined to make this girl happy, and to wipe away her
tears with her own cambric handkerchief, if need be.

"Perhaps," she continued, addressing the old man with a charming
dignified grace, " you would allow me, sir, to take your daughter home in
my gondola ? Would you trust yourself to my care ? " she said to
Miss Angel. " We might consult upon the subject of the picture^ which I
hope you may consent to paint for me. I should like to show you my
children, and my husband, who would make a noble study."

Angel's blue eyes answer unconsciously to the two shining flashes, the
smile that greets her. It seemed as if they were friends already. " I
should like to paint you just as you are," thought Angelica. " You great
ladies can make yourselves into pictures,"

8 MISS ANGEL.

Old Pinuzzi whispered something, into Kauffmann's ear. "It is her
Excellency Lady W , the English Ambassadress," he said.

Old Kauffmann bowed to the ground. " I know ! I know ! " he an-
swered, quickly. "You are too good to my poor child," said the old
fellow. " My daughter's name is perhaps not unknown to your Excel-
lency— Angelica Kauffmann," he repeated, proudly. " I, her father, may
truly say that her name is known in all Italy. We have lately come
from Naples, where all the galleries were thrown open to us — that of the
Palace of Capo di Monte, and many others. Her gifts of music and
painting, her remarkable precocity, have "

" Dear father," said Angelica, interrupting ; " the lady has judged
me too favourably already. Antonio describes my poor performances
very differently."

She spoke with a smile, but she wounded her poor plain-speaking
friend to the heart. Henturned pale, and abruptly walked off to the
other end of the room, where he stood looking at a picture that he did
not see. It was Tintoret's " Slave delivered from Torture." Poor
Antonio ! St. Marc had not yet come to burst his bonds.

" I thank you, sir, for telling me your daughter's name. Indeed, I
half suspected that it might be her. Her brilliant reputation is well
known to me and many of my friends," said the lady. " My friend the
Abbe Franck showed me a most interesting letter from Rome not long
ago, describing her rare gifts. The Abbe Winkelman speaks of her, too,
with enthusiastic praise, and I have seen her beautiful portrait of my old
master, the great Porpora." Then she added, with a sort of dignified
shyness, " I have little to offer as a temptation to one so gifted; but if
she will accept me as a friend, it will be conferring a favour that I shall
know how to value."

The lady held out her hand as she spoke, and Angelica gladly took
it in her young grateful clasp.

Old Kauffmann's eyes glistened when Angelica started off with this
high company, dressed in her shabby dress, timid yet resolute — the
compeer of any lady in the land. No thought of any difference of rank
discomposed her, as she prepared to accompany her new-found pro-
tectress. The girl was bewitched by the beautiful lady.

Antonio saw Angelica walk away with the splendid stranger, and as
she did so he jealously felt as if all was over between them. Old Kauff-
mann was surely demented to let her go — was this the way he guarded his
treasure. Would Antonio have let her go in company with those worldly
people who take artists up to suit the fancy of the moment — who throw
them by remorselessly and pass on when their fancy is over, leaving them
perhaps wounded, mortified, humiliated ? Oh, no 1 No ; he would have
guarded and shielded her from all the world, if it had been in his power.

They all lived in the same little house, on one of the quays of Venice
— a narrow shabby little tenement enough, with a view of palaces all
about, and itself more splendid to Antonio than any marble magnificence.
The narrow casem,ept gave her light and sunshine, as morning after

MISS ANGEL. 9

morning broke. The low roof sheltered her evening after evening ; he
would come down from his top attic in the roof and spend the peaceful
hours with the old painter and his docile pupil. Only last night they had
been sitting together. How happy they were. They had a lamp, and
Angel had her drawing-board and Antonio had brought down his engraving-
work. He used to design altar-pieces and patterns for printers, and
architectural designs for the convent of the Armenians, and ornaments for
walls. He had painted the ceiling of the little sitting-room with lovely
arabesques, garlands, and fountains, underneath which Angel's brown
head bent busily over her evening's toil.

There she sat in her white dressing-gown ; the window was open,
the stars looked in, the sighs and voices reached them from the water
below ; she was copying engravings and casts from the antique. Antonio
had brought her some anatomical figures to draw from, but she hated
them. They frightened her at night, she said. " Why did not Tonio
draw from them himself."

"It is mere waste of time for me to attempt the human figure,"
Antonio had said, sadly. "I have no gift whatever; see how my hand
trembles — I am a mere' mechanician. Once I had hope, now it is all I
can do to live by my tricks. . . Perhaps when I go to England, where such
things are better paid, and where, as I am told, many palaces are build-
ing, I may be able to get on better than I have done hitherto."

CHAPTER III.

GONDOLAS.

THE boat rocked backwards and forwards to the gondolier's circling oar,
the shadows danced a delicious contredanse. Splash gentle oar, rise domes
and spires upon the vault, sing voices calling along the -water, stream
golden suns reflected there.

The gondola flies down a noisy side street towards an open place where
the canals diverge ; the shadows part, and fire is streaming from the
tumultuous water. Aheu ! cry the gondoliers ; for a moment all is
swinging confusion ; then the flashing boats and the heavy-laden barges
make way before her Excellency's gondola, and it glides on once more.

Her Excellency, the English Ambassadress, leans back among her
cushions, looking out languidly ; the lights flash from the upper windows of
the tall palaces, balconies start over head marked upon the sky. Now it is
a palace to let, with wooden shutters swinging in shadow ; now they pass
the yawning vaults of great warehouses piled with saffron and crimson
dyes, where barges are moored and workmen straining at the rolling
barrels. The Ambassadress looks up ; they are passing the great brown
wall of some garden terrace ; a garland has crept over the brick, and
droops almost to the water ; one little spray encircles a rusty ring hanging
there with its shadow. A figure comes and looks over the wall— a man

1—5

10 MISS ANGEL.

with a handsome dark cut face, plain unpowdered hair, a mourning dress.
He bows low from his terrace walk, looking with a grave unmoved face.
The Ambassadress smiles and kisses her pretty loosely-gloved fingers.
" That is a new friend of my lord's, M. le Comte de Horn," she says, smiling
to her companion, who looks up in turn at the head against the sky. Angelica
wonders where she has seen that dark head before ; then she remembers
that it was in the gallery scarce an hour ago. She is a little shy, but quite
composed as she leans lightly back in her place by the great lady ; her stuff
dress looks somewhat out of keeping with the splendid equipage where the
carpets are Persian and the cushions are covered with silver damask, and
the very awnings are of soft flame-coloured silk. They have been put up
by the Ambassadress's order, in place of the black hood which oppressed
her, for she loves light and air and liberty. Now they touch palace walls,
and with a hollow jar start off once more. Now comes a snatch of song
through an old archway ; here are boats and voices, the gondolier's ear-
rings twinkle in the sun, here are vine wreaths, and steps where children,
those untiring spectators of life, are clustering ; more barges with heavy
fruit and golden treasure go by. A little brown-faced boy is .lying with
his brown legs in the sun on the very edge of a barge, dreaming over into
the green water ; he lazily raises his head to look, and falls back again ;
now a black boat passes like a ghost, its slender points start upwards in
a line with the curve of yonder spire ; now it is out of all this swing of
shadow and confusion they cross a broad sweet breadth of sunlight, and
come into the Grand Canal. A handsome young couple are gliding by,
and look up in admiration at the beautiful lady.

She sits, beautiful in glistening grey and falling lace, with feathery soft
lines of ornament, with a diamond aigrette shining in her powdered hair —
dignified, conscious. No wonder the young couple are dazzled, that the
dark- faced man looks out from the terrace wall, that the girl sitting by the
lady's side is bewitched by all that grace, beauty, and kindness. It comes
as a revelation to her, and seems to illumine all the beauty of this new
world in which she finds herself for the first time awakened to life some-
how by some inner call, by some loving revelation of the eyes and the
imagination.

The Ambassadress made Angelica answer a hundred questions about
her life and her work as they went along. She was perfectly charming
in her manner, full of interest and kindness, but her questions were
almost more than Angelica cared to answer. She told herself that with one
so kind, so beautiful, she need have no reserve, and yet other people found
it difficult at times to be quite natural and unreserved with this great lady.

By degrees, as the conversation went on, the girl felt some curious,
anxious, restless influence, upon her nerves. She could hardly define it,
nor why she was at once more and more charmed and agitated by the
beautiful stranger. She was not the first who had experienced this curious
impression. Lady W. meanwhile continues her questions; " Was that
her father?" and "Was that young man a relation?" "Had she a
mother?"

MISS ANGEL. 11

" I have a dead mother," said Angelica, with a very sweet expression ;
" her name was Cleofe Lucin. We used to live at Coire, by the side of
the stream ; her bedroom-window hung over the water, and she used to
hold my hand, and let me lean out as far as possible. We were very
poor, though, and my father could not get on ; he found work at Monbegno,
and we all went away. I cried when I left my home and the terrace-
garden, and my mother wiped my tears with her apron, and kissed my
hands. She used to teach me, and keep me with her always. I never
left her till she left me — that was nearly five years ago," said Angelica,
very softly. ' ' She was very beautiful ; I have never seen any one like
her. To-day, when you spoke to me, I was thinking that Titian's Madonna
had something of her."

" And who is your dark friend? " said Lady W., who had lost the
thread for a moment. " Are you engaged to be married ? "

Angelica shook her head. " I am married to my brush," she said
gaily; " I want no other husband. Before I came here I sometimes
thought there might be other things in life ; but when I see these glorious
works, which seem to me to surpass even the Caraccis in magnificent com-
positions, I feel that it is as much as my poor soul can grasp."

She pushed back her thick curls as she spoke, and looked up — an eager
young spirit longing to take flight — over-trained, over-stimulated by praise
— by a sense of enthusiastic responsibility perhaps, but full of hope, of
courage, of trust in the future. And what she said was true, her ideal
was all in all to her just then.

In some mysterious way she imagined at times that Raphael and
Titian, and her beloved Caracci and Caravaggio, were all waiting in some
painter's Paradise anxiously expecting to see her start in their pursuit.
When she talked of her art, some sort of light would come into her face.
Such enthusiasm is often something in itself — an inspiration not to be
despised ; but it does not create the gifts that should belong to it by rights.

When Angelica talked of art, she was a little conscious, perhaps ; but
it was a sweet, artless consciousness, and from her very heart she loved
her work.

" It was like a new soul in my soul," she said, with her vibrating voice,
" when I came here first and learned to know them all. Before that, I
sometimes imagined . . . ." Angelica smiled. " Girls have their
fancies," she said.

" And have you no fancies now ? " said her patroness, very seriously.

" Mine is a cold heart, I fear," said the girl; " I have to earn
money for our home, and to take care of my father in my mother's place.
My interests are too great to leave place in my heart for love."

" But could you imagine love without interest," said the Ambassa-
dress, very quickly ; " surely, interest is the very soul of love."

" Then my love is for Titian, for the great Veronese, for Tintoret,"
cried Angelica, flushing and excited. ' « These are the altars at which I
now worship," she said, pointing with her pretty finger to the Doge's
Palace that they were now approaching.

12 MISS A.NGEL.

The Ambassadress was looking at Angelica curiously, with her great-
lady expression ; the sun was still shining, the bells were still ringing ;
they were sliding by the Lions of St. Marc, and the lady suddenly called
to her gondolier to stop. Then, with a charming change of manner,
she said to Angel, "Now you must be my leader, and I will be your
pupil ; take me to see your pictures."

Angelica was not surprised. It seemed to her a very natural impulse.
She did not know that a whole household was waiting while they delibe-
rately walked from room to room in noble company. Gods and heroes,
allegories in white satin, Venice ruling the world ; all the pomp, all the
splendour of life, is there ; and then they come to a vast room full of pre-
sent, past, and future. . . .

A cicerone is explaining the fresco on the wall. " This picture represents
the entire human race and the kingdom of heaven," he says ; " Tintoret
painted it when he was seventy-five years of "

" Don't listen to him," said Angelica ; "you will not care for this :
come with me." And the two figures pass on.

At first this Paradise of Tintoret is so strange that no wonder the
lovely world outside, the beautiful courtyard, the flying birds, and drifting
Venetians, the great golden September, seem more like heaven to those who
are basking in their sweetness. But it is well worth while, by degrees,
with some pain and self-denial, to climb in spirit to that strange crowded
place towards which old Tintoret' s mighty soul was bent. Is it the
heaven towards which his great heart yearned ? He has painted surprise
and rapture in the face of a soul just born into this vast circling vortex :
with its sudden pools and gleams of peace. Mary Mother above is
turning to her Son, with outstretched arms, and pointing to the crowds
with tender motherhood. In the great eventful turmoil a man sits
absorbed in a book, reading unmoved. Angels, with noble wings, take
stately flights, cross and recross the darkened canvas. A far-away pro-
cession passes in radiance. . . .

Would you have other revelations of this mighty mind, let us follow
Angelica and her pupil along a noble gallery to a farther room, where by
a window that looks into a court hangs a picture that may well charm
them by its tender dawn-like grace. Ariadne holds out her languid hand.
Bacchus rises from the sea. Half a floating dream, half a vision ; almost
here, almost there upon the wall. The picture seemed to reach into
their very hearts. Peace ! said the horizon, while the wonderful tale
of love was told anew. Bacchus beseeching ; Ariadne tender, passionless,
pitiful. Pity was there, painted upon the harmony and the silence.

They neither of them moved nor spoke. The elder lady stood
absorbed, and her thoughts travelled away, far, far from the pictures,
to some fancies of her own painting, while Angelica, with her constraining
blue eyes, looked at her for sympathy.

" This must be love — the very spirit of true feeling and sentiment ! 'l
cried the girl.

" Po you think so ? " said Lady W., with some sudden impatience,,

MISS ANGEL. 13

" I do not think she loves him much ; perhaps she is still thinking of
Theseus ; and I do not believe in sentiment," she added abruptly.

" But sentiment is, whether people respond at the time or not," said
Angelica. " Surely the feeling remains for ever." As she spoke, a great
clock began to strike, and some birds whirred past the window, casting
their shadows across the picture.

" My dear child," said the Ambassadress, who did not care to be
contradicted ; " we must not waste anymore time. Come, let us go back
to the gondola."

As they went downstairs, they met Antonio, with his colour-box
under his arm ; he would have passed them without a word, but Angelica
smiled and kissed her hand. When they reached the gondola, the
Ambassadress sank down with a sigh.

" There is that gentleman again," said Angelica, looking back. The
mysterious stranger was just stepping into his gondola from the steps of
the Piazza. Had he been in the Palace ; she had not seen him there.

CHAPTER IV.
PALACES.

THE gondola stopped at a closed gate that led from marble steps into
a terraced garden full of the sweet fragrance of Autumn, and Angelica
followed her protectress across the path that led straight to the entrance
of the Palace. A fountain was at play in the shadow of the trellis ;
two little girls were dancing round and round it. The beautiful lady
stopped for an instant and called them to her, and the little creatures came
up, dropped low curtseys, and then ran away immediately. The entrance
hall was a great marble-shaded place, leading into the sitting-rooms, that
all opened from one to another. They were very handsomely furnished ;
pictures stood upon easels ; cabinets and tapestried curtains had been
disposed to the best advantage ; a flame-coloured room with ebony
furniture led to a sea-green sort of cave. Then came a great white room,
where a beautiful Vandyke was hanging in the place of honour. It was
the picture of a little boy all dressed in white satin, with a childish face
and dark brown steady eyes. The picture was so artless and noble, the
harmony so delightful, that Angel stopped short with an exclamation of
delight.

The Ambassadress smiled. " That is my lord's father," she said,
and then she opened the door of the last room in the suite. It was the
prettiest of all perhaps, and furnished with grey hangings, with French
chairs and cabinets full of china. Great pots of crimson pomegranate ;
flowers stood in the window, in one of which a lady was sitting, sunk on a
low step, with a little girl on her knee. The child's arm was round the
lady's neck — their two heads were very close together.

They both looked up startled. The little girl sprang away, and the
lady half rose to me3t the Ambassadress.

14 MISS ANGEL.

"Here is a new friend, Diana," said Lady W., as she came in,
leading Angelica by the hand ; then coldly to the child, " Judith, you
have been troubling your cousin. Why are you not in the garden with
your sisters ? "

The little girl looked up with a face curiously like the Vandyke, and
the brown eyes that he had painted. She prepared to pass her mother
with a sliding curtsey, and another to Angelica. But the latter took
her hand.

"Your mother is kind enough to say I may try and paint your
picture, my dear," she said. " I hope you will not mind sitting to me."

The little girl blushed up, looked at the pale lady in the window, and
suddenly pulled her hand away, and with another curtsey left the room.

" What a beautiful little girl," said Angelica. " How I shall enjoy
coming here to paint her."

"You must paint hsr and make friends with her," said Lady W.
"It is only those who are leading real, true existences who can be true
friends to one's children. I should wish to bring up my children to lead
lives such as yours." Then turning to the lady, she said in an altered
voice, " that is why I do not wish Judith to spend her play- time idly,
Diana. It is vastly more profitable for her to join her sisters' games, and
to have a definite object in view, than to idle away the hours."

Angel felt somewhat confused and less grateful than she might have
been for the Ambassadress's good opinion. " There are a great many
things in my life which are neither useful nor particularly improving,"
said the girl, laughing, "I am afraid I very often look out of the window,
just as your little daughter was doing, madam, when we entered the
room."

Lady Diana fixed her eyes upon Lady W. " I called her in," she said
curtly. " I had not seen her for two days, and, as you were out, I
imagined she would not be wanted.".

Lady W. opened her big fan, and looked away for an instant.
Lady Diana set her pale lips, and went on with her book. Angelica
wondered what it was all about.

Just at this moment the Ambassador came in. " The dinner is
getting spoiled, my lady," he said. " Half- an- hour late; half-an-hour
behind the time."

He seemed younger than his wife. He was a short, stout, good-
humoured little man, in a grand blue velvet coat, and with a good many
curious nervous tricks. He used to start suddenly from his chair and
put something straight at the other end of the room, and come back
again and go on with his conversation. He was very particular about
time, too, and seemed to spend a great deal in ascertaining exactly how
it passed. Details seemed to him the most important facts of life.
There was nothing in the least mysterious or vibrating in this member
of the establishment, but the two ladies and the solemn little girls were
certainly unlike any one Angelica had ever lived with before.

" Order the dinner to be served," said the lady ; " I shall not detain

MISS ANGEL. 15

you any longer." Then she took Angelica up into her own room to take
off her things. Angel composedly laid her black scarf down upon point
and satin, and opened her blue eyes into a tortoise-shell mirror, smoothed
her brown hair with a golden comb, and looked about amused and
interested by all she saw.

The girl was timid, but she was of an artistic nature, and she found
that palaces and splendour came naturally enough to her. She enjoyed
it all, and felt it her right to be there. More experienced women sud-
denly thrown into such high company might have found themselves less
in place than my bright and gentle-mannered heroine. So she looked
about and wondered at the facile comfort in which s )me lives move, at the
rough roads that others travel ; every ease of body, pleasure of mind,
were here to smooth the journey. Swift gondoliers waiting their orders
at the garden gate ; servants in attendance ; the fountains playing to cool
the air. But she had little time to moralize — a voice from below began
calling, "Judith ! Judith ! " It was the hungry and impatient Ambassador
waiting to conduct his wife in to dinner.

"Well, what have you done — where have you been?" said Antonio
and old John Joseph together as Angelica walked into their little sitting-
room that evening. The lamp was burning, and the two men were both
busy at the table. Antonio was making decorative designs for a loggia,
old Kauffmann was — if the truth must bo confessed — nailing a pair of
soles on to his buckled shoes ; he could turn his hand to many things, and
was by habit and instinct economical and of a saving turn.

Angelica sank down into a chair by the open window, looked at one
and then at the other, laughed out gaily at their anxious faces.

"Don't look so solemn," she said; " I have had a most delightful
day," and she jumped up, and flung her arms round her father. "Oh, papa !
they have been so good, so kind," she said; "you cannot think how they
admire my paintings ; and they are longing to know you better — the grand
Milady said so; and I am to paint three pictures before they leave next
month — my lord's (oh, he is so noble and so kind !) and that sweet lady
and their enchanting little girl. I shall paint them as Venus and Cupid,
with a bow and an arrow ; " said Angelica meditatively, " she is charmed
with the idea. There is only one person in that house I do not like, and
who did not approve of my intention."

" Do you mean that black mute I saw in the gallery ?" said Antonio,
looking from his work, over which he had been affectedly bending.

"I do not know who you mean," said Angelica reddening. "Is it
M. de Horn ? He does not live there, though he came after dinner. He
is in mourning for his mother ; he told me so ; he is not black, nor is he
mute," and then she regained her temper and smiled. "I assure you
that he can pay the most charmingly turned compliments."

" That I do not doubt," said Antonio sarcastically ; " and who, then
is the one thorn in your bed of roses ? "

16 MISS ANGEL.

" She is his Excellency's cousin," said Angelica. " Lady Di; they
call her Di — is it not an ugly name ? "

" I can well believe that Di is not so pretty as Angelica," said old
Kauffmann proudly.

"And that Angelica knows it well enough," said Antonio. His
voice was harsh and grating, his rr's rolled, his sentences ended like the
sound of a drum, but Angel was not afraid of him. Sometimes, poor
fellow, he longed to make her fear him, in despair of any other hold
upon this sweet and wayward creature.

Wayward was scarcely the word, to apply to the young painter ; but
she was different to different people. The people she loved knew her
really as she was — constant and unchanging ; the people who loved her,
alas ! saw Angelica as she chose to let them see her.

With all her sweetness of disposition, her kindness of nature, they
instinctively felt, they knew not why, that some light barrier lay between
them — intangible, insurmountable. Half her life was real and practical,
and inspired by good sense ; the other half she spent in a world of
her own creating — so Antonio said. She placed her friends there, saw
them enacting the parts she had bestowed upon them — some heroic, some
sentimental ; she would allow them no others in her mind — she herself,
spoiled child that she was, ruled in this kingdom — almost believed in its
existence. Once when she was young and romantic she had even thought
that she might have shared her reign there, and that Antonio, dressed,
curled, successful as he deserved to be, dear, discontented old friend, might
have been the king of her fancy land ; but that was years ago, when she
was fifteen, before her mother died, and before she knew the world as she
now did. And yet Antonio need not have been so jealous, no one had sup-
planted him. Never was sentiment more distant from a maiden's heart
than from Angelica's ; if, as she said, sentiment there was, it was for
Nature only, reflected through her own mind or by other people's light.
It was feeling for the painted sunlight within the walls of the old palaces
and churches, for the golden stream without ; for the evening and the
morning, and the noble ascension of midday when the shadows struck
straight and black, when the pigeons with a flash flew across the basking
piazza, when the bells swung their multitudinous clappers, awakening the
people asleep, among the steps and archways ; it was for Tintoret some-
times ; for Titian always ; delicious evening upon the water, for the
moon now rising from beyond, the Great Canal in front of their windows,
* hushing itself with silver silence.' One moon ray gleamed upon the flagon
of wine old Kauffmann was bringing out for their supper.

These people supped Venetian fashion, at about ten o'clock, and
Angelica stood thoughtfully looking at their meal of bread and fruit and of
cold fish served in a cracked Riviera dish that Antonio had once brought
home from old Morosco's store.

"Do you remember," she said, " when we dined with my uncle
Michael, in his farmhouse, and the goatsherd came in and sat beside me

MISS ANGEL. 17

and I complained ? Who would have thought then that I should sit
next an Ambassador at table, father ? "

" And who will say that you may not have to dine with a goatsherd
again," said Antonio smiling.

" I prefer the Ambassador," said Miss Angel saucily. Then she
went on, "I must go to market to-morrow morning, the Ambassadress
has set hor heart upon coming with me."

CHAPTER V.

GOLD AND SILVER FISH.

THE Cima was in the sky next morning when Angelica opened her eyes ;
she went to the window. A dawn of burnished aromatic light had gathered
round the sleeping town, whose domes and spires struck with sharp dis-
tinctness upon-the sky. San Zaccharius and San Marco were receiving
their silent morning benediction. Then the bells ring, the light brightens.
In Venice the sun rises to the sound of a trumpet, and the new day is
ushered in triumphant to a delightful reverberating clamour of bells and
voices and street cries from every quarter of the town. Angelica dressed
herself to a gay variety of music. Her father called her into the little
sitting-room, and they breakfasted together at a table by the open window.
The sunshine is warm and comforting, sumptuous lights glittering from
the Grand Canal make diversion on the shabby walls of the little room.
There are grapes for their breakfast, brown bread, and cups of coffee, for
which old Kauffmann is famous, and now it is time for Angelica to seek
her protectress again. The old father calls a gondola, walks with her to
the door, as is his custom, and sends her on with a blessing.

When Angelica reached the palace, she found that the Ambassadress
was still in her room, closeted with her maid ; piles of silk and satin
robes and mufflers were lying in disgrace upon the chairs ; the lady's
temper is also somewhat ruffled — the maids are in despair ; no one can
suit my lady's taste that morning. They cannot understand this fancy ;
nothing is plain enough in all the vast assortment ; a black petticoat
without fringe or trimming, a chintz wrapper, a plain lace veil — with some
difficulty these things are brought from depths of lumber drawers.

Angelica, after wandering about the empty rooms, exchanging a stiff
greeting with Lady Di, her antagonist, settled down at last in the corner of
the great marble hall, where her easel had been set by Lady W.'s desire.
My lord, on his way to his gondola, stopped for a minute to greet the
young painter ; he is followed by his little daughter, who runs out through
one of the great windows which open to the terraced gardens outside.
They are lined with orange-trees, pomegranates are growing in the great
pots of Italian clay, there are two ilex-trees, of which the leaves are shower-
ing pointed shadows, some crisp, some delicately reticulated upon the
avenues. At the end of the walk a fountain flows. Diana the elder is
sitting on the marble steps ; little Charlotte, Lady W.'s second daughter, is
coming across the avenue, There is a plash of midday waters, little

18 MISS ANGEL.

Charlotte has picked her cousin a handful of sweet verbena leaves, and goes
and sits beside her on the low step with folded hands. Angelica looks
up from her ideal Paradise, and sees the two sitting there among olive
shadows and ilex winds in this quaint and peaceful garden. She straight-
way weaves it all up into some picture in her mind, adds a column, a
drapery makes up some feeble composition, as she has been taught to do.
Antonio would tell me to add nothing — to paint them as they are, thinks
Angelica. But that is only Antonio's craze. Caracci and Guido, my great
masters, have taught me to see the ideal beauty that reality suggests ; and
once more she falls to work upon her poor little flimsy fancies — cut paper
flowers upon the altars of art. It is at any rate a peaceful state of mind
in which the young painter works on, listening from afar to the voices
from the city ; when they cease there is the sound of the fountain plash-
ing with a tender persistent lap, and brimming to the edge of the
little stone basin ; sometimes she hears the voices of the servants at their
work, sometimes the fall of an oar comes to her with the fountain's ripple.
If Angelica stretches from her corner, she sees the palaces clustering
white, and the line of water very blue beyond the brown piles of brick and
straggling sprays of ivy. The ilex sheds its aromatic perfume, light
struggles through the waters of the fountain.

From time to time the little girl comes up to peep at Angelica's paint-
box— at the steady paint-brush working on ; then she runs back ; her very
steps stir sleeping perfumes among the leaves. These strange sweet scents
from the garden are a poem in themselves, now fresh, now ravishing into
utter fragrance. The child becomes impatient of it all at last ; she pulls
a long branch, and begins to beat at all this sleeping monotony.

" Take care, child; what are you about ? " cries a voice less modu-
lated than usual. Little Charlotte runs away frightened, and the Ambassa-
dress, somewhat put out by the difficulties of her toilet, appears upon
the terrace issuing from a side door, and stands, tapping her little foot
impatiently, at the window where Angel is at work.

" Are you ready ? " said Angel, looking up. She had the rare gift of
never losing her presence of mind, and other people's flurries did not affect
her greatly.

" I have had endless difficulties with my dress ? " said Lady W., who
was indeed strangely transformed. " See here, Diana ; shall I be recog-
nised ? What will be thought of me, if I am recognised ? "

'i( That you do not look near so well as usual," said Lady Diana,
coming up.

" But why should you not be recognised ? " said Angelica, painting on.

" A basket ! " cried Lady W., suddenly, without listening to either of
them. " Do, child, go and ask Mrs. Meadows for a basket. I will carry
a basket on my arm, and, my sweet Kauffmann, you can make the
purchases. Ah ! Diana ! I know who ought to be with us. Why is not
Mr. Keynolds of the party ? "

" Because he is in England, and better employed," said the matter-of-
fact Lady Di, very shortly.

MISS ANGEL. 19

The gondola was waiting as usual at the corner ; it took them but a
very little way, and landed them on one of the quays. Lady W. glided
out, followed by Angelica. The pavement was, as usual, crowded. The
sun was deliciously white and hot, and a man with pomegranates stood
opposite the broad steps that led from the water. Angel knew her way
across the bridge, with all the people crowding so lazily and swinging
their slow-measured pace, which seems to float with the waters of the
canal. A woman stops short, leans over the rail, and slowly eats a bunch
of grapes, dropping the stems into the water. Then they come into a
beautiful arched and Byzantine shadow (how many hundred years old is
the shadow, the archway ?).. A dishevelled statue, with black hair and a
wan brown face, is leaning against a well. As Angelica passed with her
companion, the figure moved its rags and looked hard into their faces.
They seem to cross a century of centuries, as they pass under deep-blue
skies, and so through back streets come into the market.

All the pictures out of all the churches were buying and selling in their
busy market ; Virgins went by, carrying their Infants ; St. Peter is bargain-
ing his silver fish ; Judas is making a low bow to a fat old monk, who
holds up his brown skirts and steps with bare legs into a mysterious black
gondola that had been waiting by the bridge, and that silently glides away.
Lady W. was enchanted, admired, and exclaimed at everything.

" Now for our marketing," she said. ''Angelica, where does one buy
fish ? " As she spoke she suddenly exclaimed at a girl who came quietly
through the crowd, carrying her head nobly above the rest. It was a
sweet, generous face. "What a beautiful creature! Brava, brava ! "
shrieked Lady W. The girl hung her sweet head and blushed. Titian's
mother, out of the " Presentation," who was sitting by with her basket of
eggs, smiled and patted the young Madonna on her shoulder. "They
are only saying good things ; they mean no harm," said the old woman.

Then a cripple went along on his crutches ; then came a woman
carrying a beautiful little boy, with a sort of turban round his head.
Angelica put out her hand and gave the child a carnation as he passed.
One corner of the market is given up to great hobgoblin pumpkins ;
tomatos are heaped in the stalls ; oranges and limes are not yet over ;
but perhaps the fish- stalls are the prettiest of all. Silver fish tied up
in stars with olive-green leaves, golden fish, as in miracles ; noble people
serving. There are the jewellers' shops too, but their wares do not glitter
so brightly as all this natural beautiful gold and silver. Lady W. bought
fish, bought fruit. She would have liked to carry home the whole market.

There was one little shop where an old Eembrandt-like Jew was in-
stalled among crucifixes, crystals, old laces, buckles, and jimcracks of
every description. A little silver chain hanging in a case in the window
took the Ambassadress's fancy. " I should vastly like a talk with that
picturesque old man," said she. " Did you ever see anything so vene-
rable ?"

Angelica smiled. " I know him very well ; he is one of my patrons.
His name is Giuseppe Morosco ; but he is not so wise as his looks."

20 MISS ANGEL.

The two ladies made their way in with some difficulty, for the place
was narrow and crowded with things. Angelica shook hands with the
old hroker quite unaffectedly ; he was surprised to see her come to buy
instead of to sell. When she asked the price of the silver beads, the old
Rembrandt brought out a pair of glistening brass scales, in which he
gravely weighed the chain. A priest and an old wife came from a corner
of the inner shop to watch ; the bargain might have been prolonged, if Lady
W. had not put down a bit of shining gold upon the old brown counter.

" You must always wear this chain for my sake, and in remembrance
of to-day," she said, turning to Angel, and with her quick gentle hands
she flung the silver beads over the young girl's head.

For an instant the silver flashed in the darkness, then the silk broke,
and the shower fell all about the room.

" You see your kindness is everywhere," said Angelica, gratefully, as
she stooped to gather the rolling beads from the floor of the shop.

CHAPTER VI.

ANGEL AND HEK FRIENDS.

THE Ambassadress was charmed with the girl — her sweetness, her intel-
ligence, and bright artistic soul. This lady, who was not troubled by
diffidence of judgment, invested whatever she took an interest in with
a special grace, and the persons who frequented her intimacy invariably
responded to her lead. Count de Horn, that silent and somewhat melo-
dramatic personage, seemed usually too much absorbed in his hostess
when he called to notice any one else, but he gravely allowed that the Kauff-
mann was charming. His Excellency, who always followed his wife's lead,
was enthusiastic too, and, busy as he was comparing watches and arranging
everybody's affairs, he found time to have his picture painted by the girl,
upon whose shoulders his lovely wife had cast her own glamorous mantle.
So it happened that Angelica Kauffmann, a painter's daughter, had become
the friend and companion of no less a person than the wife of the Eng-
lish Ambassador in Venice. She found herself suddenly adopted by this
impatient and beautiful woman, and introduced into a world which she
had only suspected before, although she may have invented it for herself
in former day dreams. She painted the Ambassadress and the children.
Lady Diana did not like her pictures, and would not have her portrait
taken, so the Ambassadress told Angelica (and Lady Diana's manner
plainly corroborated the statement) ; but whatever poor Lady Diana may
have felt, the Ambassadress was unchanging.

The damask gondola would come at all hours of the day, silently
sliding to steps near the little house where Angelica was living. Old
John Joseph was not unaware of the advantages to be derived from
such patronage. This was not the first time that they had lived with
great people. Had not Angelica painted Monsignor Nevroni, at Como ?
His Eminence the Cardinal Bishop of Constance ? Had they not stayed
with him in his palace, and been treated as guests ? Was not Angelica

MISS ANGEL. 21

conferring a favour upon those who patronised her ? Had not the great
Winkelman accorded her distinguished interest and friendship when they
met on their travels ? No one who ever knew her passed her by unnoticed ;
and she was his work, old KaufFmann would say — the daughter and pride
of his old age.

•Antonio's sarcastic forebodings would be cut very short by the old man.

" Eh ! it is good for her to make friends ; now is the time ; she will
get magnificent orders. You can't give her orders, Antonio, my poor
fellow ; you never get one from year's end to year's end."

The old painter had failed himself, and did not disguise his failure.
He was ambitious now for his Angel ; in some vague way he had come
to consider her works and her success his own. When people praised
her, and wondered at her courage and application, her father tacitly
assumed the whole credit. " A good girl — good girl," he would say.
" She has inherent genius, and she has been carefully taught ; but
she must work and deserve her success;" and the girl sweet, bright,
obedient, wilful at times, but accustomed to the parental rule, never
thought of rebelling against somewhat arbitrary decisions, which con-
demned her to such unremitting toil. She loved her work — she was
not afraid of fatigue ; her health was delicate, but she was of good con-
stitution, full of life and vitality, and able to endure. Her temper was
very sweet — a little wilful perhaps to other people, but she bore her
father's reproofs with the greatest sweetness. His love made it all only a
part of love, and when he admired, and thought her work marvellous,
Angel only said humbly to herself that there was never such a tender
foolish old father as hers, and she would laugh and make some happy little
joke, and go her way unscathed.

The old priests, too, with their solemn hyperboles and compliments,
had all seemed so much a matter of course that she never seriously at-
tended to any one of their long-winded laudations. It was as much a
matter of course as the scrolls on the frames of her picture. But this
new state of things was very different. She felt curiously excited — unlike
herself ; she was a credulous woman ; surely there was some meaning in
all these compliments, in M. de Horn's expressive looks, and Lady W.'s
unconcealed admiration. It was a new experience altogether — delightful,
intoxicating. The sweet English voices with their guttural notes struck
her ear very pleasantly ; it seemed to Angelica like the sound of the water
answering to the oar.

She had made more money in this last week than in all the month ;
she had been at work in the gallery before, but she felt as if she loved
these kind new friends for their kindness far more than for what she could
gain from them. Those occld azzurri, of which her old friend wrote, so
bright, so placid, danced with happiness ; it was all new, all delightful.
When she was tired of sitting, and being painted, Angelica's patroness
would carry her off on long expeditions from church to church, from
picture to picture. It was a curious restless love of art that seemed to
possess Lady W., and one which Angelica could not altogether understand.

22 MISS ANGEL.

But however this might be, life, which had been a struggle for exis-
tence hitherto, suddenly became complete in itself and easy to her ; she
herself seemed to have found some new power of seeing and feeling and
enjoyment ; the very works of art seemed to gain in beauty and in mean-
ing. It is almost impossible to write the charm of some of those long
days following one by one, floating" from light to light, moons and stars
slowly waning, to tender break of dawn, melody of bells calling to the old
churches with the green weeds drifting from their lintels and crannies.

Are they falling into ruin, those old Italian churches ? Are the pic-
tures fading from their canvas in the darkened corners ? I think they
have only walked away from their niches in the chapels into the grass-
grown piazzas outside. There is the broad back of Tintoretto's Virgin
in that sunny corner ; her pretty attendant train of angels are at play
upon the grass. There is Joseph standing in the shadow with folded
arms. Is that a bronze — that dark lissom figure lying motionless on the
marble step that leads to the great entrance. The bronze turns in its
sleep ; a white dove comes flying out of the picture by the high altar
with sacred lights illumined ; is it only one of the old sacristan's pigeons
coming to be fed ? By the water-beaten steps a fisherman is mooring his
craft. St. John and St. James are piling up their store of faggots. In
this wondrous vision of Italy, when the church- doors open wide, the
saints and miracles come streaming out into the world.

One day the Ambassadress, who had scarcely been satisfied about
Antonio, mentioned him again, and began asking rather curiously who he
was, and whether Angelica was certain that she was not engaged to him
in any way ?

"Antonio ! He is always with us. He is much too cross ever to fall
in love with anybody, or for anybody to think of falling in love with him.
My father once had some idea of the sort, but Antonio entreated him
never to mention anything so absurd again. I may never marry, and any-
how— it would be great waste to marry such a true friend as Antonio."

" Listen, Angelica," said the Ambassadress, very earnestly. " If you
marry, it must be somebody worthy of you, somebody who will be a real
companion and a new interpreter of life — not Mr. Antonio, not M. de Horn
(who admires you extremely, as you know very well, you wicked child ;
even Milady Di, who never sees anything, was struck by his manner). But
no, there is someone you have never seen, whom I will not name. I have
had a dream, child — I saw you both ruling together in a noble temple of
art. My dear creature, I had a letter from the nameless gentleman this
morning — a charming letter — he asks many questions about you. There is
a picture he wishes you not to miss seeing on any account ; come, let us go
and look at it. You shall judge whether or not he has good taste in art."

Angelica wondered where they were going to, and could not help
speculating a little as to this unknown cicerone who seemed to have
directed their morning's expedition. The gondola stopped at the piazza
where the great church of the Frari stands rearing its stupendous bricks
upon the depths.

MISS ANGEL. 23

11 I approve of your friend's taste," said the young painter to herself.

To Angelica it was always a sensation when she walked from the
blazing sun and labouring life without into these solemn enclosures.
Here are. the tombs of the Doges resting from their rule. They seem
pondering still as they lie carved in stately marbled death, contemplating
the past with their calm brows and their hooked noses. The great
church, is piled arch upon arch, tomb beyond tomb ; some of these monu-
ments hang in the nave high over the heads of the people as they kneel ;
above the city and its cries, and its circling life, and the steps of the
easy-going Venetians.

As the ladies walked up the great transept, two little barefooted
children, hand in hand, came pattering softly along the marble pave-
ment ; they passed beneath the tombs of the Doges ; they made for an
open door, where only a curtain swung, dark against all the blaze
without. The rays of light came through on every side, streaking the
flat marble monument of some defunct Venetian buried there in the centre
aisle with all dignity and heraldry and engraved into eternal glory.
Outside, in the flaring piazza, some fiddler on his way had struck up a
country tune, to the call of which the children were hastening, but the
youngest, a mere baby, suddenly stopped and began to dance upon the
marble tomb with some pretty flying patter of little steps. The little
ragged sister dragged the baby, still dancing, away, and the two straggled
out by the curtained door into the piazza.

" Did you see them ? " said Angelica, greatly touched.

"Poor little wretches," said the Ambassadress ; "there should be
railings round the tombs. Come, dearest creature, let us ask for our picture."

" It must be in here," said Angelica, without troubling herself to
ask, and she led the way into a side chapel.

"How do you know ? — Yes, this must be the picture," said Lady W.,
referring to a letter ; " some inspiration must have told you. ' Grandeur
and simplicity,' he writes — that tells one nothing. Yes, here it is, * The
Virgin Altar; St. Peter with an open book . . . .' "

" This is the picture, of course," said Angelica ; and the girl looks
up, the noble Cornari heads bend in reverent conclave before the gracious
and splendid Madonna. How measured and liberal it all is ; what a
stately self-respect and reverence for others. She feels it, and yet can
scarce grasp the impression before her. Her breath came quickly — a
hundred fancies rose before her eyes.

" I wish I could paint you as you look now, child, and send the
picture back to my friend in return for his letter," said Lady W., with a
gentle playful tap of her fan.

For once Angelica was provoked by the interruption ; a moment more,
and it seemed to her that something might have come to her, some
certainty that she had never reached. She turned with vague eyes and
looked at her protectress.

24

foa Fifl ftsllt.

I KNOW not whence — from what person or from what place — the saying
emanated; but wiser saying never was than this — "Speech is silver;
silence is gold." There is something of a Talleyrandian ring in it, but
Talleyrand's mots have eome down to us in his own language, and I have
a notion that the proverb -is Swedish. Moreover, although it is no
uncommon thing for wise men to deliver themselves in opposite senses,
we all remember that Talleyrand said that ' ' Language was given to us
for the concealment of our thoughts." He thought it better, for diplomatic
purposes, to mislead by talking than merely to conceal by silence. But
Talleyrands in these days are scarce ; and diplomatic discussion is dis-
couraged, if not forbidden. It is safer for two Cabinets to interchange
Notes. Litera scripta manet. Then there are interpretations to be agreed
upon ; and the ambassador or minister is instructed by his Foreign Office,

if Count inquires, &c., you will observe, &c. &c. Very little is left

to the astuteness of the representative — now, especially, that the telegraph
(cipher) is always in motion. It becomes, therefore, of less importance
that men of remarkable sagacity and long experience should be sent to
foreign Courts. Little independent speech is now required from them.
They are, indeed, little more than mouthpieces.

But Parliament is a different thing, as its very name indicates. It is
a place in which you are permitted — some think bound — to speak. But
I am afraid that there is much Parliamentary over-talking. There are somo
men, a vast number too many, who will talk when it would be far better,
both for the House and for themselves, for them to accept the position
for which nature designed them, that of " silent members." If they do
not like the phrase, we might call them "golden members." Let them
go ; they are scarcely worth talking about. But there are genuine men —
men made to instruct, to charm, to lead popular assemblies. Even these
are forced by circumstances to talk over- much — manifestly to their own
injury as orators. When it becomes their duly to lead, they are com-
pelled to speak frequently in the House, and this frequent speaking not
only prohibits much arrangement of ideas and choice of language, but at
the same time has an inevitable tendency to mar that most delicate organ,
the human voice. Thousands, doubtless, remember the eloquence of the
great statesman and scholar — now the foremost man of his country — before
he attained to the highest power in the State. He spoke comparatively
seldom, but with a suavity of voice and a lucidity of argument which
perhaps had never been surpassed. The s\veetness of his tones were in

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALlt. 25

themselves a feast. They always reminded me of that wonderfully expres-
sive line of the great poet whom he loves so well,

. cbrb -yAwfnrTjs fj.e\iTos •yXvidwv ^e'e

To be a Prime Minister in the present day is necessarily to vulgarise one's
self. He is compelled to speak on great occasions and on small — often
only in vindication or apology — and so the orator degenerates into the
talker. " The pity o' it — oh lago, the pity o' it ! "

Almost any man of good ability, speaking rarely in the House on a
subject which he understands, is sure to find a large and attentive
audience. Macaulay was a man of rare ability, but I never thought him
fitted for parliamentary life. Whenever it was noised about the smoking-
room, or the reading-room, or the dinner-room, or the lobbies of the
House, that he was going to speak, every man hastened to take
up his seat. I remember that on one occasion, when Macaulay had
promised the Government that he would speak on the second reading of
the India Bill of 1853, the whole House was astir to hear him. He was
seen to walk, in his sedate, thoughtful manner, into the House, and
there was a rush at once to follow him. When the India Bill was called
on, there was a general cry of " Macaulay ! Macaulay 1 " The great
historian did not stir, but Joseph Hume — who had moved the adjourn-
ment of the debate, and whose unquestionable right, by parliamentary
usage, it was to speak first, rose to address the House. Still went forth
the cry " Macaulay ! Macaulay ! " Hume would not move, but taking
advantage of a pause, appealed to the Speaker, saying that during all the
years he had sate in Parliament, he never before knew the right of the
mover of the adjournment to have possession of the floor of the House
on its reassembling disputed or questioned. He was well aware of the
vast rhetorical powers of the honourable member, and he was sorry for the
disappointment occasioned to his friends. But he felt certain that when
the present fervor had subsided, they would thank him for maintaining
the privileges of the House. He would not occupy them long, but nothing
should silence him — and so he went on to speak. There was a quiet
dignity in the old man's manner, which impressed me strongly ; but he
was a frequent, and by no means a good speaker, and the House thought
him a bore. Macaulay's speech was necessarily very clever, though ob-
viously studied, abounding in illustration, but not equally full of argument.
It related to the introduction of the Competition System, and it has been
greatly falsified by events. But it answered the purpose ; it varied the dull
monotony of the debate ; it was applauded to the echo ; and most men,
the younger members especially, went away saying — " Splendid speech
of Tom Macaulay's — wish he would speak oftener."

I have often thought that the biense"ances and formalities of modern
civilisation — the iteration of " Mr. Speaker," "honourable member,"
" permission of the House," &c., have had a tendency to cool down much
of the fire of British rhetoric as it was in the last century. We have in

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 181. 2.

26 ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK.

our Parliamentary debates, at the present time, none of those grand
passages, embodied in a few words, which have come down to us from
the days of the two Pitts and the "rugged Thurlow." The Chancellor's
rebuke to the Duke of Grafton is too well known and has been too often
cited for us to repeat it. Less known is that fine response which Lord
Chatham returned to the assertion that he had quitted Lord Bute's
Government because he had a general antipathy against Scotchmen.
" Detested," he said, "be the national prejudices against them. They
are groundless, illiberal, unmanly. When I ceased to serve His Majesty
as a Minister, it was not the Country of the Man by which I was moved,
but the Man of that Country wanted wisdom, and held principles incom-
patible with freedom." No man ever had so great a command of the
House of Commons as the younger Pitt. Many stood in perfect awe of him,
and watched his goings out and his comings in (which were frequent) for
an opportunity of speaking. On one occasion a rampant Whig member,
having watched the departure of the Premier, thought he might deliver
himself with safety of his unconstitutional ideas. He had just uttered
the words " King, Lords, and Commons — Commons, Lords, and King,"
when Pitt returned to his seat. Looking the democratical member
severely in the face, and speaking very slowly, he began, " I — am —
astonished — at the words — which have — just fallen — from the honourable
member." Upon which the honourable member, shaking in his shoes,
stammered out that " he meantjiothing." " Then," said Pitt, " the next
time the honourable member means nothing, I trust that he will say
nothing." The House roared ; the luckless member collapsed, and never
made a fool of himself again. In these days Ministers are afraid of the
House. The words printed in the Times might be evolved by a machine
• — the glorious impromptus of the old time are now things of the past.

Another evil under the sun is that of conversational much- talking. It
is of this principally that I designed to write. To use an over-hackneyed
expression, "there are talkers and talkers " — men to whom it has been
a privilege to listen, spoke they ever so much, and others who are simply
a nuisance. How I could have wished — if such a thing had been possible
— to be present at a wit combat between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
Thomas Babington Macaulay ! The suggestion reminds me of a story
which I stumbled on as a boy in an old review. Two French Abbes, both
renowned as hard talkers, at last came together. The wiser of the two,
seeing the importance of getting his innings first, went on for so
long that his adversary was in despair. He saw no opening — no
pause — nothing whatever to indicate a stoppage, so he turned aside with
ineffable disgust and said to one present " S'il crache, il est perdu." (If
he stops to spit, he is done for.)

It would seem to be almost absurd, even in a man of sixty like myself,
to say that he had heard Coleridge. But I have heard him. I have a
very early memory of sitting on his knee at Mr. Gillman's in Highgate. I
was half afraid of — half pleased with him. He muttered something, which

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 27

I did not understand, but which my mother, who sate beside him, afterwards

told me was

The child he was fair, and was like to his mother,
As one drop of water resembles another.*

As I grew older, I was often at the Gillmans', where he was a sort of ama-
teur tutor to the sons — James and Henry. He used to improvise the
strangest doggrel, partly for their amusement, partly for their edifica-
tion. I remember one set of verses beginning with

There was a boy called Richard Phips,
Who, for the want of many whips, &c.

I learnt, too, when a boy, from a very dear aunt, a poem, most of which
I have forgotten, which contained, in the shape of a trio between Fire
and Famine and Slaughter, the most tremendous diatribe against William
Pitt — composed, of course, many years before, but I believe not then
published.! Each verse ended with the words : —
"Who bade you do it ?"

The same, the same,

Letters four do form his name,

He bade me do it.

There are many accounts of Coleridge's gigantic powers of monologue.
The story, perhaps, least known is one to the effect that he was dining
with some friends near London, when a broken soldier, in old tattered
uniform, came to the window begging ; on which Coleridge launched into a
history, causes, effects — everything — of the Peninsular War. " What a
pity, " said one of the party afterwards, " that that old soldier came up to
the window !" "It would have been all the same, " said the other, " if
a magpie had hopped across the path."| It seldom happens that those
who are famous in monologue are equally clever at retort. But Cole-
ridge uttered one of the finest things, on a sudden provocation, ever said
in any language. He was addressing a Bristol mob, when some of his
hearers, not liking his sentiments, hissed. He paused, looked calmly
round at them, and then enunciating very slowly, said — " When on the

* This anecdote has been given before (" Recollections of a Reader" — Vol. XXII.),
but none of what follows.

f It was first published anonymously in a newspaper, and afterwards, being
much talked of, in a collected edition of his works, among the Poems of Early Man-
hood, with an apologetic preface. It was much condemned, in Coleridge's presence,
before acknowledgment, and recited by Southey, the only person present who was in
the secret. He defended the poem as purely poetical or dramatic ; but this could not
calm down the indignation of others present, and Coleridge endeavoured to appease
the public by a long apologetic preface. It would have been better to have said briefly
that it was written in the sense of a chorus in a Greek tragedy.

J This must have been a peculiarly unappreciative audience. When Edward
Irving was asked if in conversation with Coleridge he could ever get in a word, the
great preacher answered, " I never wish to get one in." And it is related that at
the inn in which Coleridge was sojourning just before his marriage, the landlord was
so struck with his conversation that he offered him board and lodging free if he
would only stav in the house and talk.

2—2

23 ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK.

burning embers of democracy you throw the cold water of reason, no
wonder that they hiss." It was of course better suited to an Athenian
assembly than to a Bristol mob — but it was a glorious outburst all the
same.

" The old man eloquent " passed away from us forty years ago ; and
now Macaulay is gone. Few are they of the mourners beside his
open grave in Westminster Abbey who have not been charmed by his
wonderful flow of conversation. It was mostly at .breakfast parties that
he put forth his strength. For my own part, I think that a breakfast
party is the sorriest entertainment in the world. Few men are up to the
mark at ten o'clock in the morning. I have heard men say that they
cannot talk by daylight. And if I had the combined powers of Demo-
sthenes and Cicero, I think that I should be in the same condition.
Moreover, if a man has anything to do — and most men have something — he
feels whilst eating his cutlet and sipping his coffee, that he is kept away
from his work — and that his business will fall into arrears. At dinner
time he feels some satisfaction in the thought that he has done his work
and is at peace with all mankind. But there are exceptions to all rules ;
and some entertainers, equally genial and experienced, such as Lord
Hough ton and the late Sir Robert Inglis, have contrived to make their
guests forget that the labours of the day were before them, and make the
cutlets and coffee taste almost like turtle and venison and cold punch and
champagne. Of course, on these or nearly all these occasions, Macaulay
was the chief, if not the sole speaker. Sydney Smith's, well-known mot
that the great historian, on a certain occasion, had transcended himself,
for he had " some flashes of silence," represented, better than anything
else could have done, Macaulay's general manner of monologue. It must
be confessed that sometimes a little personal variety was longed for — that
a little more discussion would have been pleasant. But Macaulay did
not speak to elicit the opinions of others, but to express his own. I do
not, at present, remember more than one occasion on which anything
that Macaulay said evoked even a brief discussion. He said that he had
been endeavouring to ascertain at what period the word plunder was intro-
duced into the English language — and whence it came. It was not, he
said, to be found either in the Bible or Shakespear. This led to some
general talk. I do not think that any of us knew that the importation was
so modern — though most agreed that the origin of the word was Dutch.
I observed that I thought I had seen it in the earliest records of the
East India Company — that is in the letters of the skippers to the Court of
Directors. " Picked up, doubtless, from Dutch skippers, " said Macau-
lay. What I stated seemed to interest him greatly, and he asked me to
ascertain the point. I promised to do so — when I had time ; but the
good time never came. This, however, was an exception ; and gener-
ally there was a continual flow of talk — now like the murmur, now like
the roaring of a river. One always thought of Labitur el labetur. We •
marvelled, and admired, but for the most part went away disappointed,
We found that we had learnt so little.

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 29

There are some men who can talk well only under certain physical
conditions. I knew a very worthy and accomplished gentleman who could
not do justice to himself cither in writing or in speaking without a few-
pinches of snuff. I saw him once, at a little round-table party in my
house, feeling his waistcoat-pocket apparently in perturbation of spirit.
Thinking that he had lost his purse, I asked him. " Worse than that," he
answered; "I have left my snuff-box behind." A lady sitting next to
him said, " I cannot offer you a snuff-box, but I have a bottle of very
pungent smelling-salts ; try it ! " He did so, and found that it answered
his purpose. He afterwards frequently substituted a salts-bottle for a
snuff-box.

Others take their tobacco in another shape. I have known men silent
and stolid at the dinner-table, but brilliant in the smoking-room. I
remember a curious illustration of the power of tobacco in the case of
a celebrated savant. Some twenty years ago, I was on a visit to Dr.
Whewell, at Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, when Professor Sedgwick, who
occupied adjacent rooms, -asked me to take tea with him, an invitation
which I gladly accepted. I joined him (he was quite alone) in the dress
in which I had dined. He also was in evening costume. We drank
some tea, but conversation flagged. I had heard much of his fund of anec-
dote, of his vivid memory and his choice reminiscences, and I was
disappointed. But presently it occurred to me that I had been told he
was a great smoker, an impression which the pervading odour of his room
amply confirmed. So I said to him, " I think, Professor, that you like
your pipe in the evening ? " " Yes," he answered ; " do you smoke ? " I
replied, " I enjoy a smoke." Upon which he got up, brought me a box of
cigars, helped me to take off my dress-coat, gave me a light smoking robe
in its place, rang the bell, sent away the tea, and called for brandy-and-
water. Then the talk began in earnest. Each in an easy chair, we sat
for hours — hours that I shall not easily forget. I was well content to be
silent, except so far as I could lead the Professor on by a question or a
suggestion to some stories of his early days. We sate till the small hours
were upon us. Such is the power of smoke to overcome all stiffness and
reserve.

A word now about after-dinner speakers. There are few more remarkable
forms of this complaint of much- speaking than that which is developed in
the person of the long-winded, gas-light speaker. At a great public dinner,
where the magnates of the land (sometimes the sovereigns and princes
of other lands) have been present, and the assembled crowd has been
eager to hear them, some small personage being down in the programme
to return thanks, completely stops the way. I speak of him as a small
person with reference to the objects of the meeting — but he may be a
brave and worthy gentleman, who has fought the battles of his country with
distinction to himself and with advantage to the state — a gallant admiral,
or a gallant general of high repute. The Army and the Navy have always
an early place in the programme among " the usual loyal toasts/' ancj I

8J ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK.

have known heroes, coupled or tripled with these toasts, to be with difficulty
moved out of the groove. It is not because a man has fought at Trafalgar or
Waterloo (those heroes are now well-nigh extinct, but I am old enough to
remember many of them) or later victories in which they have done great
deeds, that they have any right to keep three hundred gentlemen waiting
to hear an oration from Gladstone or Disraeli. Unfortunately it is
difficult to stop them, for the thumpings of the table intended to silence
their loquacity are taken for applause, and this incites them to go on
with their generally inaudible harangues. Dear, simple-minded veterans
— we love you — but after-dinner speaking is not your forte !

This brief mention of after-dinner oratory reminds me that a curious
illustration of the virtues of the pauca verba is to be found in the fact,
that during a period of about a quarter of a century I have attended most
— certainly a large number — of the anniversary dinners of the Literary
Fund, and that the two best chairmen, to whom the speaking properly
belongs, were foreigners. The one was the Due d' Orleans, and the other
the King of the Belgians. Neither of these speakers said a word too
much or a word too little. They spoke slowly and distinctly, in undeni-
able English. Every sentence was to the point — every sentence grace-
fully expressed. The explanation of this is obvious. Speaking in a
foreign language, and on a subject probably not familiar to their minds a few
days preceding the anniversary, it was obviously their policy only to seize
the most impressive arguments and the most telling illustrations, and to
speak slowly and considerately, so as to avoid all possible confusion and
entanglement. An English orator, long familiar with the subject, might
have said more and expressed less than these accomplished foreign princes.
Descending now to the more commonplace realities of every- day life,
I would say that perhaps the most troublesome of all people who will
talk, and the most difficult to baffle — the more so as he generally means
to be courteous and attentive — is the great railway talker. He gener-
ally attacks you as soon as he has made himself comfortable with his rugs
and his wrappers, and safely bestowed his bags and umbrellas, with
a remark upon the weather. He dilates upon the variableness of the
English climate, a subject regarding which there is not likely to be much
difference of opinion. During an interval, occupied in skimming the
papers, he asks what I think of the leading article on the state of Europe
— "Very critical — tremendous fellow that Bismarck!" &c., &c. Thus
we get to Reading, hoping he has done ; but no ! " Wonderful expansion
of this once pleasant but insignificant town. I knew it, Sir, when I was a
boy — all attributable to the railways " (profound and original remark).
Upon this incontinently I fall asleep. At Swindon I have serious inten-
tions of changing my carriage, with an appearance of going to Gloucester
or South Wales ; but I have too many loose packages, comfortably arranged
in my carriage, to resort to this mode of escape, so I take my place in the
old corner and resume, or pretend to resume, my nap. I open my
eyes, as the first view of Bath offers itself to him, and my friend is quite

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 81

ready. " Beautiful city, Sir ; I was at school at Bath — know it well —
great deal about Bath in last Cornhill — have you read it, Sir?" I
answer in the affirmative, and might add, " ay, and wrote it too ! " Now
my release is not far off. The man who will talk, is going to Bristol !
Bravo ! only a few more miles and he leaves me, shaking me by the hand.
Now, I dare say that he is not a bad fellow in the main ; but his insatiable
love of hearing his tongue rattle makes him absolutely a bore !

It is probable that most railway travellers have encountered bores of
this description, and have endeavoured to defeat them in different ways.
A well- delivered snore is not a bad thing. One friend suggests that the
best device of all is to feign deafness — to shake one's head and to point
to one's ears ; but it is doubtful whether it is altogether justifiable to
simulate an affliction of so grievous a character.

Once I met with a railway talker who was quite endurable. He was
a fine bluff, hearty country gentleman, going from North to South. We
had the carriage to ourselves. After saying not very much, he produced
an admirable contrivance for holding luncheon, and offered me a glass of
dry champagne. He stopped my demurrer by saying that he had " plenty
more," so I gratefully accepted it, and very good it was. When he had
finished his luncheon, we chatted pleasantly enough about Gardens and
Gardeners, and I was quite sorry when he left me at Beading. Now if
every railway-talker would mitigate the affliction of much speech by
treating his hearer to dry champagne, there might be something to be said
in its favour.

Very nearly akin to the railway talker is the coffee-room talker. He
bursts in with something between a puff and a snort, throws his hat, his
wraps, and his umbrella on a vacant table, rings the bell with vis enough
to damage the machinery, orders a steak with the juice in it, and then
begins to talk. You have, perhaps, just seated yourself in a comfortable
corner, with your fried sole and pint of sherry, and have spread out before
you, as good company, the new number of the Edinburgh or the Quarterly,
when he bursts in upon you : "Very cold, Sir; I think it will freeze."
To this and several other remarks of the same kind you reply in mono-
syllables. This will not do. He tells you where he has come from,
whither he is going, and so on, until the steak with the juice in it is
brought, with a liberal supply of malt liquor, and Viator is too busy to
talk. You are afraid that he will come back again when the cheese and
celery are discussed, and you watch his proceedings furtively ; but when
he rises, he asks for the smoking room and transfers his loquacity to some
frequenter of that evening retreat. At that charming old hostelry, the
White Hart, at Salisbury, I met a man of this class, who amused rather
than distressed me. He was a fresh young Irishman, who had seen little
of Great Britain, and who was altogether so genial and na'ive in his remarks
that I could not help liking him. He actually induced me to accompany
him to the smoking room and to have a glass of hot toddy. I had gone
down to that venerable old cathedral city to see my ancient schoolhouse.

82 ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK.

But not a brick of it was left. The area on which it stood had been
covered with ten-pound cottages. Perhaps it was to dispel the melancholy
reflections engendered by the sight of this conversion that I cottoned to
the young Irishman and the whisky toddy.

But, perhaps, the worst infliction which I have recently had to en-
counter was that which came upon me from a conversational driver, whose
services I had hired, together with a trap and a very smart little black
mare, of which the said driver was inordinately proud. It had been one
of the hottest days in summer, and I had passed it in a hot room of a hot
hotel, in a hot town, in North Wales. As the sun was going down I
thought that I would refresh my exhausted nature by having a quiet
country drive. The evening air was delicious, the country was green and
fresh, if not tremendously picturesque, and I should have enjoyed myself
extremely, but for the loquacity of the driver, who considered it kis duty
to keep up, on my behalf, a running fire of information, the greater part
of which I already possessed. It is always a great misfortune, in going
to a strange place, to enter regions governed by a great landlord, with
enormous wealth and influence, who, in the eyes of the people, is little
less than a God. It is Sir Watkin here, Sir Watkin there, Sir Watkin
everywhere. You go to the Watkin Arms, and in the best sitting-room,
in which you are bestowed, there is a print of Sir Watkin (from the

famous picture by ), in a dress suit, as he received the deputation

from * * *. Then there is Sir Watkin in top-boots, hunting-cap and
whip, with his favourite horse Battler. Then the county paper is full of
Sir Watkin — of the eloquent speech he made on presiding at some distri-
bution of prizes to agricultural labourers, or to schoolboys of the middle-
class. But in these cases you can get away from Sir Watkin ; but my
conversational driver barely allowed me any relaxation. This is Sir
Watkin' s property — looking above the wood you can catch a glimpse of
the chimneys of the mansion, and so on. At last I said, with some
severity, " Oh ! I know all about it, and more than you can tell me,"
and for a few minutes he was silent. But presently he broke out again,
by asking, as I thought (for I had fallen into a reverie), " Did you ever
see a bear up two poles ?" I was obliged to ponder over this feat of
ursine activity. As a Fellow of the Zoological Society, I was bound to
know something about it. But although I could remember very often
seeing a bear up one pole, I could not tax my memory with ever having
seen a bear up two poles at the same time. It turned out, however, that
it was not a bear up two poles, but a mare with two foals, both of which
were taking their evening meal at the same maternal fount of lacteal
nourishment. Not being very well acquainted generally with the puer-
peral powers of the equine species, I confess that I was not as much
astonished or as grateful to the loquacious driver as I ought to have been
on account of this physiological revelation, the more especially as, after
this triumphant display of a great local curiosity, he ventilated his con-
versational powers more freely than before. Thinking that the object of

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 33

these attentions might be a pint of beer, I stopped him at the nearest
respectable hostelry I saw, and regaled him with the desired refreshment ;
but I am sorry to say that, whether from the effects of gratitude or the
liquor, the experiment proved to be a complete failure, and he talked
more than ever. At last I ceased to listen, and contrived to get home in
safety, having had the quiet evening drive I had promised myself spoilt
by the loquacity of my friend.

Perhaps this loquacious young man, like the younger Mr. Weller, was
the son of a stage-coachman, and paternal experiences had inculcated
upon him the expediency of talking to his fare, It used to be part
of the duty of coachmen in the old days to act as a sort of gazetteer
to the gentleman on the box, who was considered to be good for an extra
half-crown. Some boxes were very gluttons in their enquiries, whilst
others took what was offered to them and were content. Some took more
heed of the horses in the team than of the gentlemen's seats on the
way. They did not always pay up in proportion to their inquisitiveness.
I heard from my father a story of one of these Jehus, ^ho, on surren-
dering the reins at the end of his tour of duty, at Yeovil, cried out to his
successor on the box, " You have an out-and-out gentleman on the box,
Dick. He'll ask you questions the whole way, about houses and woods
and fields, and farming and shooting and what not, and you'll drive him
nigh upon fifty miles, giving him the history of all your 'osses, and he will
give you sixpence at the end of your journey." Passengers re-entering
or remounting the mail, landlord ,*guard, ostlers, &c., all had their laugh
at the discomfited box-holder, who collapsed into silence.

As the coachman was a man of many words, so the guard of the
mail, perched in his little solitary sentry-box behind, lived in a state of
golden silence, save when the horses were being changed and he dis-
mounted to warm his feet and have a gossip with the ostler, still keeping
his eye on his majesty's property, which he so zealously guarded. I
asked the coachman one day if his mate in the rear never fell asleep at
night. "No," he said, "never knowed him to doit;" then, pausing
reflectively, he added, " Leastwise only once. It was not him as is
behind now, but a very good and steady chap too. It was cruel cold
weather — hard frost, but no snow (it's the snow what bothers us most of
all) — and when we drove into town on the way to change 'osses and to
take in more mails (I think 'twas Axminster) I says to the guard, who was
looking at the new team, ' I say, Jem, why did not you blow the
horn ? I never knowed you miss afore. Was the sound froze up ? '
' No,' says Jem, « but I hadn't no breath. I dropped asleep half a mile
off, and fell upon the near wheel, and it sent me spinning over hedge into
a field. I picked myself up, and when I found no bones were broke, off
I started after you and cotclied you up just as you was entering town.
But I hadn't no breath to blow.' Now, he were a steady enough man ;
but it were cruel cold, and without a drop now and^then we could not
have held on. I remember we had no outsides. None dare ventur." I

2-3

84 ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK,

suggested that I supposed that sometimes they did get so frozen and
numbed as not to be able to hold the reins. " Well, sir," he said, " not
so often as you might think. But I remember that Caarley Hawkes, the
best whip in the West of England, who drove the mail into Bath, was
frozen to nothing one winter. He was not riz to the perfession. He was
tender and gentlemanly, and had been at Eton, but, like those swells, had
the pluck of the devil in him. Well, he broke down near Devizes, and
couldn't go no furder. Guard was as bad as he ; so Charley pulled up,
got off the box, and opened the carriage-door. ' Any gentleman that
can drive inside ? ' he said. ' If not, we must stay here. I cannot hold
the reins.' * Yes,' answered a cheery voice; .'I can drive. Give me
your wraps and gloves, and I'll do it. Bundle inside. The gentlemen
will help you to warm yourself. I shall want my brandy.' So he put
on the wraps (he was a lightweight), and they seemed to weigh him down.
But he druv the mail up to the White Hart almost to a minute. And I
guess the proprietor, who had the contract, wasn't nowise grateful —
wouldn't let him pay a farden. And Charley Hawkes, who told me the
story, said the gentleman was only a London lawyer, and hadn't even been
to Eton. But he was a nob all over of the right sort. He sent for
Charley as soon as he had warmed himself, and guv him a bottle of
champagne."

I have often wondered whether an enduring friendship or even a per-
manent acquaintanceship has ever been formed upon an English railway.
I think not. Even those who travel, day by day, from City to suburb
by the same train, and often in the same carriage, do not always know
each other's names. Perhaps, a terrible accident may bring men together
— especially if there be a community of damage-seeking. In the old
coaching days when four luckless travellers were penned up often for
twenty- four hours together in a box of narrow dimensions, they were driven
upon one another for conversation to relieve the tedium of the journey.
Besides, the coach was sometimes upset, or got embedded in a snow-drift ;
and then there were two or three days spent, as companions in misfortune,
in a roadside inn. It sometimes happened that the acquaintanceship
commenced with a little internecine strife. A. complained that B.'s legs
Mrere in his way ; and C. wanted the window down whilst B. wanted it up.
The settlement of these little differences often led to subsequent harmony.
It has occurred, however, that an intemperate gentleman (generally a young
one), in favour of the outer air, settled the difference of the window by
putting his elbow through it — an act more spirited than justifiable. t( But,
sir," on an occasion of this kind, remonstrated an elderly gentleman, " I
hare a bad throat, and I am weak in the lungs." " Then, sir, you should
take a post-chaise, I must have air." " Then, sir, you should go outside "
— a very proper retort.

I can call to mind one incident in which I believe a permanent ac-
quaintanceship, if not friendship, was fornied in a stage-coach. The
biographer of Sir John Malcolm says : — :

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 35

" But there are one or two anecdotes belonging to this period which
ought not to be omitted, though I cannot precisely fix the dates at which
the incidents occurred. It was on one of the land excursions to which
allusion has been made (most probably on his journey through Wales),
that, being in the inside of a stage-coach, he (Malcolm) fell, more suo, into
conversation with a fellow-passenger. His companion was obviously a
dignitary of the Church of England — a man of extensive acquirements,
power and subtlety of argument, and force of expression. The conversa-
tion ranged over a considerable variety of subjects, sometimes eliciting
concordance, sometimes antagonism, of sentiment between the speakers.
After some time, the conversation turned upon a topic of Indian interest,
upon which there was a serious difference of opinion. Malcolm, as may
be supposed, maintained his position with much confidence, and supported
his arguments by the assertion that he had spent the best part of his life
in India. " ' It may be so,' said his companion, ' but still I cannot yield to
you. I have conceded many points in the course of our conversation, but I
stand firm upon this ; for the very highest authority on Indian subjects,
Sir John Malcolm, is on my side.' * But I am Sir John Malcolm,' was
the answer. ' It is true that I did say so, but I have since had reason to
change my opinion.' Upon this they exchanged cards, and Malcolm was
little less pleased than his companion when he found that he had been
arguing with the scholarly Coplestone, Bishop of Llandaff."

It is generally said, and I believe generally believed, that women talk
more than men. There is a road-side inn near Weymouth with the sign
of " The Silent Woman." The silent woman is without a head. That
women utter more words than men, on an average, in the course of the
day is, I think, certain. But this is the result of circumstances more
than anything else. A woman has more time than a man to talk. The
labouring man goes forth to his work — perhaps it is solitary work. He
hoes potatos or he mends fences, far away from any mates. He may
whistle or he may sing — he can only talk — to himself. His wife stays at
home, minding the children or the washtub ; her neighbours step in to
have a gossip. There is plenty of talk. In higher classes of society man
goes forth to his work. He betakes himself to the office or the counting-
house. His work is with pen and ink — paragraphs and columns of figures.
His wife has plenty of talk ; first with the servants, then with the shop-
men ; then with her neighbours, at morning call or five- o'clock tea. She
cannot say, with Wordsworth —

I am not one, who much or oft delight

To season my discourse with personal talk

Of friends, who live within an easy walk.

This, indeed, is just what women like. I have known a party of them
to get into a suburban railway, and clamour to such an extent upon the
momentous questions, as to whether Mrs. Brown has got into her new
house, or whether it was Mrs. Jones's second or third daughter that had
got the mumps, that I have been compelled to lay*down my paper. As a

86 ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK.

rule, men going up to town are contented with their Times or Standard.
The masculine talk is brief: " Bank rate risen, I see ; rather a bore."—
" Yes, Sir ; heard yesterday it was likely — wise measure, I fancy."

During long railway journeys, I have found that women, if not glued
to their novels or hymn-books, are apt to be somewhat loquacious. I
cannot say what comes off in those mysterious asylums known as
" Ladies' Carnages." As a rule, I think that women do not much like
these reserved compartments. Trying to find a carriage in which no
female passenger has intruded, I have found four solitary female travellers
tucked up in the corners of four different first-class carriages. In this
emergency one has nothing to do but to take choice of evils, and to trust
to chance for some masculine additions before the train starts. I have
often thought if it would not be fair, on lines of rail where " Ladies'
Carriages " are supplied, to have some also lettered " No ladies admitted."
Even the word " Smoking" does not exclude ladies. I have heard fair
travellers insist on their right of entrance. This does not much matter,
unless they exclude those for whom the carnages are expressly con-
structed. One is tolerably safe in such carriages, unless the women
exceed the men. The police records show that much danger has resulted
from these encounters, in the absence of credible witnesses. I was speak-
ing, however, of harmless loquacity. I have certainly known instances in
which ladies have freely let loose their tongues for sixty or seventy miles.
I remember a journey rendered pleasant and memorable by the loquacity
of a middle-aged lady, who began upon me as soon as I entered the
carriage. I expected to be alone with her for three hours, but before the
train started, her son, a boy of fifteen, joined her. The railway people called
her " My Lady ; " but she explained to me that she was not My Lady,
but an Honourable Mrs., being wife of a Peer's brother, whom she named.

She informed me that she was another " Honourable Mrs. ," which,

for more reasons than one, was quite superfluous ; told me all about her
son, who was at Sandhurst, and her husband, who was at home ; then
rattled on about society in London, interspersing her talk with certain
anecdotes, which, not being of a very slow kind, the youth, doubtless,
booked for subsequent narration at college. A pleasanter companion of
the fat-and-forty type I seldom met ; and we parted, after hand-shaking,
with mutual hopes of seeing each other again. Other kindly incidents of
the same description might be noted ; and I have wondered whether, if I
had been of the other sex, I should have had so many familiar revela-
tions made to me.

The art of female conversation is well-nigh extinct amongst us. We
have had some great and good talkers — but in past days. The women of
France'have beaten us hollow. I should be sorely tempted to discourse
upon the subject thus suggested if my space were not exhausted. Madame
de Stael was, perhaps, one of the last of the female conversationalists of
high repute. Her vanity received a heavy blow and great discourage-
ment when conversing with Napoleon the First. She asked his Majesty

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 37

whom he considered the greatest woman in France. " The woman who
has contributed the greatest number of soldiers to my army," was the
prompt reply. Miss Martineau would have been a great conversationalist
but for her infirmity of deafness. She runs over with information and
philosophy — and, in her best days, she expressed herself with wonderful
clearness and force. But the infirmity of deafness renders conversation
impossible. I heard that at a tea-party (I believe at her own house) she
was much struck by the sensible appearance of a young lady present,
who had just said something which seemed to create general approbation
and assent. Miss Martineau lifted her trumpet, and asked that the
observation might be repeated. The friend sitting next to her shook her
head and said it was "nothing." "Let me hear! let me hear!" was

the answer, and she was told that Miss had observed that the

buttered toast was excellent. " Bah ! " said Miss Martineau, lowering
her trumpet, " and that's all." Of the three great infirmities — the
"warnings" of the poem — deafness is the only one that makes us
ridiculous ; and yet, perhaps, it is the most painful of the three.

I have often heard of the " sweet prattle of childhood." I cannot say
that I like it. " The starlight smile of children " is another thing. Let
them smile, but not talk. I do not know a greater nuisance than a talk-
ative child of three or four years, whose " prattle" to its parents may
be very delightful, but to those who have not that parental honour is irri-
tating to the last degree. As a rule, little girls are more garrulous and
egotistical in their garrulity than little boys. The latter are more
readily checked. Even the father will interfere, perhaps with a cuff on
the side of the head. As boys grow older, they are often very amusing
— especially if they do not obtrude their talk upon you, but wait to be
drawn out. I confess that I like to hear them talk about their cricket and
football. There is often in their freshness — their verdancy — especially in
their expressions of na'ive surprise at sights and circumstances familiar to
yourself, something very diverting. I remember a fine little fellow, who
was with me at an hotel in a populous town in Wales, the windows of the
front room of which looked straight down the High Street. The astonish-
ment and perplexity of the youngster at seeing so many Joneses over the
shop windows and so many donkeys in the street was very diverting.
"Oh, Uncle John, there is another Jones/" "Oh, Uncle John, there
is another donkey! " went on so long that, at last, having settled myself
to a book, I began to lose patience at these frequent interruptions, and
I said, "My dear boy, when you have been in Wales as much as I have
been, you will know that the population of the principality is mainly
composed of Joneses and donkeys."

I must say something about the old adage, Senile est de se loqui. My
own experiences are rather against this, if meant in a relative sense. I
think that young men talk more about themselves than old ones. They
are, certainly, more boastful. There is continued talk among the younger
of the rising generation about their personal exploits — how they rode and

38 ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK.

won this or that steeplechase, or bagged so many birds, or beat So-and-so
(" noted player, you know!") at billiards, or won so many hearts when
snowed up at Steepleton Towers. I do not think that old men talk much
about themselves, or are great talkers on any subject. They are not
inclined for any unnecessary exertion, and are well enough disposed to
sit in their easy chairs and listen. No ; the men who boast much
about their achievements are commonly those who have really nothing
worth boasting about. They may talk about old men's twaddle — but
there is none so offensive as their own. Could we fancy the old Duke of
Wellington gabbling about himself ? There is a story of his having re-
buked another peer who did. When compelled to refer to his own career,
he did so in the fewest possible words. I remember that at a great dinner
given by the East India Company, his health being drunk with ringing
applause, the grand old veteran, compelled on such an occasion to speak
of his Indian career, to which allusion had been made by the chairman,
prefaced his very brief remarks thereon with the words — " When I was in
India, in the prime of my life." I well remember the effect they produced.
Caroline Norton has spoken of this in that remarkable poem, " The Child
of the Islands," which ought to be read over and over again even in these
times, some thirty years after date * —

In thy youth's prime, victorious Wellington.

There was no man whom Wellington loved better than his old comrade
Sir John Malcolm. He was a prodigious talker, and earned thereby a

* I was sorry to learn the other day, that the hook is " out of print," as I wished
to distribute, at Christmas, a few copies of it among cherished friends. I scarcely
know a better " Christmas hook." It is instructive in many senses — instructive as
it is touching. There is something sad in the thought that it suggests — that tho
" Islands "are no better than they were when the "Child" was born — in some
respects, indeed , worse. Contrast that beautiful little episode of the " Ballet-Girl "
with what has recently been written on the subject by experienced modern norelists.
The poet writes about " broken vows," and " snapping of gentle links," and the
beguilement of a young heart. It would seem, however, that in these days there
is no beguilement — merely broad unabashed selling, arranged by managers or
theatrical agents.

And since these poor forsaken ones are apt

With ignorant directness to perceive

Only the fact that gentle links are snapt,

Love's perjured nonsense taught them to believe

Would last for ever : since to mourn and grieve

Over these broken vows is to grow wild :

It may be she will come some winter eve,

And weeping like a broken-hearted child,

Keproach thee for the days when she was thus beguiled.

Then in thy spacious library — where dwell

Philosophers, historians, and sages,

Full of deep lore which thou hast studied well,

And classic poets, whose melodious pages

Are shut, like birds, in lacquered trellis cages, —

ON PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK. 39

significant nickname from George Canning. But it was by no means
empty talk, and not intentionally egotistical. Whewell and Sedgwick, who
were among his most familiar friends, told me that they delighted in it ;
there was a vivacity, a cheeriness about it which could not be surpassed.
He overran with anecdote, and always left you wiser than before ; but
there was not more egotism in it than was necessary to the right telling of
his fitories. Old soldiers are more excusable in this respect than others.
There is something fascinating, especially to those who have not " served,"
in such talk. The " broken soldier," who

Sate by the fire and talked the night away,
Wept o'er his wounds and tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won,

must have had a strange attractiveness to beguile the good parson of his
night's rest. Othello was not an egotist in the hearing of Brabantio and
Desdemona. He had a right to speak of that which he knew. So it was
with Malcolm in the House of Commons. Both sides of the House felt
that he had a right to speak about India ; he knew what he was talking
about. They listened to him with the deepest attention. He was not an
egotist then. But when he spoke, upon all occasions, about the Keform
Bill, he seemed to say, " I am Sir John Malcolm, and when I ope my
mouth," &c. He was an egotist — and if / go on much longer I shall
have the Senile est quoted against myself. But I hope I may plead that
it is not, in my case, senile egotism, but senile memory, that has carried
me through these pages. What I have written may be of little worth ; but
it is, for the most part, what I have seen or heard myself; and, at least,
has the value of truth. A man who has lived to the age of sixty, and
who has little to tell, or will not tell it if he has, must be a spend-thriffc
of his opportunities or a miser of his possessions.

Let thy more educated mind explain

By all experience of recorded ages,

How commonplace is this her frantic pain,

And how such things have been, and must be yet again I

[There is nothing of the kind now — a front-place behind the foot-lights — a good
account at one's banker's — a neat brougham ; and the thing is done. The " Protector "
is ready, and the damsel ready to be protected. It is vanity on her part — vanity and
greed— but not a grain of love.]

40

I HAD FALLEN ILL (very injudiciously for my own comfort) so far on in the
autumn that, when I was ordered to the sea, the northern bathing-places
were beginning to grow empty. "To imbibe iodine," said my Doctor;
which is to be recommended as a far more majestic prescription than
that of merely breathing sea-air ; and my niece, who had come to my
help, was evidently much impressed, and respected the ailments which
required so erudite a remedy far more than she had done before.

She was a widow, with three young children, and was glad of the
opportunity to give her two little girls a change to the lovely spot in
Wales which was chosen as our destination. There were glorious views
of blue mountain ranges, and stretches of green and purple sea with
endless varieties of colour, for us, the elders ; sea-weeds and pebbles, and
plenty of shipping to delight the young ones ; and drives for us all, as I
began gradually to improve, up into mountain, glens and green lanes,
where the hawthorn berries were as red as the fuchsias in the cottage
gardens. Even a " Pass " was not quite out of reach of the strong ones.

Our time passed very pleasantly ; the place thinned every day, but
this was no grief to us. The smart young ladies with indescribable hats,
the drabby old ones with trailing gowns, were rather amusing at first to
watch, but when the novelty wore off of their garments, fearful and won-
derful to behold in combinations of colours and shape, and of the jackets
and hats of the men, which seemed to have been chosen from an ascetic
desire to make themselves hideous, it was rather a relief to get rid of them
all. The few "nice people kept theirselves to theirselves," as my old
maid observed, while we were quite sufficient for our own amusement.

We had a great many acquaintances, however, of one kind or another ;
for the youngest of my niece's children, aged eight, was a young person
of a most social turn of mind. She knew every dog and cat by its name
in all the lodging-houses near. The old washerwoman who spread her
clothes on the beach to air, and fastened them down with stones, was her
particular friend. " I can help to pin them tight for her, you know." We
knew all about the milk- woman's little girl through her, and the mother of
the donkey chair driver, demoralized as usual by the shifting population of
a watering-place. " A bad little chap," said his unprejudiced parent.

There was a small boy with a hip complaint three doors from us, in
whom she took a lively interest. " He's the son of a sailor, Mummie,
and he's seven years old. Auntie, do hear ; you're not listening. And

CHARLIA. 41

/

his name's Jem ; and he's brought up a pussy what was going to be
drowned, and he gives it half his milk."

" Very bad for him, poor little man — scrofulous, I daresay," said I,
prosaically.

"Oh, Auntie; how can you say it's bad!" cried Janet, her eyes
sparkling with wrath at my want of poetry. "And he's hung up little
strings with knots to them, and he makes her — that's the Kitty — do her
* gymnacks ' every day up them. And when she's tired he makes her
go to sleep in a hammock he's made for her with string, and he's hung it
up in the window, only think ! " After which we had in the little lame boy
to tea. Another day it was — " Look at that old crooked gentleman,
with a comforter and two sticks. Sarah says he was once in the horse
soldiers — only think ! — and rode at the savages somewhere a great way
off, and spitted 'em on his great sword like so many toads."

" But toads are not made to be spitted. I hope you don't think so,
dear ? " said I, somewhat anxiously.

" Oh, no ! Auntie, and Willy doesn't neither; for I never heard him
say so." Willy was her brother, and an authority without appeal in her
eyes on all points of morals and manners.

After this we always had a kindly nod from the paralytic old Colonel
to his admirer. Janet was not exactly a flirt, but she decidedly preferred
the society of gentlemen as more amusing.

So we went on till we knew the biographies, mythical or real, of half
our neighbours, including that of our landlord, a silent, rather stern-
looking man, who went off every morning (to " something in the Cus-
toms," said Janet) in a coat somehow reminding one of a naval uniform.
Soon we heard how Mr. Davies had been in the Royal Navy, and the
name of his ship, and of his captain, and of the model he had made of the
" Warspite," and many interesting particulars concerning her tonnage.
Also of the only daughter of the house who had been at " such a genteel
school on the other side the mountains" (it was evident here how very
faithful was the report), "and her name is Charlia (wasn't it a funny
name ?), because the Captain's name was Charles, and he was her god-
father. And Mr. Davies says, ' I want my little girl back very badly ' —
he calls her his little girl, and she's eighteen, Auntie ! Isn't it funny ?
And she sings so beautifully, he says, « The Men of Harlech,' and « All
through the Night.' I want to hear her so much — and it has a chorus.
Don't you think she may come home before we go, because I want very
much to see her ? Do ask Mr. Davies to fetch her, Auntie."

I am afraid my interest in Miss Charlia, in spite of her curious name,
was not at all thought up to the mark by the ardent Janet.

We had gone on \er~y happily for three weeks, when my niece heard
suddenly that her only boy was ill with scarlatina at school. Scarlatina
means scarlet fever in an anxious mother's ears, and she was of course
longing to be off. I was so much better that I could not think of keeping
her. She offered to leave the little girls, but she wanted the nurse with

42 CHARLIA.

her, for the sake of the invalid — I saw that she distrusted me and my old
maid, and would have been haunted by a perennial nightmare of Janet
carried off by the tide when " dabbling," and Mary " catching her
death of cold" in the autumn wind. I would not hear of anybody's
staying for my sake, and they were all off next day — Janet, with a
child's love of change, almost as glad to go away as she had been to
come to the place.

"You'll be after us very soon, dear," cried my niece, rather uneasily,
as she looked her last out of the fly at me standing by the wicket gate a
little disconsolately.

It was with rather a pang that I saw them depart. I had " assumed a
courage " which I did not quite possess for being left alone, so far from
everybody I had ever known. I even tried to get a reprieve from the
hard-hearted Doctor, who was, however, inexorable as to the number of
the necessary doses of iodine. I was still far from strong, the October
weather was beautiful, and there was really no excuse for not lasting out
till the end of the " cure."

The place grew thinner and thinner. Even the old paralysed Colonel
and the child with the bad hip were gone, and his poor spoiled kitten
went mewing about as disconsolately as the rest of us. The lodging-
houses were nearly empty, and began dolefully to close up their eyes,
like the hybernating race they were. One put up uncompromising
green Venetian shutters ; the next, where all hope had not quite fled,
was satisfied with pulling down all its white blinds ; while the plaster
bow window round the corner still hung out a despairing sign of " Apart-
ments " for the chance visitors who, tempted by the cheapness of lodgings,
might still be caught. The one West-End street was like a tomb — a
morne silence reigned in the dismal little shops. The grocer looked like
an undertaker^ the little linendraper folded up my fourpennyworth of
buttons and a pair of muffetees with a sigh, and a long hopeless side-look
at a group of five sailors lounging past, who were staring in at the smart
ties still hanging in her nearly empty windows, but evidently regarding
them as works of art, not objects to purchase ; and she grew almost hyste-
rical as she described to me " the long empty months of winter, ma'am ; so
cold and so dreary coming on, ma'am, without a soul to buy anything." I
should think that trade was never very lively in the little town, but the
stationer's wife, who sold yellow shilling novels, and Calvinistic Methodist
tracts — envelopes at three for a halfpenny, and sixpenny photographs,
spoke as if a death had taken place after a period of splendid dissipation,
while she deplored the shortness of the season. " It never had been so
short before ; the gales, too, had been so strong, and had come on earlier
than usual."

I found that every year the season always was the shortest ever known,
— the gales always had been the strongest, and always came on "much
earlier than usual." This year, too, "the Londoners hadn't come as
many as sometimes," she said sadly. I wondered how many " Londoners "
ever reached that remote spot.

CHAELIA. 43

In short, life began to grow rather depressing by force of sympathy,
and in spite of the extreme beauty of the autumn tints on the twisted
trees which fringed the rocky point on one side of us, and came down
quite to the water's edge — in spite of the glories of the purple mountains
and the sea with its regiment of little white horses which came prancing
merrily up to the beach — I wished ardently for some more human interest
as I came in next evening at dusk to my solitary tea. It is sad to have
nobody even to whom one can say, " How beautiful it is ! "

The tray was brought in by my landlady : she was a pleasant, sweet-
tempered- looking woman, with a faded air of gentility about her — who
" had only just begun to let lodgings; from difficulties," she told me.
The house was a pretty little old place, quite at the beginning of the town
and at the end of a quiet grey row, with trailing jessamine up the front
and a Virginian creeper gorgeous in colour. A " pleasure-ground," fully
thirty feet wide, lay between it and the road, filled with fuchsias and red
geraniums, and pleasant old-fashioned flowers besides. I had fallen in love
with it when first we arrived, and it had helped to settle our choice of
lodgings. She sighed as she put down my tea and told me that the
little maid-of-all-work was gone home after her hard summer, and that
my old maid had just hurt her foot getting over a stone stile.

"Father's gone to fetch my daughter home to stay altogether now,
and they won't be back to-night," she said in a sort of sad, trailing tone.

It was evident that, for some reason or other, she wanted sympathy,
so I uttered some commonplaces about her pleasure in' having her child
home again, after a long absence I understood, and so forth.

She was evidently very nervous about something. " Things were very
different at home to what Charlia had been used to lately. Life was very
contrairy, and a great deal to put up with, and now she'd perhaps be
hurt against them all, she was afraid. They'd spent all they could for
her, and now she was not hardly sure. . . . Shall I bring candles,
ma'am?" she broke off suddenly.

" No ! " said I ; "sit down by the fire and tell me all about it, if you
don't mind telling."

And then the poor soul sat down in the most uncomfortable chair she
could find, in spite of my remonstrances, and began to pour out her
troubles in the dusk, which is always favourable to confidences. I only
answered at intervals : " Dear, dear ! How sad ! No, really ! Yes, indeed 1 "
There are many people to whom it is the greatest relief to talk on unin-
terruptedly for hours, and to whom it is the truest kindness to listen, in
intelligent silence, for as long a time as you can spare.

There is always something pathetic in a human history, and it was a
comfort to her to explain that she had never thought to keep lodgings,
and how she was the daughter of a man with some small Government
appointment in a Crown colony. She had evidently been both pretty
and pleasing in her time. A Queen's ship had touched at the port, and
one of the warrant-officers had wooed and won her. The " Warspite"

44 CHARLIA.

was only to be there a month to refit — ten days to make acquaintance ;
ten days to woo and wed ; ten days of married life, and then a long
parting. He was a good man, and it was clear that she had never re-
gretted her choice — she had joined him at different stations, but her many
babies had never flourished, and died one after the other, till at length the
precious Charlia was born ; soon after which her husband had been
wounded, and had retired on the smallest of pensions, eked out by a little
appointment in the Customs. " Things had been always tight " with
them, she said, and now house-rent and provisions all went up, and
salaries and pensions kept down, and so they had been obliged to let
their spare rooms. I suspect she was a bad manager, and I know she
was quite above taking advantage of the lodgers' tea and sugar, or of such
other common little means of advancing her interests.

" Charlia' s schooling had been so very expensive. The two ladies
have grown old, and only took four boarders, and treated them quite as
themselves ; and Miss Amelia, that's the youngest, has bad health. She
had been once just going to make a very good marriage to the cousin of a
baronet ! only she didn't. I don't quite know how it was, but she told
Charlia all about it ; and she was much tried, and she was very kind, and
liked to have the girl about her, and taught her singing — and she was
very clever, and made poetry- and such beautiful wax flowers! and was
very fond of Charlia."

Bad poetry and wax flowers ; two of the greatest of abominations in my
eyes ! Altogether Miss Amelia did not sound to me at all like an ideal
instructor of youth.

" And Charlia had profited so much — and her music, and her bead-
work, and the use of the globes, and the velvet-painting."

" Why did you call her Charlia? " interrupted I, a little weary of this
enumeration of accomplishments.

" We'd lost so many little ones, and father did want a boy so much;
and his captain's name was Charles." The reasons were not all very rele-
vant, but they did quite as well as better ones. •

" And why have not you had her back before, when you wanted help
so much all this summer? " said I.

" Oh ! this isn't fit work for her," said the poor mother. " Only now I
really don't know whether it wouldn't have been best if we'd had her here
at home with us ; but her aunt and uncle— ^-he's a rich shipowner down at
the port, and got no end of trade ; and they've no children, and they're
so fond of Charlia ; and always wanting to have her with them, and her
singing and all ; and she's a good girl, that she is, poor child — for
all. ..." And she launched out again in her child's praises, before the
end of which there was a call for her by the washerwoman, and evi-
dently I had not yet got at the trouble.

The next day Charlia arrived. I had felt a great prejudice against
her for thus leaving all the burden of life upon her poor mother, while she
amused herself with aunts and uncles, and bead-work, and music, and

CHARLIA. 45

"globes." " She must be a selfish young puss," I had decided in my
own mind. Bat there was no trace of this in the girl's looks and ways
when I saw hor. She was grave and gentle, and very obliging ; and had
run up and down stairs a dozen times for me before she had been many
hours in the house.

She was tall and slight, with a pale complexion and dark hair, and a
dreamy look in her very dark brown eyes, which seemed to be looking at
something far away beyond you. She took a great fancy for me, and she
looked so unhappy that it went to my heart— eighteen ought to look
bright, or at least hopeful ; and she seemed thoroughly dispirited. Her
education had clearly not fitted her for her home life, poor child.

Her trouble soon came out. She had fallen in love with the captain
of a merchant vessel, belonging to her uncle the shipowner, which had
been coming and going for about a year to and from the small port where
she had been staying.

" He's a wild young chap, I'm afraid," her mother told me next day :
" we hear no good of him, though I can't quite say it's very bad," she
added, poor woman, wistfully ; evidently torn in pieces by her desire to be
just to both father and child. "Father's been making no end of in-
quiries," she sighed, " and doesn't like what he hears; and he's fetched
her home to be out of Captain Roberts' way ; and he's settled she shan't
have anything more to do with him. And he told a bit of his mind, he
says, to his sister, for letting things go so far for Charlia, with one who
hasn't the fear of the Lord before his eyes."

The old man was a strong Calvinistic Methodist, like so many of the
Welsh, and an earnestly religious man, to whom all lightness was an
abomination.

" Evan's as good a man and as loving a father as can be, but he won't
see her soul lost by consorting with godless men," sighed the poor
woman ; " but, as I tell Charlia, surely if the man cares for her, as he
says he does, he'll take up ; and then her father would see, perhaps.
There's not much harm in him, I daresay." She wandered from side to
side in her judgment as her mind reverted to the contradictory arguments
of her two beloved ones. " They say he's a loose hand, and he's such
a way with him he can wind folk round his finger, and that's not a safe
one to deal with if he hasn't got much of a conscience along with it."

" Have you ever seen him yourself?" said I, anxiously, wishing to
get, if possible, some direct evidence.

" Yes 1 he came in one evening when I was with the Pritchards, and we
were having tea. He's a personable young fellow ; and he stood about a
bit and joked; and wouldn't Charlia sing for a fair wind for him, he
said; she that could wile the birds off the boughs. They told father he
couldn't take his ears off of her when she sung, he thought so much of her
— it's perhaps a year back it began, I believe ! But her father says she
mustn't think any more about it," the mother ended, bracing herself up.

With his strict ideas of naval discipline, where to command is to

46 CHARLIA.

receive silent and implicit obedience at whatever cost, it seemed to me
that he expected poor Charlia to cut off her past life at his word, like the
branch of a tree, and to feel nothing more in the matter — not in the least
calculating how much she would suffer — and that her previous training had
not in the least prepared her for this. Poor Charlia ! Anyhow, the
affair had taken sad hold of her dreamy imagination.

When I came into the little sitting-room next morning, which she was
by way of dusting, she was standing with the cloth in her hand, quite
lost. She started when she saw me and went on with her work, half
wailing a sad old Welsh lament upon the " Massacre at Rhyddlan."

A day or two after, at dusting time, before breakfast, I found her in
my little bow window, which commanded the best view of the sea in the
house. She was looking out at a brigantine, trim and smart, which
swung slowly past with the tide, not far from the shore, while a man on
board waved his cap once or twice. As she turned, her face and eyes
shone with a light which almost startled me.

" So that's Captain Roberts' ship, Charlia, is it ? " said I gently,
putting my hand on her shoulder.

She turned away with a blush. " Shall I ever see her dressed for me
with a garland, like that one we saw yesterday?" she whispered almost
to herself.

There had been a ship in the little port the day before, adorned
with flags and streamers, and a garland at the masthead, in honour of
the captain's marriage.

" I believe if he really cares for you, and is steady, your father might
come to think differently; but if he isn't what he ought to be, you
ought not to think of him, Charlia," said I, with infinite sense and pro-
priety.

" They slander him and tell lies of him," replied she, with flashing
eyes. "He only just does what other young men do " (she was evidently
quoting from a text), " and he's ever so much better than they are. He's a
gallant fellow, he is, and out and out the best master mariner going ; and
so much thought of by uncle and all down there ; and once he helped to
man the lifeboat — coxswain, they said — when one of the sailors wouldn't
go. How dare they say such things to father about him ? And for
the minister, too, who scarcely knows him ! "

It seemed to me as if the excessive contrast between the two had
been a great bond of attraction ; the daring, restless, pleasure-loving man
of action had a charm for her concentred poetic nature, cultivated all on
the wrong side, and probably she had interested him much in the same way.

" Dear ! your father and mother love you so that if he goes on well
they'd be sure to consent. If he's patient and constant to you," I added.

Her face fell, and she turned away suddenly.

Was it a doubt whether the gallant and gay Captain Roberts would
be patient and constant to her ? although she would have suffered any
torture rather than confess the feeling even to herself.

CHAIILIA. 47

I must say that I doubted more about the man at that moment than
from anything her mother had told me ; and it was with a real pang that
I said, as she went towards the door —

" Mind, dear, you've no right to wreck your life. God gave it you to
do better with than that, even if it did not break your parents' hearts
along with your own. If Captain Roberts is not good,' you ought to try
to give him up."

" I might help him to do right — he told me so," she said very softly
and humbly.

"And suppose he only helped you to do wrong? it is too great a
burden for a woman's shoulders, even if it were laid upon you, Charlia, and
nobody has a right to choose it for themselves. He is ten years older
than you are : didn't you tell me so ? — and you are such a young girl to
think of guiding others."

"But I have a duty to him now, surely," she said in a still lower
voice.

" If you come to weighing incompatible duties, dear, must not the
lifelong one to your own two come at least first ? "

She did not reply, but stood outside the door for a moment irresolute,
before she closed it.

Things went on very quietly in the house after this. I used to find
exquisite little nosegays on my table — the flowers were beginning to
fade, it is true, but after one or two hints as to colours and arrange-
ment, and the sight of the berries and leaves she saw me bring in — bits of
red Virginian creeper glowing among yellowing maple and brown beech, or
bunches of fern and moss, seemed to grow of themselves in my room.
The wax-flower epoch had clearly vanished ; there was a natural refine-
ment about her which only wanted a word to develop. She did her duty
by her mother with all her might, fetched and carried, and sewed and
mended indefatigably and patiently, and was very tender to her old father
when he came home at night. He was never weary of listening to her
voice, and I could hear her singing to him half the evening. In general
he asked for his beloved hymn tunes, but also very often for the old Welsh
airs which I, too, had learned to love : " The Rising of the Lark," " The
Valley of the Folding of the Lambs," " Maid Meggan " — many of which
I found that the " Sasneg " had cribbed without acknowledgment of their
origin and had set to ugly English words, " Cease your funning," " Poor
Mary Anne," &c.

The most cheerful of them sounded sad however, I thought, as she
sang them ; there was a strange pathos in her voice, as if it carried with it
the echoes of the old historical sadnesses as well as her own, which
made me thrill. I used to open my door to hear her, and she would
sometimes come and sing to me — I saw a great deal of her by snatches ;
she cared for all that I was doing and all that I was reading, which was
not very much, though my niece had sent me down a great parcel 01
books — the circulating library of the place possessing nothing but novels.

48 CHARLIA.

My solitary rambles and the sitting on the beach in the open air for hours
were very tiring, and I came in generally too much exhausted to do more
than lie on the horsehair sofa with a book of travels. Besides which,
the period for much reading for most of us is not when we have all our
time to ourselves, and "nothing else to do," as is supposed, but when
one is at least moderately busy for other people.

There was not very much perhaps in Charlia's extreme desire to know
more about "foreign parts and languages" — Captain Roberts probably
had been, or might have to go, abroad ; but she had an appetite for better
things, and she was so interested in all which we did together that I was
quite afraid of keeping her from her other work. She was left wonderfully
free, however, as to her time and her doings, by her loving mother, who
would have made up for the one thing denied to Charlia by every tender
indulgence that she could lavish upon her, while her father interfered
with her liberty only on this one to him necessary point of discipline.

Charlia's moods varied extremely : she had asked me to help her in
her French, which, like that of Chaucer's prioress, was " after the scole of
Stratford atte bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknown," but
sometimes she could hardly keep up her attention to what we were doing
for more than a moment. Occasionally she looked so excited and restless
that I wondered her parents were not more uneasy — probably, however,
she controlled herself more when with them than alone with me. I had
tabooed all talk about Captain Roberts — it seemed to be worse than useless ;
but, to do her justice, she did not seem to wish to enter much on the subject
— she felt it too deeply.

It was very near the end of my time when one morning the sun shone
out most gloriously, the whole earth seemed to glow. A pale blue haze
hung over the distant mountain headlands, which dipped down into the sea
with great scarped cliffs ; the nearer hills seemed an intricate network of
still purplish heather, the yellow gorse, and the brown fern — the sea
was " shot" with green and lilac hues — the white gulls hovered above, and
vessels of every size and variety of rig, and of white and brown sails, came
stealing out round points and into distant little ports. All was calm
and peaceful and exquisitely lovely in its stillness. Charlia carried my
camp-stool and a book and settled me in a sunny corner : she stayed with
me for some time while we watched the passing vessels, and undertook
my education, hitherto much neglected, as to the characteristics of
schooners, smacks, flats, cutters, barques, and coasting-luggers — and ex-
plained most scientifically the difference between a brig and a brigantine.
I thought her sadder than ever, poor child— perhaps with their associa-
tions, and determined to see Mr. Davies that night when he came home
and to ask him if nothing could be done to help her.

In the afternoon I strolled out again alone, and farther than usual
from the town, in the excitement of my last enjoyment of such a beautiful
nature. At last I found a sheltered corner under a rocky bank, where the
stunted old oak and ivy and fern made a pleasant warm nook, into which the

CHAELIA. 49

sun shone almost hotly. It might have been summer but for the colour

of the leaves, and that peculiar still feeling,

the harmony

In autumn and the lustre in the sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been —

Shelley's lines went running on in my head. I had a book with me, but the
world was far too fair to look at anything but the exquisite pictures before
my eyes. Suddenly there was a rustling above my head, and a man swung
himself down the almost perpendicular bank by the branches of a tree : it
was too steep to climb down. He must have got over the wall from the road
above, which was in a shelf in the hill. As he set foot on the beach he
turned in the direction of the town, and I saw him quite distinctly : he
was a tall handsome fellow, with a bright, half-careless, half-daring look,
and a merry gleam in his dark blue eyes, for a moment, I thought at his
success so far in whatever he was intent upon. I do not know whether he
saw me or not, but he was not a man likely to care much either way; I was
only a " tourist," a " visitor," a thing not much regarded in those parts.
Presently he turned again and walked slowly round the next point of the
•wooded bank, which jutted far out into the narrow beach. The way led
in fact nowhere, for, farther on, the rocks came quite down into the sea ;
he by no means looked like a man given to solitary meditation, and my
curiosity was roused. In a few minutes there was a quiet quick step on
the shingle close to me, and Charlia appeared from the side of the town.
She passed close to me without seeing me, walked straight before her,
looking neither right nor left, past the same point behind which I had seen
the man disappear. It was very clear who he was. I was sadly puzzled
to know what to do. Would it be any use to interfere at such a moment ?
had I a right to do so ?

While I was deliberating, however, Charlia appeared once more round the
point and alone ; the man had probably gone up the bank as he had come
down. They could not have been more than a quarter of an hour together.
As she came back fronting my nook, looking very pale and resolute, I
got up — in her absorbed state, I doubt whether otherwise she would have
noticed me at all. She coloured up like fire ; not the beautiful blush of a
girl, but the painful outward effect of some vehement emotion.

"Charlia," I said, "how can you deceive those good people, who
trust you so entirely ? Dear, you owe them something better, surely, for
all these years of affection. I should not have thought you would meet
Captain Roberts underhand ? "

She fired up for a moment, and then burst into a flood of most bitter
tears, and wrung her hands passionately, but said nothing.

" You must tell them where you have been, Charlia," I said, sadly, as
we paced slowly on, " or I must do it."

She turned on me like a wild animal, and then broke down again, sob-
bing pitifully as she said, " Do you say it ; do you say it."

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 181. 8.

50 CHARLIA.

"You must be there, then, and promise them that you will never do
this again. I cannot satisfy them," said I, at my wits' end.

" Promise I will not do this again ? " she moaned, in a strange low
questioning tone, almost inaudible.

" I cannot undertake this for you," repeated I.

We came out on the open beach and then on the road, and walked
home side by side without uttering another word.

I went straight into the body of the house. My own courage was be-
ginning to fail at facing the stern old father and the loving mother with
the story, but I thought I might help poor Charlia in what seemed her
hard strife with herself.

" Mr. Davies," I said, in rather a trembling voice, " Charlia has been
meeting Captain Eoberts under the cliffs. She is very sorry, and "

I could get no further, for the old man's outbreak of anger was terrible
to see. He came of a hot-tempered race, passionate when roused, and the
storm of violent words, in what was to me a foreign language, quite
frightened me. But Charlia stood by perfectly still and silent and un-
moved, though she was as pale as death. I am not sure that she even
heard the words ; she was simply bracing herself up to endure. Mrs.
Davies entreated me in a low voice to leave the room — she was very
proud of her husband, and could not bear that I should see him " out of
himself." I was very wretched, and stood about with my door open, till
in a few minutes Charlia rushed past me up to her room.

"Is there nothing can be done?" I whispered to her mother, who
came to the foot of the stairs looking after her. " If Mr. Davies could give
her hopes for the future, supposing Captain Koberts is steady ; if he could
but let her have something to look forward to ! "

She shook her head sadly. "Father's one who is so set if once
he's made up his mind. But I must try later on," said she, sighing.

There was no singing that night, and as soon as work was done the
poor girl disappeared again into her own cell.

The next day was a busy one to me. The only acquaintance I had
anywhere in those parts had asked me to pay them a visit when I left the
place. I was to start next day, drive across country half the way, and be
met by their horses. It was a gloomy, dismal morning, with showers of
cold rain at intervals — the brief * Ete de St. Martin was clearly over, and
it was quite time to be gone. The sky was grey, the sea was grey, the
mountains were blotted as with a veil, except where a spectral outline
appeared occasionally high up, as if among the clouds. The little ships,
passing and at anchor, all loomed black through the mist — the hulls, the
rigging, the sails, which looked so bright in the sunshine, all now took
the same funereal hue in the grey autumn weather.

All the final bits of business — the packing, the paying of small bills,
which cannot be persuaded to come in till the last moment, the tiresome
odds and ends which take so much time — occupied me all day. I had to

* Welsh, " The little summer before winter."

CHAKLIA. 51

go into the town once or twice, and could not help^feeling to what a forlorn
winter I was leaving poor Charlia, and began to devise plans of sending
for her later to join me, and give some sort of diversion to her thoughts.
She had never been near me all the morning, although twice I had sent to
ask whether she could not come up. Once she was "just going out on an
errand," and another time she just " had got her gown off," and altogether
I saw that she intended to avoid me. I had done my best for the poor
girl as far as I knew how, and I had cared for her very much, which was
more, and her evident feeling against me grieved me sorely.

It was growing dusk — I sent down my letters for the post, and I heard
Charlia's voice downstairs say that she would take them to the office
herself. Presently I saw her with a shawl over her brown hat pass towards
the town.

It was quite dark, and a couple of hours perhaps after this, when I heard
a bustle in the house, and Mrs. Davies came hurriedly in to ask me
whether I had seen or heard anything of Charlia. " She had not been
home since she went to the post," she said, miserably. Her father was
evidently beginning to be alarmed as to the possible consequences of
the outbreak of the night before, and was going out to inquire about her ;
and then she looked into my face piteously for comfort and counsel.

It all flashed upon me — the quiet little bay open to the sea and the
ship, where there were half a dozen places from which she could be taken
up in its boat — the meeting of the two, when all probably had been arranged.

" Had we not better look into her room first ? " said I.

She called her husband, and we all three went into the little upper
chamber which was called Charlia's, and which they had taken great
pains to make nice — the neat white dimity hangings to the bed — the
hanging book- case, the pretty tables, all which her father had put up
himself; pathetic evidences of their care and love for her in every direction.
I knew the room well, for our two little girls had slept there, the house
having been filled to overflowing during their stay.

What a contrast to the poor heart-sick inmate who had just left it !
With a sort of dull pang I remembered our Janet's vehement longing to
see and know Charlia.

There were some signs of packing, though all was very neat in the room.
We opened the drawers ; all were empty ; but in one lay a letter, directed
to her mother. By this time, however, her eyes, and those of her husband,
were so blinded with tears, that she put it into my hands to read.

" Dear Father and Mother, — When this gets to you, I shall be far
away over the sea. Don't search for me — I shall be beyond reach. Don't
be too angry, dears, or think too ill of me, I couldn't help it. I had pro-
mised him so faithfully, and sworn it, too, on a broken ring I've got round
my neck. You shall hear as soon as we are married where we are. I
hope we are going to Scotland. They say it will be done quickest there.
Dears, I am sure you may trust him. . . ."

" And that's just what I never have done and never shall do," cried

a-2

52 CHARLIA.

the father^ savagely striking his clenched fist on the chest of drawers near
which he stood. The blow was so violent that it nearly broke the top,
and must have hurt even his hard hand.

" That isn't all, surely ? " inquired the mother eagerly.
" And now, dears, forgive me if you can — you will love me still, I
know that, for as angry as you are. I couldn't help it — I couldn't help it,
indeed ! and I'm sure he's a good man ! God bless you, my own dears."
The letter sounded almost like a despairing cry, and the poor mother
sank down on a chair and sobbed as if her heart would break, while I read
a little postscript, nearly illegible, where the great tears had fallen ; how
they were " to thank the dear kind lady and say how badly it made me feel not
to go to her when she sent for me ; it seemed so ungrateful, but I couldn't
go or I know I should have spoken." Oh, if she had ! but it probably
would have been useless.

We looked round the room once again before we left it. There
was an old-fashioned sentimental novel left on the book- shelves, All
for Love, with a pirate for hero and lover ; " Voices of the Heart, by M.
Jones, second edition," a great poet, whose name I was so ignorant
as never to have heard of — the passionate passages all underlined and
scored ; Dew-drops of the Affections, " from her tender friend and
school-fellow, Eleonora M. Dobbs ; " some sea-songs, and a smart Bible,
evidently not much used. " But she's taken her old Bible, that was once
mine," said her mother eagerly; "she couldn't mean any harm and
take that with her ! "

What could I say, but that I was quite sure that she "meant no
harm?"

" I can't think how she sent off her clothes," went on Mrs. Davies
anxiously ; but there had been no real difficulty in this : it was known that
I was going to leave, and there was nothing remarkable in packages being
sent away from the house. We found afterwards that Charlia had stopped
a friendly qart, and brought out a box directed to her aunt, to be left at
the little inn near the landing-stage two miles down, "to be called for."
Probably the Northern Star had by this time picked it up.

I was off early the next morning. I would have waited a day or so,
to try and comfort my poor hostess, who, as an Englishwoman, felt herself
sometimes rather lonely, and somewhat as if in a foreign country, but
I could not break my engagement, and went off low and dispirited.

" Write and tell me as soon as you hear — we must hope the best for
her, and that you'll have good news soon," said I, sadly, as we got into
the fly.

It was a most disagreeable journey — the wind had been rising fast the
whole night ; the rain swept by in fine drifts ; the mountains were com-
pletely blotted out by a veil of mist ; we should have seen as much of
them in Hyde Park. It was painful to me to expose other people's horses
in such weather for my service. I was overdone when we arrived, and kind
as my hosts were, it was difficult to me to rally, as I thought of poor

CHAELIA. 53

Charlia. The wind went on rising all day, and though the house was not
on the coast, we could hear it all through the evening, blowing great guns.
At night it increased to a gale ; my room was to windward, and it was
impossible to sleep. The window seemed at every moment about to be
driven in ; the wind roared in the chimney, and howled and wailed and
screeched in an almost unearthly way. I seemed to hear voices calling to
me in agony if I dropped into a doze for a moment — the house quite rocked
— the rain beat in torrents, and sobbed and cried against the casements, as
if entreating to be taken in. I thought of all that must be going on upon
the sea as I lay — the vessels driven hither and thither like chaff, and my
poor Charlia with her fate as dark and troubled as the night. I was
thankful when daybreak came and the dreadful night was over — it seemed
better at least for any one to die in the light.

"When I came downstairs next morning, " We shall have some terrible
stpries to-day of vessels ashore," said my hostess anxiously.

" I don't think I ever remember a worse storm, and this is a frightful
coast to be lost on," said my host. J>ssyf1

" There was a poor girl at sea last night in a little merchant vessel
whom I am much interested in," said I, sadly.
" Heaven help her," replied he solemnly.

In the course of the day flying rumours of disasters came in from all
sides — no one seemed quite to know how or from where — as such rumours
always do. Here a ship had been altogether wrecked and half the crew
had gone down with her ; there another had gone ashore, but the men were
all safe. The worst news was from the nearest port, where a vessel had
parted from her anchor and had drifted down upon another, which lost
hers also, and the two entangled together had broken up on the rocks,
and every soul on board both had been drowned.

Later came more details. One was a brigantine, the Northern Star,
which had taken refuge in the port, it was said, as the night came on. The
body of a young woman had been washed up with those of some of the
sailors.

" Probably she was the captain's wife," said my hostess.
I was silent — the port was not on the road to Scotland — but in such
a gale perhaps the Northern Star could not choose her own way. It was
not for poor Charlia's death that I grieved — what could the " fitful fever"
she had made of life give her even at the best, but sorrow and remorse in
such circumstances ? The tempest had ended her perplexities ; she was in
more merciful and loving hands than ours where she was now gone. But
what a sad fate, when such a death was almost a relief!

The poor parents went off, as soon as the rumour reached them, to
identify the body, and give it decent burial, and I saw them once again
when they had reached home after their terrible journey. But such things
are not of those which can bear the telling.

F. P. V.

54

n

ONE of the most remarkable characteristics of early Italian history is the
influence which great preachers exerted over the populations of whole
cities, and the frequent outbursts of fanatical revivalism to which the most
highly cultivated nation of the Middle Ages was liable. The Italians have
never revealed any great depth of moral earnestness or spiritual enthu-
siasm. That renaissance of Christianity, which we call the Reformation,
could not have proceeded from a Latin people. To free the modern world
from the mythology, the material symbolism, the scholastic pedantry, and
the hierarchical despotism of the Middle Ages ; to simplify religion by re-
turning to the spirit of the Gospel, and to open a new sphere of intellectual
energy by the emancipation of the conscience, was the work of the German
nation. The Italians had their task assigned them in the field of art and
culture. Yet, in spite of their incapacity for any fundamental revolu-
tionary movement, the imagination of the Italians, easily affected by tragic
circumstance, as well as by personal ability in demagogues and orators,
exposed them to frequently recurring paroxysms of devotional excitement.
Great national calamities, like the passing through their cities of the
plague, or the anticipation of foreign invasion — the feuds of their noble
houses, and the fierce civil discords which rent their towns — were occa-
sions on which preaching friars and hermits seized. The fancy of the
people was then suddenly excited. Processions streamed through the
streets and churches, singing penitential psalms and crying Mercy. Old
enemies embraced with tears, and swore eternal friendship. Evil-doers
vowed to abandon their bad habits and assumed the cowl. Bonfires were
lighted on the public squares ; cards, false hair, cosmetics, dice, profane
books, lewd pictures, and all the articles of a vain luxury were committed
to the flames. The paroxysm passed away, and the people returned with
incurable levity to their old feuds and their accustomed vices. Yet this
did not prevent a repetition of the same theatrical display upon the next
occasion, when a monk, with resonant voice and flashing eyes, ascended
the pulpit, and called upon the people to repent.

It would be unscientific to confound events of such European im-
portance as the foundation of the orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic
with the phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sud-
den rise and the extraordinary ascendancy of the mendicants and preachers
were due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the
Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were

KELIGIOUS EEVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY. 55

shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of
movements, which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical
revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of
the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their
militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is
necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was
common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its
wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its pil-
grims. The vast unsettled populations of medieval Europe, haunted with
the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by imperious
religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon the shores of
Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning and
scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of semi-bestial
impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages. The cele-
brated shrines of Europe — Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano, Canterbury
— acted like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous devotion of the
medieval races, like setons to their overcharged imagination. In all these
universal movements the Italians had their share ; though being more
advanced in civilization than the Northern peoples, they turned the cru-
sades to commercial account, and maintained some moderation in the
fakir fury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general history
of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that we have to do, but rather
with those intermittent manifestations of revivalism which were peculiar to
the Italians. The chief points to be noticed are the political influence
acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, the preaching of peace
and moral reformation, the panics of superstitious terror which seized
upon wide districts, and the personal ascendancy of hermits unaccredited
by the Church, but believed by the people to be divinely inspired.

One of the most picturesque figures of the first half of the thirteenth
century is the Dominican monk, John of Vicenza. His order, which had
recently been founded, was already engaged in the work of persecution.
France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, and the stakes
were smoking in the town of Milan, when this friar undertook the noble
task of pacifying Lombardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at
that period torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibelines ; private
feuds crossed and intermingled with political discords ; and the savage
tyranny of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations.
It seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to agree-
ment. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice of a
single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza began his preaching in Bo-
logna during the year 1233. The citizens and the country folk of the
surrounding districts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial
wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the magic of his elo-
quence. The themes of his discourse were invariably reconciliation and
forgiveness of injuries. The heads of rival houses, who had prosecuted
hereditary feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and swore to live

56 EELIGIOUS KEVIYALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY.

thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated him to examine
the statutes of their city, and to point out any alterations by which the
peace of the commonwealth might be assured. Having done his best for
Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his sanctity had been
already spread abroad. The carroccio of the city, on which the standard
of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to many a bloody battle,
was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he entered the gates in
triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace produced the same
results. Old enmities were abandoned, and hands were clasped which
had often been raised in fierce fraternal conflict. Treviso, Feltre, Belluno,
Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the fierce brood of Ezzelino,
yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas were about to reign,
Vicenza, Mantua, and Brescia, all placed themselves at the disposition of
the monk, and prayed him to reform their constitution. But it was not
enough to restore peace to each separate community, to reconcile house-
hold with household, and to efface the miseries of civil discord. John of
Vicenza aimed at consolidating the Lombard cities in one common bond.
For this purpose he bade the burghers of all the towns where he had
preached, to meet him on the plain of Paquara, in the country of Verona.
The 28th of August was the day fixed for this great national assembly.
More than four hundred thousand persons, according to the computation
of Parisio di Cereta, appeared upon the scene. This multitude included
the populations of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, mar-
shalled under their several standards, together with contingents furnished
by Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, Parma, and Bologna. Nor was the assembly
confined to the common folk. The bishops of these flourishing cities, the
haughty Marquis of Este, the fierce lord of Romano, and the Patriarch of
Aquileia, obeyed the invitation of the friar. There, on the banks of the
Adige, and within sight of the Alps, John of Vicenza ascended a pulpit
that had been prepared for him, and preached a sermon on the text,
" Pacem meant do vobis, pacem relinquo vobis." The horrors of war, and the
Christian duty of reconciliation, formed the subject of his sermon, at the
end of which he constrained the Lombards to ratify a solemn league of
amity, vowing to eternal perdition all who should venture to break the
same, and imprecating curses on their crops, their vines, their cattle, and
everything they had. Furthermore, he induced the Marquis of Este to
take in marriage a daughter of Alberico da Romano. Up to this moment
John of Vicenza had made a noble use of the strange power which he
possessed. But his success seems to have turned his head. Instead of
confining himself to the work of pacification so well begun, he now de-
manded to be made lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count,
and to receive the supreme authority in Verona. The people, believing
him to be a saint, readily acceded to his wishes ; but one of the first
things he did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, was to burn sixty
citizens of Verona, whom he had himself condemned as heretics. The
Paduans revolted against his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms,

RELIGIOUS EEVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY. 57

he was beaten and put in prison ; and when he was released, at the inter-
cession of the Pope, he found his wonderful prestige annihilated.*

The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that
of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his
political authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor box-
maker of Pavia, he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a
reputation for sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened
in the year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order
to' preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. " Then," to quote
Matteo Villani, " it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons
so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the
devotion they inspired increased marvellously. And he, seeing the con-
course of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce vice,
and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behaviour of women ; and thereupon
he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the tyrants : and in a
short time he brought the women to modest manners, and the men to
renunciation of usury and feuds." The only citizens of Pavia who
resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time ruled
Pavia like despots. His most animated denunciations were directed
against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they sought to slay him.
But the people gave him a body-guard, and at last he wrought so power-
fully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria and
established a republican government. At this time the Visconti were
laying siege to Pavia : the passes of the Ticino-and the Po were occupied
by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade. Fra
Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his
eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers. They broke
through the lines of the beleaguering camp, and re-established the freedom
of Pavia. What remained, however, of the Beccaria party passed over to
the enemy, and threw the whole weight of their influence into the scale of
the Visconti : so that at the end of a three years' manful conflict, Pavia
was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti in 1359. Fra Jacopo made the best
terms that he could for the city, and took no pains to secure his own
safety. He was consigned by the conquerors to the superiors of his
order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at Vercelli. In his case,
the sanctity of an austere life, and the eloquence of an authoritative
preacher of repentance, had been strictly subordinated to political aims in
the interests of republican liberty. Fra Jacopo deserves to rank with
Savonarola : like Savonarola, he fell a victim to the selfish and immoral
oppressors of his country. As in the case of Savonarola, we can trace the
connection which subsisted in Italy between a high standard of morality
and patriotic heroism, f

* The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza are to be found in
Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of Rolandini and Gerardus Maurisius.

f The best authorities for the life and actions of Fra Jacopo are Matteo Villani,
bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius, in his Chronicle (Gravius, yol. ix.).

58 RELIGIOUS EEVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY.

San Bernardino da Massa heads a long list of preachers, who, without
taking a prominent part in contemporary politics, devoted all their
energies to the moral regeneration of the people. His life, written by
Vespasiano da Bisticci, is one of the most valuable documents which we
possess for the religious history of Italy in the first half of the fifteenth
century. His parents, who were people of good condition, sent him at an
early age to study the Canon law at Siena. They designed him for
a lucrative and important office in the Church. But, while yet a youth,
he was seized with a profound conviction of the degradation of his coun-
trymen. The sense of sin so weighed upon him that he sold all his
substance, entered the order of St. Francis, and began to preach against
the vices which were flagrant in the great Italian cities. After travelling
through the length and breadth of the peninsula, and winning all men by
the magic of his eloquence, he came to Florence. " There," says
Vespasiano, "the Florentines being by nature very well disposed indeed to
truth, he so dealt that he changed the whole State and gave it, one may
say, 'a second birth. And in order to abolish the false hair which the
women wore, and games of chance, and other vanities, he caused a sort of
large stall to be raised in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and bade every one
who possessed any of these vanities to place them there ; and so they
did; and he set fire thereto and burned the whole." San Bernardino
preached unremittingly for forty- two years in every quarter of Italy, and
died at last worn out with fatigue and sickness : "of many enmities and
deaths of men he wrought peace and removed deadly hatreds ; and num-
berless princes, who harboured feuds to the death, he reconciled, and
restored tranquillity to many cities and peoples." A vivid picture of the
method adopted by San Bernardino in his dealings with these cities is
presented to us by Graziani, the chronicler of Perugia. " On September
23, 1425, a Sunday, there were, as far as we could reckon, upwards of
3,000 persons in the Cathedral. His sermon was from the Sacred
Scripture, reproving men of every vice and sin, and teaching Christian
living. Then he began to rebuke the women for their paints and cos-
metics, and false hair and such like wanton customs ; and in like manner
the men for their cards and dice-boards and masks and amulets and
charms : insomuch that within a fortnight the women sent all their false
hair and gewgaws to the Convent of St. Francis, and the men their dice,
cards, and such gear, to the amount of many loads. And on October 29
Fra Bernardino collected all these devilish things on the piazza, where
he erected a kind of wooden castle between the fountain and the Bishop's
Palace ; and in this he put all the said articles, and set fire to them ;
and the fire was so great that none durst go near ; and in the fire were
burned things of the greatest value, and so great was the haste of men
and women to escape that fire that many would have perished but for the
quick aid of the burghers." Together with this onslaught upon vanities,
Fra Bernardino connected the preaching of peace and amity. It is
noticeable that while his sermon lasted and the great bell of San Lorenzo

RELIGIOUS KEVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY. 59

went on tolling, no man could be taken or imprisoned in the city of
Perugia.*

The same city was the scene of many similar displays. During the
fifteenth century it remained in a state of the most miserable internal
discord owing to the feuds of its noble families. Graziani gives an
account of the preaching there of Fra Jacopo della Marca, in 1445. On
this occasion a temporary truce was patched up between old enemies, a witch
was burned for the edification of the burghers, the people were reproved
for their extravagance in dress, and two peacemakers (pacieri) were
appointed for each gate. On March 22, after undergoing this discipline,
the whole of Perugia seemed to have repented of its sins ; but the first
entry for April 15, is the murder of one of the Kanieri family by another
of the same house. So transitory were the effects of such revivals, f
Another entry in Graziani's Chronicle deserves to be noticed. He
describes how, in 1448, Fra Roberto da Lecce (like San Bernardino and
Fra Jacopo della Marca, a Franciscan of the Order of Observance) came
to preach in January. He was only twenty- two years of age ; but his
fame was so great that he drew about 15,000 persons into the piazza to
listen to him. The stone pulpit, we may say in passing, is still shown,
from which these sermons were delivered. It is built into the wall of the
Cathedral, and commands the whole square. Roberto da Lecce began by
exhibiting a crucifix, which moved the audience to tears ; " and the weep-
ing and crying, Jesu misericordia ! lasted about half an hour. Then he
made four citizens be chosen for each gate as peacemakers." What
follows in Graziani is an account of a theatrical show, exhibited upon the
steps of the Cathedral. On Good Friday the friar assembled all the
citizens, and preached ; and when the moment came for the elevation of
the crucifix, " there issued from San Lorenzo Eliseo di Christoforo, a
barber of the quarter of Sant Angelo, like a naked Christ with the cross on
his shoulder, and the crown of thorns upon his head, and his flesh
seemed to be bruised as when Christ was scourged." The people were
immensely moved by this sight. They groaned and cried out, " Miseri-
cordia!" and many monks were made upon the spot. At last, on April
7, Fra Roberto took his leave of the Perugians, crying as he went, "La
pace sia con voi!" \ We have a glimpse of the same Fra Roberto da
Lecce at Rome, in the year 1482. The feuds of the noble families della
Croce and della Valle were then raging in the streets of Rome. On the
night April 3 they fought a pitched battle in the neighbourhood of the
Pantheon, the factions of Orsini and Colonna joining in the fray. Many
of the combatants were left dead before the palaces of the Vallensi ; the
numbers of the wounded were variously estimated ; and all Rome seemed
to be upon the verge of civil war. Roberto da Lecce, who was drawing
large congregations, not only of the common folk, but also of the Roman

* See Vespasiano, Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 185-192. Graziani, Archivio
Storico, vol. xvi. part i. pp. 313, 314.

f See Graziani, pp. 565-568. ' J Graziani, pp. 597-601.

60 RELIGIOUS EEYIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY.

prelates, to his sermons at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, interrupted his
discourse upon the following Friday, and held before the people the image
of their crucified Saviour, entreating them to make peace. As he pleaded
with them, he wept ; and they too fell to weeping — fierce satellites of the
rival factions and worldly prelates lifting up their voice in concert with
the friar who had touched their hearts.* Another member of the Fran-
ciscan Order of Observance should be mentioned after Fra Koberto. This
was Fra Giovanni da Capistrano, of whose preaching at Brescia in 1451
we have received a minute account. He brought with him a great repu-
tation for sanctity and eloquence, and for the miraculous cures which he
had wrought. The Rectors of the city, together with 300 of the most
distinguished burghers upon horseback, and a crowd of well-born ladies on
foot, went out to meet him on February 9. Arrangements were made for
the entertainment of himself and 100 followers, at public cost. Next
morning, three hours before dawn, there were already assembled upwards
of 10,000 people on the piazza, waiting for the preacher. " Think,
therefore," says the Chronicle, " how many there must have been in the
daytime ! and mark this, that they came less to hear his sermon than to
see him." As he made his way through the throng, his frock was almost
torn to pieces on his back, everybody struggling to get a fragment.f

It did not always need the interposition of a friar to arouse a strong
religious panic in Italian cities. After an unusually fierce bout of discord
the burghers themselves would often attempt to give the sanction of solemn
rites and vows before the altar to their temporary truces. Siena, which
was always more disturbed by civil strife than any of her neighbours, offered
a notable example of this custom in the year 1494. The factions of the
Monti de' Nove and del Popolo had been raging ; the city was full of feud and
suspicion, and all Italy was agitated by the French invasion. It seemed
good, therefore, to the heads of the chief parties that an oath of peace
should be taken by the whole body of the burghers. Allegretti's account
of the ceremony, which took place at dead of night in the beautiful Cathe-
dral of Siena, is worthy to be translated. " The conditions of the peace
were then read, which took up eight pages, together with an oath of the
most horrible sort, full of maledictions, imprecations, excommunications,
invocations of evil, renunciation of benefits temporal and spiritual, confis-
cation of goods, vows, and so many other woes that to hear it was terror ;
et etiam that in articulo mortis no sacrament should accrue to the salvation,
but rather to the damnation of those who might break the said conditions ;
in so much that I, Allegretto di Nanni Allegretti, being present, believe
that never was made or heard a more awful and horrible oath. Then the
notaries of the Nove and the Popolo, on either side of the altar, wrote
down the names of all the citizens, who swore upon the crucifix, for on
each side there was one, and every couple of the one and the other faction

* See * Jacobus Volaterranus.' Muratori, xxiii. pp. 126, 166, 167.
t See ' Istori a Bresciana.' Muratori, xxi. 865.

RELIGIOUS EEVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY. 61

kissed ; and the bells clashed, and Te Deum laudamus was snng with the
organs and the choir while the oath was being taken. All this happened
between one and two hours of the night, with many torches lighted.
Now may God will that this be peace indeed, and tranquillity for all
citizens, whereof I doubt." * The doubt of Allegretti was but too reason-
able. Siena profited little by these dreadful oaths and terrifying func-
tions. Two years later on, the same chronicler tells how it was believed
that blood had rained outside the Porta a Laterino, and that various visions
of saints and spectres had appeared to holy persons, proclaiming changes
in the state, and commanding a public demonstration of repentance.
Each parish organized a procession, and all in turn marched, some by
day and some by night, singing Litanies, and beating and scourging them-
selves, to the Cathedral, where they dedicated candles; and "one ran-
somed prisoners, for an offering, and another dowered a girl in marriage."
In Bologna in 1457 a similar revival took place on the occasion of an out-
break of the plague. * ' Flagellants went round the city, and when they came
to a cross, they all cried with a loud voice : ' Misericordia ! misericordia I '
For eight days there was a strict fast ; the butchers shut their shops."
Ferrara exhibited a like devotion in 1496, on even a larger scale. About
this time the entire Italian nation was panic-stricken by the passage of
Charles VIII., and by the changes in states and kingdoms which Savonarola
had predicted. The Ferrarese, to quote the language of their chronicler,
expected that " in this year, throughout Italy, would be the greatest famine,
war, and want that had ever been since the world began." Therefore they
fasted, and "the Duke of Ferrara fasted together with the whole of his
court." At the same time a proclamation was made against swearing,
games of hazard, and unlawful trades ; and it was enacted that the Jews
should resume their obnoxious yellow gaberdine with the 0 upon their
breasts. In 1500 these edicts were repeated. The condition of Italy had
grown worse and worse ; it was necessary to besiege the saints with still
more energetic demonstrations. Therefore "the Duke Ercole da Este, for
good reasons to him known, and because it is always well io be on good
terms with God, ordained that processions should be made every third day
in Ferrara, with the whole clergy, and about 4,000 children or more from
twelve years of age upwards, dressed in white, and each holding a banner
with a painted Jesus. His lordship, and his sons and brothers, followed
this procession, namely, the Duke on horseback, because he could not
then walk, and all the rest on foot, behind the Bishop." A certain
amount of irony transpires in this quotation, which would make one
fancy that the chronicler suspected the Duke of ulterior, and perhaps
political motives.! It sometimes happened that the contagion of such
devotion spread from city to city; on one occasion, in 1399, it travelled
from Piedmont through the whole of Italy. The epidemic of flagellants,

* See Muratori, vol. xxiii. p. 839.

f 'Diario Ferrarese.' Muratori, xxiv. pp. 17-386.

62 RELIGIOUS REVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY.

of which Giovanni Yillani speaks in 1310 (lib. viii. cap. 121), began also
in Piedmont, and spread along the Genoese Riviera. The Florentine
authorities refused entrance to these fanatics into their territory. In 1334
Villani mentions another outburst of the same devotion (lib. xi. cap. 23),
which was excited by the preaching of Fra Venturino da Bergamo. The
penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove with the olive branch.
They stayed fifteen days in Florence, scourging themselves before the altars
of the Dominican churches, and feasting, five hundred at a time, in the
Piazza di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the Storia di Milano (p. 281), gives an
interesting account of these " white penitents," as they were called in the
year 1399. "Multitudes of men, women, girls, boys, small and great, towns-
people and countryfolk, nobles and burghers, laity and clergy, with bare feet
and dressed in white sheets from head to foot," visited the towns and villages
of every district in succession. " On their journey, when they came to
a cross-road or to crosses, they threw themselves on the ground, crying
' Misericordia ' three times ; then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the
Ave Mary. On their entrance into a city, they walked singing Stabat
Mater dolorosa and other litanies and prayers. The population of the
places to which they came were divided ; for some went forth and told
those who stayed that they should assume the same habit, so that at one
time there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many as 15,000
of them." After admitting that the fruit of this devotion was in many
cases penitence, and amity, and almsgiving, Corio goes on to observe :
" However, men returned to a worse life than ever after it was over." It
is noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a horrible plague ; and
it is impossible not to believe that the crowding of so many penitents
together on the highways and in the cities led to this result.

During the anarchy of Italy between 1494 (the date of the invasion
of Charles VIII.) and 1527 (the date of the sack of Rome) the voice of
preaching friars and hermits was often raised, and the effect was always
to drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan was the centre
of the military operations of the French, the Swiss, the Spaniards, and
the Germans. No city suffered more cruelly, and in none were fanatical
prophets received with greater superstition. In 1516 there appeared in
Milan " a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and beyond measure wild,
without shoes, without shirt, bareheaded, with bristly hair and beard, and
so thin that he seemed another Julian the hermit." He lived on water
and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms of all sorts, and
preached with wonderful authority. In spite of the opposition of the
Archbishop and Chapter, he chose the Duomo for his theatre ; and there
he denounced the vices of the priests and monks to vast congregations of
eager listeners. In a word, he engaged in open warfare with the clergy
on their own ground. But they of course proved too strong for him, and
he was driven out of the city. He was a native of Siena, aged 30.* We

* See "Prato" and " Burigozzo," Arch. Stor. vol. iii. pp. 357, 431.

RELIGIOUS REVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY. 63

may compare with this picturesque apparition of Jeronimo in Milan what
Varchi says about the prophets who haunted Rome like birds of evil omen
in the first years of the pontificate of Clement VII. " Not only friars from
the pulpit, but hermits on the piazza, went about preaching and predicting
the ruin of Italy and the end of the world with wild cries and threats." *
In 1523 Milan beheld the spectacle of a parody of the old preachers.
There appeared a certain Frate di San Marco, whom the people held for
a saint, and who " encouraged the Milanese against the French, saying it
was a merit with Jesus Christ to slay those Frenchmen, and that they were
pigs." He seems to have been a feeble and ignorant fellow, whose head
had been turned by the examples of Bussolaro and Savonarola, f Again,
in 1529, we find a certain monk, Tommaso, of the order of St. Dominic,
stirring up a great commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been
brought to the very lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation ;
and, strange to say, this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to
propitiate offended deities, he organised a procession on a great scale.
700 women, 500 men, and 2,500 children, assembled in the Cathedral.
The children were dressed in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and
all were barefooted. They promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly
shouting Misericordia / and besieged the Duomo with the same dismal
cry, the Bishop and the Municipal authorities of Milan taking part in the
devotion. J These gusts of penitential piety were matters of real national
importance. Writers imbued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance
thought them worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. Thus
we find Pitti, in the Storia Florentina (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 112), describing
what happened at Florence in 1514 : — " There appeared in Santa Croce
a frate Francesco da Montepulciano, very young, who rebuked vice with
severity, and affirmed that God had willed to scourge Italy, especially
Florence and Rome, in sermons so terrible that the audience kept crying
with floods of tears, Misericordia ! The whole people was struck dumb
with horror, for those who could not hear the friar by reason of the crowd,
listened with no less fear to the reports of others. At last he preached a
sermon so awful that the congregation stood like men who had lost their
senses ; for he promised to reveal upon the third day how and from what
source he had received this prophecy. However, when he left the pulpit,
worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an illness of the lungs,
which soon put an end to his life." Pitti goes on to relate the frenzy
of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused all the
old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for the
Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici
endeavoured to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and
public shows.

* Storia Florentina, vol. i. p. 87.
f Arch. Stor. vol. iii. p. 443.
j Burigozzo, pp. 485-489.

64 EELIGIOUS EEVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL ITALY.

Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illus-
trate the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the
Middle Ages and the Kenaissance. The biography of Savonarola has been
purposely omitted. It will, however, be observed, from what has been
said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, San Bernardino,
Roberto da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savona-
rola was by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history.
Combining the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining
within the sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a role, which had
been often played in the cbief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar
genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander
VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet, which
prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions which
formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent 'defects of all
Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while they
lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic scale by
Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of these move-
ments in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. The mo-
mentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, Milan, Verona,
Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia, is quite out of proportion to the slight
intellectual power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has nothing
really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the duty
of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral abuses,
and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his audience.
But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, when his
personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the nation he
so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he ob-
tained so complete an ascendancy in the political world. All this is as
true of Savonarola as it is of San Bernardino. It is this which removes
him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley, and from Luther.

J. A. S.

65

£0faeU's f cms.

MANY years ago, being in profound ignorance of all things American, we
happened to stumhle upon a copy of the Bitjlow Papers, then fresh from
the press. The allusions to contemporary political details were as obscure
to us as an Egyptian hieroglyphic. We should have been hopelessly
floored by the questions which will probably be set in some examination
paper of the future. What was that "darned proviso matter" about
which a distinguished candidate, "never had a grain of doubt ?" Who
was " Davis of Miss. ? " and why was he likely to place the perfection of
bliss in "skinning that same old coon?" What was the plan which
" chipped the shell at Buffalo of setting up old Van ? " Upon these and
numberless other difficulties, some of which, it may be added, still remain
buried for us in the profoundest night, we could only look in the spirit
which causes a youthful candidate to twist his hair into knots, and vaguely
interrogate universal space in hopes of an answer. But dark as the allu-
sions might be, there was a spirit and humour in Mr. Biglow's utterances
which shone through all superficial perplexities. Whatever might be the
cause of his excitement, there could be no doubt of the amazing shrewd-
ness of his homely satire. John P. Robinson, in particular, became a
cherished favourite, and his immortal saying about the ignorance of certain
persons " down in Judee " was a household word thenceforward. In
short, we enjoyed the rare pleasure of the revelation of a new intellectual
type, and one of no common vigour and originality. " Through coarse
Thersites' cloak," says the pseudo Carlyle, the best parody of the original
we ever encountered, whose critique is prefixed to the collected poems,
" we have revelation of the heart, world glowing, world- clasping, that is in
him. Bravely he grapples with the life problem as it presents itself to
him, uncombed, shaggy, careless of the 'nicer proprieties,' inexpert of
* elegant diction,' yet with voice audible enough to whoso hath ears, up
there on the gravelly side hills, or down on the splashy Indiarubber-like
marshes of native Jaalarn." And truly, though the phrase be intentionally
grotesque, it is but a quaint exaggeration of the truth. It was impossible
even for readers scandalously ignorant of the real meaning of the great
warfare in which he was an effective combatant, not to recognise the
genuine literary force concealed under this eccentric mask. Later
familiarity, enlightened by the course of that warfare, has only increased
our affection for the Biglow Papers. Indeed, we find it difficult to think
of any exact parallel for their characteristic merits. The now half- forgotten
" Rolliad " and the poetry of the " Anti- Jacobin " are to some extent of
a similar character. The "Rolliad" is full of satire* brilliant enough, as
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 181. 4.

66 MR. LOWELL'S POEMS.

one might have thought, to escape the common doom of most merely per-
sonal invective. The " Anti- Jacobin " is perhaps wittier, as to English-
men it is still more intelligible, than the Biglow Papers. The ode of the
" Needy Knife-grinder," for example, has a fine quality of wit, which has
given it a permanent place in popular memory, and it will probably be
preferred by literary critics even to the utterances of Mr. John P.
Robinson. But there is a characteristic difference between the two, which
tells on the opposite side. The "Knife-grinder" is substantially an
expression of the contempt with which the have -alls regard both the
lack-alls and the wicked demagogues who would trade upon their discon-
tent. Translated into prose, it would run somewhat to this effect : "I,
the poet, have a large share of the loaves and fishes, and you, who grind
my knives, have only enough to keep body and soul together. If anybody
should try to persuade you that this arrangement is not part of the ever-
lasting order of things, he is a wretched humbug, who really wants, by
trading upon your discontent, to get a larger share of the said loaves and
fishes for himself." Now this may be, and, with certain limitations, it
probably is, most excellent common sense, but it can scarcely be called a
generous or elevated sentiment. The fishwife preaching to the eels to lie
still whilst she is skinning them is always more or less in a false position ;
and, consequently, such poetry as that of the " Anti- Jacobin" is doomed
to remain in the regions of satire, and can hardly rise into true poetry.
Contempt for human misery, and even for humbug which trades upon
misery, is not the raw material of which one can make an ode or a
war-song. Hosea Biglow, on the other hand, has a most deep and genuine
sentiment -running through all his quaint and even riotous humour. His
politics may strike some readers as fanatical, and his views of war as
formed too much upon the Quaker model. But every line he writes
contains a protest against hypocrisy, time-serving, and tyranny in the
name of the noblest of human feelings. Justice to the poor and down-
trodden awakes his enthusiasm ; and the demagogues whom he attacks are
those who flatter the tyrant, not those who appeal, however erroneously,
to his victims. Poetry is not necessarily the better because its moral
is sounder; and some of the dullest of all human beings have been
martyrs to the best of causes. But the combination of deep and generous
sympathy with a keen perception of the ludicrous is the substratum of
the finest kind of humour ; and it is that which enables Biglow to pass
without any sense of discord from pure satire into strains of genuine
poetry. The first of his poems, composed after the parental Ezekiel had
retired to bed, caused him, as we may remember, to stamp about his
room, " a thrashin' round like a short-tailed bull in fly-time." And the
attack on the " 'cruitin' sargeant " passes naturally into a burst of strong

patriotic feeling.

Wai, go 'long to help 'em stealin'

Bigger pens to cram with slaves,
Help the men that's oilers dealin'
Insults on your fathers' graves ;

MR. LOWELL'S POEMS. 67

Help the strong to grind the feeble,

Help the many agin' the few,
Help the men that call your people

Whitewashed slaves an' peddling crew !

If all humour means a subtle blending of serious with the comic,
the poetical humour is that in which the groundwork is not mere
shrewd sense but ennobling passion. And it is the special merit of
the Biglow Papers that even in the purely ludicrous parts — in the
adventures, for example, of Birdofredum Sawin — we feel that the laugher
is no mere cynic ; under his rough outside and his Quaker garb there
bursts a touch of the true Tyrta3us or Korner fire. This distinguishes
the 'Biglow Papers from the more recent exhibitions of what is called
Yankee humour. The man must be straitlaced beyond all reasonable
limits who would refuse to laugh at some of the " goaks " of Artemus
Ward or even of Mark Twain. But we laugh and have done with it.
The fun of such writers is rapidly becoming a mere trick, and, to
say the truth, a very offensive trick. The essence of that mechanical
product which now calls itself Yankee humour is a simple cynicism which
holds that there is something essentially funny in brutality or irreverence.
A man fancies that he is a delicate humourist because he has learnt the
art of talking of murders as comic incidents and mixing sacred feelings
with vulgarising associations. The mind which finds permanent pleasure
in travesties of all that has stirred the imaginations of mankind, in poking
fun at antiquity and sticking a cigar in the mouth of a Greek statue, is
surely not in an enviable condition. Some wiseacres, it appears, found
fault with the Biglow Papers upon this score ; and complained of such

phrases as

If you take a sword and dror it

And go stick a feller thru,
Guv'ment ain't to answer for it,

God '11 send the bill to you.

Mr. Lowell condescended to answer such criticisms in the introduction
to the later series of Biglow Papers. We should have been sorry for the
unnecessary apology were his motive not tolerably transparent. Mr.
Lowell, in fact, as we shall presently see, is an enthusiastic lover of old
literature, and he could not resist the temptation of quoting parallel
passages from St. Bernard, Latimer, and Dryden. The last is the closest
approach to Biglow' s phrase :

And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me!

says a character in " Don Sebastian." But we should be sorry that Mr.
Lowell should rely in such a matter upon the authority of Dryden. The
case is simple enough, being, in fact, one of those in which, for a wonder,
the proverb about extremes meeting is tolerably true. The intermixture
of the divine with familiar circumstances may imply either a habitual
tendency to regard all common events as in some sense sacred, or to regard
all sacred things as common and therefore fair game for the jester. The

4—2

68 MR. LOWELL'S POEMS.

two sentiments, though verbally approximating, are at the opposite poles
of thought. And the difference between Biglow's familiar use of sacred
allusions and the profanity of many later American facetia is the difference
between a genuine old Scotch peasant of the Davie Deans type, who
believes that God is about his bed and about his path, and the rowdy at
a New York drinking bar, who breaks the third commandment twice in
every sentence.

This, indeed, is the essence of Mr. Biglow and his little circle. Mr.
Lowell wrote, as he tells us, in a mother- tongue, and was reviving " the
talk of Sam and Job over their jug of blackstrap under the shadow of the
ash-tree, which still dapples the grass whence they have been gone so
long." Sam and Job were close relations of John Brown, whose soul went
marching on to such startling effect through four years of deadly civil war.
Mr. Lowell did not take up the language of malice aforethought with
a view to literary effect, but his thoughts when heated to a certain degree
of fervour ran spontaneously into that mould. He loves the dialect as a
patriot, not as a professor with a theory about the advantages of the
" Anglo-Saxon element " in the language. If he wished to burn anybody,
it would be the first newspaper correspondent who instead of saying that
a man was hanged reported that he was launched into eternity. Such a
villain is poisoning the wells of pure vernacular and deserves no quarter.
Hosea Biglow and the excellent Mr. Wilbur are incarnations of the higher
elements of the true New England character — those which are embodied in
a deep respect for human rights and a belief in a Providential government
of the world, passing into fanaticism and obscured by a grotesque shell of
uncouth phraseology, and at times, it may be, justifying the aversion or
the fear, but never the contempt, of its adversaries.

That blood is best which hath most iron in't,

says Mr. Lowell elsewhere, and of that material, at any rate, there was no
lack in the descendants of Cromwell's Ironsides. The difficulty, however,
of elevating a vernacular dialect, however pithy and rich in compressed
imagination, into a literary expression, is enormously great, if we may judge
from the number of successful attempts. The terse, masculine style, of
which Swift is the greatest master, and in which English literature is
incomparably rich, has generally been written by men of considerable
cultivation. The uneducated man, whose talk delights you in a village
inn, or at the side of a fishing stream, generally thinks it necessary to
cramp his sturdy fist in kid gloves before he takes a pen in hand. Here
and there a Burns may be found who dares to keep mainly to his own
language, though he blunders terribly when he aims at being literary ; or
a Cobbett, who can be simple and masculine, till he strains his voice in
spouting on platforms. But, as a rule, the good old pithy phrase disappears
along with some other good things, as civilisation advances. As the
noble savage becomes a drunken vagrant, and the native art of half-
civilised countries is ousted by imitations of Manchester goods, so the

MB. LOWELL'S POEMS. 69

vernacular is superseded by the vulgar ; for a genuine patois we have a
barbarous slang, and the penny-a-liner is the chosen interpreter of popular

feeling.

An' yet I love th' unhighschooled war,
Oh ! farmers, yet when I was younger ;

Their talk was meatier, an' 'ould stay
"When bookfroth seems to whet your hunger ;

For puttin' in a downright lick

'Twixt humbug's eyes, there's few can match it,

An' then it helves my thoughts cz slick

Ez stret-grained hickory does a hatchet.

But alas ! it is gone, and we may be thankful that before the true old
country phrase of New England had been quite shut out by the intrusion
of the Brummagem slang of modern cities, a writer appeared to whom it
was a native dialect, and who had yet the fine taste to feel its power, and
took the opportunity to turn it to the best account.

A man can hardly hope to repeat such a success as that of the BlgJoiv
Papers. They are vigorous jets of song, evolved by an excitement power-
ful enough to fuse together many heterogeneous elements. Strong sense,
grotesque humour, hatred for humbug, patriotic fervour, and scorn of
tyranny predominate alternately. It is only when an electric flash of
emotion is passing through a nation that such singular products of spi-
ritual chemistry are produced. Even if a similar combination of external
conditions recurs, the poet has probably changed.- His mind has grown
more rigid ; his intellect is more separate from his emotions ; his humour
has perhaps mastered his imagination ; and the inevitable self-conscious-
ness may deprive a second attempt of the essential spontaneity. And
therefore perhaps it is that many of the best patriotic songs — as, for
example, the "Marseillaise," or the "Burial of Sir John Moore" — have
been written by men Avho have done nothing else. In the first series of
Biijlow Papers, however, there was at least one plain indication of powers
applicable to poetry of a different order. The little fragment, called the
" Courtin'," which, as Mr. Lowell informs us, was struck off to fill up a
blank page, is simply perfect in its kind. We need only quote the first
verses to refresh our readers' memory.

Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown,

And peeped in thru the winder,
And there sat Huldy all alone,

'ith no one nigh to hinder.
Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung,

An' in amongst 'em rusted
The ole queen's arm that grand't'her Young

Fetched back from Concord busted.
The wannut logs shot sparkles out

Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An' leetle fires danced all about ,

The chiny on the dresser ;
The very room, coz she waz in,

Looked warm from floor to ceilin',
An' she looked full ez rosy agin'

Ez th' apples she wuz peelin'.

70 MR. LOWELL'S POEMS.

We need not continue, and still less quote the head and tail which Mr.
Lowell added to his poem in the later series. " Most likely," he says,
" I have spoiled it." We do not say that he has; but, it may be from
old association, we are at least glad that both forms are preserved, so that
readers may choose that which they prefer. In the old shape, and pos-
sibly in the new, it is a charming example of a very rare form of excel-
lence. It is as dainty as an English song of the seventeenth century ;
and the Yankee dialect gives it the true rustic flavour, in place of the old
spice of pastoral affectation. The most obvious comparison in modern
times is to some of Mr. Barnes's Dorsetshire poems ; but we confess to
preferring the rather stronger flavour of the American humour. Unluckily,
these few verses remain almost unique ; though Mr. Lowell has approached
the same tone of sentiment in some of the later Biylow Papers ; and we can
fully sympathise with Clough's desire for some more Yankee pastorals.

Before the Biglow Papers, Mr. Lowell had already published some
serious poetry. He showed a different kind of power in another con-
temporary performance. In the " Fable for Critics " he strung together, on
a very slight thread, and in a hand-gallop of loose verses, which show a
faculty for queer rhymes, resembling that of Barham, a series of criticisms
upon contemporary American 'poets. We may say, as the poet or the
critic pretty frankly avows, that the number of native poets destined to
enduring reputation at that period was not excessive. But the poem — we
should rather call it the rhymed critique — was a proof that Mr. Lowell
possessed in a high degree a rather dangerous faculty. He is an incisive
critic ; but, in the saying which Mr. Disraeli did not originate, a critic is a
poet who has failed. The statement may be taken to mean that indul-
gence in criticism is a dangerous habit for a poet. When a man begins
to talk about the principles of art, it is generally a proof that the spon-
taneous impulse is failing in him. We can hardly fancy Mr. Hosea
Biglow in an editorial chair. The essence of his poetry is that he trusts
to his impulses, and cares nothing for the polished gentlemen who calmly
analyse the sources of his power, and are always tempted to prune away
the eccentric growths of his queer idiosyncrasy. Mr. Lowell, it is true,
has the merit as a critic of fully appreciating, or rather of heartily loving,
whatever is racy of the soil. He enjoys good homely language all the
more if it breaks Priscian's head ; and is, if anything, too contemptuous
towards the pedantry of sesthetical philosophy. His favourite maxim is,
be simple ; that is, be yourself. Mr. Wilbur informed Hosea Biglow that
the " sweetest smell on airth " was fresh air. " Thet's wut I call natur'
in writin', and it bathes my lungs and washes 'em sweet whenever I get
awhiffon't." Now fresh air is not generally to be found in a lecture -
room, and Mr. Lowell cannot help being more or less a professor of
Yankeeisms. And, moreover, it is so delicate a material that it seems
instinctively to elude any one who deliberately seeks for it. What is more
hopeless than to say I will be perfectly unconscious ? Mr. Lowell re-
lishes the true Yankee twang so keenly that he recognises it even when

MR. LOWELL'S POEMS. 71

it comes from his own lips. A writer of less vigorous sense would have
yielded to temptation, and tried to imitate his own fresh work by stale
reproduction. Mr. Lowell resisted temptation until the war made it over-
powering ; but it was at the price of leaving the vein which he had opened
entirely unworked. Possibly the Celtic invasion which has gone near to
swamping the old New England population has made the pastoral muse of
the country rather shy. The place of Job and Sam under the ash-tree
has been taken by Pat, and Pat in his new home is rather a spouting than
a singing animal.

But Mr. Lowell is too genuine a humourist not to express his charac-
ter in more methods than one. The prose essays which have been collected
in two volumes bear in their way the stamp of his authorship as plainly as
any of his poetic utterances. They show that the University of Harvard
has one of the most accomplished of living English scholars for professor
of modern literature. Our ancient poets, and indeed those of France and
Italy, have evidently been to him the objects not of a mere cursory study,
but of a lover-like devotion. He enjoys our old dramatists as sincerely
as Charles Lamb, though with a less extravagant devotion ; and has
studied the minutise of language as accurately as the most persistent
of Dryasdusts without becoming a pedant. In truth, if we may say so,
he reminds us occasionally of some appreciative remarks of his own about
White of Selborne. That excellent clergyman rode a hobby with admir-
able persistency. To him, as Mr. Lowell says, the fall of an empire was
of less importance than " the natural term of a hog's life; " and whilst
public- spirited people were troubling themselves about the surrender of
Burgoyne, Mr. White was rejoicing over the discovery that the odd tum-
bling of rooks in the air may be explained by their turning over to scratch
themselves with one claw. Mr. Lowell shares White's tastes in a great
degree ; though we do not imagine that the most critical event in the life
even of a bobolink would have diverted Mr. Lowell's attention from the
Trent affair or the attack on Fort Sumter. A humorous tinge is given to
his natural history by his patriotic sentiment. He is jealous of the honour
of the native American fauna. He is righteously indignant with the
versifiers who betrayed their want of originality by calmly annexing the
whole vocabulary of English descriptive poetry, and summarily naturalised
larks, nightingales, primroses, and other conventional imagery in defiance
of physical geography, and with shameful disregard of the legitimate claims
of bobolinks and mocking birds. " It strikes the beholders," Mr. Lowell
says to his countrymen,

You've a mental and physical stoop in your shoulders.

****** *

Though you brag of the New World you don't half believe in it,
And as much of the Old as is possible weave in it.

And "secondhand allusions to the rural scenery of England are parts of
the livery still worn by American writers. Your true Hosea Biglow
doesn't steal from the classics when he wants to describe his own farm-

72 MR. LOWELL'S POEMS.

yard ; and we are certain that there is not a line in Mr. Lowell's descrip-
tions which has not the merit of being founded on direct observation.
The bobolink, we suspect, is in his mind symbolic of the true old New
England spirit ; a lark is a mere conventionality in America ; the eagle
has teen spoilt by blatant stump oratory. As Franklin proposed the
turkey for the national emblem as a good, peaceful, Quaker-like bird,
Mr. Lowell would take a bobolink ; " a poor thing" possibly, but his own.
His heart warms in presence of the humblest products of the native
soil. We will not deny that in some instances this patriotic fervour is a
little too prominent. Mr. Lowell has got rid of the stoop in his shoulders
by taking an attitude rather too consciously erect. The thoughtful poem
called the " Cathedral," for example, is to our minds disfigured by the
discordant insertion of a rather commonplace caricature of the British
tourist. But at worst his patriotism is not the ignorant bluster of vicarious
self-conceit which usurps the name in all countries, but a love of his
own people and home, deep enough to afford a smile at its own exag-
geration. His Biglowism, if we may coin such a phrase without offence,
tinges his strongest feelings with humour and quenches any gush of
sentimentalism. When a man thus caresses a pet prejudice, if prejudice
be not too hard a word, we seem to be admitted into his intimacy. Nobody
is a hypocrite in his choice of a hobby. Whenever he mounts it, the con-
ventional ice of literary decorum is for the time broken, and we recognise
the real man behind the judicious critic who substitutes a personal " I "
for the bland editorial " we." And, therefore, though with some fear and
trembling, we admit that, in reading Mr. Lowell's books, we always fancy
ourselves seated side by side with the author " under the willows " or
" amongst his books" — to appropriate the characteristic titles of two of
his volumes. In such a dream we fancy that by some dexterous manage-
ment we have surmounted that spirit of armed neutrality towards all
persons not boasting of Yankee blood which breathes in the article on a
" certain condescension in foreigners." We should apologise, indeed, for
the purely imaginary liberty which we are taking. Doubtless, if we may
judge from that manifesto, the task of disarming Mr. Lowell's superficial
suspicions would not be altogether an easy one. A thoughtless person
would show his want of appreciation by patronising America, and con-
descending to recognise in it some modifying mixture of the true English
blood and a claim to some share in the glory of Shakspeare and Chaucer.
Not such would be our scheme. We should introduce ourselves to Mr.
Lowell as penetrated to the core by true British John Bull sentiment.
We would bring prominently forward any vestiges of the good old prejudices
with which we might happen to be provided. We would swear that one
Englishman was as good as three Frenchmen, hint that Washington was
a rebel, and, if possible, flavour our language with some provincial
archaism. If, by good fortune, we happened to stumble upon one of those
phrases which still survived in corners of English counties and crossed the
Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers, to come again to the surface as an

MR. LOWELL'S POEMS. 73

Americanism, we feel certain that his heart would open to us at once.
No thin varnish of cosmopolitan sentiment would impress him so forcibly
as a good vigorous prejudice cognate though hostile to his own patriotism.
A stubborn preference of the British blackbird might make us worthy in
Mr. Lowell's estimation of an introduction to a bobolink or a catbird.
Hosea Biglows are a breed sturdy enough to like those best who can hold
their own in a bargain, in a rustic repartee, or in a fine healthy dogmatic
strength of antagonistic prejudices. We cannot say whether this cunning
diplomacy would succeed in real life. Luckily, when a man puts himself
into his books, he cannot keep his unknown friends at a distance. We
can drink tea with Johnson, or luxuriate in sucking-pig with Charles
Lamb, without the awkward ceremonies of an introduction ; and by help
of a similar magic, we have frequently introduced ourselves into Mr.
Lowell's study without the smallest compunction. Especially we have
been there on a winter night, when the chimneys are roaring and the
windows shaking, and the frost of a New England winter is whirling the
snow-drifts outside. We have joined in the fire-worship which he cele-
brates in more than one poem with an enthusiasm specially gratifying in a
native of a land cursed, as travellers tell us, by the use of that abomination,
the close stove. He worships, too, the nymph Nicotia.

Parson Wilbur would not have objected to a certain scent of tobacco
mixing with the fresh air ; and we somehow fancy that Mr. Lowell holds
the scenery which reveals itself to musing eyes in the flames of a hickory
fire to be equal to anything outside the shutters. The company is
generally much better in an interior. His favourite old poets can step
down from their shelves to join in the conversation. They may put in a
word or two even in the fields or the mountain-side ; but deliberate
quotation in open-air intercourse is formal and pedantic. It is only
when the old dog's-eared volumes can be turned over in the firelight,
and piled into careless chaos upon the carpet, that they yield up their
true fragrance. When the winter is raving outside, it is luxurious to
ruminate over the various attempts of the ancient masters to draw his
portrait, and compare them with the blustering original at our doors. Mr.
Lowell perhaps loves Wordsworth best among modern poets, though
he flouts now and then gently enough at his master's priggishness ; he
is on civil terms even with some of the eighteenth- century fine gentle-
men, but he is not perfectly happy till he gets back to the generation
from which both Old and New England have descended. He chuckles
audibly when he detects one of these venerable persons in the act of Ame-
ricanising, and finds Ben Jonson, for example, pronouncing progress
with true Yankee intonation. A score is put against that phrase, and a
note made on the fly-leaf for the confutation of all gainsayers. But,
independently of this merit, he loves the Spring which breathes in
Chaucer's verses better if anything than the genuine article, which, indeed,
may not be saying much, as he considers May to be " a pious fraud in
the almanac." He admits in a pleasant little poem his preference for

74 MR. LOWELL'S POEMS.

the nightingale, which sings in his books, to the " cat-bird," which calls
him from outside. He breathes the sea-air blowing fresh and strong in
the vigorous lines of Chapman's Homer, and though he loves nature
and energy, he has a weakness for a quaint conceit when it occurs in
Donne or Quarles. Indeed, his love for the old race of giants is so
fervent and discriminating that he has managed to say something fresh
and interesting about Shakspeare, and no better criticism has been written
upon his favourites than that which is contained in his two volumes of
Essays.

We may be at least grateful that Mr. Lowell's affectionate study of
great models, guided, as it is, by strong sense, has not led him to indulge
in some of those painful attempts to galvanise dead corpses, on which men
capable of better things have wasted their talents. He has caught some-
thing of the art of the old writers without masquerading in their dress. His
tongue has the trick of the old speech, and here and there an archaic
phrase bewrays the student as we may recognise a sailor from some
unconscious reminiscence of the quarter-deck. But more generally we
can only trace him by a more general and indefinable resemblance. He
has caught something of the old breadth of style, freighted with good
solid weight of meaning. In one or two of the earlier poems we may
perhaps trace the later influence of Keats, and here and there we seem to
" glimpse " (it is a favourite phrase of Mr. Lowell's, and therefore doubt-
less supported by sufficient authority) something of Wordsworth's tone of
sentiment. But more frequently we seem to have not an echo of the
manly style of some old writers, but a kind of family resemblance. Ben
Jonson might have approved the " Commemoration Ode," and Andrew
Marvell might have admired the dialogue between Concord Bridge and
the Bunker's Hill Monument, to which his own conversation between the
horses of Woolchurch and Charing Cross affords a precedent as applicable
as those suggested by Mr. Wilbur.

There is indeed a criticism which may be made upon some of these
poems, namely, that they are not quite poetry. Some of them are perhaps
rather too rhetorical, or contain too much moralising to be sufficiently dis-
connected from prose. Some such remark, in fact, is suggested by Mr.
Lowell himself, who, by way, we presume, of preserving his anonymous
character, has described himself in the " Fable for Critics : " —

The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching,

Till he learns the distinction between singing and preaching ;

His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,

But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell,

And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem,

At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.

Indeed, we may say that the main impulse in most of his poems is of the
moral kind — a fact which will be a sufficient objection to them on the part
of some people who apparently hold that all art should be at least non-
moral, and is all the better for being immoral. Nor can we quite refrain

MR. LOWELL'S POEMS. 75

from another conclusion. Nobody understands better than Mr. Lowell
the difference between a pump and a spring ; between writing because
you can't help it, and writing because you are resolved to write. As

Hosea says : —

But when I can't, I can't, that's all,

For natur* won't put up with gullin' ;
Idees you luv to shove an' haul,

Like a druv pig, ain't worth a mullin';
Live thoughts ain't sent for ; thru all rifts

O' sense they pour, an' rush ye onwards,
Like rivers, when south-lying drifts

Feel that th' old airth's a-wheelin' sunwards.

That is dreadfully true ; but one may be permitted to doubt whether Mr.
Lowell always remembered it, or rather always acted up to his knowledge,
in the second series of Biglow Papers. The humour is there, but it is
perceptibly more forced, and Birdofredum Sawin seems to have lost
something of his old rollicking spirits. In fact, Mr. Lowell was sensible
that the time was not quite in harmony with writing of the old order.
The time, he says, seemed to be calling to him with the old poet —

Leave then your wonted prattle,

The oaten reed forbear,
For I hear a sound of battle,

And trumpets rend the air.

And accordingly, in the more satirical parts, we are sensible of a certain
constraint, for which indeed he occasionally seems to apologise. The wit
is here and there a little farfetched ; and, in short, the Biglow Papers are
not a complete exception to the general rule about second parts. And
yet they include some of Mr. Lowell's most charming writing. Here and
there a deeper and more melancholy emotion overpowers all desire to be
witty and forces its way to the surface. Nobody is less inclined than
Mr. Lowell to bring his feelings to the poetical market, and to pet and
dandle his private griefs in order to gain applause from the outside world,
and therefore the sentiment, when it conies, is the more impressive
because the more unmistakably genuine. The sweetest of smiles are
those which come upon the sternest faces ; and a sob in the voice of a
manly speaker is incomparably more affecting than a whole torrent of
hysterical blubbering. And therefore Mr. Biglow gets hold of our sym-
pathies when, for once, he is forced to turn the tender side of his nature
outwards, and lets us join him in a silent winter evening stroll over fields
to be trodden no more by the feet that were dearest to him. He can
hardly listen to the crackling of his hickory logs for thoughts of Grant
and Sherman, and prefers to listen to the plaintive voices of the outside
night.

While Vay o erhead, ez sweet an' low
Ez distant bells that ring for meetin'

The wedsjed wiP geese their bugles blow,
Further and further south retreatin'.

76 MB. LOWELL'S POEMS.

Or up the slippery knob I strain,

An' see a hundred hills like islan's
Fill their blue woods in broken chain

Out o' the sea o' snowy silence ;

The farm-smokes, sweetest sight on airth,

Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin'
Seem kin' o' sad, and roun' the hearth

Of empty places set me thinkin'.

Mr. Biglow's Doric is an admirable vehicle for giving the pathos of
quiet country homes desolated by the random blows of war, and brings to
mind some of the tender Scotch ballads in which the same chord has
been struck. The sentiment, in fact, is so unmistakably genuine that we
feel as if there were something intrusive in attempting to analyse the
secret of the literary expression. A perfectly genuine sentiment may
produce execrable verses ; but Mr. Lowell's art has the merit of being
just on a level with the emotion which it is intended to convey. The
expression is perfectly adequate, but never superfluous. This, indeed,
implies a rare and admirable power. His thorough truthfulness and manli-
ness is his most unfailing charm. A reserved temperament and a very
keen sense of humour have kept his more poetical impulses under a strong
curb. When he yields to them, we feel that he must be writing from the
heart. His descriptions of native scenery are wrung from him by a genuine
affection for a little circle of this planet, of which we may place the centre
somewhere in the close vicinity of Boston ; and of which it may be also
said that the warmth of his love seems to increase very rapidly in an inverse
proportion to the distance. We doubt whether he could heartily enjoy
any district beyond the range of the bobolink. His descriptive poetry,
excellent as it is, possibly loses something in popularity from this kind
of provincialism, for the most vivid touches are those which imply a
certain amount of local knowledge. And yet, though we have not been
introduced, except in literature, to that Indian summer of which Americans
so often sing the praises, we can enjoy Mr. Lowell's " Reverie " ; and we
presume that his noble pine-tree on Katahdin has some resemblance to
its brethren on Scotch or Norwegian hills. Appledore has an English
sound about it, and " Haystack" and " Saddleback " are in the neigh-
bourhood of Scawfell as well as of Agamenticus. The sea, at any rate,
must be much the same off the Cornish coast as upon the New England
rocks. And yet, somehow, they seem to have a subtle foreign flavour in
their language which makes us feel less at home with them than with the
hills described by Wordsworth. Descriptive poetry, indeed, even when
it is as thoughtful and faithful as Mr. Lowell's, loses strangely by the mere
absence of familiar associations. Perhaps, too, there is a slight sense of
effort — not of the effort to stimulate flagging emotion, but of effort to
overcome a natural shyness in expressing emotion. We fancy — it may be
merely fancy — that the poet is always just on the point of protesting against
being regarded as a sentimentalist. There is not quite the self- abandon-

MR. LOWELL'S POEMS. 77

ment which one might desire, though as graphic and vigorous descriptions,
in which every line is weighted with thought and observation, they leave
little to be desired. Some of the short lyrics, patriotic or pathetic, in
which the emotion has been vivid enough to disperse all such coyness,
are the poems called " The First Snowstorm," " After the Burial," and
" Villa Franca " in the last volume published. Nor, if we had space for
more details, should we overlook some of the playful addresses to friends,
which are charming in themselves, and serve to admit us for the moment
to a pleasant domestic familiarity.

But it is time to say a few words about the poem which is generally
felt to be Mr. Lowell's most impressive performance. We have said at
least enough of the more humorous aspects of his vigorous patriotism. If
the sphere within which it is confined may seem to outsiders to be unduly
narrow, nothing at least can be said against its elevation. Mr. Lowell, as
a patriotic American, is necessarily a democrat. But democratic senti-
ment, as one may say without committing oneself to any particular party,
may mean two very different things. The incarnation of the baser kind
of patriotism is Mr. Birdofredum Sawin, who fully subscribes to the
maxim, " Our country, right or wrong." More formally expressed, it
accepts patriotic at the cost of moral sentiment. It holds that the
numerical majority of the population is infallible, and flatters the basest
passions which may be current amongst the masses. Nobody has struck
shrewder blows against that vile form of mob-worship, which is, indeed,
but another name for utter want of principle, than Mr. Lowell. Mr.
Biglow was almost a secessionist in 1848, regarding the Union as the sup-
porter of slavery : —

Ef I'd my way I had rather

We should go to work and parf,

They take one way, we take t'other ;
Guess it wouldn't break my heart !

Man had ought to put asunder

Them that God has noways jined ;
An' I shouldn't greatly wonder

Ef there's thousands of my mind !

The thousands, however, came to a different conclusion when secession
was attempted in the interest of the slave-owners instead of the aboli-
tionists ; and Mr. Biglow, forgetting his old Quakerisms, became the most
vigorous adherent for " pison-mad, pigheaded fightin'." Patriotism and
morality joined hands. Whether this view were right or not is irrele-
vant, but it falls in with Mr. Lowell's democratic faith. He does not hold
that the people are always on the right side, but that the right side, if it
has fair play, will end by having the people on its side. He gives to the
theory that right is might the reverse interpretation to that which it has
in some quarters, and would apply it to prove that the right will make its
way in time, not that success justifies itself. Persons of a Cassandra turn
of mind may regard the doctrine as optimistic; but, at least, it is a

78 ME. LOWELL'S POEMS.

generous sentiment. Mr. Lowell is as conscious as anybody of the
mischief done by demagogues in America ; but he loves his country as the
region where the fullest play is allowed to all impulses, and where, there-
fore, a vehement fermentation is going on, bringing much scum and filth
to the surface, but yet tending in time to work itself clear, and bring out
the pure element of justice to all men. America, in his eyes, is

She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,

She of the open heart and open door,

With room about her knees for all mankind.

The faith in human nature, in the good impulses of ordinary human
beings, and in their power to throw off their superficial defects, is his pre-
vailing creed. He refuses to look back to the past, well as he loves it,
with the romanticists who shrink from the ugly side of modern life, and
believes in his ordinary fellow creatures more than in spasmodic heroes.
He prefers the future to the past, and the common, though not the vulgar,
to the romantic. Such, for example, is the burden of the " Vision of Sir
Launfal," a poem which, with great beauties, is perhaps rather too obtru-
sively didactic. But in the " Commemoration Ode," he has found an
appropriate occasion and form for pouring out his strongest feelings in
masculine verse. One or two stanzas even here may be a little too
didactic ; and the style is rather broad and manly than marked by the
exquisite felicities which betray the hand of a perfect master. But through-
out the ode the stream of song flows at once strong and deep. The poet
is speaking from his heart, and with a solemnity, a pathos, and elevation
of feeling worthy of a great event. Few official copies of verses, com-
posed by invitation on set occasions, escape the condemnation of coldness
and formality. Little would be lost to our literatura if all the verses
written by laureates, as laureates, were summarily burnt. But for once
we feel that we are listening to a man whose whole heart, pent up by
years of disappointment and suspense, has at last launched itself into a
song of triumph. There is no unworthy element of petty spite or unworthy
complacency to jar upon us. "Whatever may be our political sympathies,
we must be indifferent, not to the cause of the North, but to the cause of
humanity, not to be carried away by the energy of the poetic declamation.
The triumph is not offensive because it is free from meanness ; and the
patriotism implies a generous rejoicing that the oppressed have been freed
from bondage and the poor lifted out of the dust. To quote a fragment
from such a poem is necessarily to do it injustice ; and we must be con-
tent with referring our readers to it, as the one poetical product of the
great civil war which will deserve to live by the side of the last inaugural
message of the murdered President whom it eulogises with a singular
felicity. F. T.

79

ani) tartiam xrf (jattmne he

CATHERINE DE BOUEBON, the only sister of Henri Quatre, was born on
the 7th of February, 1559. A few months later the death of Henri II.
precipitated the religious warfare that had been so long in preparation.
In the struggle that ensued her nearest relatives took adverse sides.
When she was but three years old her father, Anthony of Vendome, fell
at the siege of Rouen while fighting in the Catholic ranks. Her paternal
uncle, Conde, a leader of the opposite party, was slain seven years later
at Jarnac. And her mother, Jeanne d'Albret, one of the noblest women
of an age singularly prolific of female excellence, remained to the last the
guiding spirit of the Huguenots. Jeanne died — of poison there is reason
to think — on the 9th of June, 1572. Six weeks afterwards Catherine,
who had accompanied her mother to Paris in order to be present at the
marriage of her brother and Margaret of Yalois, passed through " the
massacre." Many of the child's dearest friends perished therein — some
before her eyes. It was a fearful trial for one so young, and another trial
as fearful was to follow. The next four years she spent at a court whose
character is only too faithfully reflected in the pages of Brantome. From
the varied seductions of that court few withdrew with hearts untainted ;
but among the few was the motherless girl. In her last moments Jeanne
d'Albret entrusted her to Madame de Tignonville, a staunch adherent of
the family and an exalted Huguenot. How this lady contrived to escape
the slaughter we are not told. Escape, however, she did ; and that too
without abandoning her pupil. And thanks to her care, the latter passed
unshaken through terror and unscathed through temptation.

In 1576 Catherine joined her brother in the south of France. For
the next fourteen years she presided over the Court of Beam, acting as
regent during Henri's endless campaigns. Possessing most of his better
qualities unalloyed by his failings, she became the popular idol. Nor
did Henri ever find a more ardent or valuable supporter. Devoted
to her brother and to her faith, and considering their interests identical,
she was prepared to sacrifice everything, including herself, thereto. And
the politic King of Navarre and his shrewd adviser took full advantage of
her enthusiasm. Catherine's inheritance was large and her character
of the highest. For these and other reasons, among the strongest of
which was her brother's unhappy marriage and consequent childlessness,
she was a most desirable parti. Pretenders to her hand therefore were
numerous. Among scores of others, she was sought of the Dukes of
Savoy, Lorrain, and Wurtemberg, and the Kings of Scotland and Spain.
Philip II. was willing to purchase the uncompromising little Huguenot at

80 THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON.

the price of a province and a large annual subsidy to her brother. To
all these suitors, as political emergency dictated, Catherine was promised.
In the case of the King of Spain, she cut the wooing short by a prompt
and decided refusal. In the other instances, however, she allowed the
cabinet of Beam to take whatever course seemed best, being prepared to
accept any husband, however distasteful, at the call of duty. In reality
that call was not much to be apprehended. Henri found her too useful
as a lure to think of parting with her except under irresistible pressure.
Besides, valiant though he showed himself in the field, he was the weakest
of men in some things ; and an astrologer of high repute had warned
him to beware of the children of his sister. By 1587 things had come to
a crisis in France ; the last and fiercest struggle of the religious contest
was about to begin. Previous to taking the field the leaders busied them-
selves in seducing each other 's'adherents. No day passed without defec-
tions from one side or the other, the most notable being that of the
Count de Soissons from the Catholics. This prince was the youngest
of the sons of the victim of Jarnac. He was the wealthiest too, for he
was the only son of his mother, a lady of large possessions. And he was
by far the most brilliant. Handsome, valiant, and enterprising, highly
educated and magnificent, refined of taste and full of ability ; he possessed
every excellent quality except judgment. This he lacked so egregiously,
that already, though barely twenty, he had won an unenviable notoriety
for taking a decided course precisely at the wrong time. Understanding
that Soissons was vacillating, Henri offered him the usual bribe, his
sister. Soissons caught at the bait and joined his cousin in time to take
a distinguished part in the fight of Coutras. The victor therein found it
impossible to follow up his success, and returned with the trophies to
Beam. There Soissons was presented to Catherine as her destined
husband. Neither Henri nor his advisers meant much by the phrase ;
nor did they think that Catherine would take it more seriously than here-
tofore. She had reached the mature age of twenty-eight, and was, in
their view, beyond the reach of thoughtless passion. Besides, they
considered the gay, fickle][ Catholic, who was so much her junior, about
the last man in the world to excite a tender interest in her well-regulated
breast. Never were politicians more mistaken. Most unexpectedly the
princess threw off her snowy crust and manifested herself a very woman.
She fell at once and fathoms deep in love with the stranger, abandoning
herself to the delightful new feeling like the veriest school girl. And she
did this all the more freely since he too showed himself unequivocally
smitten, as well he might, for Catherine was singularly winning, and —
a little lameness apart — very pretty.

Soissons pressed Henri to fulfil his promise ; and Henri found innu-
merable specious pretexts for evading that fulfilment. The former was the
more annoyed, since, besides his love for Catherine, he felt very keenly
that he had joined the Huguenots at the wrong time. Joyeuse had fallen
at Coutras, and the Count's vanity told him that he could have succeeded

THE LOVE AND MASRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON. 61

the magnificent duke in the favour of Henry III. had he only remained at
Court. In his vexation, Soissons refused to be dallied with. Then Henri,
the wiliest prince of his time, devised a method of withdrawing his pledge
without any open forfeiture of honour. Returning one evening from the
chase, a stranger placed a packet in his hand and disappeared. The
packet contained an anonymous letter, which denounced the Count of
Soissons in strong terms. It declared that he had resumed his relations
with the Court of the Louvre, where he was labouring to procure Lis
recognition as heir by the childless monarch ; that he was endeavouring
to corrupt the servants of the King of Navarre ; and that eagerly as he
seemed to sue for the hand of the Princess, he was at that very moment
seeking a wife in the daughter of the Duke of Nevers. Henri showed the
letter to those whom it chiefly concerned. There was some truth in its
allegations, but very much more falsehood. Truth and falsehood, however,
were so ingeniously interwoven therein, that it was exceedingly difficult to
disentangle them to the satisfaction of any one — especially if that one had
no particular desire to be satisfied. This being the fact with Henri, the
result was a quarrel and the departure of the disappointed wooer.

Soissons returned to the Louvre, where he found that he had chosen a
bad season for his new change of sides. The King, who was still smarting
under the defeat of Coutras, reproached him bitterly for his conduct, and
got rid of him by ordering him on service to Bretagne. There Soissons
was surprised shortly afterwards by the Leaguers, and committed a close
prisoner to the castle of Nantes, much to the satisfaction of the two kings.

Meanwhile, events progressed rapidly. The Day of the Barricades —
of the sixteenth century we mean, for Paris has had one or more such
days every century since its foundation — the Day of the Barricades drove
Henry III. from his capital early in 1588, and towards the close of that
year the States General assembled at Blois. There, on Christmas eve,
Henry of Valois, rousing into his old ferocity, struck the stroke that
released him from his leading foes. A few days afterwards died Catherine
de Medici — that woman who united the highest personal repute to utter
intellectual depravity ; who played with human lives and passions as if
they were of no more account than pawns on a chess-board ; and who
lived and ruled and died as if there were no God but self- interest. Then
her son accepted the aid of the Huguenots, and their army, uniting with
his, swept opposition before it and encircled Paris with a wall of iron.
The insolent city trembled ; for Henri had sworn to sweep it off the face
of the earth, and he was just the man to keep such an oath. In this
extremity the Parisians borrowed a weapon from the arsenal of the enemy.
The knife of Clement avenged the Guises and averted their peril. Here
we may remark that Henri Quatre was never so well served as by his
enemies. In slaying the formidable Guises, Henri III. cleared his path to
the throne ; and in slaying Henri III,, the facatics of Paris placed him on
that throne.

When the Huguenot chivalry crossed the Loire for the last time, the
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 181. 5.

82 THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON.

Princess Catherine remained behind as viceroy of the South. For a while
she believed all that had been urged against Soissons. She, however, had
a confident ; that confident was Corisande de Grammont ; and Corisande
de Grammont had broken for ever with her once devoted lover, Henri
Quatre. The Hero-Henri she still continued to admire and aid. But
towards the man Henri she cherished a lively hatred, which she omitted
no opportunity of manifesting. Hating Henri, as a matter of course she
became the partisan of Soissons. It is easy to convince those who wish
to be convinced, and, thanks to Corisande, Catherine soon learnt to regard
the Count as a maligned and injured man. Nor was Madame de Gram-
mont content with this. Though Soissons was fast in durance, with
many a league of hostile territory between, the indefatigable lady contrived
to establish epistolary communications between him and his princess.

The sixteenth .century was emphatically the age of dashing escalades
and escapes. Indeed in those days the chief study of gentlemen seems to
have been — how to get into fortresses, and out of them, against the will of
the holders. Soissons was not the man to let himself rust in prison at
any time, least of all after receiving some charming letters from Catherine.
The officers of Nantes, however, were vigilant, and the garrison incorrupt-
ible, so an opportunity for breaking prison did not speedily present itself.
It came at last, after many weary months, and was immediately utilized.
Prison fare at that time was not inviting ; no captive who could cater for
himself would put up with it ; and Soissons, who was not short of funds,
had his table supplied from the kitchen of the best hotel in Nantes. Every
day his food was brought to him in a pannier, and after each meal the
dishes were removed in the same conveyance. At first the pannier was
carefully searched every time it passed the gate ; but as months passed
without disclosing anything suspicious, the ceremony was discontinued.
Soissons was apprised of this, and laid his plans accordingly. One day,
when the garrison was observing a provincial fete in the accustomed
manner, that is, by tippling pretty considerably, the prisoner passed out
undetected with his pannier. De Thou and Davila agree in stating that
he lay within it, like Sir John Falstaff in his buck-basket. Others aver,
with more probability, that the Count put on the cap and apron of a
scullion, and carried the basket himself in the wake of the portly inn-
keeper. It is added that, unaccustomed to the duty, he dashed the
basket full against the stomach of the governor of the castle, whom he
happened to meet in the street, and that he had his ears well boxed for
his pains by the ready-fisted, as well as ready-witted, innkeeper.

Soissons at once joined the army of the king, and did good service for
a period ; then he disappeared unaccountably from the army, to turn up
three days later at the Castle of Pau, where Catherine received him with
delight. But hardly had he dismounted at the gate than intelligence of
the event was despatched to the King by Madame de Pangeas. The
latter had been supplanted in the affections of Henri by Corisande — a
deed which she never pardoned. She knew very well that her successful

THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON. 83

rival was in the confidence of the lovers, and she took as much pleasure
in thwarting their views as that rival did in aiding them. At that very
moment Henri was paralyzing the hostility of the Duke of Savoy, and
securing the aid of more than one powerful native noble by the offer of
Catherine's hand. He was therefore terribly annoyed at the news, and
took instant measures to avert the consequences of this unexpected move
on the part of Soissons. Calling for the Baron de Pangeas, he hurried
him to Beam, with the following letter for Catherine's lieutenant : —
" Monsieur de Ravignan, — I have heard with displeasure of the journey
that my cousin Soissons has undertaken. Should anything against my
wish take place, your head shall answer for it." This letter, short and
stern enough, was accompanied by a warrant for the arrest of the Count.
And Pangeas hurried with it to Pau, with a despatch marvellous in one
of such girth of waist — for he was the fattest man in France.

Pangeas reached Pau hardly in time. Between the encouragement of
Corisande and the fascinations of Soissons, Catherine allowed her passion
to carry her away, though how far it is now impossible to ascertain. It
is notorious that a contract of marriage was signed by herself and the
Count, and intrusted to the keeping of Madame de Grammont. Some say
that the marriage actually took place. Others assert that it was only
averted by the firmness of Palma Cayet, who was then a Huguenot
clergyman. It is told that the Count, drawing his sword, ordered Cayet
to perform the ceremony on pain of instant death. And it is added, that
Cayet refused in these words : — " Monseigneur, I find I must disobey you
or the King. In the one case, you will slay me ; in the other, the King
will have my head. Whatever I do, death is certain. On the whole, then,
I had rather die by the hand of a prince, than by the hand of a rascally
executioner." This story, however, is too neat to be quite accurate.
Besides, there were difficulties in the way of hasty marriage when the
parties were of high rank and diverse creeds, not easy to be surmounted.
Be that as it may, the lovers spent several days, which were none the less
pleasant that they were utterly unconscious of the storm that was sweeping
down on their heads.

On the 29th of March, 1592, about seven o'clock in the evening,
Pangeas arrived with his despatches. Ravignan, who knew his master,
and had no desire to lose his head, took instant and vigorous action. The
Sovereign Council of Beam was quietly but quickly assembled, and the
troops as quietly put in motion. Short were the deliberations and sharp
was the decision. Duly caparisoned in red gowns and gold chains, and
headed by Ravignan and Pangeas, the councillors hastened to the castle.
They reached it between ten and eleven o'clock. Then, forcing their way
into the presence of the Princess, they accused her of " plotting to have
herself carried away by her cousin, without the leave of the King." The
Princess was then accompanied by the said cousin and Corisande, and the
scene that followed may be imagined. There was scolding, fainting,
screaming, swearing, and some fighting ; for Soissons was mad with indig-

5—2

84 THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON.

nation, and attended by a band of stalwart swordsmen. But wild as was
the scene within the castle, the one without was wilder still. There a
mob was gathered, armed to the teeth and howling imprecations against
the Count. " He has come to carry off our good Princess ! " cried one.
"He has bewitched her!" yelled another. "Yes, yes," shrieked the
multitude, " he is a pupil of the Medici ! He has learnt their infernal
arts ! He has charmed Madame ! Death to the wizard ! Death ! death ! "

Soissons and his men could not resist the numbers mustered against
them. They were soon overpowered and disarmed, without much damage
to anybody except Pangeas, whose pate Corisande cracked with a billet of
firewood. The captives were immediately marched off to the prison of Pau ;
nor was it an easy task to escort them thither. The excited multitude made
more than one fierce effort to break through the cordon and slaughter them.

While the prisoners were on their way to the gaol, the Princess was
inditing a furious letter to her brother. In it she reminded him of the
dutiful sister that she had -always been, and how he himself had encou-
raged her love for the Count. She went on to'declare that the visit of the
latter to Pau was, in her opinion, about the very best proof of submissive
loyalty that he could render to his sovereign. Then she described how
the red-robed councillors, led by the " gras buffi e " Pangeas, had outraged
her; and she closed by demanding that they should be fittingly punished.

Henri replied in soothing strain, regretting what had passed, declaring
that his instructions must have been misunderstood, and promising to
castigate the stupid insolents. He concluded by begging Catherine to
join him without delay, and take the place that was her due at his Court.
Henri was in the habit of writing such letters. He was never sparing of
honeyed words when there was a woman to be pacified. As to meaning
what he said, that was quite another thing. From the courier who
delivered this epistle to Catherine, M. de Kavignan received a second
letter, in which his conduct was accorded the. highest approval. Henri
ordered the release of Soissons, and permitted him to reappear at Court ;
simply because he was leis likely to be dangerous there than anywhere else.

And Soissons went direct to Court. A few days after his reappearance
there, meeting Pangeas at the top of the stairs leading to the royal apart-
ments, he forgot everything but the scene at Pau. In the good old times
vituperation was one of the fine arts. There were few battles that were
not preceded by what friend Patrick would call a " bullyragging" between
the opposing braves. And therefore it behoved every good man-at-arms,
even so recently as the days of Henri Quatre, to be as ready and skilful
with his tongue as with his sword. That the Count's education had not
been neglected in this particular, many of his contemporaries, including
the King himself, could attest. On the present occasion he overwhelmed
the Baron with a masterpiece of scolding. Nor was he content with
treating Pangeas to what Judge Jeffries used to term " a licking with the
rough side of the tongue." Heating as he went on, he seized Pangeas
by the neck, and after a stout trussle, fairly flung the yras luffle down

THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON. 85

the stairs. Catherine heard of the accident, and regretted it, — because, in
the first place, the gras buffle had escaped a broken neck ; and because,
in the second place, the whole Sovereign Council of Beam had not shared
his fall. As for the King and his courtiers, they were a rough and ready
company. Such tussles were too common among them for any particular
attention to be paid to this one. Henri, indeed, pretended to be angry
with the aggressor ; but that was only in public, and because the aggressor
happened to be Soissons. In private, the monarch and his familiars
laughed at the matter without stint.

The scene in the old castle of Gaston de Foix disgusted Catherine with
Beam, and she hesitated little to obey her brother. The people, whose
recent indignation had been concentrated on the Count, were very unwilling
to lose their beloved Princess. Addresses poured in on her from all
sides entreating her to remain. They were ineffectual, and she quitted
Pau towards the end of October, 1592, amid the tears and blessings of
the mountaineers.

It was not until February, 1593, that Catherine and Henri met at
Saumur. He did all he could to make her give up the Count. At first
he sought to bend her to his will by gentle means, and the old stock
arguments. He flattered, caressed, and dwelt on her duties as a princess
and a Huguenot, and on the sacrifices that those duties demanded. But
Catherine was no longer the heroine that she had been : love had reduced
her from that pre-eminence to the common level. Her brother then
tried severity, and many distressing scenes followed. The last and
bitterest took place at Tours, whither the Count had been transferred.
After enduring many sharp reproaches, the Princess threw herself at
Henri's feet, and, declaring that he was breaking her heart, she disclosed
the secret of the marriage contract. Henri afterwards stated that never
in his life had he received such a shock — he could hardly refrain from
violence. Terrified by his looks, Catherine in turn gave way to feelings
whose intensity appalled him. Reluctant as he was to admit a third
party to such a scene, he was obliged to summon De Mornay to aid in
calming her. But Catherine would not be comforted until Henri allowed
himself to promise what he had no intention of performing. Then she
dried her tears, and indulged again in hope. As for her brother, he
went straight to Sully, and commanded him to procure this contract of
marriage, no matter how. Sully accepted the task because he dared not
refuse, and achieved it by resorting to the grossest trickery. He pro-
mised that the King would allow the marriage if this contract were given
up ; and she gave it up. With the document in his possession, Henri
resumed the old game. He found excuses for delaying the fulfilment of
this new promise until the Count should give him sufficient excuse for
breaking it, which, sooner or later, he knew must happen.

Catherine continued to wait and hope for four years more, generally
with patience. And Henri allowed her to wait and hope, so long as she
was likely to be useful. For these four years he found her invaluable.

86 THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHEKINE DE BOURBON.

His reversion to the Established Church had lost him the confidence of
the Huguenots. Without such a trusty representative at Court as the
Princess, that powerful body would certainly have rebelled against him,
and such a rebellion any time previous to the Peace of Vervins must have
been his ruin. Soissons, fickle as he was in all else, was consistent in
his love for Catherine. He, too, waited and hoped, but not like her, with
patience. After many minor escapades, his conduct in abandoning the
army previous to the affair of Fontaine Francaise furnished Henri with
the excuse for which he had been waiting, and the Princess was apprised
that she must think no more of him. The shock brought on an illness
that nearly slew her, and greatly alarmed Henri, who was not quite desti-
tute of disinterested affection. After hanging dubious for weeks between
life and death, Catherine recovered, and resumed her place at the head of
the Huguenots, but not with the old spirit. Thenceforth she lived merely
to do her duty.

At length, the Peace of Yervins and the publication of the Edict of
Nantes rendered her no longer necessary to the policy of the Hero-King.
She was credited with much of the odium which the Catholics attached to
the Edict, and she became its victim. As a peace-offering to the offended
Court of the Vatican, Henri signified his intention of restoring her to
the bosom of the Church, and of wedding her to the Duke of Bar,
the heir of the orthodox Duke of Lorraine. Catherine objected to the
match. " What a sister is mine ! " exclaimed Henri. " After all that I
have done for her, here she is as bad-tempered and self-willed as ever.
But I will put up no longer with her whims. This time I mean to marry
her out of hand. And thenceforth I shall enjoy undisturbed the peace
and prosperity with which God has blessed me."

For full six months Catherine resisted, but she had no one to support
her. All her friends were gained over, some by bribes, others by political
considerations, and several by high religious notions. The last firmly
believed that Catherine was to be the agent in converting the persecuting
family of Lorraine to Calvinism. From every mouth, then, she heard
nothing but advocacy of the Duke of Bar, and wishes that she would
avail herself of this last opportunity of obtaining an honourable settlement
before her youth was quite spent. Threats, too, were not spared. Nor
did the magnanimous monarch disdain to resort to material as well as
moral pressure. Her sister was made to feel her dependent position.
Her allowance was permitted to fall into arrear, and she was subjected to
all those little annoyances in which underlings can be so expert, when
they know that they may distribute them with impunity. Catherine, in
short, was given to understand that she was no longer wanted. She gave
way — not quite, however, as her brother would have liked. She stipu-
lated for liberty of conscience, and whatever Henri could do or say, she
would not recede therefrom. " Never mind," observed he to his private
friends. " Let her have her way for the present. Once she is married,
we shall know how to bend her to our will." It was very royally said.

THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON. 87

Henri found that the difficulties in the way of the marriage did not
disappear when his sister gave her assent. True, the Duke of Bar and
his father, the Duke of Lorraine, desired it just as eagerly as Henri.
But something more was requisite. The parties being akin within the
prohibited degrees, a dispensation had to be obtained from Borne ; and
this dispensation the Pope refused to grant, without the previous conversion
of Catherine.

Time passed tediously in negotiations. The King compelled his sister
to receive instructions from dignitaries of the Established Church and to
listen to discussions that decided nothing. She had also the misery to
find that the marriage of a Protestant princess with a Catholic prince was
no less disapproved of by the Calvinist clergy convened in Synod, than by
the authorities of the Vatican. Henri, however, was in earnest, and in
spite of the protests of the rival churches, the marriage contract was
signed, towards the end of December 1598. A little incident occurring
then deserves to be recorded. When Henri presented the pen to his
sister, he stated that he constrained her in no way ; that he exercised no
pressure over her conscience ; that, in short, he had but one object in
view — her happiness !

The matter made no progress at Rome, quite the reverse. And the
Huguenot clergy, backed by the whole party — a very few exalted spirits
excepted — began to murmur loudly. Perhaps the Pope would hardly
have shown himself so firm, but for the conduct of the Puritans. And it
is certain that the Puritans would have contented themselves with the
smallest of remonstrances, but for the attitude of the Pope. It was a
good specimen of the cordiality with which factions that detest one another
can co-operate, at times, to discomfit a neutral.

Henri saw how things were going and made preparations, with his
customary quietness and completeness, for confounding Pope and Puritan.
His natural brother, Charles of Bourbon, was a clergyman who emulated
the manners of a Turkish pasha in all respects except abstention from
wine. Wanting a docile instrument in high ecclesiastical place, Henri
created this worthless person archbishop of Rouen. Then, giving him a
few weeks to settle comfortable into his post, he summoned him to officiate
at the marriage — easily o\erruling the few mild remonstrances that were
made. The princes of Lorraine were not quite satisfied with this despotic
method of settling the difficulty. But Henri's grasp was strong, and
father and son were tight within it ; so they submitted with as good a grace
as they could assume. Between five and six o'clock on the morning of the
25th of January, 1599, the ceremony took place within the Louvre, in
Henri's cabinet. Thus, at the age of forty, Catherine became Duchess of
Bar. Henri smiled when he thought of the prediction : her children were
not very likely to realize it.

The Duke of Bar was an amiable gentleman, and he really was
attached to Catherine. So, in spite of her repugnance to the wedding,
and in spite of her long cherished affection for the Count of Soissons,

83 THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON.

three days after the ceremony the Duchess actually admitted to the Duke
of Lorraine that " the happiness of her life had come at last ! "

With her happiness returned Catherine's enthusiastic devotion to her
brother; her departure for Lorraine was therefore moving. "Madame,"
wrote the Princess of Orange, " greatly regretted quitting France. She
swooned outright on bidding adieu to the King." The letter states that
Henri also wept.

Catherine's new-born happiness was not unmixed. In fact, a few
months rendered her situation almost as intolerable as ever. The Pope
was indignant at the marriage, and could hardly be restrained from
declaring it null and excommunicating all the parties implicated therein.
The course he took was hardly less severe. He refused to ratify the
union, and he directed the clergy of Lorraine to exclude the Duke of Bar
from confession and the cene — until such time as Catherine should abjure
Calvinism. " I have many trials to bear," wrote the latter at this period
to de Mornay. "It is not that they force me to abandon the 'religion,'
but I grieve to see the pain which my husband feels because he cannot
obtain absolution for having married a relative. He loves me ; and I
would gladly lay down my life to relieve him of the terrible idea which
they have put into his mind that his soul is lost ! They have forbidden
him to make his pdques. It afflicts me exceedingly. He loves me none
the less, and he tells me his sorrows with such gentle words that the tears
are never out of my eyes. Still, I am thoroughly resolved to live and die
in the fear of God. I write to you unreservedly, as to my friend. Pray
let it go no further than you may judge necessary for our relief from this
torture — without which I should be the happiest woman in the world."

As time went by, Catherine's position became more wretched. The
clergy remained uncompromising and her husband began to vacillate.
The first day of the century was approaching and with it the jubilee.
Bar undertook a pilgrimage to Kome. He hoped at such a season to
induce the Pope to grant him the much- desired dispensation — so at least
he informed the Duchess. But it seems that his real purpose was to
obtain not a dispensation, but a divorce ! He had bent at last under the
relentless and ever-increasing pressure of the priesthood.

The Duke reached Rome in safety and commenced the necessary
intrigues. They were soon detected by Cardinal d'Ossat, the able French
resident, which brought them at once to an end ; neither Pope nor Prince
dared to pursue the project further. The latter knew full that the conquest
of Lorraine would be but a labour of love to the King. And the former
had been warned that this last Henri of France possessed many of the
qualities of the last Henry of England, and would deal with the church in
a similar way should he receive due provocation. The argument had
proved serviceable while Henri's divorce was pending, and it was not urged
in vain on this occasion. Bar was admitted to the rites of his church.
The Pope, too, promised to grant the dispensation whenever he received
the assurance that, sooner or later, the Princess would abandon her heresy.

THE LOVE AND MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE DE BOURBON. 89

The Dukes and the priests now made a vigorous effort to convert the
Duchess, or win from her the desired promise ; but she would neither
recant nor give the pledge. Apprised of this, Henri Quatre determined to
try his own peculiar powers of persuasion, and invited his sister and her
husband to visit him in Paris. They came ; but in Paris the Calvinists
crowded round her, and she showed herself firmer than ever. Henri soon
tired of discussion, and resorted to an instrument which he could handle
tetter — violence. " Your obstinacy," said he, at last, " compromises the
peace of France and Lorraine. For the sake of your miserable preche
you are determined to ruin two great States. Come, this must cease." He
grasped her shoulder roughly, as he added, " Go, and listen to the clergy."

She dropped on her knees, and looked at him with despairing eyes.
" Your clergy ! " she faltered ; " they ask me to believe that our mother
is damned ! "

Henri staggered as if struck by a shot. A world of recollection rushed
across his memory. In spite of his efforts to repress them, tears burst
forth. " Take her," said he, raising Catherine gently, and handing her
to her husband ; "I can do no more."

In her extremity — finding brother, husband, conscience, and the
Church alike inexorable, and worried to death between them — Catherine
conceived the singular resolution of appealing to the Pope. To him she
wrote a womanly letter. She told the Holy Father that she had done her
best to satisfy him : that she had listened patiently to many theologic
conferences, and meant to attend many more ; that her only wish was to
adhere to the truth; that, as yet, her conscience could not honestly
decide that the truth lay with Catholicism ; that, meanwhile, her husband
remained in great trouble about the dispensation ; that, assured of the
Holy Father's goodness, she, though a Huguenot, could not refrain from
entreating him, in conjunction with her husband, to grant them this
thing ; and that, as she felt and believed, this grace would add great
weight to the many considerations which impelled her to seek the means of
showing that she was the very humble daughter and servant of his Holiness.

And how did the Pope receive this letter ? In a way that hardly the
petitioner or anybody else expected — he granted the dispensation. It
was transmitted, in the first instance, to the French Court, and from thence
it was hurried to its destination. " La Varenne will tell you what has
passed," wrote Catherine to her brother; " my husband loves me more
and more. Believe me, oh, my king ! that I am the happiest woman alive.
You have placed me in Paradise ! "

On the morning of the 13th of February, 1604, barely two months
subsequent to the date of the dispensation, Catherine kissed the forehead
of the Duke of Bar, who was kneeling by her bed, sank back on her pillow,
and closed her eyes to open them no more on earth. The physicians
busied themselves to assign natural causes for her death, as if such a
thing as a broken heart were unknown.

5—5

90

anir (itomht transits 0f

DURING the autumn months of this year the evening star was seen draw-
ing nearer and nearer, night after night, to the place of the sun, until at
length she set too soon after him to be discernible save with the telescope.
To the astronomer this approach of Venus to the sun had an interest
greater than usually attaches to the phenomenon ; for it was known that
she would not pass from the eastern to the western side of the sun's orb
without crossing his face. The passage of Venus close by the sun is, of
course, a phenomenon of frequent occurrence and possessing no special
interest. Hesperus, the star of evening, cannot change into the morning
star, Lucifer, without passing the sun's place upon the heavens ; nor can
Lucifer change into Hesperus without a similar passage ; though there
is a distinction between the two cases, for it is by passing between the
sun and the earth that the evening star changes into the morning star,
while it is by passing beyond the sun, so that the sun comes between the
earth and her, that Venus changes from a morning star into an evening
star. But these are astronomical phenomena which have been witnessed
and understood for thousands of years. It is when Venus, in passing from
the east to the west of the sun, does not steer clear of his disc, but tra-
verses it, so that she appears in the telescope like a round black spot
upon his face, that every astronomer is interested. For these occasions
are few and far between. The last transit of Venus occurred more than
105 years ago ; and although the transit of this year will be followed
by another in 1882, yet after that second transit an even longer interval
will elapse before another occurs, than has passed since the transit of 1769 :
not until June 2004 will Venus again pass over the face of the sun. And
besides the interest naturally attaching to a phenomenon which occurs so
seldom, the transits of Venus have a scientific importance depending on
their relation to celestial measurement, since they afford the best means
astronomy possesses for determining the distance of the sun, and with
that distance the dimensions of the solar system, besides whatever in-
formation we may hope to possess respecting the tremendous distances
which separate the sun from his fellow-suns, the stars.

Transits of the inferior planets were, at first, only awaited with
interest because of their bearing on the Copernican theory of the solar
system. It was not until astronomers had abandoned the old systems
that they could have any positive assurance that any planet ever passed
between the earth and the sun. Moreover, regarding the celestial bodies
as all self-luminous, astronomers could hardly have expected that, even if

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF YENUS. 91

a planet passed across the sun's face, it would be discernible as a dark
spot. We do, indeed, hear that some old observations of sun-spots were
regarded as transits of Mercury or Venus across the sun's disc. Thus,
the author of the Life of Charlemagne tells us that Mercury was seen in
April 807, as a black spot upon the sun's face, for eight consecutive days.
Kepler, who was perfectly well aware that Mercury could not remain as
many hours on the sun's disc, endeavoured to show that the expression
used in the manuscript of the old writer might not have been octo dies,
but octoties, a barbaric form of octies for eight times. Again, the famous
physician Ebn Roschd (commonly called Averroes) says, in his Ptolemaic
Paraphrase, that in the year 1161 he saw Mercury on the sun at a time
when the planet really was in inferior conjunction (that is, passing between
the earth and the sun). Kepler himself believed that he had so seen the
planet. In his day Mercury was supposed to be a much larger body than
it actually is. Hence there was nothing surprising in the fact that an
experienced astronomer like Kepler should have mistaken for the planet a
sun-spot, seen no doubt only for a short time when the sun was low
down. But later, when the telescope had revealed the existence of spots
upon the sun's face, Kepler admitted that in all probability he had seen
such a spot, and not Mercury. We know now that even Venus, much
larger though she is than Mercury, and much nearer to the earth when in
transit, is quite invisible to the unaided eye at such a time.

Gassendi, who was the first to witness a transit of an inferior planet,
saw Mercury pass across the face of the sun on November 7, 1631. His
account of the observation is quoted somewhat fully in the CORNHILL
MAGAZINE for November 1868. Kepler, who had announced the transit,
had also predicted a transit of Venus on December 6, 1631 ; and
Gassendi hoped to witness this event. Kepler predicted that the transit
would begin shortly before sunset ; but as the transit of Mercury had
not occurred exactly at the time indicated by Kepler, Gassendi thought
that quite possibly he might witness the whole of the transit of Venus.
He was prevented from observing the sun on December 4 and 5 by impe-
tuous storms of wind and rain. " On the 6th he continued to obtain
occasional glimpses of the sun, till a little past three o'clock in the after-
noon, but no indication of the planet could be discerned." "On the
7th he saw the sun during the whole forenoon, but looked in vain for any
trace of the planet." We now know that the transit took place during
the night between December 6 and December 7.*

* It is commonly stated that no part of the transit could have been witnessed in
Europe. The present writer, however, having calculated the circumstances of the
transit as accurately as the case warrants, finds that the end of the transit could have
been seen from the south-eastern parts of Europe, occurring at sunrise for all places
on a line drawn from Gibraltar through Marseilles, Dresden, St. Petersburg, to the
extreme north-east of European Russia. The account of Gassendi's failure in the
excellent treatise " Les Passages de Venus,1' by M. Dubois, Naval Examiner in
Hydrography for France, is amusing : " Le Passage de Venu^," he says, " qui sans.

92 PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS.

Just as the transit of December in this year is followed by another
December transit in the year 1882, so the transit of December 1631 was
followed by another in December 1639. The earlier had escaped obser-
vation, as we have seen, though predicted by Kepler ; the latter, which
according to Kepler's tables would not take place, was observed, though
it almost escaped the ingenious astronomer who detected the mistakes in
Kepler's computations and watched for its occurrence. This astronomer
was one whose, name is only not associated with any great discoveries
because he died so young. Had he lived it is probable that Newton
himself would not have stood much higher among the astronomers of
England. Jeremiah Horrocks, minister of Hoole, in Lancashire (aged
only twenty), had in his zeal for science gone over the computations
published by Kepler in the Rudolphine Tables. Comparing these with
Lansberg's Tables of the Motions of Venus, he noticed that, while
according to Kepler the planet would pass very close to the sun but
south of his disc on December 4, 1639, Lansberg's Tables assigned to
the planet at that conjunction a course traversing the northern part of the
sun's disc. He had found Kepler a much more reliable authority than
Lansberg ; but he had reason, from his own observations, to believe that
Venus would follow a course between the two paths thus assigned by
Lansberg and Kepler — somewhat nearer to Kepler's — insomuch that,
instead of passing south of the sun, she would transit the southern part
of his disc. He determined, therefore, to watch carefully for this inte-
resting phenomenon. " Lest a vain exultation should deceive me," he
says, " and to prevent the chance of disappointment, I not only deter-
mined diligently to watch the important spectacle myself, but exhorted
others whom I knew to be fond of astronomy to follow my example, in
order that the testimony of several persons, if it should so happen, might
the more effectually promote the attainment of truth, and because by
observing in different places our purpose would be less likely to be de-
feated by the accidental interposition of clouds or any fortuitous impedi-
ment." In fact, he was not free from astrological fears pointing to such
interposition, since the positions of the planets Jupiter and Mercury
seemed to portend bad weather. " For," he remarks, " in such appre-
hension I coincide with the opinion of the astrologers, because it is
confirmed by experience ; but, in other respects, I cannot help despising
their puerile vanities."

Horrocks' s description of his successful observation is interesting in
many respects, especially perhaps for the enthusiasm which pervades it.
" On voit," says Delambre in his History of Modern Astronomy, " qua
Horrocks etait jeune et enthousiaste, mais cette jeunesse et cet enthou-

doute n'etait pas predit avec une precision suffisante, ne f ut pas observe, d'abord parce
que Gassendi, qui s'appretait a 1'observation, en f ut empeche par la pluie, mais surtout
parce que le passage eut lieu pendant la nuit pour les observateurs Europeens." It
may reasonably be admitted that the occurrence of the transit when the sun waq
below the horizon was a sufficient cause for Gassendi's failure, apart from the rain.

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF YENUS. 93

siasme annoncaient un homme vraiment distingue." " Following the
example of Gassendi," Horrocks begins, " I have drawn up an account of
this extraordinary sight, trusting that it will not prove less pleasing to
astronomers to contemplate Venus than Mercury, though she be wrapt in
the close embraces of the sun—

Vinclisque nova ratione paratis
Admisisse Deos. \

Hail ! then, ye eyes that penetrate the inmost recesses of the heavens, and
gazing upon the bosom of the sun with your sight- assisting tube, have
dared to point out the spots on that eternal luminary ! And thou, too,
illustrious Gassendi, above all others, hail ! thou who, first and only, didst
behold Hermes' changeful orb in hidden congress with the sun. Well hast
thou restored the fallen credit of our ancestors, and triumphed o'er the
inconstant Wanderer. Behold thyself, thrice celebrated man ! associated
with me, if I may venture so to speak, in a like good fortune. Contem-
plate, I repeat, this most extraordinary phenomenon, never in our time to
be seen again ! the planet Venus, drawn from her seclusion, modestly
delineating on the sun, without disguise, her real magnitude, whilst her
disc, at other times so lovely, is here obscured in melancholy gloom ; in
short, constrained to reveal to us those important truths which Mercury
on a former occasion confided to thee. How admirably are the destinies
appointed ! How wisely have the decrees of Providence ordered the
several purposes of their creation ! Thou ! a profound divine, hast
honoured the patron of wisdom and learning ; whilst I, whose youthful
days are scarce complete, have chosen for my theme the Queen of Love,
veiled by the shade of Phoebus' light."

Horrocks was fortunate in possessing a telescope of considerable power
(for that period). He says that it showed even the smallest spots upon
the sun, and enabled him to make the most accurate division of the solar
disc. Moreover, he was already, notwithstanding his youth and the
recentness of the invention, familiar with the use of the telescope, and he
remarks respecting the instrument he employed that, in all his observa-
tions he had found it represent objects with the greatest truth.

Horrocks's calculations must have been made with great care and
excellent judgment. We have seen that Gassendi' s attempt to observe
the transit of 1631 had failed, because Kepler's computations had been so
far erroneous that, instead of the transit beginning before sunset on
December 6, it really began nearly at midnight (for Paris or Greenwich)
between December 6 and December 7. Halley's computation of the
transit of 1761 was also seriously in error (about half an hour) ; and an
error of fully an hour was made in the first published statement respecting
the transit of the present year ! We shall see that Horrocks was correct
within a few minutes. He had found that other astronomers set the
conjunction of 1639 as occurring on November 23 (old style), whereas his
own " forbad him to expect anything before three o'clock in the afternoon

94 PAST AND COMING TEANSITS OF VENUS.

of the 24th " (December 4, new style.) Fearing, however, lest "by too
much self-confidence " he might " endanger the observation," he watched
the sun through the greater part of the 23rd, and the whole of the 24th.
"I watched carefully," he says, "on the 24th from sunrise to nine
o'clock, and from a little before ten until noon, and at one in the after-
noon,— being called away in the intervals by business of the highest
importance, which, for these ornamental pursuits, I could not with
propriety neglect." As the day was Sunday, we may gather from this that
the church services in small places like Hoole, in the seventeenth century,
lasted not much longer than the low mass of a century earlier ; but that
a longer service took place at one, unless (as seems not unreasonable) we
are to suppose that Horrocks took his dinner between one and three, soon
after which hour he resumed his observation of the sun. " About fifteen
minutes past three," he says, " when I was again at liberty to continue
my labours, the clouds, as if by Divine interposition, were entirely dis-
persed, and I was once more invited to the grateful task of repeating my
observations. I then beheld a most agreeable spectacle — the object of my
sanguine wishes — a spot of unusual magnitude, and of a perfectly circular
shape, which had already fully entered upon the sun's disc on the left, so
that the limbs of the sun and Venus perfectly coincided. Not doubting
that this was really the shadow of the planet, I immediately applied
myself sedulously to observe it."

We need not consider very closely what Horrocks actually observed ;
for of course no special scientific interest attaches to the details of his ob-
servations. The chief point is that his prediction should have been so closely
fulfilled. The time, indeed, during which he could examine the appearance
and motions of Venus was very short. He had first seen her at a quarter
past three, and the sun set thirty-five minutes later. Nevertheless, he
effected one discovery worthy of notice. He found that the planet's ap-
parent size is very much smaller than had been supposed. Gassendi had
effected a similar discovery respecting Mercury. Thus had the transits
of these two planets shown that relatively to the sun their globes are much
smaller than astronomers had imagined.

Horrocks had written to his friend Crabtree, a young man well skilled in
mathematics and astronomy, " inviting him to be present at this Uranian
banquet, if the weather permitted." "But the sky," says Horrocks,
" was very unfavourable, being obscured during the greater part of the day
with thick clouds ; and as he was unable to obtain a view of the sun, he
despaired of making an observation, and resolved to take no further
trouble in the matter. But a little before sunset — namely, about thirty-
five minutes past three — the sun bursting, forth from behind the clouds,
he at once began to observe, and was gratified by beholding the pleasing
spectacle of Venus upon the sun's disc. Rapt in contemplation, he stood
for some time motionless, scarcely trusting his own senses, through excess
of joy ; for we astronomers have, as it were, a womanish disposition, and
are overjoyed with trifles, and such small matters as scarcely make an im-

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS. 95

pression upon others ; a susceptibility which those who will may deride
with impunity, even in my own presence ; and if it gratify them I too will
join in the merriment. One thing I request : let no severe Cato be
seriously offended with our follies ; for, to speak poetically, what young
man on earth would not, like ourselves, fondly admire Venus in conjunc-
tion with the sun, pulcliritudinem divitiis conjunctani ? " *

None but these two saw the transit of 1689. It might have been
observed under more advantageous conditions by astronomers in Spain.
In France it could have been seen nearly as favourably as in England ;
but in the eastern parts of Europe it could not have been seen at all. It
would have been favourably seen from the greater part of the North
American Continent, had there been any astronomers there to study it.

Many years passed before the astronomical world began again to
consider the subject of a transit of Venus. It was not, indeed, until
June 1761 that another was to take place.. Towards the close, however,
of the seventeenth century, the astronomer Halley, who during his stay
(when very young) at St. Helena had observed a transit of Mercury, pub-
lished an interesting dissertation showing how a transit of Venus might be
so observed as to afford means for determining the distance of the sun. In
this paper he discussed the circumstances of the transit of 1761, according
to his calculation respecting the time and manner of its occurrence. It
was then that he described the method of observing a transit, which is
commonly called Halley's, though it may also be called (if we do not
wish to give Halley his due), the method of durations. Probably the
simplest sketch of this method would be thought out of place in these
pages. We shall therefore content ourselves with merely noting that it
depends on observing the duration of the transit as seen at different sta-
tions. If our earth were a mere point compared with the sun, the cir-
cumstances of a transit would be appreciably the same from whatever part
of the earth it was observed. But as the earth has dimensions which,
though small, are yet measurable compared with the sun's, observers in
different parts of the earth see a transit under different circumstances ;
and amongst other circumstances affected in this way, the duration of the
transit may be longer or shorter according to the observer's position. It
does not matter whether the difference be brought about by setting one
observer far to the north and another far to the south, or by taking advan-
tage of the rotation of the earth which in a transit of long continuance
shifts the place of an observer who is near the equator very importantly,
while scarcely at all affecting an observer placed in a high latitude, or
even shifting him in a contrary direction if he is on that side of the arctic
regions which lies farthest from the sun. It is manifest that the larger

* This passage, like the others quoted respecting the transit of 1639, is from the
translation of Horrocks's original memoir, by the Rev. Arundell B. Whatton. The
sketch of Horrocks's life accompanying Mr. Whatton's translation, is full of interest.
We are glad to see that the Astronomical Society has honoured itself recently by
having a tablet placed in Westminster Abbey in memory of Horrocks.

96 PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF YENUS.

the earth compared with the sun's distance, the greater will be the effect
due to difference of position ; in other words, the difference of duration
will be greater. And nothing can be simpler than the measurement of the
transit's duration as observed at any place. All that is necessary is a
clock which will not gain or lose appreciably during the time that the
transit is in progress. Having determined the difference for stations of
known position on the earth, we are enabled to infer what proportion the
earth's dimensions bear to the sun's distance, or in other words, we learn
how far off the sun is.

Halley, then, in the dissertation to which we refer, proposed that,
during the transit of 1761 observers should be placed at certain stations
which he pointed out — at Bencoolen in Sumatra, at an arctic station near
Hudson's Bay, and so on — where the transit would have its greatest and
its least duration, so that by rinding how great the difference of duration
might be, the observers would be enabled to infer the relation which the
earth's dimensions bear to the distance of the sun.

The remarks with which Halley closed the introductory portion of his
dissertation are worth quoting for the fine scientific spirit which pervad es
them : — " I could wish," he says, " that many observations of this famous
phenomenon might be taken by different persons at separate places, both
that we might arrive at a greater degree of certainty by their agreement,
and also lest any single observer should be deprived by the intervention
of clouds, of a sight which I know not whether any man living in this or
the next age will ever see again, and on which depends the certain and
adequate solution of a problem the most noble, and at any other times not
to be attained to. I recommend it therefore again and again, to those
curious astronomers who, when I am dead, will have an opportunity of
observing these things, that they would remember this my admonition,
and diligently apply themselves with all their might in making this
observation ; and I earnestly wish them all imaginable success ; in the
first place that they may not by the unseasonable obscurity of a cloudy
sky, be deprived of this most desirable sight, and then, that having
ascertained with more exactness the magnitudes of the planetary orbits,
it may redound to their immortal fame and glory."

As the transit of 1761 drew near, careful observations of the motion
of Venus were made, which showed that she would not transit the sun in
the manner predicted by Halley. It was also found that no stations
could be reached at which Halley's method could be conveniently applied.
In fact the transit was not one whose whole duration could be advanta-
geously observed. The French astronomer Delisle proposed another
method, more difficult in an astronomical sense, but geographically much
more convenient. We have already said that, owing to the fact that the
earth has dimensions measurably comparable even with those of the
solar py stem, the circumstances of a transit will be different at different
stations. Amongst other circumstances so affected will be the time at
which transit will begin or end. Halley's method was directed to the

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS. 97

observation of the time transit lasts, and the differences observed in such
duration were to give the means of determining the sun's distance.
Delisle suggested that observers might note the time at which transit began
or ended (not necessarily observing the whole transit), and that differences
observed in the epochs noted would give the means of measuring the
sun's distance. Of course all the observed epochs would have to be
expressed according to a uniform manner (all in Greenwich time, for
instance, or all in Paris time) ; so that the longitude of each observing
station would have to be determined as well as the local time at which
transit began or ended. But this accomplished, the method would avail
as well as Halley's, for determining the sun's distance.

Accordingly, the French Academy made preparations for sending out
observers to stations suitable for applying this method, which (if we
wish to avoid naming Delisle), ma}7 be called the " absolute time me-
thod," because it depends on comparing the absolute instants at which
transit begins or ends at different stations. Le Gentil, most unfor-
tunate of men so far as transits of Venus were concerned, was sent to
Pondicherry, but as we shall presently see did not arrive there. Here
the whole duration could be observed, but his special object was to
observe ingress. Chappe d'Auteroche was sent to Tobolsk in Siberia.
England, with fine official pertinacity, held fast to Halley's selection,
Bencoolen, though in the actual circumstances of the transit, Bencoolen
presented no advantages whatever. Doubtless an expedition would have
been sent to Halley's other station near Hudson's Bay, but for the cir-
cumstance that the transit would not have been visible there at all.

The actual history of the expeditions is full of interest, but would
require more space than can here be devoted to it. Fortunately for
science, the ship which had set out for Bencoolen was attacked by a
Spanish vessel of greatly superior strength, and being compelled to put in
at the Cape of Good Hope, an excellent station for observing egress in
Delisle's manner, observations were made which proved far more service-
able than any which could possibly have been made at Bencoolen. Le
Gentil set forth for Pondicherry on March 26, 1760. Had he reached
that station, he would have witnessed the curious spectacle of a transit, the
middle of which occurred with the sun almost vertically overhead. But
when Le Gentil arrived at the Isle of France (on July 10, 1760), he
learned that a war had broken out between France and England, and that
it would be unsafe for his ship to proceed. He had resolved to betake
himself to Rodriguez (which, would, however, have been a most unfortu-
nate selection, as only the egress would have been visible, and under very
unfavourable conditions), when he learned that a French frigate was
about to sail for the coast of Coromandel. In her, therefore, he deter-
mined to proceed to Pondicherry. He sailed from the Isle of France in
the middle of March 1761, and after experiencing many provoking delays
from calms, reached Malabar on May 24, only to learn that the English
were masters of Pondicherry. The captain of the frigate sailed away

98 PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS.

with all speed for the Isle of France, and she was still on her way thither
when the day of the transit arrived. Le Gentil made most ingenious
preparations to observe the transit, and favoured by splendid weather he
had an excellent view of its phenomena. But it need hardly be said that
the observations he made, however interesting to him as a student of
astronomy, were utterly valueless for the determination of the sun's
distance. As Dubois well remarks, " Le Gentil had experienced one of
those mishaps which assume to the man of science all the proportions
of a real misfortune ; to have traversed so large a portion of the globe,
to have endured all the weariness, all the privations, all the perils, of
a long sea-voyage, and to effect nothing, this was enough to have dis-
gusted any one with scientific observation, or, at least, with Halley's
method." But, as we shall soon see, Le Gentil was even now not at the
end of his troubles. Chappe d'Auteroche, after a long and painful journey,
reached Tobolsk, and observed the transit there under favourable
conditions.

The results of the observations of the transit of 1761 were by no
means so satisfactory as had been expected, so far as the determination
of the sun's distance was concerned. Some estimates made the distance
nearly 100 millions of miles, while according to others, the sun's distance
fell short of 80 millions of miles. Astronomers had already obtained
much more satisfactory measurements from observations made upon the
planet Mars ; so that the most striking result of the transit observa-
tions made in 1761, seemed to be the recognition of the inferiority of such
observations compared with other methods available to astronomers for
determining the sun's distance.

It was, in fact, during the transit observations of 1761 that astro-
nomers recognised a peculiarity in the behaviour of Venus as she enters
upon and leaves the sun's disc, which militates very strongly against the
usefulness of both Halley's and Delisle's method. Theoretically nothing
can be more perfect than the plan suggested for timing durations by
one method, and the absolute moment of ingress or egress by the
other. As the round black disc of Venus passes upon the sun's face
at ingress, the observer can wait for the moment when her outline
will just touch the sun's. As this moment gradually approaches, he
can give his whole attention to determine the exact instant when the
two outlines are in contact ; and theoretically this instant can be
exactly determined : for, the moment after, the sun's light will be seen
between the two outlines. But practically, matters do not proceed so
conveniently. In the first place, the outline of orb is rippled through
the effects of atmospheric undulations, and so much the more disturbed
as the sun is nearer the horizon, — a fact of great importance, be-
cause all the best stations have the sun somewhat low down at the
critical moment of contact. Then there is the optical effect called irradia-
tion, by which the image of a bright object on the retina is apparently
enlarged. This effect, of course, makes the dark disc of Venus look

PAST AND COMING TEANSITS OF VENUS. 99

smaller, and the bright disc of the sun look larger than they really are ;
and a very little consideration will show that at the moment when the two
are really in contact (Venus just lying wholly within the sun's disc)
instead of appearing as a round black disc just touching the sun, she will
appear to have a disc smaller than her real orb, and not round, since
irradiation will not contract the disc at the place of contact as it does
elsewhere. Thus, at the moment of real contact Venus will present a
pear-shaped aspect, the stalk of the pear connecting the body with
the edge of the sun's disc. The moment after real contact, the stalk
will appear to break, and either in an instant or very quickly the
pear-shape will disappear, and the disc will become circular, with a
wide space separating it from the edge of the sun's disc. The disc will
seem to have taken a leap, as it were, from the sun's edge, to which a
moment before it was attached by the black stalk. Similar phenomena
will present themselves at egress in a reverse order. Now, these effects
are combined with those due to atmospheric undulations ; and more-
over the extent of irradiation depends largely on the observer him-
self (some persons being much more sensitive to the effects of light
than others), and largely also on the telescope employed, the state of
the air, and other variable circumstances. So that manifestly, instead
of that neat and precise determination of the moment of contact which
Halley expected, and which both his method and Delisle's require, there
must be considerable uncertainty in the comparison of observations made
by different astronomers, at different stations, with different telescopes,
and under different conditions.

Most of those who observed the transit of 1761 mention the occurrence
of peculiarities such as we have here described. Thus, Mr. Hirst, who
observed the transit at Madras, where the sun was at a considerable
elevation, states that " at the total immersion, the planet, instead of
appearing truly circular, resembled more the form of a Bergamot pear,
or, as Governor Pigott then expressed it, looked like a nine-pin," yet
the part of the disc farthest from the sun was extremely well defined.
When the planet was about to leave the sun similar appearances were
presented. " The planet was as black as ink, and the body truly circular
just before the beginning of egress, yet it was no sooner in contact " with
the edge of the sun's disc "than it assumed the same figure as before,"
the other part of Venus " keeping well defined and truly circular."

However, the general impression among the astronomers of the last
century would seem to have been that too much reliance had been
placed on Delisle's method. Cassini, several years later, wrote as follows
respecting the arrangements for the transit of 1769 : — " Experience is our
chief instructor ; the fruit of her lessons repays us for the years passed
in learning them. In 1761 the principal object had 'been missed for
want of observations in places where the durations differed sufficiently.
It was essential not to experience a second time the same disadvantage."

In accordance with this view, preparations were made for sending

100 PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OP VENUS.

observers in 1769 to the South Sea, California, Mexico, Lapland, Kams-
chatka, Hudson's Bay, and other places where the whole transit could be
observed. England took an important part in these arrangements. At
that period Spain possessed nominal dominion over the South Sea, and
the French Government waited for permission from Spain to observe the
transit in those seas. This permission Spain refused to grant. But
England did not wait for it. Indeed, from all the accounts we have seen, it
does not appear that the idea of asking Spain for permission to visit the
Southern Seas occurred to the British authorities. The Royal Society
presented a memorial to George III. early in 1768, requesting, among
ether things, that a vessel might be fitted out at the expense of govern-
ment " to convey proper persons to observe the transit, either from the
Marquesas, or from one of those islands to which Tasman had given the
several appellations of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Middleburgh," now
known as the Friendly Isles. This petition was readily complied with.
But early in the negotiations a hitch occurred which threatened mischie-
vous delays. Dalrymple, who had been selected to superintend the
expedition, was a man eminent in science, and every way worthy of confi-
dence ; moreover he had " already greatly distinguished himself respecting
the geography of the Southern Ocean. As this gentleman had been
regularly bred to the sea, he insisted on having a brevet commission, as
captain of the vessel, before he would undertake the employment." The
Admiralty violently opposed this measure, and Lord Hawke (who then
presided at the Admiralty) " declared that nothing could induce him to
sanction such a commission." After much debate, both sides proving
inflexible, it was thought desirable to look out for another commander for
the expedition, and Captain Cook (then Lieutenant and afterwards world-
renowned) was eventually appointed. The Endeavour, a barque of 370
tons, originally built for the coal trade, was selected as a suitable vessel,
and at the suggestion of Captain Wallis, who had just returned from a
voyage round the world, Otaheite (then called King George's Island) was
chosen as the most convenient place for observing the transit. The
observers selected were Mr. Chas. Green, assistant of Dr. Bradley, the
Astronomer Royal, and Mr. Jos. Banks (afterwards the President of the
Royal Society). Two draughtsmen, a secretary, and four subordinate
assistants accompanied the observers. Solander, the Swedish naturalist,
also sailed with Cook, and his botanical observations were among the
most important fruits of the expedition. The transit was successfully
observed both by Green and Banks.

Le Gentil experienced in 1769 the culmination of his misfortunes as
a transit observer. With a pertinacious courage worthy of better success,
he determined, after his failure in 1761, to return to Pondicherry so soon
as an opportunity presented itself, and there to await the transit of 1769.
For eight years he waited, employing himself in the agreeable study of
Brahminical astronomy. But alas, when June 8, 1769, arrived, an
envious cloud covered the sun at the moment when Le Gentil was pre-

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS. 101

paring to reap the reward of his patience ; and all that was left to the
unhappy astronomer was to return to France and publish a book on the
astronomy of the Brahmins. Let us hope that he was kindly treated by
the critics.

As important as observations in the South Seas, where the duration
of the transit was shortened, were those made at Wardhuus, in Lapland,
where the duration was lengthened. The King of Denmark invited
Father Hell, a skilful German astronomer, to occupy this station in
company with the Danish astronomer Borgrewing. Arriving at Wardhuus
in the autumn of 1768, the two astronomers wintered in that desolate
region ; and fortunately, when the day of the transit arrived, clear
weather permitted them to make good observations. Doubt has, indeed,
been thrown upon the observations of Hell, in comparatively recent
times, because of the difficulty of reconciling them with the present
estimates of the sun's distance. The Astronomer Royal has even gone so
far as to suggest that the worthy Father was asleep at the moment of
egress, and that being ashamed to admit the fact he made an entry
in his notebook describing an imaginary observation. We know of
nothing rendering this at all probable, for Hell was a man held in high
esteem by his contemporaries. The time, indeed, at which egress
occurred was such that sleep would not in itself have been an improper
indulgence. Transit began, at Wardhuus, at about half-past nine in the
evening, and ended at about half- past three in the morning (there was no
night in that high latitude), and a rest in tte interval would have been
excusable. But it seems absurd to suppose that the astronomer would
have left his waking to chance. Besides, there were the astronomers
Sajnowiz and Borgrewiug, as well as several assistant observers, and these
would not have left Father Hell to sleep through the important moments
of egress. It seems likely, in fact, that his unlucky name rather than
any other circumstance, suggested a charge which, if really warranted,
would expose him to the undying obloquy of astronomers. In this respect
he may be compared to that unfortunate Dr. Impey, whom Macaulay
represents to us in so contemptible an aspect, — with no better justification,
according to well-informed historians.

A great deal has been said during the last few years about the error
which astronomers are supposed to have detected in that estimate of the
sun's distance which had been based on the observations of 1769. But in
point of fact it was very early seen that these observations were little more
trustworthy than those made in 1761. Within less than two years,
upwards of two hundred papers containing different estimates of the sun's
distance were sent by various persons to the Academy of Paris, and
probably about four hundred to the different learned societies of Europe.
Selecting from among these the papers contributed by the able mathema-
ticians, Lalande, Euler, Pingre, Hornsby, and Hell, we find the estimates
of the sun's distance ranging from 92 millions to 96 millions of miles.
Not the leatt curious part of the matter is that all the calculators were

102 PAST AND COMING- TRANSITS OF VENtJS.

positive they were right. Pingre, who made the distance 92 millions of
miles said, " Of two things one, either this is the true distance, or the
observations of 1769 are not to be trusted at all ; " while Lalande said
that " incontestably " the sun's distance amounts to fully 96 millions of
miles. Euler, a greater mathematician than either, after carefully going
over his work afresh, obtained a value almost exactly midway between
Lalande's and Pingre's. Then did Dionis du Sejour publish a new in-
vestigation leading to nearly the same value which Pingre had obtained.
Lastly came Encke, who with German patience combined all the observa-
tions together, with a result nearly coinciding with Lalande's. This was
the value of the sun's distance — 95,265,000 — which for so many years
reigned in our books of astronomy ; though why implicit reliance was
given to it when the history of the investigation showed that mathe-
maticians more skilful than Encke had obtained results differing widely
from his, cannot be easily explained. Nor should it have been thought
at all a wonderful circumstance that researches by other methods soon
began to point to a different value of the sun's distance.

This would not be the place to explain the various methods by which,
without the aid of a transit of Venus, astronomers have in recent times
obtained new estimates of the scale on which the solar system is con-
structed. Yet the ingenuity with which the great problem has been
attacked is so remarkable that it may interest our readers to have simply
stated, without explanation of details, the contrivances employed by
astronomers. First, there was an old method depending on the observa-
tion of the planet Mars, when at his nearest to us, and when therefore his
apparent position in the heavens is most affected by the difference in the
position of the observers on our earth. This method was applied in two
ways : in one, by stationing observers far apart ; in the other, by taking
advantage of the fact that an observer is carried round by the daily
rotation of the earth so as to have his place changed for him, so to speak.
Then the motions of the moon were consulted. Our satellite is disturbed
by the sun, and if her path were indefinitely small compared with his
distance she would be just as much disturbed in the half of her path
farthest from him as in the half nearest to him ; but as the sun's distance
is not immeasurably superior to the moon's, she is slightly more disturbed
when traversing the half of her path nearest to him than when traversing
the other half. The excess of disturbance being noted, affords a means of
estimating the sun's distance ; for, as we have seen, it depends on the
extent to which that distance exceeds the readily measured distance of the
moon.* Then there was yet another method depending on the fact that
the earth circuits once a month around the common centre of gravity of
her orb and the moon's, so that she is now a little on this side now a little
on that side of the place she would have if there were no moon. This

* The moon's distance is easily measured because she is so near that two ob-
servers at distant stations on the earth Bee her in perceptibly different directions.

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS. 103

slight range on her part from what may he called her mean position gives,
as it were, a base of measurement, to either extremity of which the
astronomer is carried successively month after month, and the resulting
slight displacement of the sun's apparent place shows itself in the records
of Greenwich, Washington, Paris, and other great observatories. The
sun's distance is inferred from such observations, just as a surveyor infers
the distance of some inaccessible spire or rock by noting how much it is
shifted in direction as seen from one or the other end of a measured base-
line. Then there was that most ingenious and wonderful of all methods
which depends on the measurement of the velocity of light. Every one
knows that astronomy first revealed the fact that light travels with a measur-
able though inconceivable velocity. The little satellites of Jupiter were
found to undergo eclipse earlier or later according as Jupiter was nearer to
or farther from us, and it was soon seen that these effects arise from the
fact that the light-message by which the news of these eclipses is conveyed
takes a longer time to traverse the longer distance, — in other words, that
light does not travel with infinite velocity. It appeared from the observed
effects that light occupied about seventeen minutes in traversing a distance
equal to the diameter of the earth's orbit ; and using Encke's value of
the sun's distances, this implied that light travels with a velocity of about
192,000 miles per second. Of course if the sun's distance is greater, light
travels more quickly, and if less then less quickly. It occurred toFoucault to
apply an ingenious contrivance, devised by Wheatstone for measuring the
duration of the electric spark, to the less difficult task of measuring the
velocity of light. And inconceivable though it may seem that a velocity of
nearly two hundred thousand miles per second can be measured by any
terrestrial contrivance, the task was accomplished so satisfactorily that
the resulting estimate of the velocity of light has been thought a sufficient
ground for adopting a new estimate of the sun's distance. Foucault
found that light does not travel at so great a rate as 192,000 miles per
second, but at the rate of about 180,000 miles, so that the diameter
of the sun's orbit must be less than Encke had supposed, — the sun's
distance being reduced in this way from 95,265,000 miles to about 92
millions. The values obtained by the other methods all lie much nearer
to this value than to Encke's, ranging in fact from 91,230,000 miles to
92,680,000 miles. So that whether Pingre and Dionis du Sejour were
right or wrong in asserting that the transit observations in 1769 point to a
solar distance of 92,000,000 miles, it is certain that modern observations
point to such a distance.

Much has been said respecting the efforts which have been recently
made to show that the observations of 1769 can be forced into agree-
ment with the new and reduced estimates of the sun's distance. The
continental astronomer Powalky effected this by selecting certain ob-
servations and rejecting others, — without giving any sufficient reasons for
so doing. Stone, of Greenwich, adopted a plan little more satisfactory,
though many writers (the present writer among the number) somewhat

104 PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS.

hastily assumed that he had removed the whole difficulty. We have
described the peculiarity which affects the appearance of Venus when
she is just wholly upon the disc of ihe sun. Between the moment
at ingress when her rounded outline seems to belong to a circle which
(if complete) would touch the sun's outline (the moment of apparent
contact) and the moment when she seems suddenly to break away from
the edge of the san (the moment of real contact), an interval elapses ;
and there is a corresponding interval between the two contacts at egress.
Mr. Stone found that if this interval be taken as seventeen seconds
then the observations of 1769 point to just such a distance of the sun
as astronomers have recently been led to adopt. This is all very well ;
but if it proved anything it would prove that the interval either always
amounts to seventeen seconds or that seventeen seconds is a fair average
value. Even if this were true nothing else would have been demon-
strated by Mr. Stone's investigation. But unfortunately those observers
who, availing themselves of the experience obtained in 1761, were careful
to observe both kinds of contact in 1769, found the interval to be not
only widely variable but always much greater than seventeen seconds.
Green at Otaheite found the interval to be 40 seconds at ingress and 48
seconds at egress. Cook made it 60 seconds at ingress and 32 seconds at
egress. Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, observed a difference of 52
seconds, while Horsley, at the same station (Greenwich Observatory), found
it to be 63 seconds. Hornsby at Oxford found the difference to be 57
seconds, while Shuckberg, also at Oxford, found it to be fully 69 seconds.
Yet all these observers were prepared for this peculiarity, and Maskelyne
had issued special instructions for their guidance in this particular respect.*

We cannot wonder, therefore, if continental and American astrono-
mers unanimously decline to recognise any independent value in Mr.
Stone's attempted reconciliation between the transit observations of 1769
and recent measurements of the sun's distance.

It is hoped, however, that the observations which are to be made
during the transits of this year and the year 1882 will remove all doubt as
to the correctness of these more recent measurements. At a very early
date attention was directed to the transits by the Astronomer Boya! for
England ; who, in May 1857, delivered an address to the Astronomical
Society, in which he described the various methods available for determining
the sun's distance, and pointed out the advantages of a transit of Venus,
more especially if it could be observed by Halley's method. He stated,
however, that the. methods of durations could only be applied in 1882,
any observable difference in 1874 " being probably little more than half as
great as in 1882." It appeared also from his calculations that to apply
the method successfully in 1882, Antarctic stations must be reached.

* One observer, at Caen, using a very small telescope, found the interval between
real aud apparent contact to be more than two minutes and a half — " a monstrous
cantle out."

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF YENUS. 105

Not deterred, however, by this difficulty, and remembering doubtless that
British seamen were not altogether without fame as Antarctic explorers,
he boldly advocated the occupation of Antarctic stations. The whole
region, he said, " should be reconnoitred some years before the transit,"
for "the future astronomical public will not be satisfied unless all prac-
ticable use be made of the transits of Venus in 1874 and 1882."

In 1864 these suggestions were renewed, special attention being
directed to Sabrina Land and Repulse Bay. In May 1865, the Astro-
nomer Royal heard that the Geographical Society was endeavouring to
move Government to send an expedition towards the North Pole, and he
immediately put in a plea for an Antarctic expedition. " In the year
1882," he said, " a transit of Venus over the sun's disc will occur ; the
most favourable of all phenomena for solution of the noble problem of
determining the sun's distance from the earth." He then stated that the
southern stations must be on the Antarctic continent, and pointed out
that although, if such an expedition were undertaken the astronomical
observations must take precedence of all others, " there would be no diffi-
culty in combining with them any other inquiries of geography, geology,
hydrography, magnetism, meteorology, natural history, or any other
subject for which the localities are suitable."

But it was in December 1868 that the suggestions for Antarctic recon-
naisance first took definite form. Then did the Astronomer Royal
marshal an array of naval authorities — Admiral Richards (Hydro-
grapher to the Admiralty), Admiral Ommanney, Commander Davis (a
companion of Sir Jas. C. Ross in his celebrated Antarctic expedition),
Captain Toynbee, and others — in support of the schemes which during
the preceding eleven years he had from time to time advocated ; and,
with excellent unanimity, these authorities expressed their belief that
Antarctic explorations could be usefully and safely carried out.

Hitherto the astronomers of other countries had taken no part in
these preliminary inquiries and suggestions. It was doubtless felt that
the matter could be well left in the hands of so excellent a mathematician
as Sir George Airy. We find, in fact, that in the communication ad-
dressed in 1868 to the Astronomical Society, the part which other nations
were to take was indicated as well as that which our country might regard
as specially her own. The lion's share was taken indeed for England,
which was to occupy in 1874 all the four regions suitable for observing
by Delisle's method, while in 1882, besides taking her share in applying
this method, she was to occupy stations on the Antarctic -continent. It is
rather singular that no part whatever was assigned to America until 1882,
when " the utmost reliance might be placed on the zeal of our American
brethren " for observing the transit of that year at stations in the United
States.

But the last five years have seen all these ideas changed. It was
found that an error had been made in the original investigation of the
conditions of the two transits, and that it is for the later not the earlier

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 181. 6.

106 PAST AND COMING TBANSITS OP VENUS.

transit that Halley's method fails. Accordingly, ample preparations
were made for observing the duration of the transit of this year from
suitably selected stations. Among these are several which had been
already chosen for the other method ; but others are new. In particular
the Russian Government provided for a whole range of stations in
Eastern Siberia where the transit had a lengthened duration, while
America, France, and Germany arranged to occupy Crozet Island,
St. Paul's Island, Campbell, Auckland, and other islands in the sub-
Antarctic Seas, which, with Rodriguez, Kerguelen, and other places to be
occupied by England, form ample provision for the observation of the
shortened duration.

A little disappointment was occasioned to those who may have hoped,
from the plans published in 1868, that Antarctic exploration would have
been undertaken for observing the transit of 1882. So soon as it was
pointed out that no good could result from the occupation of Antarctic
stations in that year, all those plans were very properly abandoned. It
had now become known, however, that Antarctic stations would be more
useful during the transit of the present year than it had been supposed they
would be in 1882. Some imagined that the authorities who had been so
enthusiastic in favour of Antarctic exploration for one transit would not be
altogether opposed to such exploration for the other. This hope was
doomed to be disappointed. In fact the Astronomer Royal and the
Admirals grew quite facetious in ridiculing the idea of Antarctic explora-
tion ; though they suddenly became serious even to severity, when re-
minded of the views they had themselves expressed in 1868. Thenceforth
they deprecated jesting with a touching solemnity.

But after all, Antarctic exploration was not a point of great importance
for the transit of this year. So admirably is the method of durations suited
for this transit, that without incurring the dangers of Antarctic voyaging
— whether these dangers be excessive, as now stated by the Admiralty, or
slight, as they stated in 1868 — a large number of stations could be occupied
both in the northern and southern hemisphere, whence the whole transit
can be seen. And fortunately for science the opportunity was recog-
nised early enough to be turned to good account. Russia, as we have
stated, occupied no less than eleven northern stations for observing the
whole transit, America, Germany and France occupying between them
seven or eight others in Siberia, North China, and Japan, while England
occupied one in North India. In the southern hemisphere nearly all the
stations are such that the duration of the transit can be observed, except
Cape Town, which has special value as a station for observing the middle
of the transit. England occupied four stations in the southern hemi-
sphere, besides Cape Town, Melbourne, Sidney, and other places already
provided with astronomical instruments ; and America, France, and Ger-
many occupied many other southern stations for applying Halley's method
But it is not by any means to be supposed that Delisle's method was neg-
lected. England, for instance, occupied the Sandwich Islands where only

PAST AND COMING TRANSITS OF VENUS. 107

the ingress could be observed, and the Isthmus of Suez whence only the
egress could be observed, and Russia had a yet larger number of astrono-
mers devoted to the observation of egress only. Moreover, all the stations
whence the duration could be seen were excellent stations for observing
ingress and egress alone, so that where bad weather unfortunately
prevented the observers from noting the ] duration, they still had a
chance of doing useful work. This, in fact, was one great reason why it
would have been little less than a disaster for science had the value of the
transit for Halley's method not been noted in good time ; because it was
hardly to be expected that other nations would occupy second-rate
Delislean stations when England and Russia had all the best stations of
that kind, whereas under the actual circumstances a large number of
second-rate but excellent Delislean stations were occupied because they
were first-rate Halleyan stations.

But probably the most hopeful circumstance of all is that photography
has been applied to determine the moments when the transit began and
ended, as well as to give the place of Venus on the sun's face at successive
short intervals throughout the whole transit. It was Dr. De la Rue, we
believe, who first suggested the application of photography in this way in
a practical manner (though Faye calls the photographic method " la
methode Francaise," because he himself mentioned it as possible twenty
years since). Janssen, a French astronomer, invented an ingenious
arrangement, by which a large circular plate can be so turned during the
ingress and egress of Venus, that picture after picture of her advancing
and retiring disc is depicted round the edge of the plate. The exact
instant when each picture is taken is known, and by examining the
series it becomes possible to tell exactly when Venus was in contact
with the sun. The American astronomers hope for even better results
from the photographic record of the progress of the transit. It appears
to us, however, that they have not sufficiently taken into account the
distortion which the whole disc of the sun, even when moderately high,
undergoes from atmospheric refraction. The displacements to be mea-
sured are so small that distortions which could otherwise be safely
neglected, become of paramount importance.

However, the great point is that all the available methods have been
tried, and the failure of this or that method does not involve the failure of
the whole series. In these respects, — the multitude of plans employed, and
the ingenuity with which astronomers have availed themselves of modern
scientific discoveries, — the preparations for the transit were far in advance
of any before provided. We venture to predict that the close agreement
between the measures of the sun's distance obtained in 1874 and 1882
will show that full reliance may be placed on transit observations, while
the success of the observations will make the occasion an epoch in the
history of science.

6—2

103

CHAPTER XX.

TINTAGEL'S WALLS.

HAT was the matter with Harry
Trelyon ? His mother could
not make out, and there never
had been much confidence be-
tween them, so that she did
not care to ask. But she
watched ; and she saw that
he had, for the time at least,
forsaken his accustomed
haunts and ways, and become
gloomy, silent, and self-pos-
sessed. Dick was left neg-
lected in the stables; you no
longer heard his rapid clatter
along the highway, with the
not over- melodious voice of
his master singing " The Men
of merry, merry England " or
" The Young Chevalier." The
long and slender fishing-rod remained on the pegs in the hall, although
you could hear the flop of the small burn trout of an evening when the
flies were thick over the stream. The dogs were deprived of their accus-
tomed runs ; the horses had to be taken out for exercise by the groom ;
and the various and innumerable animals about the place missed their
doses of alternate petting and teasing, all because Master Harry had
chosen to shut himself up in his study.

The mother of the young man very soon discovered that her son was
not devoting his hours of seclusion in that extraordinary museum of
natural history to making trout-flies, stuffing birds, and arranging pinned
butterflies in cases, as was his custom. These were not the occupations
which now kept Trelyon up half the night. When she went in of a
morning, before he was up, she found that he had been covering whole
sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages taken at random from
the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was ordinarily on the table —
a book which the young gentleman had brought back from school free
from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing foil lay among these evidences
of study ; while the small aquaria, the cases of stuffed animals with fancy

THREE FEATHERS. 109

backgrounds, and the numerous birdcages had been thrust aside to give
fair elbow-room. "Perhaps," said Mrs. Trelyon to herself, with much
satisfaction, " perhaps, after all, that good little girl has given him a hint
about Parliament, and he is preparing himself."

A few days of this seclusion, however, began to make the mother
anxious ; and so, one morning, she went into his room. He hastily turned
over the sheet of paper on which he had been writing ; then he looked up,
not too well pleased.

' ' Harry, why do you stay indoors on such a beautiful morning ? It
is quite like summer."

" Yes, I know," he said. " I suppose we shall soon have a batch of
parsons here : summer always brings them. They come out with the hot
weather — like butterflies."

Mrs. Trelyon was shocked and disappointed; she thought Wenna
Bosewarne had cured him of his insane dislike to clergymen — indeed, for
many a day gone by he had kept respectfully silent on the subject.

"But we shall not ask them to come if you'd rather not," she said,
wishing to do all she could to encourage the reformation of his ways. " I
think Mr. Barnes promised to visit us early in May ; but he is only one."

" And one is worse than a dozen. When there's a lot you can leave 'em
to fight it out among themselves. But one — to have one stalking about
an empty house, like a ghost dipped in ink ! Why can't you ask any-
body but clergymen, mother ? There are whole lots of people would like
to run down from London for a fortnight before getting into the thick of
the season — there's the Pomeroy girls as good as offered to come."

"But they can't come by themselves," Mrs. Trelyon said, with a
feeble protest.

" Oh yes they can ; they're ugly enough to be safe anywhere. And
why don't you get Juliott up ? She'll be glad to get away from that old
curmudgeon for a week. And you ought to ask the Trewhellas, mother
and daughter, to dinner — that old fellow is not half a bad sort of fellow,
although he's a clergyman."

" Harry," said his mother, interrupting him, " I'll fill the house, if
that will please you ; and you shall ask just whomsoever you please."

"All right," said he ; " the place wants waking up."

" And then," said the mother, wishing to be still more gracious, "you
might ask Miss Rosewarne to dine with us — she might come well enough,
although Mr. Boscorla is not here."

A sort of gloom fell over the young man's face again.

" I can't ask her ; you may if you like."

Mrs. Trelyon stared. " What is the matter, Harry? Have you and
she quarrelled ? Why, I was going to ask you, if you were down La the
village to-day, to say that I should like to see her."

" And how could I take such a message?" the young man said, rather
warmly. " I don't see why the girl should be ordered up to see you
as if you were conferring a favour on her by joining in this scheme.
She's very hard- worked ; you have got plenty of time ; you ought to call

110 THREE FEATHERS.

on her, and study her convenience, instead of making her trot all the
way up here whenever you want to talk to her."

The pale and gentle woman flushed a little ; but she was anxious not
to give way to petulance just then.

" Well, you are quite right, Harry ; it was thoughtless of me. I
should like to go down and see her this morning ; but I have sent Jakes
over to the blacksmith's, and I am afraid of that new lad."

" Oh, I will drive you down to the inn ! I suppose among them they
can put the horses to the waggonette," the young man said, not very
graciously ; and then Mrs. Trelyon went off to get ready.

It was a beautiful, fresh morning ; the far-off line of the sea still and
blue ; the sunlight lighting up the wonderful masses of primroses along
the tall banks ; the air sweet with the resinous odour of the gorse. Mrs.
Trelyon looked with a gentle and childlike pleasure on all these things,
and was fairly inclined to be very friendly with the young gentleman
beside her. But he was more than ordinarily silent and morose. Mrs.
Trelyon knew she had done nothing to offend him, and thought it hard
she should be punished for the sins of anybody else.

He spoke scarcely a word to her as the carriage rolled along the- silent
highways. He drove rapidly and carelessly down the steep thoroughfare
of Eglosilyan, although there were plenty of loose stones about. Then he
pulled sharply up in front of the inn ; and George Eosewarne appeared.

" Mr. Rosewarne, let me introduce you to my mother. She wants to
see Miss Wenna for a few moments, if she is not engaged."

Mr. Rosewarne took off his cap, assisted Mrs. Trelyon to alight, and
then showed her the way into the house.

" Won't you come in, Harry ? " his mother said.

"No."

A man had come out to the horses' heads*

" You leave 'em alone," said the young gentleman. "I shan't get
down."

Mabyn came out, her bright young face full of pleasure.

" How do you do, Mabyn ? " he said, coldly, and without offering to
shake hands.

"Won't you come in for a minute ? " she said, rather surprised.

" No, thank you. Don't you stay out in the cold ; you've got nothing
round your neck."

Mabyn went away without saying a word ; but thinking that the cool-
ness of the air was much less apparent than that of his manner and
speech.

Being at length left to himself, he turned his attention to the horses
before him, and eventually, to pass the time, took out his pocket-handker-
chief and began to polish the silver on the handle of the whip. He was
disturbed in this peaceful occupation by a very timid voice which said,
*' Mr. Trelyon." He turned round and found that Wenna's wistful face
was looking up to 'him, with a look in it partly of friendly gladness, and
partly of anxiety and entreaty.

THEEE FEATHEBS. Ill

" Mr. Trelyon," she said, with her eyes cast down, " I think you are
offended with me. I am very sorry. I beg your forgiveness."

The reins were fastened up in a minute, and he was down in the road
beside her.

"Now look here, Wenna," he said. "What could you mean by
treating me so unfairly ? I don't mean in being vexed with me ; but in
shunting me off, as it were, instead of having it out at once. I don't
think it was fair."

" I am very sorry," she said. "I think I was very wrong ; but you don't
know what a girl feels about such things. Will you come into the inn ? "

"And leave my horses ? No," he said, good-naturedly. "But as
soon as I get that fellow out, I will ; so you go in at once, and I'll follow
you directly. And mind, Wenna, don't you be so silly again ; or you and
I may have a real quarrel. And I know that would break your heart."

The old pleased smile lit up her face again as she turned and went
indoors ; he, meanwhile, proceeded to summon an ostler by shouting his
name at the pitch of his voice.

The small party of women assembled in the parlour were a trifle
embarrassed ; it was the first time that the great lady of the neigh-
bourhood had honoured the inn with a visit. She herself was merely
quiet, gentle, and pleased ; but Mrs. Rosewarne, with her fine eyes and
her sensitive face lit up and quickened by the novel excitement, was all
anxiety to amuse, and interest, and propitiate her distinguished guest.
Mabyn, too, was rather shy and embarrassed ; she said things hastily,
and then seemed afraid of her interference. Wenna was scarcely at
her ease, because she saw that her mother and sister were not ; and
she was very anxious, moreover, that these two should think well of
Mrs. Trelyon and be disposed to like her.

The sudden appearance of a man, with a man's rough ways and
loud voice, seemed to shake these feminine elements better together, and
to clear the air of timid apprehensions and cautions. Harry Trelyon
came into the room with quite a marked freshness and good-nature on
his face. His mother was surprised : what had completely changed his
manner in a couple of minutes ?

" How are you, Mrs. Rosewarne ? " he cried, in his off-hand fashion.
" You oughtn't to be indoors on such a morning, or we'll never get you well,
you know ; and the doctor will be sending you to Penzance or Devonport
for a change. Well, Mabyn, have you convinced anybody yet that your
farm- labourers with their twelve shillings a week are better off than the
slate-workers with their eighteen ? You'd better take your sister's opinion
on that point, and don't squabble with me. Mother, what's the use of
sitting here ? You bring Miss Wenna with you into the waggonette, and
talk to her there about all your business affairs, and I'll take you for a
drive. Come along ! And, of course, I want somebody with me : will you
come, Mrs. Rosewarne, or will Mabyn ? You can't ? — then Mabyn must.
Go along, Mabyn, and put your best hat on, and make yourself uncom-
monly smart, and you shall be allowed to sit next the driver — that's me ! "

112 THREE FEATHERS.

And indeed he bundled the whole of them about until they were seated
in the waggonette just as he had indicated ; and away they went from the
inn-door.

" And you think you are coming back in half an hour? " he said to
his companion, who was very pleased and very proud to occupy such a
place. " Oh no, you're not. You're a young and simple thing, Mabyn.
These two behind us will go on talking now for any time about yards of
calico, and crotchet-needles, and twopenny subscriptions ; while you and I,

don't you see, are quietly driving them over to Tintagel "

" Oh, Mr. Trelyon ! " said Mabyn.

" You keep quiet. That isn't the half of what's going to befall you.
I shall put up the horses at the inn, and I shall take you all down to the
beach for a scramble to improve your appetite ; and at the said inn you
shall have luncheon with me, if you're all very good and behave yourselves.
Then we shall drive back just when we particularly please. Do you like
the picture ? "

" It is delightful — oh, I am sure Wenna will enjoy it! " Mabyn said.
" But don't you think, Mr. Trelyon, that you might ask her to sit here ?
One sees better here than sitting sideways in a waggonette."
" They have their business affairs to settle."

" Yes," said Mabyn, petulantly, " that is what everyone says ; nobody
expects Wenna ever to have a moment's enjoyment to herself! Oh ! here
is old Uncle Cornish — he's a great friend of Wenna's — he will be dread-
fully hurt if she passes him without saying a word."

" Then we must pull up and address Uncle Cornish. I believe he
used to be the most thieving old ruffian of a poacher in this county."

There was a hale old man of seventy or so seated on a low wall in
front of one of the gardens ; his face shaded from the sunlight by a broad
hat ; his lean grey hands employed in buckling up the leathern leggings
that encased his spare calves. He got up when the horses stopped, and
looked in rather a dazed fashion at the carriage.

" How do you do this morning, Mr. Cornish ? " Wenna said.
" Why, now, to be sure ! " the old man said, as if reproaching his
own imperfect vision. " 'Tis a fine marnin, Miss Wenna, and yii be
agwoin for a drive."

" And how is your daughter-in-law, Mr. Cornish ? Has she sold the
pig yet ? "

" Naw, she hasn't sold the peg. If yii be agwoin thru Trevalga, Miss
Wenna, just yii stop and have a look at that peg ; yii'll be mazed to see
en ; 'tis many a year agone sence there has been such a peg by me. And
perhaps yii'd take the laste bit o' refrashment, Miss Wenna, as yii go by ;
Jane would get yii a coop o' tay to once."

" Thank you, Mr. Cornish, I'll look in and see the pig some other
time ; to-day we shan't be going as far as Trevalga."

" Oh, won't you ? " said Master Harry, in a low voice, as he drove on.
" You'll be in Trevalga before you know where you are."

Which was literally the case. Wenna was so much engaged in her

THREE FEATHERS. 113

talk with Mrs. Trelyon that she did not notice how far away they were
getting from Eglosilyan. But Mabyn and her companion knew. They
were now on the high uplands by the coast, driving between the beautiful
banks which were starred with primroses, and stitchwort, and red dead-
nettle, and a dozen other bright and tender-hued firstlings of the year.
The sun was warm on the hedges and the fields, but a cool breeze blew
about these lofty heights, and stirred Mabyn's splendid masses of hair as
they drove rapidly along. Far over on their right, beyond the majestic
wall of cliff, lay the great blue plain of the sea ; and there stood the bold
brown masses of the Sisters Rocks, with a circle of white foam around
their base. As they looked down into the south, the white light was so
fierce that they could but faintly discern objects through it ; but here and
there they caught a glimpse of a square church-tower, or of a few rude
cottages clustered on the high plain, and these seemed to be of a trans-
parent grey in the blinding glare of the sun.

Then suddenly in front of them they found a deep chasm, with the
white road leading down into its cool shadows. There was the channel
of a stream, with the rocks looking purple amid the grey bushes ; and
here were rich meadows, with cattle standing deep in the grass and the
daisies ; and over there, on the o"ther side, a strip of forest, with the sun-
light shining along one side of the tall and dark green pines. As they
drove down into this place, which is called the Rocky Valley, a magpie
rose from one of the fields and flew up into the firs.

" That is sorrow," said Mabyn.

Another one rose and flew up to the same spot.

" And that is joy," she said, with her face brightening.

" Oh, but I saw another as we came to the brow of the hill, and thai
means a marriage ! " her companion remarked to her.

11 Oh, no ! " she said, quite eagerly. " I am sure there was no third
one. I am certain there were only two. I am quite positive we only saw
two."

"But why should you be so anxious ?" Trelyon said. "You know
you ought to be looking forward to a marriage, and that is always a happy
thing. Are you envious, Mabyn ? "

The girl was silent for a moment or two. Then she said, with a sudden
bitterness in her tone —

" Isn't it a fearful thing to have to be civil to people whom you hate ?
Isn't it ? — when they come and establish a claim on you through some one
you care for. You look at them — yes, you can look at them — and you've
got to see them kiss some one that you love ; and you wonder she doesn't
rush away for a bit of caustic and cauterise the place, as you do when a
mad dog bites you."

" Mabyn," said the young man beside her, "you are a most unchristian
sort of person this morning. Who is it you hate in such a fashion ?
liVill you take the reins while I walk up the hill ? "

Mabyn's little burst of passion still burned in her cheeks, and gave a

6—5

114 THREE FEATHERS.

proud and angry look to her mouth ; but she took the reins all the same,
and her companion leapt to the ground. The banks on each side of the
road going up this hill were tall and steep ; here and there great masses
of wild flowers were scattered among the grass and the gorse. From time
to time he stooped and picked up a handful ; until, when they had got up
to the high and level country again, he had brought together a very pretty
bouquet of wild blossoms. When he got into his seat and took the reins
again, he carelessly gave the bouquet to Mabyn.

" Oh, how pretty ! " she said ; and then she turned round. " Wenna,
are you very much engaged ? Look at the pretty bouquet Mr. Trelyon
has gathered for you."

Wenna's quiet face flushed with pleasure when she took the flowers ;
and Mrs. Trelyon looked pleased, and said they were very pretty. She
evidently thought that her son was greatly improved in his manners when
he condescended to gather flowers to present to a girl. Nay, was he not
at this moment devoting a whole forenoon of his precious time to the
unaccustomed task of taking ladies for a drive ? Mrs. Trelyun regarded
Wenna with a friendly look, and began to take a greater liking than ever
to that sensitive and expressive face, and to the quiet and earnest eyes.

" But, Mr. Trelyon," said Wenna, Icfoking round, " hadn't we better
turn? We shall be at Trevenna directly."

"Yes, you are quite right," said Master Harry; " you will be at
Trevenna directly, and you are likely to be there for some time. For
Mabyn and I have resolved to have luncheon there ; and we are going
down to Tintagel; and we shall most likely climb to King Arthur's Castle.
Have you any objections ? "

Wenna had none. The drive through the cool and bright day had
braced up her spirits. She was glad to know that everything looked
promising about this scheme of hers. So she willingly surrendered her-
self to the holiday ; and in due time they drove into the odd and remote
little village, and pulled up in front of the inn.

So soon as the ostler had come to the horses' heads, the young gen-
tleman who had been driving jumped down and assisted his three com-
panions to alight ; then he led the way into the inn. In the doorway
stood a stranger — probably a commercial traveller — who, with his hands
in his pockets, his legs apart, and a cigar in his mouth, had been visiting
those three ladies with a very hearty stare as they got out of the carriage.
Moreover, when they came to the doorway he did not budge an inch, nor
did he take his cigar from his mouth; and so, as it had never been
Mr. Trelyon's fashion to sidle past any one, that young gentleman made
straight for the middle of the passage, keeping his shoulders very square.
The consequence was a collision. The imperturbable person with his
hands in his pockets was sent staggering against the wall, while his cigar
dropped on the stone.

"What the devil !" he was beginning to say, when Trelyon got

the three women past him and into the small parlour : then he went back,

THREE FEATHERS. 115

" Did you wish to speak to me, sir ? No, you didn't — I perceive you
are a prudent person. Next time ladies pass you, you'd better take your
cigar out of your mouth, or somebody '11 destroy that two pennyworth
of tobacco for you. Good morning."

Then he returned to the little parlour, to which a waitress had been
summoned.

" Now, Jinny, pull yourself together and let's have something nice for
luncheon — in an hour's time, sharp — you will, won't you ? And how
about that sillery with the blue star — not the stuff with the gold head
that some abandoned ruffian in Plymouth brews in his back garden.
Well, can't you speak ? "

" Yes, sir," said the bewildered maid.

" That's a good thing — a very good thing," said he, putting the shawls
together on a sofa. " Don't you forget how to speak, until you get mar-
ried. And don't let anybody come into this room. And you can let my
man have his dinner and a pint of beer — oh ! I forgot, I'm my own man
this morning, so you needn't go asking for him. Now, will you remember
all these things? "

11 Yes, sir ; but what would you like for luncheon ? "

" My good girl, we should like a thousand things for luncheon such
as Tintagel never saw ; but what you've got to do is to give us the nicest
things you've got ; do you see ? I leave it entirely in your hands. Come
along, young people."

And so he bundled his charges out again into the main street of the
village ; and somehow it happened that Mabyn addressed a timid remark
to Mrs. Trelyon, and that Mrs. Trelyon, in answering it, stopped for a
moment ; so that Master Harry was sent to Wenna's side, and these two
led the way down the wide thoroughfare. There were few people visible
in the old-fashioned place ; here and there an aged crone came out to the
door of one of the rude stone cottages to look at the strangers. Overhead
the sky was veiled over with a thin fleece of white cloud ; but the light
was intense for all that ; and indeed the colours of the objects around
seemed all the more clear and marked.

" Well, Miss Wenna," said the young man, gaily, " how long are
we to remain good friends ? What is the next fault you will have to find
with me ? Or have you discovered something wrong already ? "

" Oh, no !" she said, with a quiet smile, " I am very good friends with
you this morning. You have pleased your mother very much by bringing
her for this drive,"

" Oh, nonsense ! " he said. " She might have as many drives as
she chose ; but presently you'll find a lot o' those parsons back at the
house, and she'll take to her white gowns again, and the playing of the
organ all the day long, and all that sham stuff. I tell you what it is :
she never seems alive — she never seems to take any interest in anything —
unless you're with her. Now you will see how the novelty of this
luncheon-party in an inn will amuse her : but do you think she would
care for it if she and I were here alone ? "

116 THKEE FEATHEES.

" Perhaps you never tried ?" Miss Wenna said, gently.

" Perhaps I knew she wouldn't come. However, don't let's have a
fight. I mean to be very civil to you to-day — I do, really."

" I am so much obliged to you," she said, meekly. " But pray don't
give yourself unnecessary trouble."

" Oh! " said he, "I'd always be civil to you if you would treat me
decently. But you say far more rude things than I do — in that soft way,
you know, that looks as if it were all silk and honey. I do think you've
awfully little consideration for. human failings. If one goes wrong in the
least thing — even in one's spelling — you say something that sounds as
pleasant as possible, and all the same it transfixes you just as you stick
a pin through a beetle. You are very hard, you are — I mean with those
who would like to be friends with you. When it's mere strangers, and
cottagers, and people of that sort, who don't care a brass farthing about
you, then I believe you're all gentleness and kindness ; but to your real
friends — the edge of a saw is smooth compared to you."

" Am I so very harsh to my friends ? " the young lady said, in a re-
signed way.

" Oh, well ! " he said, with some compunction, " I don't quite say
that ; but you could be much more pleasant if you liked, and a little
more charitable to their faults. You know there are some who would
give a great deal to win your approval ; and perhaps when you find fault
they are so disappointed that they think your words are sharper than you
mean ; and sometimes they think you might give them credit for trying
to please you, at least."

" And who are these persons ? " Wenna said, with another smile
stealing over her face.

" Oh ! " said he, rather shamefacedly, " there's no need to explain
anything to you. You always see it before one need put it in words."

Well, perhaps it was in his manner, or in the tone of his voice, that
there was something which seemed at this moment to touch her deeply
for she half turned, and looked up at his face with her honest and earnest
eyes, and said to him kindly,

"Yes, I do know without your telling me; and it makes me happy
to hear you talk so ; and if I am unjust to you, you must not think it
intentional. And I shall try not to be so in the future."

Mrs. Trelyon was regarding with a kindly look the two young people
walking on in front of her. Whatever pleased her son pleased her ; and
she was glad to see him enjoy himself in so light-hearted a fashion.
These two were chatting to each other in the friendliest manner ; some-
times they stopped to pick up wild flowers ; they were as two children
together, under the fair and light summer skies.

They went down and along a narrow valley, until they suddenly stood
in front of the sea, the green waters of which were breaking in upon a
small and lonely creek. What strange light was this that fell from the
white skies above, rendering all the objects around them sharp in outline
aad intense in colour ? The beach before them seemed of a pale lilac.

THREE FEATHERS. 117

where the green waves broke in a semicircle of white. On their right
some masses of ruddy rock jutted out into the cold sea, and there were
huge black caverns into which the waves dashed and roared. On their
left and far above them towered a great and isolated rock, its precipitous
sides scored here and there with twisted lines of red and yellow quartz ;
and on the summit of this bold headland, amid the dark green of the sea-
grass, they could see the dusky ruins — the crumbling walls, and doorways,
and battlements — of the castle that is named in all the stories of King
Arthur and his knights. The bridge across to the mainland has, in the
course of centuries, fallen away ; but there, on the other side of the wide
chasm, were the ruins of the other portions of the castle, scarcely to be
distinguished in parts from the grass-grown rocks. How long ago was it
since Sir Tristram rode out here to the end of the world, to find the
beautiful Isoulde awaiting him — she whom he had brought from Ireland
as an unwilling bride to the old King Mark ? And what of the joyous
company of knights and ladies who once held high sport in the court-
yard there ? Trelyon, looking shyly at his companion, could see that her
eyes seemed centuries away from him. She was quite unconscious of his
covertly staring at her ; for she was absently looking at the high and bare
precipices, tha deserted slopes of dark sea-grass, and the lonely and
crumbling ruins. She was wondering whether the ghosts of those
vanished people ever came back to this lonely headland, where they
would find the world scarcely altered since they had left it. Did they
come at night, when the land was dark, and when there was a light over
the sea only coming from the stars ? If one were to come at night alone,
and to sit down here by the shore, might not one see strange things far
overhead, or hear some sound other than the falling of the waves ?

"Miss Wenna," he said — and she started suddenly — " are you bold
enough to climb up to the castle ? I know my mother would rather stay
here."

She went with him mechanically. She followed him up the rude steps
cut in the steep slopes of slate, holding his hand where that was
possible, but her head was so full of dreams that she answered him when
he gpoke only with a vague yes or no. "When they descended again, they
found that Mabyn had taken Mrs. Trelyon down to the beach, and had
inveigled her into entering a huge cavern, or rather a natural tunnel, that
went right through underneath the promontory on which the castle is built.
They were in a sort of green-hued twilight, a scent of seaweed filling
the damp air, and their voices raising an echo in the great hall of rock.

"I hope the climbing has not made you giddy," Mrs. Trelyon said, in
her kind way, to Wenna, noticing that she was very silent and distraite.

" Oh, no !" Mabyn said, promptly. " She has been seeing ghosts. We
always know when Wenna has been seeing ghosts. She remains so for
hours."

And, indeed, at this time she was rather more reserved than usual all
during their walk back to luncheon, and while they were in the inn ; and
yet she was obviously very happy, and sometimes even amused by the

118 THREE FEATHERS.

childlike pleasure which Mrs. Trelyon seemed to obtain from these un-
wonted experiences.

" Come, now, mother," Master Harry said, " what are you going to do
for me when I come of age next month ? Fill the house with guests ? —
yes, you promised that — with not more than one parson to the dozen.
And when they're all feasting, and gabbling, and missing the targets with
their arrows, you'll slip quietly away, and I'll drive you and Miss Wenna
over here, and you'll go and get your feet wet again in that cavern,
and you'll come up here again, and have an elegant luncheon, just like
this. Won't that do ?"

" I don't quite know about the elegance of the luncheon ; but I'm
sure our little excursion has been very pleasant. Don't you think so,
Miss Eosewarne ? " Mrs. Trelyon said.

"Indeed I do," said Wenna, with her big, dark eyes coming" back
from their trance.

" And here is another thing," remarked young Trelyon. " There's a
picture I've seen of the heir coming of age — he's a horrid, self-sufficient
young cad, but never mind — and it seems to be a day of general jolli-
fication. Can't I give a present to somebody ? Well, I'm going to give
it to a young lady, who never cares for anything but what she can give
away again to somebody else ; and it is — well, it is — why don't you
guess, Mabyn? "

" I don't know what you mean to give Wenna," said Mabyn,
naturally.

" Why, you silly, I mean to give her a dozen sewing-machines —
a baker's dozen — thirteen — there ! Oh ! I heard you as you came
along. It was all, * Three sewing -machines will cost so much, and
four sewing-machines will cost so much, and Jive sewing-machines will cost
so much. And a penny a week from so many subscribers will be so much,
and twopence a week from so many will be so much ; ' and all this as if
my mother could tell you how much twice two was. My arithmetic ain't

very brilliant ; but as for hers And these you shall have, Miss Wenna

— one baker's dozen of sewing-machines, as per order, duly delivered,
carriage free ; empty casks and bottles to be returned."

*' That is very kind of you, Mr. Trelyon," Wenna said — and all the
dreams nad gone straight out of her head so soon as this was mentioned
— " but \ve can't possibly accept them. You know our scheme is to
make the Dewing Club quite self- supporting — no charity."

" Oh, what stuff! " the young gentleman cried. " You know you will
give all your labour and supervision for nothing — isn't that charity ? And
you know you will let off all sorts of people owing you subscriptions
the moment some blessed baby falls ill. And you know you won't charge
interest on all the outlay. But if you insist on paying me back for my
sewing-machines out of the overwhelming profits at the end of ne*t year,
then I'll take the money. I'm not proud."

" Then we will take six sewing-machines from you, if you please, Mr.
Trelyon, on those conditions," said Wenna, gravely. And Master Harry

THEEE FEATHERS. 119

— with a look towards Mabyn which was just about as good as a wink —
consented.

As they drove quietly back again to Eglosilyan, Mabyn had taken her
former place by the driver, and found him uncommonly thoughtful. He
answered her questions, but that was all ; and it was so unusual to find
Harry Trelyon in this mood, that she said to him,

" Mr. Trelyon, have you been seeing ghosts, too ? "

He turned to her and said,

" I was thinking about something. Look here, Mabyn ; did you ever
know any one, or do you know any one, whose face is a sort of barometer
to you ? Suppose that you see her look pale and tired, or sad in any
way, then down go your spirits, and you almost wish you had never
been born. When you see her face brighten up, and get full of healthy
colour, you feel glad enough to burst out singing, or go mad ; anyhow,
you know that everything's all right. What the weather is, what
people may say about you, whatever else may happen to you, that's
nothing: all you want to see is just that one person's face look perfectly
bright and perfectly happy, and nothing can touch you then. Did you
ever know anybody like that ? " he added, rather abruptly.

" Oh, yes !" said Mabyn, in a low voice ; " that is when you are in love
with some one. And there is only one face in all the world that I look to
for all these things, there is only one person I know who tells you openly
and simply in her face all that affects her, and that is our Wenna. I
suppose you have noticed that, Mr. Trelyon ? "

But he did not make any answer.

CHAPTER XXI.

CONFESSION.

THE lad lay dreaming in the warm meadows by the side of a small and
rapid brook, the clear waters of which plashed and bubbled in the sun-
light as they hurried past the brown stones. His fishing-rod lay beside
him, hidden in the long grass and the daisies. The sun was hot in the
valley — shining on a wall of grey rock behind him, and throwing purple
shadows over the clefts ; shining on the dark bushes beside the stream,
and on the lush green of the meadows ; shining on the trees beyond, in
the shadow of which some dark red cattle were standing. Then, away
on the other side of the valley rose gently- sloping woods, grey and green
in the haze of the heat, and over these again was the pale blue sky with
scarcely a cloud in it. It was a hot day to be found in spring-time ; but
the waters of the brook seemed cool and pleasant as they gurgled bv,
and occasionally a breath of wind blew over from the woods. For the
rest he lay so still on this fine, indolent, dreamy morning that the birds
around seemed to take no note of his presence ; and one of the large
woodpeckers, with his scarlet head and green body brilliant in the sun,
flew close by him and disappeared into the bushes opposite like a sudden
gleam of colour shot by a diamond.

120 THKEE FEATHERS.

" Next month," he was thinking to himself, as he lay with his hands
behind his head, not caring to shade his handsome and well-tanned face
from the warm sun, "next month I shall be twenty-one, and most folks
will consider me a man. Anyhow, I don't know the man whom I wouldn't
fight, or run, or ride, or shoot against, for any wager he liked. But of
all the people who know anything about me, just that one whose opinion
I care for will not consider me a man at all, but only a boy. And that
without saying anything. You can tell, somehow, by a mere look what
her feelings are ; and you know that what she thinks is true. Of course
it's true — I am only a boy. What's the good of me to anybody ? I could
look after a farm — that is, I could look after other people doing their
work, but I couldn't do any myself. And that seems to me whaj; she is
always looking at — what's the good of you, what are you doing, what are
you busy about ? It's all very well for her to be busy, for she can do a
hundred thousand things, and she is always at them. What can I do ?"
Then his wandering day-dreamings took another turn.
" It was an odd thing for Mabyn to say, * That is when you are in love
with some one' But those girls take everything for love. They don't know
how you can admire almost to worshipping the goodness of a woman, and
how you are anxious that she should be well and happy, and how you would
do anything in the world to please her, without fancying straight away
that you are in love with her, and want to marry her, and drive about
in the same carriage with her. I shall be quite as fond of Wenna
Rosewarne when she is married ; although I shall hate that little brute
with his rum and his treacle — the cheek of him, in asking her to marry
him, is astonishing. He is the most hideous little beast that could have
been picked out to marry any woman ; but I suppose he has appealed to
her compassion, and then she'll do anything. But if there was anybody
else in love with her — if she cared the least bit about anybody else —
wouldn't I go straight to her, and insist on her shunting that fellow aside !
What claim has he on any other feeling of hers but her compassion ?
Why, if that fellow were to come and try to frighten her — and if I were
in the affair, and if she appealed to me even by a look — then there
would be short work with something or somebody !"

He got up hastily, with something of an angry look on his face. He
did not notice that he had startled all the birds around from out of the
bushes. He picked up his rod and line in a morose fashion, not seeming
to care about adding to the half-dozen small and red-spreckled trout
he had in his basket.

While he was thus irresolutely standing, he caught sight of a girl's
figure coming rapidly along the valley, under the shadow of some ash-
trees growing by the stream. It was Wenna Rosewarne herself, and she
seemed to be hurrying towards him. She was carrying some black object
in her arms.

"Oh, Mr. Trelyon!" she said, " what am I to do with this little
dog ? I saw him kicking in the road and foaming at the mouth — an4
then he got up and ran — and I took him ."

THREE FEATHERS. 121

Before she had time to say anything more the young man made a
sudden dive at the dog, caught hold of him, and turned and heaved him
into the stream. He fell into a little pool of clear brown water ; he
spluttered and paddled there for a second ; then he got his footing and
scrambled across the stones up to the opposite bank, where he began
shaking the water from his coat among the long grass.

" Oh, how could you be so disgracefully cruel !" she said, with her
face full of indignation.

" And how could you be so imprudent L:> he said, quite as vehemently.
" Why, whose is the dog ?"

"I don't know."

"And you catch up some mongrel little cur in the middle of the high-
way— he might have been mad ."

1 * I knew he wasn't mad," she said ; "it was only a fit ; and how could
you be so cruel as to throw him into the river?"

" Oh !" said the young man, coolly, " a dash of cold water is the best
thing for a dog that has a fit. Besides, I don't care what he had, or
what I did with him, so long as you are safe. Your little finger is of
more consequence than the necks of all the curs in the country."

" Oh ! it is mean of you to say that," she retorted, warmly. " You have
no pity for those wretched little things that are at every one's mercy. If it
were a handsome and beautiful dog, now, you would care for that, or if it
were a dog that was skilled in getting game for you, you would care for that."

" Yes, certainly," he said; "these are dogs that have something to
recommend them."

"*Yes, and every one is good to them ; they are not in need of your
favour. But you don't think of the wretched little brutes that have
nothing to recommend them — that only live on sufferance — that every
one kicks, and despises, and starves."

" Well," said he, with some compunction, " look there ! That new
friend of yours — he's no great beauty, you must confess — is all right
now. The bath has cured him. As soon as he's done licking his paws,
he'll be off home, wherever that may be. But I've always noticed that
about you, Wenna — you're always on the side of things that are ugly,
and helpless, and useless in the world ; and you're not very just to
those who don't agree with you. For after all, you know, one wants
time to acquire that notion of yours — tbat it is only weak and ill-favoured
creatures that are worthy of any consideration."

" Yes," she said, rather sadly ; "you want time to learn that."

He looked at her. Did she mean that her sympathy with those who
were weak and ill-favoured arose from some strange consciousness that
she herself was both ? His cheeks began to burn red. He had often
heard her hint something like that ; and yet he had never dared to reason
with her, or show her what he thought of her. Should he do so now ?

" Wenna," he said, blushing hotly, " I can't make you out sometimes.
You speak as if no one cared for you. Now, if I were to tell you—- — "
" Oh, I am no'i so ungrateful !" she said, hastily. " I know that two

122 THREE FEATHERS.

or three do — and — and, Mr. Trelyon, do you think you could coax that
little dog over the stream again ? You see he has come back again — he
can't find his way home."

Mr. Trelyon called to the dog ; it came down to the river's side, and
whined and shivered on the brink. " Do you care a brass farthing
about the little beast ?" he said to Wenna.

" I must put him on his way home," she answered.

Thereupon the young man went straight through the stream to the
other side, jumping the deeper portions of the channel ; he caught up
the dog, and brought it back to her ; and when she was very angry with
him for this mad performance, he merely kicked some of the water out of
his trousers, and laughed. Then a smile broke over her face also.

" Is that an example of what people would do for me ?" she said,
shyly. " Mr. Trelyon, you must keep walking through the warm grass
till your feet are dry ; or will you come along to the inn, and I shall get
you some shoes and stockings ? Pray do ; and at once. I am rather in
a hurry."

" I'll go along with you, anyway," he said, " and put this little brute
into the highway. But why are you in a hurry ?"

" Because," said Wenna, as they set out to walk down the valley,
" because my mother and I are going to Penzance the day after to-
morrow, and I have a lot of things to get ready."

" To Penzance ?" said he, with a sudden falling of the face.

" Yes. She has been dreadfully out of sorts lately, and she has sunk
into a kind of despondent state. The doctor says she must have a change
— a holiday, really, to take her away from the cares of the house "

" Why, Wenna, it's you who want the holiday ; it's you who have
the cares of the house !" Trelyon said, warmly.

" And so I have persuaded her to go to Penzance for a week or two,
and I go with her to look after her. Mr. Trelyon, would you be kind
enough to keep Rock for me until we come back : I am afraid of the
servants neglecting him ?"

" You needn't be afraid of that : he's not one of the ill-favoured ;
every one will attend to him ;" said Trelyon ; and then he added,
after a minute or two of silence, " The fact is, I think I shall be at
Penzance also while you are there. My cousin Juliott is coming here in
about a fortnight to celebrate the important event of my coming of age,
and I promised to go for her. I might as well go now."

She said nothing.

" I might as well go any time," he said, rather impatiently. "I
haven't got anything to do. Do you know, before you came along just now,
I was thinking what a very useful person you were in the world, and what
a very useless person I was — about as useless as this little cur. I think
somebody should take me up and heave me into a river. And I was wonder-
ing, too," — here he became a little more embarrassed and slow of speech —
" I was wondering what you would say if I spoke to you, and gave you a
hint that sometimes — that sometimes one might wish to cut this lazy life if

THREE FEATHEKS. 123

one only knew how, and whether so very busy a person as yourself mightn't,
don't you see, give one some notion — some sort of hint, in fact "

"Oh! but then, Mr. Trelyon," she said, quite cheerfully, "you
would think it very strange if I asked you to take any interest in the
things that keep me busy. That is not a man's work. I wouldn't accept
you as a pupil."

He burst out laughing.

" Why," said he, " do you think I offered to mend stockings, and set
sums on slates, and coddle babies?"

" As for setting sums on slates," she remarked, with a quiet imper-
tinence, " the working of them out might be of use to you."

" Yes, and a serious trouble too," he said, candidly. " No, no —
that cottage business ain't in my line. I like to have a joke with the old
folks, or a romp with the kids ; but I can't go in for cutting out pinafores.
I shall leave my mother to do my share of that for me ; and hasn't she
come out strong lately, eh ? It's quite a new amusement for her, and
it's driven a deal of that organ-grinding and stuff out of her head ; and
I've a notion some o' those parsons "

He stopped short, remembering who his companion was ; and at this
moment they came to a gate which opened out on the highway, through
which the small cur was passed to find his way home.

"Now, Miss Wenna," said the young man — "by the way, you see
how I remember to address you respectfully ever since you got sulky with
me about it the other day ?"

" I am sure I did not get sulky with you, and especially about that,"
she remarked, with much composure. " I suppose you are not aware
that you have dropped the ' Miss ' several times this morning already ?"

" Did I, really ? Well, then, I'm awfully sorry — but then you are so
good-natured you tempt one to forget ; and my mother she always calls
you Wenna Rosewarne now in speaking to me, as if you were a little
school-girl instead of being the chief support and pillar of all the public
affairs of Eglosilyan. And now, Miss Wenna, I shan't go down the road
with you, because my damp boots and garments would gather the dust ;
but, perhaps, you wouldn't mind stopping two seconds here, and I'm
going to go a cracker and ask you a question : What should a fellow in my
position try to do ? You see, I haven't had the least training for any
one of the professions even if I had any sort of capacity "

" But why should you wish to have a profession ? " she said, simply.
" You have more money than is good for you already."

" Then you don't think it ignominious," he said, with his face light-
ing up considerably, "to fish in summer, and shoot in autumn, and hunt
in winter, and make that the only business of one's life ? "

" I should, if it were the only business ; but it needn't be, and you
don't make it so. My father speaks very highly of the way you look
after your property ; and he knows what attending to an estate is. And
then you have so many opportunities of being kind and useful to the
people about you, that you might do more good that way than by working

124 THREE FEATHEES.

night and day at a profession. Then you owe much to yourself; because
if every one began with himself, and educated himself and became satis-
fied and happy with doing his best, there would be no bad conduct and
wretchedness to call for interference. I don't see why you should be
ashamed of shooting, and hunting, and all that ; and doing them as well
as anybody else, or far better, as I hear people say. I don't think a
man is bound to have ambition and try to become famous ; you might be
of much greater use in the world even in such a little place as Eglosilyan
than if you were in Parliament. I did say to Mrs. Trelyon that I should
like to see you in Parliament, because one has a natural pride in any

one that one admires and likes very much "

He saw the quick look of fear that sprang to her eyes — not a sudden
appearance of shy embarrassment, but of absolute fear ; and he was
almost as startled by her blunder as she herself was. He hastily came
to her rescue. He thanked her in a few rapid and formal words for her
patience and advice; and, as he saw she was trying to turn away and
hide the mortification visible on her face, he shook hands with her, and
let her go.

Then he turned. He had been startled, it is true, and grieved to see
the pain her chance words had caused her. But now a great glow of
delight rose up within him ; and he could have called aloud to the blue
skies and the silent woods because of the joy that filled his heart. They
were chance words, of course. They were uttered with no deliberate
intention ; on the contrary, her quick look of pain showed how bitterly
she regretted the blunder. Moreover, he congratulated himself on his
rapid piece of acting, and assured himself that she would believe that he
had not noticed that admission of hers. They were idle words. She
would forget them. The incident, so far as she was concerned, was
gone.

But not so far as he was concerned. For now he knew that the
person whom, above all other persons in the world, he was most desirous
to please, whose respect and esteem he was most anxious to obtain, had
not only condoned much of his idleness, out of the abundant charity of
her heart, but had further, and by chance, revealed to him that she gave
him some little share of that affection which she seemed to shed generously
and indiscriminately on so many folks and things around her. He, too,
was now in the charmed circle. He walked with a new pride through the
warm, green meadows, his rod over his shoulder ; he whistled as he went,
or he sang snatches of "The Rose of Allandale." He met two small
boys out bird's-nesting ; he gave them a shilling a-piece, and then in-
consistently informed them that if he caught them then or at any other
time with a bird's nest in their hands he would cuff their ears. Then he
walked hastily home, put by his fishing-rod, and shut himself up in his
study with half-a-dozen of those learned volumes which he had brought
back unsoiled from school.

THREE FEATHERS. 125

CHAPTER XXII.

ON Wises OF HOPE.

WHEN Trelyon arrived late one evening at Penzance, he was surprised to
find his uncle's coachman awaiting him at the station.

" What's the matter, Tobias ? Is the old gentleman going to die ?
You don't mean to say you are here for me ? "

" Yaas, zor, I be," said the little old man, with no great courtesy.
" Then he is going to die, if he sends out his horse at this time
o1 night. Look here, Tobias ; I'll put my portmanteau inside and come on
the box to have a talk with you — you're such a jolly old card, you know —
and you'll tell me all that's happened since I last enjoyed my uncle's
bountiful hospitality."

This the young man did ; and then the brown-faced, wiry, and surly
little person, having started his horse, proceeded to tell his story in a
series of grumbling and disconnected sentences. He was not nearly so
taciturn as he looked.

" The maaster he went siin to bed to-night — 'twere Miss Juliott sent
me to the station, without tellin en. He's gettin worse and worse, that's
sure ; if yii be for giving me half- a- crown, like, or any one that comes to
the house, he finds it out and stops it out o' my wages ; yes, he does, zor,
the old fule."

" Tobias, be a little more respectful to my uncle, if you please."

" Why, zor, yii knaw en well enough ! " said the man, in the same
Burly fashion. "And I'll tell yii this, Maaster Harry, if yii be after
dinner with en, and he has a bottle o ' poort wine that he puts on the
mantelpiece, and he says to yii to let that aloan, vor 'tis a medicine-zart
o' wine, don't yii heed en, but have that wine. 'Tis the real old poort
wine, zor, thatyiir vather gied en ; the dahmned old Pagan ! "

The young man burst out laughing, instead of reprimanding Tobias,
who maintained his sulky impassiveness of face.

" Why, zor, I be gardener now, too ; yaiis, I be, to save the wages.
And he's gone clean mazed about that garden ; yes, I think. Would yii
believe this, Maaster Harry, that he killed every one o' the blessed straw-
berries last year with a lot o' wrack from the bache, because he said it
wiid be as good for them as for the 'sparagus ? "

" Well, but the old chap finds amusement in pottering about the
garden "

" The old fule," repeated Tobias, in an undertone.

" And the theory is sound about the seaweed and the strawberries ;
just as his old notion of getting a green rose by pouring sulphate of copper
in at the roots."

" Yaiis, that were another pretty thing, Maaster Harry, and he had
the tin labels all printed out in French, and he waited and waited, and
there baint a fairly giide rose left in the garden. And his violet glass for
the cucumbers — he burned en up to once, "although 'twere fine to hear'n

126 THEEE FEATHERS.

talk about the sunlight and the rays, and such nonsenses. He be a
strange mahn, zor, and a dahmned close 'n with his penny pieces, Chris-
tian and all as he calls hissen. There's Miss Juliott, zor, she's goin to
get married, I suppose ; and when she goes, no one '11 dare spake to 'n.
Bee yii going to stop long this time, Maaster Harry ? "

" Not at the Hollies, Tobias. I shall go down to the Queen's to-
morrow; I've got rooms there."

"So much the better; so much the better," said the frank but
inhospitable retainer ; and presently the jog-trot old animal between the
shafts was pulled up in front of a certain square old-fashioned building
of grey stone, which was prettily surrounded with trees. They had
arrived at the Rev. Mr. Penaluna's house ; and there was a J7oung lady
standing in the light of the hall, she having opened the door very softly
as she heard the carriage drive up.

" So here you are, Harry ; and you'll stay with us the whole fortnight,
won't you ? Come in to the dining-room — I have some supper ready for
you. Papa's gone to bed, and he desired me to give you his excuses, and
he hopes you'll make yourself quite at home, as you always do, Harry."

He did make himself quite at home ; for, having kissed his cousin,
and flung his topcoat down in the hall, he went into the dining-room, and
took possession of an easy chair.

" Shan't have any supper, Jue, thank you. You won't mind my
lighting a cigar — somebody's been smoking here already. And what's the
least poisonous claret you've got ? "

" Well, I declare ! " she said ; but she got him the wine all the same,
and watched him light his cigar ; then she took the easy chair opposite.

" Tell us about your young man, Jue," he said. " Girls always like
to talk about that."

" Do they ? " she said. " Not to boys."

" I shall be twenty-one in a fortnight. I am thinking of getting
married."

" So I hear," she remarked, quietly.

Now he had been talking nonsense at random — mostly intent on
getting his cigar well lit ; but this little observation rather startled him.

" What have you heard ? " he said, abruptly.

" Oh ! nothing — the ordinary stupid gossip," she said, though she was
watching him rather closely. " Are you going to stay with us for the
next fortnight ? "

" No ; I have got rooms at the Queen's."

" I thought so. One might have expected you, however, to stay with
your relations when you came to Penzance."

" Oh, that's all gammon, Jue ! " he said ; " you know very well your
father doesn't care to have any one stay with you — it's too much bother.
You'll have quite enough of me while I am in Penzance."

" Shall we have anything of you ? " she said, with apparent in-
difference. "I understood that Miss Rosewarne and her mamma had
already come here."

THREE FEATHERS 127

" And what if they have ? " he said, with unnecessary fierceness.

" Well, Harry," she said, "you needn't get into a temper about it;
but people will talk, you know ; and they say that your attentions to that
young lady are rather marked considering that she is engaged to be
married ; and you have induced your mother to make a pet of her. Shall
I go on? "

" No, you needn't," he said, with a strong effort to overcome his
anger. " You're quite right — people do talk ; but they wouldn't talk so
much if other people didn't carry tales. "Why, it isn't like you, Jue. I
thought you were another sort. And about this girl of all girls in the
world "

He got up and began walking about the room, and talking with
considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what
cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was
who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact
way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin
all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in
the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked
her if she could condemn him. Miss Juliott w-as touched.

" Sit down, Harry ; I have wanted to talk to you ; and I don't mean
to heed any gossip. Sit down, please — you frighten me by walking up
and down like that. Now I'm going to talk common sense to you, for I
should like to be your friend ; and your mother is so easily led away by
any sort of sentiment that she isn't likely to have seen with my eyes.
Suppose that this Miss Rosewarne "

" No ; hold hard a bit, Jue," he said, imperatively. " You may talk
till the millennium, but just keep off her, I warn you."

" Will you hear me out, you silly boy ? Suppose that Miss
Rosewarne is everything that you believe her to be. I'm going to grant
that ; because I'm going to ask you a question. You can't have such an
opinion of any girl, and be constantly in her society, and go following her
about like this, without falling in love with her. Now, in that case,
would you propose to marry her ? "

"I marry her!" he said, his face becoming suddenly pale for a
moment. " Jue, you are mad. I am not fit to marry a girl like that.
You don't know her. Why "

" Let all that alone, Harry; when a man is in love with a woman he
always thinks he's good enough for her ; and whether he does or not he
tries to get her for a wife. Don't let us discuss your comparative
merits — one might even put in a word for you. But suppose you drifted
into being in love with her — and I consider that quite probable — and
suppose you forgot, as I know you -would forget, the difference in your
social position, how would you like to go and ask her to break her
promise to the gentleman to whom she is engaged ? "

Master Harry laughed aloud, in a somewhat nervous fashion.

" Him ? Look here, Jue ; leave me out of it — I haven't the cheek to
talk of myself in that connection ; but if there was a decent sort of fellow

128 THREE FEATHERS.

whom that girl really took a liking to, do you think he would let that
elderly and elegant swell in Jamaica stand in his way ? He would be no
such fool, I can tell you. He would consider the girl, first of all. He
would say to himself, ' I mean to make this girl happy ; if any one
interferes, let him look out ! ' Why, Jue, you don't suppose any man
would be frightened by that sort of thing ! "

Miss Juliott did not seem quite convinced by this burst of scornful
oratory. She continued quietly,

" You forget something, Harry. Your heroic young man might find
it easy to do something wild — to fight with that gentleman in the West
Indies, or murder him, or anything like that, just as you see in a story ;
but perhaps Miss Rosewarne might have something to say."
"I meant if she cared for him," Trelyon said, looking down.
" Granting that also, do you think it likely your hot-headed
gentleman would be able to get a young lady to disgrace herself by
breaking her plighted word, and deceiving a man who went away trusting
in her ? You say she has a very tender conscience — that she is so
anxious to consult every one's happiness before her own — and all that.
Probably it is true. I say nothing against her. But to bring the matter
back to yourself — for I believe you're hot-headed enough to do any-
thing— what would you think of her if you or anybody else persuaded
her to do such a treacherous thing ? "

"She is not capable of treachery," he said, somewhat stiffly. "If
you've got no more cheerful things to talk about, you'd better go to bed,
Jue. I shall finish my cigar by myself."

" Very well, then, Harry. You know your room. Will you put out
the lamp when you have lit your candle ? "

So she went, and the young man was left alone, in no very enviable
frame of mind. He sate and smoked, while the clock on the mantelpiece
swung its gilded boy and struck the hours and half-hours with unheeded
regularity. He lit a second cigar, and a third ; he forgot the wine ; it
seemed to him that he was looking on all the roads of life that lay
before him, and they were lit up by as strange and new a light as that
which was beginning to shine over the world outside. New fancies seemed
to awake with the naw dawn. For himself to ask Wenna Eosewarne to
be his wife ? — could he but win the tender and shy regard of her eyes he
would fall at her feet and bathe them with his tears ! And if this won-
derful thing were possible— if she could put her hand in his and trust
to him for safety in all the coming years they might live together —
what man of woman born would dare to interfere ? There was a blue light
coming in through the shutters. He went to the window — the topmost
leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air, far up there in the
clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by one. And he
could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach ; and he knew that
across the grey plain of waters the dawn was breaking, and that over the
sleeping world another day was rising that seemed to him the first day of
a new and tremulous life, full of joy, and courage, and hope.

THE

COENHILL MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1875.

CHAPTER XXIII.
LOVE-MAKING AT LAND'S END.

BE you dreaming again, child ? "
said Mrs. Rosewarne to her
daughter. " You are not a
fit companion for a sick wo-
man, who is herself dull
enough. "Why do you al-
ways look so sad when you
look at the sea, Wenna ? "

The wan-faced, beautiful-
eyed woman lay on a sofa, a
book beside her. She had

self really by a continual
stream of playful talk — until
she perceived that the girl's
fancies were far away. Then
she stopped suddenly, with
this expression of petulant
but good-natured disappoint-
ment.

" Oh, I beg your pardon, mother," said Wenna, who was seated at an
open window fronting the bay. " What did you say ? Why does the sea
make one sad ? I don't know. One feels less at home here than out on
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 182. 7.

130 THKEE FEATHERS.

the rocks at Eglosilyan ; perhaps that is it. Or the place is so beautiful,
that it almost makes you cry. I don't know."

And, indeed, Penzance Bay, on this still, clear morning, was beautiful
enough to attract wistful eyes and call up vague and distant fancies. The
cloudless sky was intensely dark in its blue ; one had a notion that the
unseen sun was overhead and shining vertically down. The still plain
of water— so clear that the shingle could be seen through it a long way out
— had no decisive colour ; but the fishing-smacks lying out there were jet-
black points in the bewildering glare. The sunlight did not seem to be in
the sky, in the air, or on the sea ; but when you turned to the southern
arm of the bay, where the low line of green hills runs out into the water,
there you could see the strong clear light shining — shining on the green
fields and on the sharp black lines of hedges, on that bit of grey old town
with its cottage-gardens and its sea-wall, and on the line of dark rock that
formed the point of the promontory. On the other side of the bay, the
eye followed the curve of the level shore, until it caught sight of St.
Michael's Mount rising palely from the water, its sunlit greys and purple
shadows softened by the cool distance. Then beyond that again, on the
verge of the far horizon, lay the long and narrow line of the Lizard, half
lost in a silver haze. For the rest, a cool wind went this way and that
through Mrs. Rosewarne's room, stirring the curtains. There was a fresh
odour of the sea in the air. It was a day for dreaming, perhaps ; but not
for the gloom begotten of languor and an indolent pulse.

" Oh, mother — oh, mother ! " Wenna cried, suddenly, with a quick
flush of colour in her cheeks, " do you know who is coming along ? Can
you see ? It is Mr. Trelyon, and he is looking at all the houses ; I know
he is looking for us."

" Child, child ! " said the mother. " How should Mr. Trelyon know
we are here ? "

" Because I told him," Wenna said, simply and hurriedly. " Mother,
may I wave a handkerchief to him ? Won't you come and see him ? he
seems so much more manly in this strange place ; and how brave and
handsome he looks ! "

" Wenna ! " her mother said, severely.

The girl did not wave a handkerchief, it is true ; but she knelt
down at the open bay-window, so that he must needs see her ; and sure
enough he did. Off went his hat in a minute ; a bright look of recognition
leapt to his eyes, and he crossed the street. Then Wenna turned, all in
a flutter of delight, and quite unconscious of the colour in her face.

"Are you vexed, mother ? Mayn't I be glad to see him? Why,
when I know that he will brighten up your spirits better than a dozen
doctors ! One feels quite happy and hopeful whenever he comes into the
room. Mother, you won't have to complain of dulness if Mr. Trelyon
conies to see you. And why doesn't the girl send him up at once ? "

Wenna was standing at the open door to receive him when he came up-
stairs ; she had wholly forgotten the embarrassment of their last parting.

THREE FEATHERS. 131

" I thought I should find you out," he said, when he came into the
room, and it was clear that there was little embarrassment about him ;
" and I know how your mother likes to be teased and worried. You've
got a nice place here, Mrs. Bosewarne ; and what splendid weather you've
brought with you ! "

"Yes," said Wenna, her whole face lit up with a shy gladness,
" haven't we ? And did you ever see the bay looking more beautiful ? It
is enough to make you laugh and clap your hands out of mere delight to
see everything so lovely and fresh ! "

" A few minutes ago I thought you were nearly crying over it," said
the mother, with a smile ; but Miss Wenna took no heed of the reproof.
She would have Mr. Trelyon help himself to a tumbler of claret and water.
She fetched out from some mysterious lodging-house recess an ornamented
tin can of biscuits. She accused herself of being the dullest companion in
the world, and indirectly hinted that he might have pity on her mamma
and stay to luncheon with them.

"Well, it's very odd," he said, telling a lie with great simplicity of
purpose, " but I had arranged to drive to the Land's End for luncheon —
to the inn there, you know. I suppose it wouldn't — do you think, Mrs.
Bosewarne — would it be convenient for you to come for a drive so far ? "

" Oh, it would be the very best thing in the world for her — nothing
could be better," said Wenna ; and then she added meekly, " if it is not
giving you too much trouble, Mr. Trelyon."

He laughed.

" Trouble ! I'm glad to be of use to anybody ; and in this case I
shall have all the pleasure on my side. Well, I'm off now to see about
the horses. If I come for you in half-an-hour, will that do ? "

As soon as he had left, Mrs. Bosewarne turned to her daughter, and
said to her, gravely enough —

" Wenna, one has seldom to talk to you about the proprieties ; but,
really, this seems just a little doubtful. Mr. Trelyon may make a friend
of you ; that is all very well, for you are going to marry a friend of his.
But you ought not to expect him to associate with me."

"Mother," said Wenna, with hot cheeks, "I wonder how you can
suspect him of thinking of such foolish and wicked things. Why, he is
the very last man in all the world to do anything that was mean and
unkind, or to think about it."

" My dear child, I suspect him of nothing," Mrs. Bosewarne said ;
" but look at the simple facts of the case. Mr. Trelyon is a very rich
gentleman ; his family is an old one, greatly honoured about here ; and if
he is so recklessly kind as to offer his acquaintanceship to persons who
are altogether in a different sphere of life, we should take care not to
abuse his kindness, or to let people have occasion to wonder at him.
Looking at your marriage and future station, it is perhaps more permissible
with you ; but as regards myself, I don't very much care, Wenna, to have
Mr. Trelyon coming about the house."

r 2

132 THREE FEATHERS,

" Why, mother, I — I am surprised at you ! " Wenna said, warmly.
'* You judge of him by the contemptible things that other people might
say of him. Do you think he would care for that ? Mr. Trelyon is a
man, and like a man he has the courage to choose such friends as he
likes ; and it is no more to him what money they have, or what their
position is, than the— than the shape of their pocket-handkerchiefs is !
Perhaps that is his folly — recklessness^— the recklessness of a young man.
Perhaps it is. I am not old enough to know how people alter ; but I
hope I shall never see Mr. Trelyon alter in this respect — never, if he were
to live for a hundred years. And — and I am surprised to hear you of all
people, mother, suggest such things of him. What has he done that you
should think so meanly of him ? "

Wenna was very indignant and hurt. She would have continued
further, but that a tremulous movement of her under lip caused her to
turn away her head.

" Well, Wenna, you needn't cry about it," her mother said, gently.
" It is of no great consequence. Of course every one must please himself
in choosing his friends ; and I quite admit that Mr. Trelyon is not likely
to be hindered by anything that anybody may say. Don't take it so much
to heart, child ; go and get on your things, and get back some of the
cheerfulness you had while he was here. I will say that for the young
man — that he has an extraordinary power of raising your spirits."

" You are a good mother after all," said Wenna, penitently; " and if
you come and let me dress you prettily, I shall promise not to scold you
again — not till the next time you deserve it."

By the time they drove away from Penzance, the forenoon had softened
into more beautiful colours. There was a paler blue in the sky and on
the sea, and millions of yellow stars twinkled on the ripples. A faint
haze had fallen over the bright green hills lying on the south of the bay.

" Life looks worth having on such a day as this," Trelyon said ;
" doesn't it, Miss Wenna? "

She certainly seemed pleased enough. She drank in the sweet fresh
air ; she called attention to the pure rare colours of the sea and the
green uplands ; the coolness of the woods through which they drove,
the profuse abundance of wild flowers along the banks — all things around
her seemed to have conspired to yield her delight ; and a great happiness
shone in her eyes. Mr. Trelyon talked mostly to Mrs. Rosewarne ; but
his eyes rarely wandered away for long from Wenna' s pleased and radiant
face ; and again and again he said to himself, " And if a simple drive on
a spring morning can give this clii d so great a delight, it is not the last that
she and I shall have together."

" Mrs. Rosewarne," said he, "I think your daughter has as much
need of a holiday as anybody. I don't believe there's a woman or girl
in the county works as hard as she does."

" I don't know whether she needs it," said Miss Wtmna, of herself,
" but I know that she enjoys it."

THREE FEATHERS. 188

" I know what you'd enjoy a good deal better than merely getting
out of sight of your own door, for a week or two," said he. " Wouldn't
you like to get clear away from England for six months, and go wandering
about all sorts of fine places ? Why, I could take you such a trip in that
time ! I should like to see what you'd say to some of the old Dutch
towns, and their churches, and all that ; then Cologne, you know, and a
sail up the Rhine to Mainz ; then you'd go on to Basel and Geneva,
and we'd get you a fine big carriage with the horses decorated with
foxes' and pheasants' tails to drive you to Chamounix. Then, when
you had gone tremulously over the Mer de Glace, and kept your wits
about you going down the Mauvais Pas, I don't think you could do better
than go on to the Italian lakes — you never saw anything like them, I'll
be bound — and Naples, and Florence. Would you come back by the
Tyrol, and have a turn at Zurich and Lucerne, with a ramble through the
Black Forest in a trap resembling a ramshackle landau ? "

" Thank you," said Wenna, very cheerfully. " The sketch is de-
lightful ; but I am pretty comfortable where I am."

" But this can't last," said he.

" And neither can my holidays," she answered.

" Oh, but they ought to," he retorted, vehemently. " You have not
half enough amusement in your life — that's my opinion. You slave too
much, for all those folks about Eglosilyan and their dozens of children.
Why, you don't get anything out of life as you ought to. What have you
to look forward to ? Only the same ceaseless round of working for other
people. Don't you think you might let some one else have a turn at that
useful but monotonous occupation ? "

" But Wenna has something else to look forward to now," her
mother reminded him, gently ; and after that he did not speak for some
time.

Fair and blue was the sea that shone all around the land when they
got out on the rough moorland near the coast. They drove to the solitary
little inn perched over the steep cliffs ; and here the horses were put
up and luncheon ordered. Would Mrs. Eosewarne venture down to
the great rocks at the promontory ? No, she would rather stay indoors
till the young people returned ; and so these two went along the grassy
path themselves.

They clambered down the slopes, and went out among the huge blocks
of weather-worn granite, many of which were brilliant with grey, green,
and orange lichens. There was a low and thunderous noise in the air ;
far below them, calm and fine as the day was, the summer sea dashed
and roared into gigantic caverns, while the white foam floated out again
on the troubled waves. Could anything have been more magical than the
colours of the sea — its luminous greens, its rich purples, its brilliant blues,
lying in long swathes on the apparently motionless surface ? It was
only the seething white beneath their feet, and the hoarse thunder along
the coast, that told of the force of this summer-like sea ; for the rest the

134 THREE FEATHERS.

picture was light, and calm, and beautiful. Out there the black rocks
basked in the sunlight, the big skarts standing on their ledges, not
moving a feather. A small steamer was slowly making for the island
further out where a lighthouse stood. And far away beyond these, on
the remote horizon, the Scilly Isles lay like a low bank of yellow fog,
under the pale blue skies.

They were very much by themselves, out here at the end of the
world ; and yet they did not seem inclined to talk much. Wenna sat
down on the warm grass ; her companion perched himself on one of the
blocks of granite ; they watched the great undulations of the blue water
come rolling on to the black rocks, and then fall backward seething in
foam.

" And what are you thinking about ? " said Trelyon to her, gently,
so that she should not be startled.

" Of nothing at all — I am quite happy," Wenna said, frankly. Then
she added, " I suppose the worst of a day like this is, that a long time
after you look back upon it, and it seems so beautiful and far away that
it makes you miserable. You think how happy you were once. That is
the unfortunate side of being happy."

" Well," said he, " I must say you don't look forward to the future
with any great hope, if you think the recollection of one bright day will
make you wretched."

He came down from his perch and stood beside her.
" Why, Wenna," said he, " do you know what you really need ?
Some one to take you in hand thoroughly, and give you such an abund-
ance of cheerful and pleasant days that you would never think of singling
out any one of them. Why shouldn't you have weeks and months of
happy idling, in bright weather, such as lots of people have who don't
deserve them a bit ? There's something wrong in your position. You
want some one to become your master, and compel you to make yourself
happy. You won't of yourself study your own comfort ; some one else
ought to make you."

" And who do you think would care to take so much trouble about
me ? " she said, with a smile ; for she attached no serious meaning to
this random talk.

Her companion's face flushed somewhat, not with embarrassment, but
with the courage of what he was going to say.

" I would," he said, boldly. " You will say it is none of my busi-
ness ; but I tell you I would give twenty thousand pounds to-morrow, if
I were allowed to — to get you a whole summer of pleasant holidays."

There was something about the plain-spoken honesty of this avowal
that touched her keenly. Wild and impossible as the suggestion was, it
told her at least what one person in the world thought of her. She said
to him, with her eyes cast down —

11 I like to hear you speak like that — not for my own sake — but I
know there is nothing generous and kindly that you wouldn't do at a

THREE FEATHERS. 135

mere moment's impulse. But I hope you don't think I have been
grumbling over my lot, on such a day as this ? Oh, no ; I see too much
of other people's way of living to complain of my own. I have every
reason to be contented and happy."

" Yes, you're a deal too contented and happy," said he, with an im-
patient shrug. * * You want somebody to alter all that, and see that you
get more to be contented and happy about."

She rose ; he gave her his hand to help her up. But he did not
surrender her hand then, for the path up the slopes was a deep and diffi-
cult one ; and she could fairly rely on his strength and sureness of foot.

" But you are not content, Mr. Trelyon," she said. " I always
notice that whenever you get to a dangerous place, you are never satisfied
unless you are putting your life in peril. Wouldn't you like to ride your
black horse down the face of this precipice ? Or wouldn't you like to
clamber down blindfold ? Why does a man generally seem to be anxious
to get rid of his life?"

" Perhaps it isn't of much use to him," he said, coolly.

" You ought not to say that," she answered, in a low voice.

" Well," he said, " I don't mean to break my neck yet awhile ; but if I
did, who would miss me ? I suppose my mother would play half-a-dozen
a day more operas or oratorios, or stuff of that sort, and there would be
twenty parsons in the house for one there is at present. And some of
the brats about the place would miss an occasional sixpence — which would
be better for their health. And Dick — I suppose they'd sell him to
some fool of a Londoner, who would pound his knees out in the Park —
he would miss me too."

" And these are all," she said, " who would miss you ? You are kind
to your friends."

" Why, would- you ?" he said, with a stare of surprise ; and then,
seeing she would not speak, he continued, with a laugh, " I like the
notion of my making an object of general compassion of myself. Did the
poor dear tumble off a rock into the sea ? And where was its mother's
apron-string ? I'm not going to break my neck yet awhile, Miss Wenna ;
so don't you think I'm going to let you off your promise to pay me back
for those sewing-machines."

" I have told you, Mr. Trelyon," she said, with some dignity, " that
we shall pay you back every farthing of the price of them."

He began to whistle in an impertinent manner. He clearly placed no
great faith in the financial prospects of that Sewing Club.

They had some light luncheon in the remote little inn, and Mrs.
Rosewarne was pleased to see her ordinarily demure and pre-occupied
daughter in such high and careless spirits. It was not a splendid banquet.
Nor was the chamber a gorgeous one, for the absence of ornament and
the enormous thickness of the walls told of the bouse being shut up in
the winter months and abandoned to the fury of the western gales, when
the wild sea came hurling up the face of these steep cliffs and blowing over

136 THREE FEATHER?.

the land. But they paid little attention to any lack of luxury. There
was a beautiful blue sea shining in the distance. The sunlight was falling
hotly on the greensward of the rocks outside ; and a fresh, cool breeze
came blowing in at the open window. They let the time pass easily, with
pleasant talk and laughter.

Then they drove leisurely back in the afternoon. They passed along
the moorland ways, through rude little villages built of stone, and by the
outskirts of level and cheerless farms, until they got into the beautiful
woods and avenues lying around Penzance. When they came in sight of
the broad bay, they found that the world had changed its colours since the
morning. The sea was of a cold purplish grey ; but all around it, on the
eastern horizon, there was a band of pale pink in the sky. On the west
again, behind Penzance, the warm hues of the sunset were shining
behind the black stems of the trees. The broad thoroughfare was mostly
in shadow ; and the sea was so still that one could hear the footsteps and
the voices of the people walking up and down the Parade.

" I suppose I must go now," said the young gentleman, when he had
seen them safely seated in the small parlour overlooking the bay. But he
did not seem anxious to go.

"But why?" Wenna said, rather timidly. "You have no engage-
ment, Mr. Trelyon. Would you care to stay and have dinner with us —
such a dinner as we can give you ? "

" Well, to tell you the truth, I should like it very much," he said.
Mrs. Rosewarne, a little surprised and yet glad to see Wenna
enjoying herself, regarded the whole affair with a gentle resignation.
Wenna had the gas lit, and the blinds let down ; then, as the eveniog
was rather cold, she had soon a bright fire burning in the grate. She
helped to lay the table. She produced such wines as they had. She
made sundry visits to the kitchen ; and at length the banquet was ready.
What ailed the young man ? He seemed beside himself with careless
and audacious mirth ; and he made Mrs. Rosewarne laugh as she had not
laughed for years. It was in vain that Wenna assumed airs to rebuke
his rudeness. Nothing was sacred from his impertinence — not even the
offended majesty of her face. And at last she gave in too, and could
only revenge herself by saying things of him which, the more severe they
were, the more he seemed to enjoy. But after dinner she went to the
small piano, while her mother took a big easy-chair near the fire ; and
he sat by the table, apparently looking over some books. There was no
more reckless laughter then.

In ancient times — that is to say, in the half-forgotten days of our
youth — a species of song existed which exists no more. It was not as the
mournful ballads of these days, which seem to record the gloomy utterances
of a strange young woman who has apparently wandered into the magic
scene in " Der Freischlitz," and who mixes up the moanings of her passion
with descriptions of the sights and sounds she there finds around her. It
was of quite another stamp. It dealt with a phraseology of sentiment

THREE FEATHERS. 137

peculiar to itself — a " patter," as it were, which came to be universally
recognised in drawing-rooms. It spoke of maidens plighting their troth,
of Phyllis enchanting her lover with her varied moods, of marble halls in
which true love still remained the same. It apostrophized the shells of
ocean ; it tenderly described the three great crises of a particular heroine's
life by mentioning successive head-dresses ; it told of how the lover of Pretty
Jane would have her meet him in the evening. Well, all the world was
content to accept this conventional phraseology ; and, behind the para-
phernalia of " enchanted moonbeams," and " fondest glances," and
"adoring sighs," perceived and loved the sentiment that could find no
simpler utterance. Some of us, hearing the half-forgotten songs again,
suddenly forget the odd language, and the old pathos springs up again,
as fresh as in the days when our first love had just come home from her
boarding-school; while others, who have no old-standing acquaintance
with these memorable songs, have somehow got attracted to them by the
mere quaintness of their speech and the simplicity of their airs. Master
Harry Trelyon was no great critic of music. When Wenna Ptosewarne
sang that night " She wore a wreath of roses," he fancied he had never
listened to anything so pathetic. When she sang " Meet me by moon-
light alone," he was delighted with the spirit and half- humorous, half-
tender grace of the composition. As she sang " When other lips and
other hearts," it seemed to him that there were no songs like the old-
fashioned songs, and that the people who wrote those ballads were more
frank, and simple, and touching in their speech than writers now- a- days.
Somehow, he began to think of the drawing-rooms of a former generation ;
and of the pictures of herself his grandmother had drawn for him many
a time. Had she a high waist to that white silk dress in which she ran
away to Gretna ; and did she have ostrich feathers on her head ?
Anyhow, he entirely believed what she had told him of the men of that
generation. They were capable of doing daring things for the sake of a
sweetheart. Of course his grandfather had done boldly and well in
whirling the girl off to the Scottish borders ; for who could tell what might
have befallen her among ill-natured relatives and persecuted suitors ?

Wenna Rosewarne was singing " We met; 'twas in a crowd; and I
thought he would shun me." It is the song of a girl (must one explain
so much in these later days ?) who is in love with one man, and is
induced to marry another : she meets the former, and her heart is filled
with shame, and anguish, and remorse. As Wenna sang the song, it
seemed to this young man that there was an unusual pathos in her voice ;
and he was so carried away by the earnestness of her singing, that his heart
swelled and rose up within him, and he felt himself ready to declare that
such should not be her fate. This man who was coming back to marry
her — was there no one ready to meet him and challenge his atrocious
claim ? Then the song ended ; and, with a sudden disappointment,
Trelyon recollected that he at least had no business to interfere. What
right had he to think of saving her ?

7—5

138 THKEE FEATHEES.

He had been idly turning over some volumes on the table. At last he
came to a Prayer-book, of considerable size and elegance of binding.
Carelessly looking at the fly-leaf, he saw that it was a present to Wenna
Rosewarne, " with the very dearest love of her sister Mabyn." He passed
his hand over the leaves, not noticing what he was doing. Suddenly he
saw something which did effectually startle him into attention.

It was a sheet of paper with two slits cut into it at top and bottom.
In these a carefully-pressed piece of None-so-pretty had been placed, and
just underneath the flower was written in pencil " From H. T. to W. R.,
May 2nd, 18 — ." He shut the book quickly, as if his fingers had been
burned ; and then he sate quite silent, with his heart beating fast.

So she had kept the flower he had put in the basket of primroses. It
had carried its message ; and she still remained his friend.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CUT DIRECT.

" WELL, mother," Miss Wenna said, deliberately, after he had gone, " I
never did see you so thoroughly enjoy a whole day."

" I was thinking the same about you, Wenna," the mother answered,
with an amused look.

" That is true enough, mother," the girl confessed, in her simple way.
" He is so good-natured, so full of spirits, and careless, that one gets
quite as careless and happy as himself. It is a great comfort, mother, to
be with anybody who doesn't watch the meaning of every word you say
— don't you think so ? And I hope I wasn't rude — do you think I was
rude ? "

" Why, child, I don't think you could be rude to a fox that was eating
your chickens. You would ask him to take a chair and not hurry himself."

" Well, I must write to Mabyn now," Wenna said, with a business-
like air, " and thank her for posting me this Prayer-book. I suppose she
didn't know I had my small one with me."

She took up the book, for she was sitting on the chair that Harry
Trelyon had just vacated. She had no sooner done so than she caught
sight of the sheet of paper with the dried flower and the inscription in
Mabyn's handwriting. She stared, with something of a look of fear on
her face.

"Mother," she said, in quite an altered voice, " did you notice if Mr.
Trelyon was looking at this Prayer-book? "

" I don't know, I'm sure," Mrs. Rosewarne said. " I should think he
went over every book on the table."

The girl said nothing ; but she took the book in her hand and carried
it up to her own room. She stood for a moment irresolute ; then she
took the sheet of paper with the flowers on it, and tore it in a hundred

THEEE FEATHER?. 339

pieces, and threw them into the empty grate. Then she cried a little —
as a girl must ; and finally went down again and wrote a letter to Mabyn,
which rather astonished that young lady.

" My dear Mabyn " — so the letter ran — " I am exceedingly angry with
you. I did not think you were capable of such folly — I might call it by
a worse name if I thought you really meant what you seem to mean. I
have just torn up the worthless scrap of flower you so carefully preserved
for me into a thousand pieces ; but you will be glad to know that in all
probability Mr. Trelyon saw it on the paper, and the initials too which
you put there. I cannot tell you how pained and angry I am. If he
did place that flower intentionally among the primroses, it was most im-
pertinent of him ; but he is often impertinent in joking. What must he
think of me that I should seem to have taken this seriously, and treasured
up that miserable and horrid piece of weed, and put his initials below it,
and the important date ? You put thoughts into my head that cover me
with shame. I should not be fit to live if I were what you take me to
be. If I thought there was another human being in the world who could
imagine or suspect what you apparently desire, I would resolve this
moment never to see Mr. Trelyon again ; and much harm that would do
either him or me ! But I am too proud to think that any one could
imagine such a thing. Nor did I expect that to come from my own sister,
who ought to know what my true relations are with regard to Mr. Trelyon.
I like him very much, as I told him to his face two days before we left
Eglosilyan, and that will sJioiv you what our relations are. I think he is
a very frank, generous, and good young man, and a clever and cheerful
companion ; and my mother, has to-day to thank him for about the
pleasantest little trip she has (ever enjoyed. But as for your wishing me
to preserve a flower that he sent, or that you think he sent to me, why,
I feel my face burning at the thought of what you suggest. And what
can I say to him now, supposing he has seen it ? Can I tell him that my
own sister thought such things of me ? Perhaps, after all, the simplest
way to set matters right will be for me to break off the acquaintance
altogether ; and that will show him whether I was likely to have treasured
up a scrap of London-pride in my Prayer-book. — I am, your loving sister,
Wenna Rosewarne."

Meanwhile, Harry Trelyon was walking up and down the almost
empty thoroughfare by the side of the sea ; the stars overhead shining
clearly in the dark night, the dimly seen waves falling monotonously on
the shelving beach.

" To keep a flower, that is nothing," he was saying to himself. " All
girls do that, no matter who gives it to them. I suppose she has lots
more, all with the proper initials and date attached."

It was not an agreeable reflection ; he turned to other matters.

" If she were to care for me a little bit, would it be mean of me to try
to carry her off from that man ? Is it possible that he has the same
regard for her that I have ? In that case it would be mean. Now, when

140 THREE FEATHERS.

I think of her, the whole world seems filled with her presence somehow,
and everything is changed. When I hear the sea in the morning, I think
of her, and wonder where she is ; when I see a fine day, I hope she
is enjoying it somewhere ; the whole of Penzance has become magical.
It is no longer the same town. I used to come to it, and never see it, in
the old days, when one was busy about stables, and the pilchard-fishing,
and the reports of the quarries. Now the whole of Penzance has got a
sort of charm in it, since Wenna Rosewarne has come to it. I look at the
houses, and wonder if the people inside know anybody fit to compare
with her ; and one becomes grateful to the good weather for shining round
about her and making her happy. I suppose the weather knows what she
deserves."

Then he began to argue the question as to whether it would be fair
and honourable to seek to take away from another man the woman .who
had pledged herself to marry him ; and of course an easy and definite
decision is sure to be arrived at when counsel on both sides, and jury
and judges sitting in banco, are all one person, who conducts and closes
the case as it suits himself. He began by assuming such facts as
suited his arguments, and ended by selecting and confirming such
arguments as suited himself. Wenna Rosewarne cared nothing for Mr.
Roscorla. She would be miserable if she married him ; her own sister
was continually hinting as much. Mr. Roscorla cared nothing for her ex-
cept in so far as she might prove a pretty housewife for him. The selfish-
ness that would sacrifice for its own purposes a girl's happiness was of a
peculiarly despicable sort which ought to be combated, and deserved no
mercy. Therefore, and because of all these things, Harry Trelyon wag
justified in trying to win Wenna Rosewarne's love.

One by one the people who had been strolling up and down the dark
thoroughfare left it ; he was almost alone now. He walked along to the
house in which the Rosewarnes were. There was no light in any of the
windows. But might she not be sitting up there by herself, looking
out on the starlit heavens, and listening to the waves ? He wished to
be able to say good-night to her once more.

How soon might, she be up and out on the morrow ? Early in the
morning, when the young day was rising over the grey sea, and the sea-
winds coming freshly in as if they were returning from the cold night ?
If he could but see her at daybreak, with all the world asleep around
them, and with only themselves to watch the growing wonders of the
dawn, might not he say something to her then that she would not be
vexed to hear, and persuade her that a new sort of life lay before her
if she would only enter it along with him ? That was the notion that
he continually dwelt on for self-justification, when he happened to
take the trouble to justify himself. The crisis of this girl's life was
approaching. Other errors might be retrieved ; that one, once committed,
never. If he could only see her now, this is what he would say : — •
" We can only live but once, Wenna ; and this for us two icould be life —

THEEE FEATHERS. 1 ~i I.

our only chance of it. Whatever else may happen, that is no matter ;
let us make sure of this one chance, and face the future together, you full
of sweetness and trust, I having plenty of courage for both. We will
treat objectors and objections as they may arise — afterwards ; perhaps they
will be prudent and keep out of our way." And, indeed, he convinced
himself that this was Wenna Rosewarne's one chance of securing happiness
for her life, assuming, in a way, that he had love, as well as courage,
sufficient for both.

He was early up next morning, and down on the promenade ; but the
day was not likely to tempt Wenna to come out just then. A grey fog
hung over land and sea ; the sea itself being a dull, leaden plain. Trelyon
walked about, however, talking to everybody, as was his custom ; and
everybody said the fog would clear and a fine day follow. This, in fact,
happened ; and still Wenna did not make her appearance. The fog over
the sea seemed to separate itself into clouds ; there was a dim, yellow
light in the breaks. These breaks widened ; there was a glimmer of
blue. Then, on the leaden plain, a glare of white light fell, twinkling
in innumerable stars on the water. Everything promised a clear, bright
day.

As a last resource, he thought he would go and get Juliott Penaluna,
and persuade that young lady to come and be introduced to the Rose-
warnes. At first Miss Penaluna refused point-blank. She asked him
how he could expect her to do such a thing. But then her cousin Harry
happened to be civil, and indeed kind in his manner to her, and when he
was in one of those moods there was nothing she could refuse him. She
went and got ready with an air of resignation on her comely face.

" Mind, Harry, I am not responsible," she said, when she camo back.
" I am afraid I shall get into awful trouble about it."

" And who will interfere ?" said the young man, just as if he were
looking about for some one anxious to be thrown from the top of the
tower on St. Michael's Mount.

"I shall be accused of conniving, you know; and I think I am very
good-natured to do so much for you, Harry."

" I think you are, Jue ; you are a thoroughly good sort of girl when
you like to be — that's a fact. And now you will see whether what I have
said about Miss Eosewarne is all gammon or not."

" My poor boy, I wouldn't say a word against her for the world. Do
I want my head wrenched off ? But if any one says anything to me
about what I may do to-day, I shall have to tell the truth ; and do you
know what that is, Harry ? I do really believe you are in love with that
girl, past all argument ; and there never was one of your family who
would listen to reason. I know quite well what you will do. If she
cares ever so little for you, you will marry her in" spite of everybody,
and probably against her own wish ; if she doesn't care for you, you will
revenge yourself on the happy man of her choice, and probably murder
him. Well, it isn't my fault. I know what your mother will say "

142 THEEE FEATHERS.

" Ah, you don't know, Jue, what my mother thinks of her," he said,
confidently.

" Oh, yes, mothers think very well of a girl until they discover that
she is going to marry their son."

11 Oh, stuff! why the. inconsistency "

" It is the privilege of women to be inconsistent, Harry. Your mother
will detest that girl if you try to marry her."

" I don't care."

" Of course not. No man of your family cares for anything that
interferes with his own wishes. I suppose there's no use in my trying
to show you what a fearful amount of annoyance and trouble you are
preparing for yourself?"

" None ; I'll take it as it comes — I'm not afraid."

They got down to the promenade ; the forenoon was now bright and
cheerful ; a good many folks had come out to enjoy the sunlight and the
cool sea-breeze. Miss Juliott was not at all disinclined to walk there
with her handsome cousin, though he had forgotten his gloves, and was
clearly not paying her very special attention.

"Jue," he said, suddenly; "I can see Miss Rosewarne — right at the
end of this road — can't you?"

"I haven't got the eyes of a hawk, you stupid boy," his cousin said.

" Oh, but I can recognise her dress a dozen times as far away.
These are her pet colours at present — a soft, cream-colour and black,
with bits of dark red — can you see now?"

" I never saw you pay the least attention before to a lady's dress."

" Because you don't know how she dresses," he said, proudly.

She was coming along the parade, all alone.

" Well, it is a pretty dress," Miss Juliott said, " and I like the look
of her face, Harry. You can't expect one girl to say any more than that
of another girl, can you?"

" This is a very nice way of being able to introduce you," he said.
" I suppose you will be able to chaperon each other afterwards, when her
mother can't go out?"

Wenna was coming quietly along, apparently rather preoccupied.
Sometimes she looked ©ut, with her dark, earnest, and yet wistful eyes,
at the great plain of water quivering in the sunshine ; she paid little heed
to the people who went by. "When, at length, she did see Harry Trelyon,
she was quite near him, and she had just time to glance for a moment
at his companion. The next moment — he could not tell how it . all hap-
pened— she passed him with a slight bow of recognition, courteous enough,
but nothing more. There was no especial look of friendliness in her
eyes.

He stood there, rather bewildered.

"That is about as good as the cut direct, Harry," his cousin said.
" Come along — don't stand there."

" Oh, but there's some mistake, Jue," he said.

THREE FEATHERS. 143

" A girl never does a thing of that sort by mistake. Either she is
vexed with yon for walking with rne — and that is improbable, for I doubt
whether she saw -me — or she thinks the ardour of your acquaintance
should be moderated, and there I should agree with her. You don't seem
so vexed as one might have expected, Harry."

" Vexed! " he said. " Why, can't you tell by that girl's face that she
could do nothing capricious or unkind ? Of course, she has a reason ;
and I will find it out."

CHAPTER XXV.

NOT THE LAST WORD.

As soon as he could decently leave his cousin at home, he did ; and then
he walked hastily down to the house in which Mrs. Kosewarne had taken
rooms. Miss Kosewarne was not at home, the small maid-servant said.
Was Mrs. Rosewarne ? Yes ; so he would see her.

He went upstairs, never thinking how his deep trouble about so insig-
nificant an incident would strike a third person.

"Mrs. Rosewarne," he said, right out, "I want you to tell me if
Wenna wishes our acquaintance to end. Has she been speaking to you ?
Just now, she passed me in the street as if she did not wish to see me
again."

" Probably," said Mrs. Rosewarne, amused as well as surprised by the
young man's impetuosity, " she did not see you then. Wenna often
passes people so. Most likely she was thinking about other things ; for
she had another letter from Jamaica just before she went out."

" Oh, she has had another letter from Jamaica this morning ! "
Trelyon said, with an angry light appearing in his eyes. " That is it,
is it ? "

" I don't understand you," Mrs. Rosewarne was saying, when both of
them heard Wenna enter below.

" Mrs. Rosewarne," he said, with a sudden entreaty in his voice,
" would you mind letting me see Wenna alone for a couple of minutes ?
I want to ask her if she is offended with me — you won't mind, will you ? '

" Not in the least," she said, good-naturedly; and then she added, at
the door, "Mind, Mr. Trelyon, Wenna is easily hurt. You must speak
gently to her."

About a minute afterwards, Wenna, having laid her hat and shawl
aside, came into the room. When she found Trelyon there, alone, she
almost shrank back, and her face paled somewhat ; then she forced her-
self to go forward and shake hands with him, though her face still wore a
frightened and constrained look.

"Wenna," he said, " don't go away. I want to speak to you for a
minute. You are offended with me about something, and I want you to
tell me why. If you wish our friendship to cease, say so, and I will obey
you ; but you must tell me why first."

144 THREE FEATHERS.

"I am not offended with you, Mr. Trelyon," she said, in a low and
nervous voice. "Do not think that, But — but I think it will be better
if you will let our friendship cease, as you say."

" Oh, no," he said, " I will not, in this fashion. You've got to tell
me what is the matter first. Now remember this. Not very long ago
you chose to quarrel with me about nothing — absolutely about nothing.
You know quite well that I meant no harm to you by lending Mr. Roscorla
that money ; yet you must needs flare up and give it me as hot as you
could all for nothing. What could I do ? Why, only wait until you saw
what a mistake you had made."

"It was very wrong of me," she said. *< I ask your forgiveness.
But now it is quite different. I am not angry with you at all. I should
like to remain your friend ; and yet I think it better not. I — I cannot
explain to you, Mr. Trelyon ; and I am sure you won't ask me, when I
say so."

He looked at her for a moment, and then he said, gently and yet
firmly —

" Look here, Wenna. You think I am only a boy. That may or may
not be ; but I am going to talk reasonably to you for once. Come over
to this chair by the window, and sit down."

She followed him in passive obedience. She took the one chair, he
the other.

" Perhaps I am only a boy," he said ; " but I have knocked about a
good deal, and I have kept my eyes as wide open as most folks. I sup-
pose ill-natured people might say that, as I had nothing to do at Eglosilyan,
I wanted to have a flirtation with the only girl who was handy. I know
better. Year after year I saw more and more of you, bit by bit ; and
that after I had been abroad or living in other places in England from
time to time. I got to believe that I had never seen anywhere any girl
or woman who was so honest as you are and good in a dozen secret ways
that needed a deal of discovering. I found out far more about you than
you imagined. I heard of you in cottages that you never knew I was in ;
and everything I heard made me respect you more and more. Mind this
too. I had no sort of personal liking for the sort of thing you were
doing. I don't admire beastly little rooms, and poverty, and sick people as
appealing to a fine sentiment. There never was anything of the parson or
of the benevolent old lady about me. I would rather give half- a- crown to
an impertinent little schoolboy who had just whopped another boy bigger
than himself than give a halfpenny tract to a sickly infant in its mother's
arms ; that's original sin in me, I suppose. But all that squalid sort of
work you were in only made the jewel shine the more. I used to think I
should like to marry a very grand woman, who could be presented at
Court without a tremor, who would come into a drawing-room as if she
was conferring a favour on the world at large ; and I certainly never
thought I should find the best woman I had ever seen in back-kitchens
sewing pinafores for children. And then, when I found her there, wasn't

THEEE FEATHEBS. 145

it natural I should put some store by her friendship ? I suppose you
didn't know what I thought of you, Wenna, because I kept chaffing you
and Mabyn ? I have told you something of it now ; and now I want you
to say whether you have a right to shunt me off like this without a word
of explanation."

She sate quite still, silent and nervous. The rude and impetuous
eloquence of his speech, broken by many a hesitating stammer, had
touched her. There was more thoughtfulness and tenderness in this wild
lad than she had supposed.

" How can I explain ? " she burst out, suddenly. " I should cover
myself with shame ! "

" And what have you to be ashamed of ? " he said, with a stare.

The distress she was obviously suffering was so great that he had
almost a mind to take her at her word, and leave the house without
further ado. Just at this moment, when he was considering what would
be the most generous thing to do, she seemed to nerve herself to speak to
him, and in a low and measured voice she said —

"Yes, I will tell you. I have had a letter this morning from Mr.
Koscorla. He asks me if it is true that you are paying me such attention
that people notice it ; and he asks me if that is how I keep my promise to
him."

Something like a quiver of rage passed through the young man at this
moment, but his teeth were kept firmly together. She did not look up to
his face.

" That is not all. I must tell you that I was deeply shocked and
grieved by this letter ; but on looking back over the past six weeks I
think a suspicious person might have been justified in complaining to Mr.
Boscorla. And — and — and, Mr. Trelyon, did you see that dried flower in
my Prayer-book last night ? "

Her resolution was fast ebbing away ; he could see that her hands
were clasped piteously together.

" Yes, I did," he said, boldly.

" And oh ! what could you have thought of me ! " she cried, in her
distress. " Indeed, Mr. Trelyon, it was all a mistake. I did not keep
the flower — I did not, indeed. And when I thought you had seen it, I
could have died for shame."

" And why ? " he said, in a way that made her lift up her startled
eyes to his face. There was a strange look there, as of a man who had
suddenly resolved to dare his fate, and yet was imploringly anxious as to
the result. " For you have been frank with me, and so will I be with you.
Why should you not have kept that flower ? Yes, I sent it to you ; and
with all the purpose that such a thing could carry. Yes, you may be as
angry as you please ; osly listen, Wenna. You don't love that man whom
you are engaged to marry ; you know in your heart that you do not believe
in his love for you ; and are you surprised that people should wish to have
you break off an engagement that will only bring you misery ? "

146 THREE FEATHERS.

" Mr. Trelyon ! "

" Wenna, one minute — you must hear me. Do with my offer what
you like — only here it is : give me the power to break off this engage-
ment, and I will. Give me the right to do that ! Don't mind me in the
matter. It is true I love you — there, I will say it again : there is nothing
I think of from morning till night but my love for you ; and if you would
say that some time I might ask you to be my wife, you would give me more
happiness than you could dream of. But I don't wish that now. I will
remain your friend, if you like, Wenna ; only let me do this thing for you ;
and when you are free, you can then say yes or no."

She rose, not proud and indignant, but weeping bitterly.

" I have deserved this," she said, apparently overwhelmed with morti-
fication and self-reproach. "I have earned this shame, and I must bear
it. I do not blame you, Mr. Trelyon— 4t is I who have done this.
How many weeks is it since the man left England to whom I promised to

be faithful ! and already but this I can do, Mr. Trelyon : I will bid

you good-bye now, and I will never see you again."

Her face was quite pale. She held out her hand.

"No," he said, firmly. "We don't part like that, Wenna. First,
let me say that you have nothing to accuse yourself of. You have done
nothing, and said nothing, of which any man, however mean and sus-
picious, could complain. Perhaps I was too hasty in speaking of my
love for you. In that case, I've got to pay for my folly."

" And it is folly, Mr. Trelyon ! " she said, passionately, and yet with
nothing but tenderness in her face. "How could you have thought of
marrying me ? Why, the future that ought to lie before you is far more
than you can imagine yet ; and you would go and hamper it by marrying
an innkeeper's daughter ! It is folly, indeed ; and you will see that very
soon. But — but I am very sorry all this has occurred ; it is another
grief to me that I have troubled you. I think I was born to bring grief
to all my friends."

He was anxiously debating what he should do ; and he needed all his
wits at that moment, for his own feelings were strong within him, and
clamouring for expression. Would he insist ? Would he bear down all
opposition ? Happily, quieter counsels prevailed ; for there was no mis-
taking the absolute truthfulness of what the girl had said.

" Well, Wenna," he said, " I will do anything you like, only to re-
main your friend. Is that possible ? Will you forgive all that I have said
if I make you a promise not to repeat it, and never again to mention your
engagement to Mr. Eoscorla ? "

" No, we must part now altogether," she said, slowly. Then, by
haphazard, she glanced up at his face for a moment, and there was a great
sadness in her eyes. " It is a hard thing to part. Perhaps it will not
be necessary that you should never come to see me. But we must not
be friends as we have been ; for I have my duty to do towards him."

" Then I may come to see you sometimes ? "

THKEE FEATHEES. 147

She hesitated.

" You may come to see my mother sometimes. And I will always
think of you as a dear friend, whether I see you or not."

He went outside, and drew a long breath.

" I had to keep a tight grip on the reins that time," he was thinking
to himself; " a precious tight grip ; but I did it."

He thought of the look there was in her eyes when she finally bid
him good-bye. His face grew the happier as he thought of it. He was
clearly not at all down-hearted about his rejection ; on the contrary, he
went and told his cousin Juliott that the little affair of the morning had
been quite satisfactorily arranged ; that Miss Wenna and he were very
good friends again ; and that it was quite a mistake to imagine that she
was already married to Mr. Roscorla.

" Harry," said his cousin, " I strictly forbid you to mention that
gentleman's name."

" Why, Jue ? " he said.

" Because I will not listen to the bad language you invariably use
whenever you speak of him ; and you ought to remember that you are in
a clergyman's house. I wonder Miss Rosewarne is not ashamed to have
your acquaintance ; but I dare say you amend your ways when you are
in her presence. She'll have plenty to reform if ever she takes you for a
husband."

" That's true enough, Jue," the young . man said, penitently. "I
believe I'm a bad lot ; but then, look at the brilliant contrast which the
future will present. You know that my old grandmother is always saying
to me, ' Harry, you were born with as many, manners as most folks ;
and you've used none ; so you'll have a rare stock to come and go on
when you begin.' "

148

Jmmiam

FROM THB FRENCH OF THEOPHILB GAUTIER.

A FOUNTAIN bubbles forth, hard by the lake,

Between two stones up-sparkling ever,
And merrily their course the waters take,

As if to launch some famous river.

Softly she murmurs, "What delight is mine,

It was so cold and dark below;
But now my banks green in the sunlight shine,

Bright skies upon my mirror glow;

" The blue forget-me-nots through tender sighs,

« Remember us,' keep ever saying ;
On a strong wing the gem-like dragon-flies

Ruffle me, as they sweep round playing.

•

"The bird drinks at my cup; and now who knows

After this rush through grass and flowers,
I may become a giant stream, that flows
Past rocks and valleys, woods and towers.

" My foam may lie, a lace-like fringe, upon

Bridges of stone, and granite quays,
And bear the smoking steam- ship on, and on,
To earth-embracing seas."

Thus the young rivulet prattled as it went,
With countless hopes and fancies fraught;

Like boiling water in a vessel pent,

Throbbed through its bed, the imprisoned thought.

But close upon the cradle frowns the tomb ;

A babe the future Titan dies,
For in the near lake's gulph of azure gloom

The scarce-born fountain buried lies.

F. H. POYLE,

149

in* ffteo grains?

RECENTLY Dr. Brown-Sequard has brought somewhat prominently before
the American scientific world the theory — advanced many years ago by
Sir Henry Holland* and others — that we have two brains, each perfectly
sufficient for the full performance of the mental functions. The general
opinion respecting the two halves of the brain was formerly that the left
side is the organ serving in the movements and feeling of the right side
of the body, while, vice versd, the right side serves in volition and sensa-
tion for the left side of the body. But Dr. Brown- Sequard endeavours to
show that this is not a necessary relation ; and he maintains not only
that we have two brains, but that as we make use of only one in thought,
we leave quite useless one-half of the most important of our organs as
regards manifestations of intelligence. He points out that if this state-
ment be just, it is a matter of extreme importance to deal carefully with
the question whether " we ought not to give education to the two sides of
the brain, or rather to the two brains."

We would here recall the reader's attention to a point on which we
insisted formerly, f the analogy namely between the bodily and the
mental powers. "We said that the action of the brain is a process not
merely depending upon, but in its turn affecting, the physical condition of
the brain, precisely as muscular action of any given kind not only depends
on the quality of the muscles employed, but also affects the condition of
those muscles. The analogy on which we then dwelt, and the deductions
we then pointed to, are illustrated, and in their turn illustrate Brown-
Sequard's theory. The bodily powers are duplex, and very few of the
bodily organs are single, though several which are really double may
appear to be single. Now we train both members of these twofold bodily
organs which are under the control of volition : sometimes both equally, as
in the case of the eyes and ears ; sometimes with a very slight difference,
as in the case of the two legs ; sometimes with a noticeable difference, as
in the case of the two arms. Having these pairs of members we do not
think of suffering one to do all the work, and the other to remain idle ; as
one eye, or one ear, or one arm might. But we can conceive the case of

* Throughout the report of Dr. Brown- Sequard's lecture, which we have chiefly
followed, the name of Sir Henry Holland appears in the odd-looking form " Sir Henry
Olan;" rather strangely illustrating the American belief that the letter "h" is
unknown to Englishmen, or only presents itself where it ought not to be ; a notion
not more absurd perhaps than the common idea in this country that every American
speaks the dialect which we pleasingly call " Yankee."

f See The Growth and Decay of Mind, CORNHILL MAGAZINE for November 1873.

150 HAYE WE TWO BEAINS ?

a race of beings possessing limbs and organs such as we have, but through
some defect in their method of training the bodily powers, using only or
chiefly one member of each pair. To such a race it would be a new
doctrine, and a very important one, that both members of every pair could
be used with equal or nearly equal efficiency. The theory, at first start-
ling by its novelty, would before long be established in a practical manner ;
and the race would find their powers much more than doubled by this
duplication of their limbs and organs. Now something like this is what
Dr. Brown- Sequard promises as the result of his theory if practically
adopted. In the remote future, perhaps, after many generations have
followed the rules which he suggests for bringing both halves of the brain
• or both brains into operation, a community with brains more effective than
ours will arise. Mental one-sidedness will disappear, and remembering
that such terms imply not mere analogies between mental and bodily
power but actual physical facts, we perceive that it is a matter of extreme
importance to the human race to inquire on what evidence Brown- Sequard
bases his ideas.

One of the proofs on which Dr. Wigan insisted, in supporting Holland's
theory, was the fact that among insane persons we often recognise two
different minds, either one sane and the other insane, or both insane but
in different degrees. No one who has studied the literature of insanity
can fail to recall instances ; but we shall venture to quote in illustration a
passage from an American narrative, The Hoosier Schoolmaster, which is
based, we are assured, on an actual case which came under the notice of
the author of that pleasant story.

" Ralph stood looking into a cell, where there was a man with a gay
red plume in his hat and a strip of red flannel about his waist. He
strutted up and down like a drill-sergeant. * I am General Jackson,' he
began ; ' people don't believe it, but I am. I had my head shot off at
Bueny Yisty, and the new one that growed on isn't nigh so good as the
old one ; it's tater on one side. That's why they took advantage of me to
shut me up. But I know some things. My head is tater on one side, but
it's all right on t'other. And when I know a thing in the left side of my
head I know it/ " (This illustrates a point on which Dr. Wigan specially
insisted. An insane patient knows he is insane. He will put forward
insane ideas, and immediately after having put them forward he will say,
" I know they are insane." " The lunatic is at one and the same time
perfectly rational," says Brown- Sequard, " and perfectly insane/' Dr.
Wigan concluded, like the poor lunatic of the Indiana workhouse, that in
such cases one-half of the brain is normal and the other half diseased ;
one-half employs the faculties in a normal way, the other half employs
them in a wrong way.) The crazy pauper is called on to give evidence, or
rather he introduces himself to the judges, with the remark that one side
of his head being " sound as a nut," he " kin give information." He refuses
to be sworn, because " he knows himself." " You see, when a feller's got
one side of his head tater, he's mighty onsartain like. You don't swear

HAVE WE TWO BRAINS ? 151

me, for I can't tell what minute the tater side'll begin to talk. I'm talkin'
out of the lef side now, and I'm all right. But you don't swar me.
But if you'll send some of your constables out to the barn at the poor-
house and look under the hay mow in the north-east corner, you'll find
some things maybe as has been a missin' for some time. And that a'n't
out of the tater side jneither." The exactness of the information, with
the careful references to locality and time, as also the suggestion of the
proper course of action — not merely "go and look," but send some of
your constables, &c. — all this illustrates well the perfect contrast often
existing between the two states in which a so-called lunatic exists.

There are cases, however, which are even more interesting, in which
two different mental conditions are presented, neither of which presents
any indication of mental disease, except such as might be inferred from
the completeness of the gap which separates one from the other. Dr.
Brown- Sequard gives the following account of a case of this kind. " I saw
a boy," he says, " at Notting Hill, in London, who had two mental lives.
In the course of the day, generally at the same time, but not constantly,
his head was seen to fall suddenly. He remained erect, however, if he
was standing, or if sitting he remained in that position ; if talking, he
stopped talking for awhile ; if making a movement he stopped moving
for awhile ; and after one or two minutes of that state of falling forward
or drooping of the head (and he appeared as if falling asleep sud-
denly, his eyes closing), immediately after that his head rose, he
started up, opening his eyes, which were now perfectly bright, and look-
ing quite awake. Then, if there was anybody in the room whom he had
not previously seen, he would ask who the person was, and why he was not
introduced to him. He had seen me a great many times, and knew me
very well. Being with him once when one of these attacks occurred, he
lifted his head and asked his mother, ' Who is this gentleman ? Why
don't your introduce him to me ? ' His mother introduced me to him.
He did not know me at all. He shook hands with me, and then I had a
conversation with him as a physician may have with a patient. On
the next instance when I was present during an attack of this kind, I
found that he recognised me fully, and talked of what we had spoken of
in our first interview. I ascertained from what I witnessed in these two
instances, and also (and chiefly, I may add) from his mother, a very
intelligent woman, that he had two lives in reality — two mental lives —
one in his ordinary state, and another occurring after that attack of a kind
of sleep for about a minute or two, when he knew nothing of what existed
in his other life. In his abnormal life, the events of his normal life were
forgotten — his ordinary life became a blank. * He knew nothing during

* We have been compelled slightly to modify the report of Dr. Brown-Sequard's
statement. Though manifestly a report taken by short-hand writers, and intended
to be verbatim, there are places where it is clear that either a part of a sentence
has been omitted or some words are wrongly reported. We speak from experience
in saying that even in America, where lectures are much more carefully reported

HAVE WU WO

that second state about what had occurred in previous periods of that
same condition ; but he knew full well all that had occurred then, and his
recollection of everything was as perfect then as it was during his ordinary
life concerning the ordinary acts of that life. He had therefore two
actually distinct lives, in each of which he knew everything which belonged
to the wakeful period of that life, and in neither of which did he know
anything of what had occurred in the other. He remained in the abnormal
— or rather the less usual state, for a time which was extremely variable
— between one and three hours, and after that he fell asleep, and got out of
that state of mind pretty much in the same way that he had got into it.
I have seen three other cases of that kind, and as so many have fallen
under the eyes of one single medical practitioner, such cases cannot be
extremely rare."

The circumstances just described will probably remind the reader of
cases of somnambulism, during the recurrence of which the person affected
recalls the circumstances which had taken place during the previous
attack, of which in the intervening wakeful state he had been altogether
oblivious. Dr. Carpenter, in his fine work on Mental Physiology, records
several instances.* Forbes Winslow cites cases in which intoxication has

than in England, mistakes are not uncommon. The enterprise of the New York
Tribune, in taking full reports of lectures considered noteworthy, is a well-known
and most creditable feature of American journalism. But it is a mistake to suppose
that reports, even if actually verbatim, can exactly represent a lecturer's meaning. A
speaker, by varieties of inflection, emphasis, and so on, to say nothing of expression,
action, and illustration, can indicate his exact meaning, while using language which
written in the ordinary manner may appear indistinct and confused. Thus a most
exact and carefully-prepared lecture may appear loose and slipshod in the report.
This applies to the case where a lecturer speaks at so moderate a rate that the short-
hand writers can secure every word, and is true even when in writing out their report
they make no mistake — though this seldom happens, as any one will readily un-
derstand who is acquainted with the stenographic art. But the case is much worse
if a lecturer is a rapid speaker. A reporter is compelled to omit words and sentences
occasionally, and such omissions are absolutely fatal to the effect of a lecture,
regarded either as a demonstration or as a work of art. Still more unfortunate will
it be for a lecturer if he should be carried away by his subject, and pour forth rapidly
the thoughts which have come uncalled into existence. Take the most eloquent pas-
sage from the pages of Sir J. Herschel, Tyndall, or Huxley, strike out as many w ords,
not quite necessary to the sense, as shall destroy completely the flow and rhythm of the
passage, omit every third sentence, and leave the rest to be slowly read by a perplexed
student, and the effect will correspond to the report of passages which as delivered
formed the most effective part of a lecture. The result may be a useful mental
exercise, but will surely not be suggestive of fervid eloquence. The student of such
reports will do well to read as it were between the lines, taking what appears as
rather the symbol of what was said than its actual substance. So read such reports are
of great value.

* One of these, however, is scarcely worthy of a place in Dr. Carpenter's book.
We refer to the narrative at p. 596, of a servant-maid, rather given to sleep-walking,
who missed one of her combs, and charged a fellow-servant who slept in the same
room with stealing it, but one morning awoke with the comb in her hand. " There
is no doubt," says Dr. Carpenter, " that she had put it away on a previous night

HAVE WE tfWO CHAINS?

produced similar effects ; as, for instance, when a drunken messenger left
a parcel in a place which he was quite unable to recall when sober ; but,
becoming drunk again, remembered where it was, and so saved his cha-
racter for honesty through the loss of his sobriety.

It may fairly be reasoned, however, that the actual duality of the
brain is not demonstrated or even suggested by cases such as these last.
In fact, it is not difficult to cite evidence which, if interpreted in the same
way, would show that we have three brains, or four, or more. Thus Dr.
Bush, of Philadelphia, records that "an Italian gentleman, who died of
yellow fever in New York, in the beginning of his illness spoke English,
in the middle of it French, but on the day of his death only Italian." It
ig manifest that the interpretation of this case, and therefore of others of the
same kind, must be very different from that which Brown-Sequard assigns,
perhaps correctly, to the case of twofold mental life above related. Know-
ing as we do how greatly brain action depends on the circulation of the
blood in the vessels of the brain, we can be at no loss to understand the
cases of the former kind, without requiring a distinct brain for the dif-
ferent memories excited.* In the same way possibly we might explain
the well-known case of an insane person who became sane during an
attack of typhus fever at the stage when sane persons commonly become
delirious, his insanity returning as the fever declined. But we seem led
rather to Dr. Brown- Sequard's interpretation, by a case which recently
came under discussion in our law courts, where a gentleman whose mind
had become diseased was restored to sanity by a fall which was so serious
in its bodily consequences as to be the subject of an action for damages.

But perhaps the most remarkable illustration of a double life is one
which has been brought before the notice of the scientific world recently ;
some time, we believe, after Brown- Sequard's views were published. We
refer to the case recently published by Dr. Mesnet, and referred to in Dr.
Huxley's remarkable lecture at Belfast on the hypothesis that animals
are or may be automata. We do not purpose to quote Huxley's
account in full, as no doubt many of our readers have already seen
it, but the following facts are necessary to show the bearing of the

case on Sequard's theory : "A sergeant of the French army, F ,

twenty-seven years of age, was wounded at the Battle of Bazeilles, by a
ball which fractured his left parietal bone. He ran his bayonet through
the Prussian soldier who wounded him, but almost immediately his right
arm became paralyzed ; after walking about two hundred yards his right

without preserving any waking remembrance of the occurrence ; and that she had
recovered it when the remembrance of its hiding-place was brought to her by the
recurrence of the state in which it had been secreted." This is not altogether certain.
The other servant might have been able to give a different account of the matter.

* " No simple term, ' says Sir Henry Holland, " can express the various effects of
accident, disease, or decay, upon this faculty, so strangely partial in this aspect, and
so abrupt in the changes they undergo, that the attempt to classify them is almost as
vain as the research into their cause." The term " dislocation of memory " was pro-
posed by him for the phenomena of complete but temporary f orgetf ulness.
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 182. 8.

154 HAVE WE TWO BRAINS?

leg became similarly affected, and he lost his senses. When he recovered
them, three weeks afterwards, in hospital at Mayence, the right half of the
body was completely paralyzed, and remained in this condition for a year.
At present, the only trace of the paralysis which remains is a slight weak-
ness of the right half of the body. Three or four months after the wound
was inflicted, periodical disturbances of the functions of the brain made
their appearance, and have continued ever since. The disturbances last
from fifteen to thirty hours, the intervals at which they occur being from
fifteen to thirty days. For four years, therefore, the life of this man has
been divided into alternating phases, short abnormal states intervening
between long normal states."

It is important to notice here that although this case somewhat re-
sembles that of Brown-Sequard's two-lived boy, we have in the soldier's case
a duality brought about by a different cause, an accident affecting the left
side of the head — that side, as we shall presently see, which is regarded as
ordinarily if not always the seat of chief intellectual activity. The
soldier's right side was paralyzed, confirming the theory that so far as the
bodily movements are concerned the left brain chiefly rules the right hand
organs of the body, and vice versa. But the man had recovered from his
paralysis, so that either the left side of the brain had been partially
restored or else the right brain had acquired the power of directing the
movements of the right-hand organs. But the periodical disturbances
came on three or four months after the wound was inflicted, that is, more
than half-a-year before the paralysis disappeared. We have, then : 1st,
three weeks of unconsciousness, during which we may suppose that the
left side of the brain was completely stunned (if we may apply to the
brain an expression properly relating to the condition of the man) ;
secondly, we have three months during which the man was conscious, and
in his normal mental condition, but paralyzed ; thirdly, we have more
than half a year during which a double mental life went on, but the left
side of the brain was still so far affected that the right side of the body
was paralyzed ; and lastly, we have more than three years of this double
mental life, the bodily functions in the man's normal life being, it would
appear, completely restored.

Assuming, then, Sequard's theory for the moment, we have to inquire
whether the man's normal condition implies the action of the uninjured
right brain, or of the restored left brain, and also to determine whether
the recovery from paralysis has resulted from a more complete restoration
of the left brain, or from the right brain having acquired a power formerly
limited to the left brain. The fact that the man's normal mental
condition returned as soon as consciousness was restored does not show
that this condition depends on the action of the left brain, for in the
unconscious state both brains were at rest. Bather it might seem to
imply that the right brain was the brain active in the normal mental
state, for the continued paralysis of the right side showed that the left
brain was not completely restored. Yet it has been so clearly shown by

HAVE WE TWO BRAINS? 155

other and independent researches that the left brain is the chief seat of
intellectual activity that we seem forced to adopt the opinion that this
man's normal condition depends on the action of the left brain. And we
may perhaps assume, from the length of time during which the right
side remained paralyzed after the left brain had resumed a portion of its
functions, that the other portion — the control of the right-hand organs —
has never been recovered at all by the left brain, but that the right brain
has acquired the power, a result which, as we shall presently see, accords
well with experience in other cases.

It would almost seem, on Brown- Sequard's hypothesis — though we
must admit that the hypothesis does not explain all the difficulties in this
very singular case — that the right brain having assumed one set of
functions belonging to the left, from time to time tries, as it were, to
assume also another set of functions belonging to the left, viz. the control
of mental operations, the weakened left brain passing temporarily into
unconsciousness. The matter is, however, complicated by peculiarities
in the bodily state, and in sensorial relations during the abnormal
condition. The whole case is, in fact, replete with difficulties, as
Professor Huxley well points out,* and it seems to us these difficulties are
not diminished by Brown- Sequard's theory.

Let us consider some of the facts of the man's twofold life : — " In the
periods of normal life the ex-sergeant's health is perfect ; he is intelligent
and kindly, and performs satisfactorily the duties of a hospital attendant.
The commencement of the abnornal state is ushered in by uneasiness and
a sense of weight about the forehead, which the patient compares to the
constriction of a circle of iron ; and after its termination he complains for
some hours of dulness and heaviness of the head. But the transition
from the normal to the abnormal state takes place in a few minutes,
without convulsions or cries, and without anything to indicate the change
to a bystander. His movements remain free and his expression calm,
except for a contraction of the brow, an incessant movement of the
eyeballs, and a chewing motion of the jaws. The eyes are wide open,
and their pupils dilated. If the man happens to be in a place to which
he is accustomed he walks about as usual ; but if he is in a new place, or
if obstacles are intentionally placed in his way, he stumbles gently

* We may in passing note that the case of Brown-Sequard's double-lived boy
throws some light on the question whether the soldier is conscious in his abnormal
state. Professor Huxley- says justly that it is impossible to prove whether F. is
conscious or not, because in his abnormal condition he does not possess the power of
describing his condition. But the two conditions of the boy's life were not dis-
tinguished in this way, for he was perfectly rational, and could describe his sensations
in both conditions. The only evidence we can have of any other person's con-
sciousness was afforded by this boy during his abnormal state. But what straage
thoughts are suggested by this twofold consciousness— or, rather (for twofold
consciousness is intelligible enough), by this alternate unconsciousness. To the boy
in one state, what was the other life ? Whose was the life of which he was un-
conscious ?

8—2

156 HAVE WE TWO

against them, stops, and then, feeling over the objects with his hands,
passes on one side of them. He offers no resistance to any change of
direction which may be impressed upon him, or to the forcible accele-
ration or retardation of his movements. He eats, drinks, smokes, walks
about, dresses and undresses himself, rises and goes to bed at the
accustomed hours. Nevertheless, pins may be run into his body, or
strong electric shocks sent through it without causing the least
indication of pain ; no odorous substance, pleasant or unpleasant, makes
the least impression ; he eats and drinks with avidity whatever is offered,
and takes asafoetida, or vinegar, or quinine, as readily as water ; no noise
affects him ; and light influences him only under certain conditions. Dr.
Mesnet remarks that the sense of touch alone seems to persist, and indeed
to be more acute and delicate than in the normal state ; and it is by
means of the nerves of touch, almost exclusively, that his organism is
brought into relation with the outer world."

Such are the general phenomena presented by this curious case. As
respects details of the man's behaviour under particular circumstances, we
refer our readers to Professor Huxley's paper in the Fortnightly Review
for last November. But one peculiarity is so noteworthy, and rightly
understood gives so special an interest to Brown-Sequard's hypothesis,
that we must quote it at length, together with the significant remarks
with which Professor Huxley introduces the subject. " Those," he says,
" who have had occasion to become acquainted with the phenomena of
somnambulism and mesmerism will be struck with the close parallel which
they present to the proceedings of F. in his abnormal state. But the
great value of Dr. Mesnet's observations lies in the fact that the abnormal
condition is traceable to a definite injury to the brain, and that the
circumstances are such as to keep us clear of the cloud of voluntary and
involuntary fictions in which the truth is too often smothered in such
cases. In the unfortunate subjects of such abnormal conditions of the
brain, the disturbance of the sensory and intellectual faculties is not
unfrequently accompanied by a perturbation of the moral nature which
may manifest itself in a most astonishing love of lying for its own sake.
And in this respect, also, F.'s case is singularly instructive, for although
in his normal state he is a perfectly honest man, in his abnormal condition
he is an inveterate thief, stealing and hiding away whatever he can lay
hands on, with much dexterity, and with an absurd indifference as to
whether the property is his own or not. Hoffmann's terrible conception
of the * Doppelt-ganger ' is realised by men in this state, who live two
lives, in the one of which they may be guilty of the most criminal acts,
while in the other they are eminently virtuous and respectable. Neither
life knows anything of the other. Dr. Mesnet states that he has watched
a man in his abnormal state elaborately prepare to hang himself, and has
let him go on" (!) "until asphyxia set in, when he cut him down. But on
passing into the normal state the would-be suicide was wholly ignorant of
what had happened."

HAVE WE TWO BRAINS? 157

If Wigan and Scquard are right in regarding the changes of opinion
with which most of us are familiar as differing only in degree from the
duality of a lunatic's mind who has sane and insane periods, and mental
indecision as differing only in degree from the case of a lunatic who " is
of two minds," knowing that what he says is insane, a curious subject of
speculation arises in the consideration of the possible duality of the moral
nature. The promptings of evil and the voice of conscience resisting
these promptings, present themselves as the operation of the two brains,
one less instructed and worse trained than the other. " Conversion "is
presented to us as a physical process, bringing the better trained brain into
action in such sort as to be the only or chief guide of the man's actions.

Passing, however, from thoughts such as these to the reasoning on
which must depend our acceptance of the theory which has suggested them,
let us consider what evidence we have to show that a real difference exists
between the right and left brains.

It has been shown that the faculty of speech depends either wholly or
mainly on the left side of the brain. A lesion in a particular region of this
side produces the loss of the faculty of expressing ideas by spoken words.
Out of more than a hundred cases of this peculiar disease — aphasia — only
one is known (and that case is doubtful) in which the right side of the brain
was diseased. This seems to show that the two sides of the brain are distinct
one from the other. At first sight, however, the idea might suggest itself
that this evidence tended to prove that the two portions of the brain dis-
charge supplementary functions. If the left side thus perform duties with
which the right side has nothing to do, presumably the right side may
perform duties from which the left side is free. This, indeed, would
appear*to be the case ; but Brown- Sequard's position is that this is not a
necessary distinction ; but the result of habit, unconsciously exercised of
course, since (as yet, at any rate) we do not possess the power of deciding
that we will use this or that side of the brain. He maintains that the left
brain is used in speech, as the right hand is used in writing, that a disease
in the particular part of the left brain on which speech depends, causes
aphasia, precisely as a disease of the right hand destroys the power of
writing (until the left hand has been trained to the work), and that by
training both brains we should render this particular form of cerebral
disease less likely to cause loss of speech, much in the same way that by
training both hands to write, we should diminish the chance of any such
cause as disease or accident depriving us of the power of writing.

Brown- Sequard further maintains that where the power of articulation
is lost, it is not the mere power of moving the muscles of the tongue,
larynx or chest, which is lost, but the memory of the mode of directing the
movements of those muscles. In many cases, he says, " a patient could
move the tongue in any direction, could move the larynx, and utter sounds
very well ; but could not articulate, the mental part of the mechanical
act being lost, not the mechanical action itself."

Sight affords evidence tjaat the distinct action of the two sides of the

158 HAVE WE TWO BRAINS?

brain is not incompatible with the completeness of the power pos-
sessed by either. Wollaston held that the right side of the base of the brain
is the centre for sight in the two right halves of the eye, — that is, the
half of the right eye towards the temple, and the half of the left eye to-
wards the nose ; while the left side of the base of the brain is the centre
for sight in the two other halves — the outer half of the left eye and the
inner half of the right eye. If this were so, the two halves of the brain
would be, so far as sight is concerned, absolutely supplementary to each
other, insomuch that a disease of either half of the brain would render
sight imperfect. It is not altogether true, however, as Brown-Sequard
states, that only one half of each object would be seen, for the whole of
an object may fall on either half of the retina. But objects looked at full
front would thus be divided. If the left side of the brain were affected,
the left halves of the eyes would act imperfectly, that is, the left halves of
the visual field within the eye ; so that, in point of fact, objects towards the
observer's right would be unseen ; and vice versa. Wollaston himself was
troubled occasionally by a defect of this kind. Trying one day to read the
name of an instrument — the barometer — he could read only " meter," the
other part of the word, " baro," being invisible. Agassiz was similarly
affected. And many patients who are afflicted with certain disorders of
movement implying brain disease, have the same trouble — they see only
half of objects towards which the eyes are directly turned. Nor is this
the only evidence which at a first view seems to demonstrate Wollaston's
theory. If the theory were true we should expect to find that when only
a small part of one side of the brain — or rather, of that region on which
sight depends — was affected, then only the half of one eye would be de-
prived of sight. This has been found to be the case. And naturatly, we
should expect that if the other part of that region (of the same side of the
brain) were affected, then the corresponding half of the other eye, and
that half only, would be deprived of sight. This also has been found to
be the case. Nevertheless, Wollaston's theory has to be abandoned be-
cause it does not account for all the facts, and is opposed by three deci-
sive facts at least."* It has been shown in many instances that a disease
in one half of the brain will produce complete loss of sight, (i.) of the two
halves of the eye on the same side as the diseased brain ; or (ii.) of the two
halves of the eye on the opposite side ; or (iii.) of the two halves of both

* It is singular how seldom the true rules which should guide us in selecting and
rejecting theories are recognised and understood. Over and over again we see it
assumed, if not stated, that that theory which accounts for the greatest number of facts
is to he adopted as the most probable. This is not by any means the case. The true
theory must, in reality, accord with all the facts, though we may not be able to show
that it does. Now if a theory accounts for several of the facts, and is not opposed by a
single one, it has a much better claim to be adopted provisionally as the most probable
than another theory which accounts for a greater number of facts, or even for all the
known facts save one, but is manifestly opposed by one fact. This is a rule of the
utmost importance in science, because often it enables us to select the true theory,
not by overpowering testimony of evidence in its favour, but consecutively rejecting
all other possible theories.

HAYE WE TWO BKAINS ? 159

eyes. Manifestly then there is no necessary association between either side
of the brain and the sight of either eye, or of the two halves of either eye.
Each side* of the brain possesses apparently the potentiality of rendering
sight perfect for both eyes. Admitting this, it is clearly a point of great
importance to inquire whether both sides of the brain, or the two brains,
may not each be trained to discharge this duty ; for the disease of either
would no longer destroy or seriously impair the power of sight.

The next point considered by Brown-Sequard is that of gesture. The left
side of the brain chiefly controls the gestures, and this for the simple reason
that the left side of the brain guides chiefly the movements of the right
side of the body, and it is chiefly with the right arm that gestures are
made. But it also appears likely, from certain pathological facts, that
even the motion of the left arm, so far as gestures are concerned,
depends on the action of the left side of the brain ; for it is found that
patients who have the left side of the brain diseased commonly lose the
faculty of making appropriate gestures with either the right or the left
arm. It has, however, happened in a few cases that disease of the right
side of the brain has led to a loss of the power of making gestures. It
need hardly be remarked that this exception no more opposes itself to
the general theory of the duality of the brain than does the fact that a
certain proportion of persons are left-handed, or one may say left-sided.
There is a difficulty in determining how far writing depends on the
left side of the brain, because disease of that side is not uncommonly
accompanied by paralysis of the right arm and hand, and in such cases
we cannot determine whether the power of writing is lost on account
of a real loss of memory of the relation between written symbols and
the ideas they express, or simply through the effects of paralysis. How-
ever, it very seldom happens that paralyzed patients have lost altogether
the use of the fingers and are unable to make the least sign. In fact it
is found that in many cases they can imitate writing placed before
them (oftener if the handwriting resembles their own), while they are
unable from memory to write anything, or at all events to express ideas
by writing. The disease is called agraphia. In many patients suffering
from this disease the right arm is perfectly free from any sign of paralysis,
but a portion of the left side of the brain has been diseased. It would
appear therefore that written language, like spoken language, depends on
the left side of the brain.

It is also known that the power of reasoning depends on the left side
of the brain more than on the right. In cases of insanity the left side of
the brain has more frequently been found to be diseased than the right side.
We see, then, that to the left brain we must assign the chief control
over speech, writing, and gesture — the methods, that is, of expressing
ideas. This side also seems principally concerned in the process of
reasoning ; and besides these special functions, we must assign to the
left side of the brain the principal control over the motions and organs
of the right side of the body.

160 HAVE WE TWO BBAINS ?

The right side of the brain in turn possesses its special functions. It
serves chiefly to the emotional manifestations, including those called
hysterical, and also to the needs of the body as respects nutrition.* It
also, of course, possesses a function corresponding to the control of the
left side of the brain over the bodily organs, the right side having principal
control over the movements and organs of the left side of the body.

And now for the practical application of these facts.

If the difference which exists between the two sides of the brain
depended on a radical difference in their structure, it would of course be
impossible to bring about any change. The facts we have cited would be
interesting, but they would have no practical application, however
thoroughly they might be demonstrated. We recognise clearly the diffe-
rence between the functions of the eye and those of the ear, between the
office of the legs and that of the arms ; but we do not inquire whether
both the eye and the ear might be trained to perform the same duties, nor
do we practise walking on our hands, or grasping objects with our fee*t.
But it is manifest that a useful purpose might be served by calling to any
person's attention the fact, if such it should be, that he uses one or other
eye more frequently than the other, or for different purposes, and that his
general powers of sight would be improved if he accustomed both eyes to
the same amount and kind of work.f Similarly of the ears. Again some

* The evidence adduced by Dr. Brown-Sequard respecting the special functions of
the right side of the brain is chiefly derived from his medical experience, and would,
therefore, not be altogether suitable to these pages — or rather, its force would not be
so clearly recognised as that of the evidence relating to language and gesture. It
appears that ulceration of the lungs or liver, haemorrhage and sudden inflammation,
can result more or less directly from irritation, and that in these cases it has chiefly
been the right side of the brain which has been affected. Among 121 cases of
paralysis, caused by hysteria, 97 were found associated with disease of the right side
of the brain, and only 24 with disease of the left side. It is also well known that
paralysis is more common on the left side of the body than on the right side, which
corresponds to the fact that the right side of the brain is more commonly diseased in
the manner which results in paralysis. He cites other medical evidence in support of
the theory that the right side of the brain is chiefly concerned in the nutrition of the
various organs of the body.

f Perhaps in some instances the reverse may be the case — though we question
whether many would care to have one eye specially suited for one kind of work, and
the other eye for a different kind. This is not an imaginary case. It is much more
common than many suppose, for one eye to be of different focal length than the
other ; and, if the difference is not early noticed, it is apt to increase, each eye being
used for the work to which it is best suited. The present writer supposes that a
marked difference between his own eyes attained its present extent in this way, though
the difference was probably considerable in childhood. It is now so great that the
left eye is scarcely used at all, and is almost useless for ordinary vision, being very
near-sighted, but is almost microscopic for near objects ; while the right eye is not
used at all on examining minute objects, and very little in reading, but is of average
power for distant objects. To use both has become impossible, and may have always
been so. The difference, however, was not noticed until the writer was about 18 years
of age. That it existed in boyhood to a marked degree, he considers to be proved by

HAVE WE TWO BEAINS ? 161

persons are too right-handed (we question, indeed, whether one-handedness,
•whether right or left be chiefly employed, does not in all cases involve a
loss of power). In all such cases it is probable that careful training,
especially if begun in early life, by tending to equalise the work of each
member of each pair of organs, might not add considerably to the general
powers of the body. It is something of this sort that Brown-Sequard
hopes to attain for the brain ; in fact, it is by this very process that he
hopes to bring into action the full powers of this dual organ.

He remarks that " every organ which is put in use for a certain function
gets developed, and more apt or ready to perform that function. Indeed,
the bream shows this in point of mere size. For the left side of the brain,
which is used most, is larger than the right side. The left side of the
brain also receives a great deal more blood than the right side, because its
action preponderates, and every organ that acts much receives more blood.
As regards the influence of action on the brain, there is a fact which
hatters know very well. If a person is accustomed for many years of adult
life — say from 20 up to 40 or more — to go to the same hatter, the hatter
will find after a time that he has to enlarge the hat of his customer ; and,
indeed, a person advanced in years, even having passed 56, as your
lecturer has, may have a chance to observe such a change. There is no
period of six months that has passed that I have not found my hat, if
neglected and put aside, has become too small. The head growing is very
strong proof that the brain grows also. Action is a means of increasing
size. It is also a means of developing power. I have no doubt that a
good many among you have observed that after paying great attention to a
subject they have not only acquired knowledge on that subject, but became
much better able to solve questions relating to that subject — that having de-
veloped the part of the brain which has been used for the acts performed,
that part has become far better able to perform the duties demanded of it."

The superior size, therefore, of the left side of the brain, as well as the
fact that it receives a larger share of blood than the right, show that it is
predominant in our system. This fact is also shown by the prevalence of
right-handedness among all races of men. There is no left-handed race
among all the races that people the world.* But also, the left-handed
individuals of every race have the brain correspondingly unequal, only that

the difficulty he experienced in acquiring skill in such games as cricket, rackets, fives,
billiards, &c., where ready and exact judgment of distances is required. He believes
that in almost every instance when a boy shows a marked want of skill in such
games — while apt in others — it will be found thet one eye differs so much in focal
length from the other as to be little used.

* Right-sidedness extends even to lower races, though there are few cases in
which we have the means of determining it. Birds, and especially parrots, show
right-sidedncss. Dr. TV. Ogle has found that few parrots perch on the left leg. Now
parrots have that part at least of the faculty of speech, which depends on the memory
of successive sounds, and of the method of reproducing such imitation of them as a
parrot's powers permit ; and it is remarkable that their left brain receives more blood
and is better developed than the right brain. So far J)r. Brown-Sequard on this point.

8—5

162 HAVE WE TWO BEAINS ?

in their case the right side of the brain is more developed, and that side,
instead of the left, controls the faculty of expressing ideas, whether by
language or by gesture, and acts chiefly in intellectual operations. Tho
connection between greater development of the brain and the control
of reason and its expression, by the side of the brain so developed,
seems conclusively established. The side of the brain which chiefly
guides our actions has the greater mass of grey matter, the greater
number of convolutions, the most plentiful supply of blood.

Now it appears certain that the greater development of the left side of
the brain, and consequently, if the inferences just drawn are sound, the
chief use of that side in reason, language, and gesture, is brought about
by actions under the control of will. We exercise most the right side of
the body, hence the left side of the brain becomes better developed
than the right, and hence, therefore, it assumes the function of controlling
intellectual processes and their expression. If, of set purpose, we exercised
equally both sides of the body, if in particular we employed the organs
on the left side in processes at present chiefly or wholly managed by
those on the right, would not the two sides of the brain become equally
developed, and might not both become capable of controlling the reasoning
faculties ? On this point we have evidence which is well worth con-
sidering, even if it cannot be regarded as decisive.

Cases have occurred in which the left side of a child's brain has
become diseased before the child has learned to talk. In such cases
the child has learned to talk as well, or nearly as well, as if the left side
of the brain had been sound. Now, if in such cases the child had been
born of left-handed parents, we could regard the result as depending on
the hereditary transmission of exceptional powers to the right side of the
brain. But no such explanation has been available. In most instances,
certainly (in all according to Brown- Sequard's belief) the parents of
these children were right-handed. In fact, the circumstance that these
children, besides being able to speak, could make use of all the members of
the right side of the body (though the left side of the brain, which usually
controls the movements of those members, was diseased), shows that the
right side of the brain had assumed powers not ordinarily belonging to it.
The children, however, as might be expected, were left-handed, the left
side of the body being governed as the special province of the right brain,
and the right side only because the disease of the left brain forced on the
right brain the duty of governing the right side of the body, as well as
that of controlling reason, speech, and gesture.

The next point cited by Dr. Brown- Sequard does not seem quite so
clearly favourable to his views ; in fact it appears to us to suggest a rather
strong argument against the hope which he entertains that the general

It may be questioned whether monkeys show any tendency to right-handedness ; our
own recollections of monkey gestures certainly suggest no preference of the kind.
Here is a field for observation and inquiry among our zoological professors when
young Guy Fawkes has passed through his teething.

HAVE WE TWO BRAINS? 163

mental powers may be improved by exercising both sides of the brain in
the same kind of work. He points out that very few left-handed persons
have learned to write with the left hand, and that those who can write
with that hand do not write nearly so well with it as with the right hand.
" Therefore," he says, " the left side of the brain, even in persons who
are left-handed naturally (so that the right side of the brain controls the
reasoning faculties and their expression) can be so educated that the
right hand, which that side of the brain controls, produces a better hand-
writing than that by the left hand, though this is controlled by the better de-
veloped brain." This certainly seems to show the possibility of training
one side of the brain to do a part of the work appertaining in the ordinary
course of things to the other ; but the inferiority of the writing with the
left hand is rather an awkward result so far as Brown- Sequard's hopes are
concerned. For it looks very much as though the habit of writing with
the right hand, which in the case of a left-handed person is in fact the
wrong hand for writing with, rendered the right brain less fit to control
that special department of its duties (for a left-handed person) which relates
to the expression of ideas by writing. Now it may be a very useful thing
to acquire true duality of brain-power, if the ordinarily less-used side of
the brain for any particular action does not acquire full power for that
function at the expense of the other side ; but otherwise the advantage is
not so obvious. If we could train the left arm to be as skilful as the
right, without losing the skill of the right arm, we should willingly take
the proper measures ; but merely to shift the skill from one arm to the
other would lead to no advantage, even if we could be quite sure that
it would involve no loss. And, as we have said, this particular argument
suggests a test which can hardly be. expected to favour Brown- Sequard's
theory. Left-handed persons are continually exercising their left or less
developed brain in work properly appertaining to the right brain (in this
case). Accordingly, with them the two brains are more equally exercised
than in the case of right-handed persons. But are the left-handed
observed to be ordinarily of better balanced mind than the right-
handed? Are they less liable to paralysis of one side of the body,
through having each brain readier to discharge the functions of the other ?
It seems to us that if neither of these relations exists, and we can
scarcely suppose that either could exist without having long since been
recognised, we may regard Brown- Sequard's theories as interesting
perhaps, and even trustworthy, but we can scarcely place much reliance
on the hopes which he bases upon those theories. t

His next argument seems somewhat more to the purpose. Right-
sidedness affects the arms, as we know,- much more than the legs. It is
presumable, therefore, that there is not so special a relation between the
more developed left brain and the action of the right leg, which is
only the equal of the left leg, as there is between the left brain and
the more skilful of the two arms. In other words, we may assume that
both brains control both legs. In fact, if, by equalising the practice

164 HAVE WE TWO BEAINS ?

of the two arms we are to bring the two brains not only into more
equal operation, but into combined action on each arm, it would
appear that the equal exercise of the two legs ought to have resulted
in combining the action of the two brains so far as the control of
the lower limbs is concerned. So that we not only may " infer this
state of the two brains from the observed powers of the two legs," but
unless we do assume this, the hopes entertained by Brown-Sequard must
be regarded as to some degree negatived. Now if the brains do thus act
in combination in controlling the lower limbs, it is clear that the com-
plete paralysis of a leg ought not to be so common as the complete
paralysis of an arm, for an arm would be paralyzed if only one side of the
brain were affected, but for a leg to be paralyzed both sides of the brain
must be affected. Dr. Brown-Sequard states that this is the case, at
least to this degree, that " it is exceedingly rare that the leg is affected
in the same degree by paralysis as the arm." *

The hope entertained by Dr. Brown-Sequard is that by teaching our
children to use both sides of the body equally, the two sides of the brain
may be brought into more uniform action. " If you have been convinced
by the arguments I have given that we have two brains," he says, " it is
clear that we ought to develop both of them, and I can say at any rate
as much as this, there is a chance, — I could not say more, but at least there
is a chance,— that if we develop the movements of the two sides of the
body, the. two arms and the two legs, one just as much as the other,
the two sides of the brain will then be developed one as much as the
other as respects the mental faculties also." There is a connection be-
tween the development of the brain as regards the mental faculties and
the development as regards leading movements on one side of the body :
therefore, Brown-Sequard considers that if we train the left side of the
body as carefully as we are in the habit of training the right, there is a
chance that we should have two brains as respects mental functions in-
stead of one as at present. Since in cases of disease of the left side of the
brain the right side can be trained to exercise all the functions usually
performed by the left side, it seems reasonable to hope that we can do as
much for the right side of the brain when the left side is sound. Dr.
Brown-Sequard suggests, therefore, that no child shall be allowed to remain
either right- sided or left-sided, but be initiated as early as possible into
two-sided ways. " One day or one week it would be one arm which would
be employed for certain things, such as writing, cutting meat, or putting
a spoon or fork in the mouth, and so on. In this way it would be very
easy to obtain a great deal, if not all. We know that even adults can
come to make use of their left arm. A person who has lost his right arm
can learn to write (with difficulty, it is true, because in adult life it is much

* "We do not feel quite sure that we have rightly dealt with the doctor's argument
in this case ; because he has presented it very briefly, with the remark that it cannot
be understood well except by medical men, and our explanation, not requiring a,
medical training on the reader's part, is therefore presumably inexact.

HAVE WE TWO BRAINS? 165

more difficult to produce these effects than in children), and the left arm
can be used in a great variety of ways by persons who wish to make use
of it." .... "There is also another fact as regards the power of training.
Even in adults, who have lost the power of speech from disease of the
left side of the brain, it is possible to train the patient to speak, and most
likely then by the use of the right side of the brain, the left side of those
patients, with great difficulty, will come to learn. The same teaching we
employ with a child learning to speak should be employed to teach an
adult who has lost the power of speech. So also as regards gesture and
other ways of expressing ideas. I have trained some patients to make
gestures with the left arm who had lost the power of gesture with the
right, and who were quite uncomfortable because their left arm, when
they tried to move it, at times moved in quite an irregular way, and by no
means in harmony with their intention. There is a power of training,
therefore, for adults ; and therefore that power no doubt exists to a still
greater degree in the case of children ; and as we know that we can make
a child, who is naturally left-handed, come to be right-handed, so we
can make a child who is naturally right-handed come to be left-handed
as well." The great point should be to develop equally the two sides of
the body, in the hope that by so doing the two sides of the brain, or the
two brains, may be brought into harmonious action, not only as respects
bodi^, but also as respects mental functions.

We have thus brought before the reader the hopes, as well as the
theoretical views, of Dr. Brown- Sequard. We must say in conclusion
that although for our own part we do not regard his hopes as altogether
well based, believing, in fact, that many familiar experiences are against
them, we attach great importance to the theoretical considerations to
which he directs attention. We may not be able to increase general
mental power, and still less to double mental power by calling the two
sides of the brain into combined activity (as respects intellectual processes),
yet if we recognise the duality of the brain in this respect we may find it
possible to assist the reasoning side of the brain in other ways. For
instance, it may be found that by considering the facts to which Brown-
Sequard has called attention, we can more clearly understand the
advantage which the student has long Been known to derive from special
forms of mental relaxation. It may, for instance, be a specially desirable
change for the student to have his emotions called into play, because the
overworked reasoning part of the brain obtains in that way a more
complete rest. When either side of the head is suffering from temporary
ailments, as in migraine (hemikranion), special forms of mental * or

* An experience of the writer's seems to suggest this as possible. On one occa-
sion, when he was about to deliver a lecture to a large audience (the largest he had
ever addressed, in fact, and computed at nearly 3,000), he was suffering from a head-
ache affecting the right side of the head so severely that the slightest movement
caused intense pain, and every breathing was responded tp by a dismal throbbing of
the brain. The headache was not occasioned by excitement, but was connected

166 HAVE WE TWO BRAINS?

bodily exercise may be found useful to remove or alleviate the sufferings.
And it cannot be but that in studying the effects of such experiments as
Brown- Sequard suggests, light would be thrown on the interesting and
perplexing subject of the brain's action in relation to consciousness and
volition. If in addition to such useful results as these it should be found
that by careful training on Brown- Sequard's plan the duality of the
brain can be made a source of increased mental power, or of better
mental balance, or of readier decision, so much the better. The progress
of science calls for increased mental activity. We want more powerful
brains than served our forefathers, for we try to grapple with more diffi-
cult questions. The idea is at least pleasing to contemplate, though we
fear it is based as yet on no very firm foundation, that as binocular vision
gives a power of determining the true position of objects which the single
eye does not possess, so bi-cerebral thought may supply a mental parallax
enabling men to obtain juster views of the various subjects of their
thoughts than they can obtain at present by mental processes which are
known to be one-sided.

with a general disturbance of the system from a severe cold, and was intensified by
a journey from Chicago to New York (where the lecture was delivered), completed
only two or three hours before the lecture began. During the first ten minutes of
the address the pain was very great indeed, and was rendered more severe by the
effort required in addressing so large a meeting with a voice affected by cq|prrh.
But from that time the pain grew less, and at the end of the lecture no trace of it
remained. The headache did not return after the lecture was over ; in fact, the rest
of the evening was passed in such manifest enj oyment of pleasant converse at the
Century Club, that several " Centurions " who had heard the lecture must in all pro-
bability have found it difficult to reconcile the circumstance with the lecturer's state-
ment about his illness. [Ah ! goodly fellowship of" Centurions ! " where else in the
world are so many genial souls gathered together ? and where else in the world does
the stranger receive so warm a greeting ?]

167

|)ter0

" The monarch, in our times, of painting and architecture ; what he can do

with his pencil you may see in Urbino, Bologna, Ferrara, Kimini, Ancona, and in our
own country on wall and panel, in oil and distemper, but above all in the city of
Arezzo the great chapel of the tribune of the great altar, one of the most famous
works of Italy and praised by all men." — LUCA PAOIOLI, Divina Proporzione. Venice,
1509.

ON an easel in the long room of the Italian masters at the National Gallery
you will see, until the masters one and all find nobler lodging in the great
new rooms preparing for them, a picture that cannot fail to strike you.
It is a Nativity of Christ, but with an invention and a style of its own
that distinguish it among the multitude of Nativities with which Italian art
will have made you familiar. The stall is set in the middle of a landscape
of bare hills, with winding paths and tufts of verdure, and the gables and
steeples of a little grey town on the right. This landscape is unfinished,
and looks strange with its brown ground, and because the green in it
has turned black. In front of the stall (where you can see the ox looking
mild and the ass with his head thrown up, braying) the mother has knelt
down and drawn round upon the ground before her a fold of her outer
cloak. On this she has laid the child, and adores him with joined hands.
Behind her on the right, Joseph sits on the ass's saddle with one foot across
his knee. Two sturdy shepherds have just come in from the country,
and one of them points upward, recalling the apparition of the herald
angel. So far, these are customary features of a Nativity ; and the work
is exceptional only by something robust and energetic in the character of
the figures, something, on the other hand, unusually refined and delicate in
the grey and brown tones of the colour, and a beautiful precision of draw-
ing, particularly in the draperies. But it is the attendant choir of angels
that makes the great difference between this and ordinary paintings of the
class. Such angels are generally fair winged creatures kneeling about
the child where he lies and worshipping him, or offering crowns and
flowers ; or they are poised upon streamers of cloud in the air above him ;
or else have alighted on the roof of the stall and dance and give thanks
there. Not so here ; you see a group of vigorous striplings drawn up in
close file on the ground to the left of the picture, and fronting you as they
sing out loud and accompany themselves on viol and cithern. . They
are not beautiful, but in their erect station and frank looks there is a
reality, a strong simplicity, that somehow moves you more than beauty.
One of them has lank hair, another a great bonnet of crisp curls ; the
three in the front file wear plain tunics girdled at the waist, each of a

168 PIEKO BELLA FBANCESCA.

different grey, or rather one white, one purple, and the other blue, all in-
clining to grey ; the two in the rear file, whose heads you see over the
shoulders of the others, shew jewels at their throats and collars embroi-
dered with pearl. You never saw the choir so conceived or placed before ;
but the composition takes you ; its blunt originality is very felicitous ;
and in the figures of these choristers there is that which reminds you of
the young men of the Elgin marbles, not only by their air of physical
nobility and health, but by a justness of execution almost as perfect as
that of the Greek work accompanying the same perfect directness of
purpose. This interesting Nativity was bought, with other things, for the
Gallery last year. Let the spirit of it enter into you, as there is nothing
to binder its entering ; for though the landscape is partly discoloured, and
neither this nor the figures of the shepherds were ever finished, and though
the panel has been split in three places and brought together again, and
modern hands have been busy here and there upon cracks and holes, yet
these are common calamities. The care of the restorer -comes one day,
and palliates at the best, or at the worst swiftly consummates, the mischief
that has stolen upon an altar-piece from the long neglect of priests. Idle
things have been said in this instance both of the mischief and the repair ;
nor is the original in any essential way disfigured. Then, when the
Nativity is a possession to you, go and study a piece by the same hand
which has been longer among the treasures of the nation. This is larger
than the first. It is an oil-painting of the Baptism of Christ ; and partly
because of a special study of transparent effects, such as men were begin-
ning to make in this vehicle, partly because of injury to surface and
finishings, it has a somewhat thin and ghostly look at first sight. The
ground of its landscape is white, not brown as in the other picture ; tree-
stems and river-bed are white too, and there is a whiteness in the flesh-
colour. The figure of Christ stands nearly naked in the foreground, with
his feet in the stream ; John baptizes him from the bank, and the Holy
Spirit in the form of a white dove hangs over his head. So much again
is tradition ; but again the attendant angels are all the painter's own. A
group of three, one half hidden behind a tree trunk, stand and converse
in the foreground ; noble upright creatures once more, broad-shouldered
and planted firmly upon both feet ; but this time with the loveliest inter-
change of transparent blue and crimson and violet in their robes, and
strong rounded wings of the same, and garlands upon their heads. Be-
hind the Baptism and these beautiful spectators of it, the stream* winds
away among the paths and hillocks of the landscape, and casts up the
reflection of a sky of that cold gradation, cold and unspeakably pure, which
is more familiar, one would have said, to our northern climate than to Italy,
but which we shall see that this painter loved. A little way off down the
bank stands a frame of learned design — a disciple in the act of pulling his
garment over his head before baptism. Some of the rich colouring of the
angels is repeated in the Oriental robes and tall headgear of two or three
Jews moving about the further landscape. There is in England a third

PIERO BELLA FBANCESCA. 169

picture by the same hand smaller than either of these, perhaps not quite
so striking in its originality as either, but better preserved and bearing the
same stamp of science with simplicity and energy with refinement. Wo
mean the Coronation of the Virgin exhibited by Mr. Alfred Seymour at
the Gallery of Old Masters in 1871, and last year in the rooms of the
Burlington Club. And these are the only quite well authenticated pictures
of Piero della Francesca which are to be seen out of Italy.

For as rare as his pictures are, this painter was nevertheless one of
the leading spirits of Italy in the fifteenth century, and one of those
who did most to carry their art towards perfection. The story of his life,
what influences formed him and what work he did, is this so far as it
can be ascertained. He was born about 1420, certainly not later, perhaps
a few years earlier, at Borgo San Sepolcro, a little town at the point
where the road over the Apennines from the Adriatic, by Urbino and San
Giustino, drops suddenly from the mountains into the valley of the Tiber
near its source. In crusading times, it was said, a company of pilgrims
on their way home from Palestine had bivouacked here, and it had been
declared to them in a dream that here was the place where they must
dedicate the relics they carried with them. And so they built a church,
and about it grew the little town called after the name of the Holy
Sepulchre. Piero's customary surname, della Francesca, marks him as
his mother's son, because his father, Benedetto, of the house of the
Franceschi, had died before the child was born. About the time of his
boyhood all the towns of Umbria to the south and south-east of his home
began to be known for painters springing up in them and filling their
churches with new altar-pieces. For until this second quarter of the
fifteenth century, the population of those Apennine regions, a population
of pious shepherds and cultivators with a score of small townships for
their centres of agricultural exchange, had been used to see the demand
which their devotion made for holy images supplied by a class of travelling
artists from the other side of Italy. The painting of altar-pieces for
churches, variations upon one or two universal themes, had been the
great predilection of the Sienese school. And it was the custom of the
painters of Siena to go from place to place upon commissions of this kind.
The hand of an early painter of that city, Nicholas Segna, of Barna, and
about the year 1403 of Taddeo Bartoli, may be traced in panels of
Madonna or Majesty which' still exist in Arezzo, Cortona, Perugia, and
towns further within the province of Umbria proper. Taddeo Bartoli in
especial, a vehement and prolific hand, seems to have had a stimulating
influence in these regions. It is within a few years of his visit that the
crowd of native craftsmen make their appearance. Foligno, Spoleto,
Gubbio, Camerino, Gualdo, Fabriano, these even earlier than Perugia, the
chief city of the district, have each its painter called after the name of his
native town, and throwing this or that colour of personality into work of
which the general spirit is derived from Siena. To devise new attitudes
of tepderness between mother and child, to imagine new benignities of

170 PIERO BELLA FRANCESCA.

countenance and suavities of gesture, to express with little surprises of
homely novelty the adoration of attendant saints and the ecstasy of minis-
tering angels, to furnish and array the celestial figures as became them,
with thrones of jasper and alabaster and peach-coloured marble, and
canopies of festooned roses, and curtains and cloaks of gold embroidery :
such was the ambition whereon the hearts of this school of the Umbrian
province were innocently set ; not on grappling closer than those who had
gone before them with the complex lineaments of nature ; not on mastery,
nor on so proportioning and combining the pictured forms as to make their
art reflect at large the fashion of the world as it really was. That was
the mission of a different school. That was what the artists of Florence
had set their hearts on. And the circumstance which made Piero della
Francesca what he was, and but for which perhaps he might have been
like any of these innocent provincial brethren of his craft, was that he
early went to Florence in the service of a painter from that city whom he
had met at Perugia. This was Domenico Veniziano, the records con-
cerning whom show that in 1438 he was painting at Perugia, and that he
had led the young Piero to Florence as his assistant in some works for
the church of Sta. Maria Nuova in 1439.

In Florence this was the flood-tide of the Kenaissance. During the
latter part of the fourteenth century Florentine art had gone no farther
than its first inspirations. The noble ideals of Giotto had grown some-
what flat and mechanical by repetition. His noble art of distributing the
groups and expressing the action of a story had become a routine in his
school. Many elements in nature Giotto had left out, or treated incom-
pletely and symbolically : his followers had continued to do the same. At
the beginning of the fifteenth century a new impulse went out from a group
of sculptors and architects, and quickly gathered into a mighty and com-
bined effort after perfection, after mastery along many lines at once. The
study of the antique, the study of nature, were the two great sources of
expansion. Ghiberti stood at one extreme, and was the foremost master of
classic grace. Donatello is commonly quoted as standing at the other ex-
treme, and being the foremost master of those who reinforced sculpture with
the study of blunt realities and common nature. But Donatello was in
reality a great central power who helped to expand art in both senses,
working now in the most refined spirit of antiquity, now in the coarsest
spirit of realism. The name that should rather be quoted as standing at
the opposite extreme to Ghiberti is that of a painter like Andrea del
Castagno. He was the son of a peasant, and brought into the art of
painting a lusty peasant spirit, a vigorous commonness, a love of rude
thews and sinews and plain sturdy bodies, to which only one part of
Donatello's work in sculpture corresponds. In designing human figures
so conceived — and saint and soldier and sibyl alike he conceives in
no other way — Andrea del Castagno shows an immense spirit and power.
The best place to study him is the Museum of the Bargello at Florence,
whither his classical and Florentine heroes and heroines, done for the villa

PIEEO BELLA FRANCESCA. 171

of the Pandolfini at Legnaia, have been transported. He had for his
comrade in several undertakings the master of Piero della Francesca,
Domenico Veniziano. This Domenico holds rather an obscure place in
the history of Florentine art. His surname points to a connection with
Venice which nothing remains in his work to corroborate. Vasari has a
tale that he was murdered by Andrea del Castagno out of jealousy. But
existing documents prove that the supposed victim outlived his supposed
murderer four years. The only picture which remains from the hand of
Domenico is the altar-piece of Sta. Lucia de' Bardi, an enthroned Virgin
among saints, of late years removed to the Uffizii. It bespeaks a painter
whose conceptions are governed by those of Andrea del Castagno, while in
technical processes he is working out experiments of his own. The Saints,
John and Nicholas and Francis and Mary, especially the John, have strong
figures and large dull heads, and that commonness with athletic vigour which
marks the thorough- going realist. But the medium is new. It is a first
commencement of oil-painting, and the search for transparent effects pro-
duces a result quite different from any contemporary colouring — a scheme
of light and thin greys, greens, blues, and pinks, with notes of sharp
white and black in the marbles of the floor and canopy. Gaiety and
transparency are attained, but not harmony. The student of Piero della
Francesca must look carefully at this single painting by his master. In
this love of robust models and physical energy he will see one source of
Piero 's style ; in this experimental treatment of oil and choice of light and
gay colouring a second source. But besides his master Domenico, it is
easy to see that Piero owed a great deal to another painter who was
working in Florence at this productive crisis of her genius. In the first
years of the century there had been among the pupils who helped Ghiberti
with the bronze work for his wonderful first gate of the Baptistery, a boy
named Paolo Doni. Paolo Doni presently set up for himself as a
painter, and is a great figure in the movement of art's expansion at the
beginning of the fifteenth century. I have said how the Florentines had
begun to set their hearts on getting their art, and the ideals which their art
created, to reflect at large and with justness the fashion of the world as it
really was. One way of doing this was by bringing within the range of
their art a number of natural objects earlier art had left out — details of
landscape, grass, flowers, and trees, with the living things that moved among
them. Paolo treated the details of landscape and natural history with
a fulness and affection they had never received before ; especially
birds, which he put into his pictures whenever he could find the chance ;
hence he got the ornithological nickname Uccelli, by which he is known
to posterity. Another way of reaching mastery, and making your art
equal to reflecting all the fashion of the world, is to help your eyesight
with rules and measurements ; to observe and register those invari-
able laws of structure and proportion which make the human body what it
is and must be, and those other invariable laws of geometry and optics which
make things seem to us in space as they do and must seem ; in other words,

172 PIERO BELLA FRANCE SCA.

to study anatomy and perspective. Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, the
great group of sculptors and architects in whom the new impulse was
incarnate, invented anatomy and perspective as they invented the scientific
study of the antique. Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccelli, and Masaccio,
were the three earliest painters in whom the new impulse declared itself,
and who devoted themselves each in his manner to such studies. Paolo
Uccelli took up perspective from Ghiberti, and made it the passion of his
life. A musty passion, says the modern student. But no ; when these
things were new, each problem solved was a discovery, each deduction
a conquest, each rule a revelation ; and you may read in their own artless
language of the immense sweetness (immensa dolcezza) which the artist-
mathematicians of the time found in their pursuit. In course of time Uccelli
took to painting pictures in which he cared for nothing but to set and
solve new problems in the perspective of buildings, of horses, of men and
women — nay, of God the Father; for his great triumph is a foreshortened
figure of this kind swooping from heaven in acceptance of Noah's sacrifice.
For the sake of perspective he endured solitude, reproach, poverty, and to
be scant of the patronage and fame that were ready for him. The place to
study him is in a battle-piece in our National Gallery, and in four out of
a great series of decayed frescoes in the Green Cloister of Santa Maria
Novella at Florence.

More might be written of the special strains of the Florentine genius
which can be picked out in the work of Piero della Francesca. But let
us be content with these two — from Domenico Veniziano his stalwart
realism and his light transparencies of colour ; from Paolo Uccelli his
animated landscape and his finished science of perspective in living things
and buildings. When we first meet Piero as an independent artist, these
and all other influences, plainly as we may trace them, are absorbed in a
style as individual as any artist ever had. The dates and movements of
his life are indistinct. We can clearly trace a certain number of engage-
ments in the service of the princes, the communities, the private citizens of
his own region of Italy. The earliest of these is in 1451, twelve years
after his apprenticeship under Domenico at Florence. The latest is in
1469. In 1451 he worked for Sigismond Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of
Rimini. In 1469 he took service with Federigo of Montefeltro, Duke of
Urbino. We possess to this day the memorials of both employments.
Art and letters were above the hatreds of the time. An artist, a man of
letters, found impartial welcome and entertainment in hostile cities and
with princes whose lives were given up to the destruction of one another.
Between the neighbour lords of Rimini and Urbino existed the most con-
sistent hatred, the most sustained hostility, of the century. Both were
famous leaders of trained bands at the hire of the greater powers. In the
ever-shifting politics of the Papacy, the Kingdom, the Duchy of Milan, the
republics of Venice and Florence, amid those intricate alliances and disloca-
tions of alliance, the Malatesta and the Montefeltro found themselves
constantly face to face. One was the incarnation of the age's wickedness,

PIERO BELLA FRANCESCA. 173

The other was the ideal of its virtue. The Malatesta was the worst of an
evil race. His recklessness, his licence, his ferocity, are such as scarcely
belong to the histories of real men. He was a soldier of desperate enter-
prise, but more reckless and ferocious than brave, and more braggart than
either. Sometimes his courage would fail suddenly, and he would end like
a poltroon what he had begun like a hero. He murdered his wives like
Bluebeard. He was insane with vanity like Nero. He was a traitor without
a parallel ; for treachery in princes has never been understood as it was in
that age and country ; and he left his age and country far behind. He
was without faith and without law. His enemy of Montefeltro was the
one statesman in Italy who never broke his word. He was the one ruler
always just and humane. When he went alone among the streets and in
the market-place of his city, the people thronged about him with blessings.
He was the one soldier who hated cruelty, and forbade the sack of captured
cities. He was as simple and temperate in peace as he was prudent and
enduring in war. His house was a school of piety and a court of honour.
But the one prince and the other were the same in their love of art and
letters. Both were among the most bountiful patrons of the new classical
learning. Both loved to talk with grammarians and archaeologists on their
own subjects. Both kept open house and an open purse for scholars,
poets, architects, sculptors, painters. Sigismond Malatesta built a
church of St. Francis, which was less a church than a temple to himself
and the one woman he was good to, Isotta degli Atti. The building is
one of the noblest monuments of the early Renaissance. Federigo of
Montefeltro built a palace which is a monument no less noble. In the
church built by the Lord of Rimini you may see his portrait in fresco in
the grave and simple manner of Piero della Francesca. He kneels before
his patron saint King Sigismund of Hungary, who is enthroned at one end
of the picture. Behind the feet of the kneeler two great hounds repose in
front of a column. Malatesta has the same head which we know upon his
medals ; a crown that sweeps back from a low brow in the hawk's curve of
craft and fierceness, a shock of crisp curls clustering back upon his neck ;
a hard clear-cut profile, a mouth and jaw tense with passion and bitter
with cruelty. In the city of Urbino there still remain one or two pictures
done by Piero for the house of Montefeltro ; a beautiful perspective of
architecture ; a Flagellation with some bystanders outside, in whom tradi-
tion sees certain ill-fated members of the ducal family. But the chief thing
has been long removed to the Uffizii. This is the double folding panel
with the profile of Federigo, shrewd and staunch and benevolent, only
quaint ever since the breaking of his hook- nose in a tourney, facing that of
his wife Battista Sforza on the outside. And on the inside are two choice
little paintings ; one showing the Duke armed and drawn in procession by
two white horses, with Fortitude and Justice on the car beside him, and
Fortune standing plumb and secure upon her wheel behind ; in the other
the unicorns of chastity drawing the car of Battista, who holds a prayer-
book, and has for her attendants little straight-robed frank-eyed figures

174 PIEEO BELLA FRANCESCA.

of Pieties and Domestic Virtues. The painting is in oil ; and its manner,
with that of the landscapes behind the heads and behind the processions,
shows a new influence in the work of the painter. Federigo had sum-
moned to Urbino a painter of the Flemish school, Justus of Ghent ; and
from him it seems evident that Piero had been learning.

Between the dates when Piero worked for the false Malatesta at
Eimini and the loyal Montefeltro at Urbino, there is a space of eighteen
years. We cannot tell in order how these years were filled. But it is
most likely that the chief work of his life falls about the year 1453,
soon after his engagement at Rimini. This is a series in fresco on the
walls of the choir — what the writer quoted for our text calls " the great
chapel of the tribune of the great altar" — of the church of Saint Francis
at Arezzo. This was a city famous in the fourteenth century for Petrarch,
famous in the fifteenth for the great scholars Lionardo and Carlo, —
nay, of all the cities of Italy, Arezzo has most of those tablets which
are let into the walls of houses to commemorate illustrious births within
them. Yasari, himself from Arezzo, has preserved with delight a
compliment of Michel Angelo, who said, what had been said by Villani
before him, that there was in the air of the place a fineness favourable to
genius. And Vasari takes especial pleasure in the description of these
frescoes, which Piero, he says, " having come from Loreto to Arezzo,
worked for Luigi Bacci, a citizen of that place, in a chapel the vault of
which had already been begun by Lorenzo di Bicci." Here, then, on
the way between Florence and Rome, you must stop if you would see
Piero at his best, and find out the church of Saint Francis. It is on the
way between the station and the inns ; having been built, like most of
the Franciscan churches, in the lowest and what was at the time the
poorest quarter of the town. The sacristan comes and speaks to you in
a loud harsh voice ; but he means kindly, and will draw the great curtain
that the light may be good, and encourage you to establish yourself for
study in the stalls behind the high altar.

The subject of the frescoes about you here is not from the legend of
Saint Francis, as is most common in the churches of his order. It is
the story of the True Cross, in that shape in which the imagination of
the Middle Age had put it together, a patchwork of the quaintest colours,
from fragments of real chronicle and fragments of pure fancy and inde-
terminate fillings-in between the two. The compiler of the Golden Legend
is no severe critic of history ; but he is fain to acknowledge under the rubrics
De inventione sanctcB crucis and De exaltatione sancttz crucis (May 3 and
September 14), a puzzling discrepancy of authorities, as well as an in-
compatibility of dates which is not one of the admitted forms of the
miraculous. The story, as he found it current, was like this : — When
Adam lay in his death-sickness, he sent Seth to Paradise to beg for some
of the oil of the tree of mercy. The archangel Michael replied that
the oil of the tree of mercy could not be given to men for the space of
six thousand years ; but instead, he gave to Seth a wand which he was

HERO DELIA FRANCESCA. 175

to plant upon the grave of Adam after his death ; or, as some say, a seed
which he was to lay under his tongue. And presently Adam died, and
Seth fulfilled the commands of the angel. From the wand planted upon
the grave of Adam, or, as some say the seed set under his tongue, there
grew a goodly tree. And hy-and-bye King Solomon, seeing its good-
liness, bade them cut it down and fashion it for a summer-house they
were building him. But the builders could not fit nor fashion it ; first
it was too large for its place, then too small ; so they threw it aside, and
cast it for a bridge across a stream in Solomon's garden. The Queen of
Sheba coming to visit Solomon, was aware in the spirit of the miraculous
virtue of this tree, and would not tread upon it, but fell down and
worshipped it. And after she was gone, she sent messengers to Solomon,
bidding him beware of that tree, for on it should be hanged one with
whose death the kingdom of the Jews should pass away. So Solomon
caused the tree to be buried deep in the ground. And later, the Jews
unawares dug a well in the same place ; this was the pool of Bethesda,
and not only from the descent of the angel, but from the tree which was
at the bottom of the well, the water drew healing virtues. About the
time when Christ's ministry drew to an end, the tree of its own accord
floated to the surface of the water, and the Jews finding it ready to their
hand used it for a cross whereon to crucify Christ. After the Crucifixion it
was buried, together with the crosses of the two thieves, upon Mount Calvary ;
and in the time of Hadrian a temple of Venus was built beside the site.
Until the time of Constantine, nearly three hundred years after the Cruci-
fixion, nothing more was seen of the Cross. In the history of Constantine,
the visionary cross of his dream is closely but confusedly associated
with the actual cross found by his mother. Some say that the dream,
in which an angel holding a cross appeared to him saying, " In this
sign thou shalt conquer," was dreamed in the night before a great battle
against the barbarians on the Danube ; some before the battle in which
Constantine overthrew his rival Maxentius (A.D. 313) at Saxa Rubra near
Rome. However this was, Constantine being converted presently sent his
mother Helena to find the True Cross at Jerusalem. When her coming
was made known, the Jews wondered wherefore she came : until one Judas
said he knew it was to find the cross ; for his grandfather Zaccheus had
prophesied this coming to his father Simon. Christ whom they crucified
had been the true God, said Judas, and for Christ's sake they had
stoned Stephen, who had been the brother of his father Simon
(here arises the great difficulty of dates). And the Jews warned
Judas lest he should confess aught of these things. So when
Helena came they denied with one accord that they knew aught of
that cross. Thereupon Helena threatened that they should all be
burned alive. Then they gave Judas up into her hands ; and when
he persisted in denying, she caused him to be buried up to his neck in the
ground. On the sixth day he confessed, and being drawn out of the
ground, led them to the hill of Calvary. Here they dug, and three crosses

176 PIERO BELLA

were presently found* The miracle of raising one dead presently declared
which of the three was the True Cross. So Helena caused the temple of
Venus to be destroyed, and a church to be built wherein one portion of the
True Cross should be preserved : the other part she carried away to Constan-
tinople, and Judas being converted presently became Bishop of Jerusalem
under the title of Saint Quiricus. Here ends the story of the discovery
(Inventio) of the Holy Cross. The story of its recovery and carriage in
procession (Exaltatio) belongs to a point three hundred years later in the
history of the Empire. In the years 620—626, the Emperor Heraclius was
hard pressed by the Avars before Constantinople, and by Chosroes of the
great Sassanian house of Persia, who was master of all Syria and Asia
Minor, and had carried off to his own capital the portion of the Holy
Cross enshrined since the time of Constantine in Jerusalem. Heraclius
arose ; and the campaigns which for a while retrieved the Empire, and
ended in the overthrow and death of Chosroes, shine out among the most
memorable flashes of antiquity's expiring heroism. Sacred legend tells
them in another way from history, and knows of nothing but one great de-
feat of the infidel (meaning no doubt the battle of Nineveh), followed im-
mediately by his condign punishment. Chosroes in fact perished not
beneath the justice of the victor, but beneath the treachery and desertion
of his son. But what legend cares most about is to follow Heraclius as he
rescues the True Cross after its fourteen years of durance beyond the Tigris,
and carries it back in triumph to Jerusalem. As Heraclius, we are told,
came riding in military pomp to the gate of Jerusalem, with the cross up-
borne by his soldiers, suddenly the walls closed before him ; a voice was
heard saying, " Not thus, but with humility did thy Master bear his cross ; "
whereupon Heraclius descended to trail the cross upon his own shoulders,
bareheaded and unshod ; the walls unclosed again, and the procession
passed safely in.

That is the fable which one of the last followers of Giotto, Agnolo
Gaddi, had already in the fourteenth century commemorated in the choir
of the great church dedicated to the Holy Cross at Florence. And now,
in the middle of the fifteenth century (probably, we have said, about
1453), upon the commission of a wealthy and devout citizen of Arezzo,
Piero della Francesca commemorates it again.

The genius to which our two altar-pieces have given us the clue
displays itself at large in these masterpieces, whereby the painter, says
Vasari, " deserved to be held in love and reverence, as indeed he always
was, in the city he had so illustrated with his works." The church has
been shaken by earthquakes ; gaps in the painting have been filled up
with white stucco ; but there has been little positive destruction, and next
to no tampering. The pilasters on either side of the entrance arch, as
you pass from the nave into the choir, are indeed defaced ; and the frag-
ments of Piero's work upon them have a strange effect. On one side
everything has perished except the head of a proud-looking angel with
strong wings and shoulders. On the other side there remains the figure of

PIERO BELLA FKANCESCA. 177

the Dominican martyr Peter ; above him the Dominican doctor Aquinas ;
and from above Aquinas, in the miscellaneous spirit of the Renaissance,
there looks down a lusty Cupid with his bow. The history of the Cross
is told in a series of great life-sized compositions painted on the three
walls of the chapel. Each wall carries three courses of painting one
above another, the space on the end wall being divided by the window
into two perpendicular strips. The upper lunette on the right-hand wall
begins the tale with a subject which, although the most injured, is the
most beautiful of them all. No work of the time is so fit to strike the
romance chord in our modern natures as this scene of death and mourning
among the patriarchs. Through the bare boughs of a great tree, in the
foreground of a bosky place, we see small level clouds afloat upon a pale
blue sky. The great tree separates the two phases of the action. To the
right is the death- sickness of Adam, to the left his burial. In the
death-scene, Michael walks conversing with Seth in the distance at the
wood's edge ; Adam lies in front, a literal and pathetic hospital study,
but of no commonness or repulsiveness, with his bent back and stiffened
limbs and the shrivelled forearm he holds out to say something to those
about him. Eve stands behind in profile and holds his head ; she has a
white coif and drooping breasts bare above her white garment. On the
farther side of Adam, a daughter, square of frame and round of head,
stands erect with her hands joined before her and a sweet concern in her
frank looks ; her arms and flanks are bare, a strip of black drapery
falling straight from her shoulders over a white under-garment. At Adam's
feet stand two figures, admirably just and powerful in design, of an old
man with his hands thrust into the drapery about his middle, and a
young one leaning on his staff with his legs crossed. In the burial scene,
the figures lowering the body into the grave are nearly effaced. Across
the grave the same stalwart daughter we have seen already stands fronting
us, and wails with head thrown back and arms extended. Among the
spectators at the foot of the grave there are to be noticed a figure nobly
draped in red and blue ; the figure of one running up from a distance to
take part in the scene ; and last of all a youthful pair beautifully
designed in quiet conversation. With the sense of romance and pathos
in all this, there is a sense of sturdiness and manhood sufficiently striking.
And the women, too, these broad upright beings with a native sweet-
ness in their frank proud mien, stand well for Eve's early daughters.
Nor do the same beings, with their heads set between two strong sweeps
of wing, make indifferent angels. It is when we come to the Queen of
Sheba and her attendants that they please us less. The fashion of
shaven foreheads, and a coif to cover up what hair is left, with which the
painter was familiar in the court of Rimini, give a rather uncomely look to
their bold features and strong bare throats. Yet what .a science of dis-
tribution in these two connected scenes, where the queen kneels in a
landscape with her retinue looking on and grooms holding the horses,
and where Solomon and his counsellors receive her and her women under
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 182. 9.

178 PIEEO BELLA FKANCESCA.

a portico ; what gravity and pleasantness ; what dignity in the station of
men and women ; what simplicity, but what richness, in these cloaks and
trains falling in close parallel plaits and drawn in at the waist by a plain
girdle. " The attire of the Queen of Sheba's ladies, carried out in a new
charming manner," is a point which moves Vasari to admiration here ;
but still more the painter's science in perspective and taste in classical
architecture, as testified by the " order of Corinthian columns divinely
proportioned," which constitute the portico of the king's palace. Below
this we have the battle of Saxa Rubra. The painter has followed a tale
of Eusebius and Zosimus, according to which Maxentius perished by the
breaking down of a treacherous bridge he had meant to break down
under Constantine. But he has not attempted to realise the conditions
of a practical battle. The Tiber is like the Jordan in our Baptism.
It winds fair and pure under the same delicate sky between blue and
green, and among the same chalky paths and patches of greenery and
white-stemmed trees. The horse of Maxentius has his hind legs in the
stream, and horse and rider struggle rather stiffly for the land. On either
bank a host is drawn up, that of Constantine beneath an eagle banner,
while the badge of his enemy is a dragon. Each host is but a stationary
throng of horsemen, a slanting forest of many-coloured spears, red and
white and green against the sky ; outlandish armour and strange crests
and fierce soldier faces, all strongly drawn, and in colour showing the
richest and most delighted invention and the subtlest sense of air and
space and value.

The same considerations have prevailed in the opposite battle-piece,
where Heraclius defeats the Persians. Here are banners that wave above
the press, with passagings of green and amber and crimson and white and
rose-colour against the blue, and devices of eagle and lion and dragon and
swan, and one in which two Ethiop silhouettes combine with geometrical
forms in the quaintest heraldry. And here, as Vasari says, is the lustre of
steel armour wonderfully represented in fresco. And here are white horses
of the loveliest colour in shadow and light, and bronzed harness, and tawny
or green or purple sleeves and jerkins ; a splendid medley. But in this
case fancifulness and the love of beauty have not caused the fighting
to be neglected. Much power is put forth to express (in the words of
the same guide and gossip) * ' the terror, the animosity, the skill, the strength,
and all the other affections which can be contemplated in those that
fight ; and in like manner the accidents of war, with an almost incredible
medley of wounded, fallen, and dead." The tussle with its many colours
resolves itself into a number of episodes thoroughly and severely made
out. The warriors are some of a Roman and some of a Moorish type.
One rider drives his poniard into the throat of another, whose horse
lashes out as his rider hangs falling backward over his croup. One on a
grey charger makes to the rescue of a foot soldier who presents his shield
against the lance thrust of a mounted greybeard. One flinging up his
shield cries for quarter on his knees. Two light- armed footmen with fierce
faces clash their bucklers in the foreground. The buglers blow with

PIEEO BELLA FRANCESCA. 179

strained cheeks. But, spirited as all this is in invention, it is not quite
spirited in effect ; thoroughness and severity are there, but vehemence of
life and motion are not there ; the fight they wage is somehow wooden.
What Piero could do best was not the vehemence of motion, but the
dignity of vigorous figures in repose ; and this you get to perfection in
that end of the same composition where the victorious king and his
counsellors (under the likeness of grave Italian citizens) stand round
beneath a crimson canopy, while the captive Chosroes kneels in the midst,
and the executioner heaves up his sword. The final scene of the Exalta-
tion, with its kneeling and standing figures of Jews in their high head-
pieces, is perhaps the least interesting of the whole. But the Discovery,
which comes in the middle course between these two, has masterly work
both in the representation of the miracle and in that of the workmen who
raise the cross before Helena and her kneeling women. Piero is
especially great in giving a frank dignity to the working realities of life ;
nothing can be finer than his aproned carpenters and labourers both
here and in the raising of Judas, which is one of the subjects to the left of
the window. The two grand draped figures which stand one on either
side of the window higher up (and which I take to be Judas and Helena),
have not ampler style with more complete sincerity. But if we are to
speak technically, the triumph of his art is in the Vision of Constantine,
in the right-hand lower compartment beside the window. Hear Vasari : —
" Above every other Consideration both of nature and art, is his having
painted the night and a foreshortened angel, who, coming head downwards
to carry the token of victory to Constantine as he lies asleep in his tent
with a chamberlain and certain armed guards, whose figures are dark with
the shades of night, with his own light illuminates the tent, the guards,
and everything around ; all with the utmost discretion." In its day, this
double feat of drawing the downward swoop, hardier than anything Uccelli
had attempted, of a winged figure in sudden perspective, and at the same
time of illuminating with light from this figure all the other objects of the
scene, was a thing to amaze all beholders. And it is not done vulgarly,
as art does her feats in her seasons of decadence, but with a direct and
masculine force that excludes the idea of ostentation. In the fashion of
the tent and disposal of the sleeper, the painter has followed the model of
Agnolo Gaddi in Santa Croce. In the irruption and diffusion of light
into darkness, he is himself the model that others have followed, and
above all Raphael in his famous piece of the Liberation of Peter at the
Vatican. And thus he makes good his place in the front rank of those
who stand between the traditional fathers of painting and the consummate
spirits, born fifty years after him, whose art is a confluence and
commingling of all the currents of the Italian genius.

The remaining works of Piero della Francesca cannot be dated,
nor their sequence exactly determined. Our Baptism aforemen-
tioned has so many points of close resemblance with the frescoes
of Arezzo that it may be safely put down to the same time as

9—2

180 FIERO BELLA. FRANCE SCI.

these. A somewhat dull Annunciation preserved in Perugia, and fully
described by Vasari, is probably earlier. In the painter's native town
you may see a fresco of the Resurrection, and an oil-painting of Our Lady
of Mercy, which are likely to be later. They are both pieces of the first
class. Perhaps if one had to name the finest single work remaining from
the hand of Piero, it would be this Resurrection, carelessly preserved in
the hall of the town- council of Borgo San Sepolcro. One common type of
Resurrection shows the Saviour with the red-cross banner bursting forth
from the tomb with pow.er and radiance. Another common type shows
him tranquilly disprisoned and floating over it. Piero has followed the
example of an old Sienese picture existing in the town, and represented
him as half emerged only, and standing firmly with one foot planted on the
hither edge of the sepulchre. With one hand upon the raised knee, he
holds together the folds of a cloak of the loveliest rose-colour magnificently
cast and drawn about his athletic frame. His right hand grasps strongly
the upright staff of the banner. The expression of solid victory, of bold
imperious calm, is complete. The Roman guards lie helmed and mailed
before the tomb, majestic frames in masterly disposition, and behind, the
customary landscape of white soil and winding paths and trees beneath a
beautiful sky. The altar-piece of Our Lady of Mercy repeats the com-
position preferred from of old by the charitable confraternities (Compagni-e
di misericordia) for their standards and emblems. A gigantic Virgin
stands erect and holds out her cloak with both hands from her sides,
giving shelter with it to a company of her votaries. So you may see her
in Arezzo, painted in half a dozen altar-pieces, or carved in relief upon
the tympanum of one of the prettiest transition buildings of the early
Renaissance. Her round features and look of bold sweetness in this
piece are in Piero's most characteristic manner, and the groups of kneel-
ing votaries, men on one side and women on the other, are admirably
simple and severe. A number of separate saints and small Scripture sub-
jects that once formed the predella to this picture have been built up all
about it in a sufficiently barbarous rococo re -arrangement of the seventeenth
century.

Of works at Bologna cited in our text, of works at Ancona, not a trace
remains. At Ferrara nothing is to be seen of what Piero did for Duke
Borso with his own hand in the palace of Schifanoia, but some mytho-
logical paintings show the character of his school. There was another
undertaking of his for the city of Arezzo, which has perished out of sight,
though we possess the written memorial of it. This I quote in part,
because it gives us an entertaining glimpse of the way in which business
was done between a painter and his clients in those days. A religious
confraternity of the city, the Company of the Virgin Annunciate, wanted
a new gonfalon or standard for their procession ; and thus ran the contract
drawn up for its execution :—" We assign the said standard to Master
Peter, son of Benedict of Borgo San Sepolcro, master in painting, who has
painted the great chapel of S. Francis in Arezzo, on these terms and con-
ditions. That the said Master Peter is to work and paint upon the said

PIEKO BELLA FRANCE SCA. 181

standard," sc. with his own hand — and here follow measurements and
proportions — " and that upon the said standard shall be painted Our Lady
Annunciate with the Angel, loth on one side and the other ; and that all
the blue shall be the finest ultramarine ; and that such blue shall be put
wherever it ought to be put in the said standard, upon the cloak of Our
Lady Annunciate, and in the border, and wherever it is proper ; and that
all the other colours shall be of fine quality ; and that the border round
about shall be a procession of figures the prettiest and finest that can be
made, as shall seem most beautiful and fitting in the judgment of the
aforesaid Master Peter ; and that it shall be done with fine gold and the
blue called ultramarine, and shall be beautiful and of good workmanship ;
and the heads of Our Lady and the Angel shall be fair and lovely, and
proper angelic countenances;" and then come more stipulations about
ultramarine, the precious pigment ; and finally the price and the forfeit.

But this belongs to the year 1466, three years before Piero was invited
to the court of Frederic of Urbino. The works done by him at that court
are the last of which we have certain trace or record : though it is pos-
sible from internal evidence to suppose a later date for either the National
Gallery Nativity or Mr. Seymour's picture of the Coronation. It is
certain that Piero lived twenty-five years at least after his summons to
Urbino. As to this latter part of his career, Vasari is a great darkener of
counsel. For one thing, he says that Piero went blind at sixty and could
not paint. That might be possible, considering the absence of works
which can be ascribed to his old age. But another tale of Vasari' s about
him calls for flat contradiction, and is an instance of his peculiar principles
of biography. Vasari is not a diffident writer ; most things which he does
give him unaffected satisfaction ; but there is one capacity, the capacity of
a moralist, in which, if his secret heart were known, he pleases himself best
of all. That is the key to half his inaccuracies. To get an opportunity
of moralising, to break in upon his delightful gossip with impressive pla-
titudes of this order, he will stick at nothing. The slightest hint is
enough ; or if no hint is forthcoming, he will invent one. In the case of
Domenico Veniziano, the fact of another Domenico having once been found
dead in the street gave him the hint which he worked up into the murder
of Domenico Veniziano by Andrea del Castagno. And thus he could get
in his reflections on the fatal consequences of jealousy. Now Piero della
Francesca had a friend and fellow-townsman, a brother of the order of
St. Francis, named Luca Pacioli. Luca Pacioli was one of the leading
mathematicians of the early Kenaissance, who commented Euclid and wrote
geometrical treatises of his own in that mood of half- macaronic pedantry
which made so many writers of his time forget sense and syntax in the pur-
suit of a fantastic and mongrel Latinism. This excellent forgotten pedant,
afterwards the friend of Lionardo, was known to have turned to account
for his own work the mathematical studies of Piero della Francesca. That
is enough for Vasari, who forthwith denounces eloquently the ingratitude
of those who pick the brains of others without acknowledgment. But look
at the facts. Luca Pacioli dedicates his first book, written in 1494, to

182 PIEBO BELLA FRANCESCA.

Guidubaldo, the son and successor of Federigo of Urbino'; and in the
dedication talks of the great palace of Urbino as the new light of Italy ; but
says, " It would be nothing without perspective ; as is clearly demonstrated
by the monarch of painting in our times, Master Peter of the Fran-
ceschi, our townsman and the familiar frequenter of your illustrious Ducal
house, in a compendious treatise he composed on the art of painting and
the force of lines in perspective ; which treatise at present exists in your
noble library, together with the innumerable multitude of your other choice
books in every faculty." Again, in the later book quoted at the head of
this essay, Luca, at the request of a group of friends, writes a summary
of architectural proportion in twenty short chapters, and promises to do
more another time, " with the help of the documents of our fellow-
townsman and contemporary, the monarch of this faculty in our time,
Master Peter of the Franceschi, of which he formerly wrote an excellent
handbook, and one which we have thoroughly mastered." Who but
Vasari could ever have found, in the discipleship thus handsomely
avowed, the occasion for a lecture on the sin of plagiarism ? But the most
instructive passage by far is the following, again from Pacioli's Summa de
Arithmetica of 1494. "If you consider well in all the arts, you will
find that Proportion is mother and queen of them all, and that without
her nothing can be done. This is proved by perspective in pictures ; for
if they do not give to the stature of a human figure its due dimensions to the
eye of the spectator, it never answers well. And again, the painter never
disposes his colours well, unless he attends to the values of each ; for in-
stance, in flesh-painting, so much white or black or yellow, &c., or
again red, &c. And so of the planes upon which they have to place their
figures, it behoves them to take great care to make them stand at their due
proportion of distance. And so of the costumes they put on them; let
these come so as to look as they ought to look. And so in making a
figure sit under a vaulted canopy, they have to proportion it in such a way
that if it were to stand on its feet its head should not come above the top.
And so in the other lineaments and dispositions, of whatsoever figure it
may be. In evidence of which, and that painters may know how to dis-
pose things properly, the sublime painter (in our days still living) Master
Peter of the Franceschi, our fellow-townsman of Borgo San Sepolcro, has
composed a valuable book on the same kind of proportion " (i.e. perspective),
" in which he speaks of painting in a lofty style, always accompanying his
text with the manner and figure of doing the thing. The whole of which
we have read and digested. The which he wrote in the vulgar tongue, and
afterwards the famous master in Greek and Latin oratory, poetry, and
rhetoric, his intimate companion and in like manner our fellow-townsman,
Master Matteo, turned it into Latin " (and here brother Luke shall speak
for himself) " ornatissima mente deverbo ad verbum con exquisiti vocabuli."
The reader may think my mathematician dull : but look, I say, how
much he tells us. First of all, he acquits himself of the stigma set upon
him by Vasari. Next, he makes it certain that Piero was living in 1494.
That Luca says nothing of the blindness is another, although a negative

PIEKO BELLA FEANCESCA. 183

point. I think we may conclude that infirmity to be an invention ; and
that Piero painted less and less in his old age, not because he was blind,
but because he was more and more taken up with the theoretical studies
that bore upon his art ; because the immense sweetness of the mathematics
overmastered him. Not one, but two, treatises of his are extant — one
" On Perspective," the other " On the Five Eegular Bodies." * Luca
reiterates his phrase " monarch of painting in our times "as if that had
been Piero's recognised position on his own side of the peninsula at least.
And it is clear that contemporary enthusiasm saw in him at least as much
the man of science as the man of art. Luca's lumbering language is a
contemporary enumeration of those points of exactness in representing
things as they are — linear perspective, aerial perspective, the placing of
objects on their true planes, the proportioning of figures to buildings —
which the half symbolical art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
had neglected, but which the fifteenth century in its love of perfection
set its heart on. And in this domain he means that Piero was monarch.
Some say that science kills art, and that the mathematic spirit was
presently the death of the esthetic spirit in Italy. Not so. As long as
the imagination and the perceptions are keen, art will flourish, and the
mathematic spirit be a helpful servant of the aesthetic spirit; if the
imagination and perceptions are dull, art is killed already. You cannot
help a bad eyesight with rules and measurements ; but a good eyesight
you can help with them. The mathematics of Piero della Francesca
meant a great deal to himself and his contemporaries. To us they
mean little ; but they do not hurt his art. They leave him, if they do
not make him, what he was, one of the mightiest artists of a mighty
generation, and one of the simplest in his strength. From Umbria he
had drawn the secret of homely combinations and direct surprises ; from
Florence draughtsmanship, the power of dramatic distribution and
combination, science and the passion of science, the resolve that art
should leave no province of nature unattempted. From his own instincts
he took the twofold choice that gives his work its charm and singularity —
a love of colour in its fairest gradations and most fanciful harmonies,
and with that, a delight in the confident gestures of the strong, the
innocent haughtiness of physical health, the courageous mien of those
who stand on both feet, and hold their heads high, looking out with eyes
of a frank indifferent sweetness upon a world of which they feel the
masters. Taking much from his teachers, having more in himself, he
gave most of all to his pupils. And one, the prince of these, I hope to
be allowed to tell about another day. S. C.

* I assume, though not with certainty, that the MS. Treatise on Perspective
in the Ambrosian library at Milan, described by Harzen (as quoted by Crowe-Caval-
caselle, vol. ii. p. 528), is identical with that in the Urbino library at the Vatican
described by Mr. Deninstoun (Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, ii. 195), who is also
the authority for the existence in the same place of Piero's second treatise, on the
Five Regular Bodies.

184

'a (garlbr

THE regeneration of poetry which was inaugurated at the dawn of the
nineteenth century came from opposite sides. It took its music and its
passion from Shelley, and its devotion to nature from Wordsworth. Both
overturned the severely classical school which came in with Dryden and
Pope, men who were pleased with the constitution of things as they were.
I take Shelley and Wordsworth as types of the new order, because Byron,
though largely uniting the qualities of both, did not, in the general outline
of his genius, so distinctively set forth the special and distinguishing
characteristics of either. Shelley rebelled against organised society, and
poured his wrath and his ecstasies into his verse ; Wordsworth, also,
touched into a noble frame of soul by the initiation of the French Revolution,
thought he saw the grand triumph of right over might in the immediate
distance. The aristocrat and the plebeian — Shelley was the descendant of
two illustrious families, and Wordsworth was the son of a country attor-
ney— met on common ground. They were living and writing at the same
time ; both Republicans and Communists in spirit, inspired by the grand
idea of hastening that period when the brotherhood of man would be recog-
nised throughout the world. For this they worked, and in different
grooves brought about a revolution in poetic literature. Shelley — who by
his family connected himself with Sir Philip Sidney, the pure and noble
knight of immortal renown — never lost his faith in those principles which
filled his own father with horror. The dignity of man outweighed with
him all the glories of the peerage, and to the last this great and unfortu-
nate genius preserved his conscience from reproach, and loved his species
after the most shameful usage. The enfranchisement of humanity was with
him a deeper sentiment than with Wordsworth. The latter, whom I never-
theless regard as being the equal of any English poet we have witnessed
since Shakspeare, had really Conservative instincts beneath the enthusiasm
which welled up within him at the thought of freedom being gained for
France. In the tranquil beauty of nature he was contentedly absorbed,
but he was seized with affright at the natural concomitants of that very
revolution among men which he hailed with so much ardour. The Reign
of Terror dissipated his dream of universal happiness. Not so with Shelley.
Though far from possessing the mental aplomb of Wordsworth generally,
his eye in this matter was more keen and far-seeing. So much wrong had
been committed in the world for centuries, that he knew the balance could
not be adjusted without blood ; and though his own heart bled at misery
and injustice, he did not begrudge the sacrifice. He looked farther into

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 185

the years than Wordsworth for the effects of the Great Revolution, though
in his own crusade against evil he worked with all the energy and impatience
of the man who believes he can convert the world in a day. The Reign
of Terror was a necessity. To Wordsworth it was the bouleversement of
all his hopes, and transformed him into a Conservative. As a friend of
his own has written in just rebuke of his want of faith on this head, " The
Reign of Terror was a mere fleeting and transitional phasis. The
Napoleon dynasty was nothing more. Even that very Napoleon scourge,
which was supposed by many to have consummated and superseded the
Revolution, has itself passed away upon the wind — has itself been super-
seded— leaving no wreck, no relic, or record behind, except precisely those
changes which it worked, not in its character of an enemy to the Revolution
(which also it was), but as its servant and its tool. See, even whilst we
speak, the folly of that cynical sceptic who would not allow time for great
natural processes of purification to travel onwards to their birth, or wait for
the evolution of natural results : the storm that shocked him has wheeled
away ; the frost and the hail that offended him have done their office ;
the rain is over and gone ; happier days have descended upon France ;
the voice of the turtle is heard in all her forests; once again, after two
thousand years of serfdom, man walks with his head erect ; Bastiles are
no more ; every cottage is searched by the golden light of law ; and the
privileges of religious conscience have been guaranteed and consecrated
for ever and ever." Thirty years have passed since these words^were written,
and France has recently gone through stupendous throes, from which she
has emerged with strong and erect presence ; but the grandeur of her
destiny is not accomplished yet. When we remember, however, the days
of her darkness, has the price paid for her present position been too great ?
Wordsworth yearned for immediate fruition ; but an idea sometimes takes
a thousand years to become concrete.

I have been impelled to this comparison because inherent radicalism
(which I may hereafter consider more fully) was one of the changeless
ideas and convictions of Shelley. From his earliest years of thought we
find it asserting itself, separating the poet from all the natural views and
associations by which he was environed. To understand him fully he must
be regarded in this light, viz. : as one who, from the first moment of his
intellectual consciousness, indulged an antipathy to the institutions of so-
ciety, while he loved and pitied the individual. As a child, his keen and
weird imagination, teeming with vivid conceptions of the ideal, was not all
that was noticeable in him. His thoughts and aspirations were not those
of the rest of his schoolfellows, and he must be followed closely from the
time when he first began to think and to suffer. His mind, even in its
first evolutions, was busy with the Infinite. He was making daily ex-
cursions into the vast region of the unknowable. His schoolfellows, being
unable to comprehend him, busied themselves in tormenting him, and in
endeavouring to render his life a burden. One can imagine how St,
Augustine's language would apply to him when he said that " the boy's

9—5

186 SHELLEY'S EAELIER YEARS.

sufferings while they last are quite as real as those of the man ; " indeed,
we may credibly suppose that his anguish was almost keener in these
early days at the injustice he endured than it was in after years when
there were lavishly hurled at him opprobrious epithets. Verses which he
afterwards wrote show how completely isolated he was from those whom
he daily met in statu pupillari, and how even then he was leading a
separate existence, like some lonely, melancholy star : —

I do remember well the hour which burst

My spirit's sleep : a fresh May dawn it was,

When I walk'd forth upon the glittering grass,

And wept, I knew not why : until there rose

From the near schoolroom voices that, alas !

Were but one echo from a world of woes —

The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

And then I clasped my hands, and Jook'd around ;
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground :
So, without shame, 1 spake:—" I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power ; for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check."

Remembering all that is implied in these lines, and the facts upon
which the description is based, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Percy
Bysshe Shelley, the most spiritual of all the poets of the nineteenth cen-
tury, remains, in many aspects, one of the unsolved problems of literature.
Misapprehended and misunderstood more perhaps than any other man of
equal genius by his own generation, even at this day also his name
excites a visible tremor in those whose estimate of him . has been formed
from a superficial examination of his extraordinary character. The wild
beauty of his song penetrates every mind which is capable of being moved
by poetic thought and expression ; yet from the moment when this grand
but erratic luminary first shot across the horizon of English literature,
readers and critics have been divided into two distinctly hostile camps
whenever any attempt has been made to assign him his true position.
We are in the habit of thinking that the poet is never happy till his death ;
but neither in his life nor his death hath the just balance been held with
regard to Shelley — his detractors ever being unwilling to give due weight
to the circumstances of his life, and his unreasoning admirers being
blinded to his imperfections by the excess and magnificence of his poetic
vision. More than most men in his art has he excited a personal interest
in the legion of his commentators and elucidators, and in almost all that
has been said of him some warp or bias is easily discernible. A curious
and interesting study may, however, be made of this gifted being, if we
examine, by the light of well- ascertained facts, the springs of thought and
action in his early life — and it is a study which will materially assist
towards a conception of the real nature of the poet in his later years.
From the very youth of Shelley the interconnection between fact and

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 187

action was so close and intimate — distinguishing in truth the whole of his
strange and brilliant career — that the biographical incidents of his history
become necessary to a true understanding of his character. The poet
lives in his emotions ; pre-eminently was this the case with Shelley ; and
the singular strength and tenacity of his feelings will in a large measure
account for the failure of mere criticism, unassisted by a quick sympathy,
to arrive at a just estimate of the poet and the man. My present object
is chiefly to set forth as I conceive him, Shelley, while yet in his youth,
through his genius and personality, a being permeated with the " enthu-
siasm of humanity," to a degree seldom witnessed in recent generations.
Biography will be an adjunct, by whose aid we shall endeavour to get at
the soul of the poet, and hope to unravel some of those tangled threads of
character which puzzle most students of his nature, and which have even
betrayed men of kindred gifts into unworthy aspersions upon his name.
For nearly two centuries past no more remarkable phenomenon has
arisen — a phenomenon at once so striking and so splendid — the terror of
those who saw in him only the fiery champion of Atheism, but a glorious
radiance to all who have finally comprehended the efforts of his imagina-
tion and the nobility of his heart. He can scarcely pass for a true
lover of poetry who has not in his youth revelled in the luxuriant fancies
of Queen Mab, nor can a man be said to have done justice to strength of
thought in his later age except The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound have,
with other extraordinary creations, commanded his willing admiration.
This sanguine and rebellious spirit had but one equal in his day — he to
whom I have already made reference — Wordsworth, the patriarch of the
North, who, filled with a calm majestic as that which possessed the moun-
tains and lakes of his inspiration, was in every respect the antithesis of his
younger brother in song.

One trembles for the veracity of history in relation to past ages, when
we remember how circumstances which occurred only fifty years ago have
been distorted for the convenience of interested persons. Shelley, like Dr.
Johnson, had his Bosvvell, and the biographer of the former has left behind
him a work almost as unique as the Scotchman's immortal record. But with
this qualifying adjective all similarity ends. Boswell was content to narrate
facts, but when necessary for his theories Shelley's biographer, Hogg, was
prolific in inventing them. I should imagine there would be little diffi-
culty in tracing many of the false conceptions of the poet's character to
his door. The invention of a fact, indeed, was with him an easy and
insignificant accomplishment. And if other facts more trustworthy than
his own proved refractory, so much the worse for the facts ; but that could
not be allowed to deter him for a moment in his development of the rela-
tions between Shelley's work and his life. To prove that the poet never
conducted himself as other mortals (even in his youth), he writes a
lengthy disquisition upon Shelley's " raising the Devil" at Oxford — not a
formidable operation at any time, if we are to believe the theologians,
seeing that the enemy of the human race is always close at our elbow.

188 SHELLEY'3 EARLIER YEARS.

Yet boyish pranks like this have been solemnly paraded as affording a clue
to the understanding of the poet, although every boy of Shelley's ingenious
mind and lively spirit exhibits similar idiosyncracies, upon which it
would be absurd to build a serious and elaborate superstructure. Then,
again, this biographer had an obvious Tory bias, and the opinions of
Shelley, both religious and political, terribly disturbed his equilibrium. In
one passage Hogg says of his friend, "He gave himself up too much to
people who have since been called Radicals ; these were necessarily
vulgar ; they dreaded and detested his conspicuously aristocratical and
gentlemanlike dispositions, and being commonly needy men, chiefly per-
haps beause they were lazy and dissipated, they preyed upon him most
unmercifully." The absurdity of this passage is only equalled by its
imbecility ; and it is very valuable as showing the calibre of the man who
undertook to tell us the story of Shelley's life. His greatest condemnation
lies in the fact that the man of genius and the aristocrat could be a
Radical of the most advanced type. Other biographers have given us the
details of their respective friendships with Shelley, whose records are more
useful for the purposes of the student from the fact that they are not dis-
figured by personal feelings and animosities. But the reflection still
recurs, how inadequate is all that has been written to place in a just ligbt
in the eyes of posterity that singular being whose genius was of so sublime
and transcendent an order. Ample materials exist for the construction of
a complete biography, but obstacles still intervene to prevent the accom-
plishment of the task with the requisite fulness and freedom. " Pelion
upon Ossa " is but a faint shadowing forth of the memorial tomes which
have been reared ; but many of the volumes never had any raison d'etre
whatever, and they only serve to intensify our perplexity and bewilderment
in endeavouring to consolidate the facts of Shelley's career. Perhaps the
only solid rock in these drifting sands of biography is that volume wherein
Lady Shelley has given us a brief memorial of her illustrious relative.
Meanwhile, pending the full publication of the real history of Shelley, it
is not impossible to advance a solution of many problems of his existence.
And one of the questions we have to ask is, will the poet yet be reconciled
to the mass of human beings whose feelings De Quincey declared him to
have outraged — not only in his own, but in every age — by his attack upon
established dogma and religion ? I refuse, for one, to signify adhesion to
De Quincey's asseveration, and to believe that when Shelley's character is
placed in a clearer light, he will still be regarded as the bitter enemy of all
religious teaching and belief. In stating the grounds for this opinion, I
shall not plead for his memory ad misericordiam, but by right of that
eternal justice which he was ever the first to invoke and acknowledge.

Before the childish principle of selfishness is generally eliminated from
the breast, was this youth troubled and saddened by the wrongs and
misery of the world. Yet never were divine pity and magnanimity
crushed out of his soul. All the malignity of his foes, and all the suffer-
ing which fell to his lot, only served to make the flame of his noble

SHELLEY'S EAELIER YEARS. 189

philanthropy burn the brighter and with"a purer radiance. Despotism
never conquered the fresh feelings of his heart, and his gentleness seemed
to grow by the unlikely meat it fed on. Of the strange schoolboy at
Brentford, " nursing his mighty youth," unsuspected of genius, and appa-
rently the bitter sport of Fates, we have the following portraiture :
" Shelley was slightly yet elegantly formed; he had deep blue eyes, of a
wild, strange beauty, and a high white forehead, overshadowed with a
quantity of dark-brown curling hair. His complexion was very fair ; and,
though his features were not positively handsome, the expression of his
countenance was one of exceeding sweetness and sincerity. His look
of youthfulness he retained to the end of his life, though his hair was
beginning to get grey — the effect of intense study, and of the painful agita-
tions of mind through which he had passed." * We are not surprised to
learn that though Shelley paid little attention to his tasks at school, he
easily outstripped his companions. But the daily routine was singularly
wearisome to him, and was rendered doubly so by the petty persecutions
to which he was subjected, and which he regarded as very atrocious.
This was one of the first intimations of his recognition of the dignity of
the human soul, and of his unchangeable determination never to see it
degraded in his own person. A strong antipathy to physical punishments
he displayed when he visited his sister Helen at her school at Clapham,
and insisted upon the cessation of what he considered to be a derogatory
method of correction. Referring to his school life, one writer says, " I do
not give him as an example for children to follow. Away with this cant
of schoolboy reproving. I describe, and as far as in me lies unfold, the
secrets of a human heart; and, if I be true to nature, I depict an
uprightness of purpose, a generosity of sentiment, and a sweetness of dis-
position, that yielded not to the devil of hate, but to the God of love,
unequalled by any human being that ever existed. Tamed by affection,
but unconquered by blows, what chance was there that Shelley should be
happy at a public school ? " It is strange that this man, who should
have excited such an intense veneration in every individual who knew him
personally, should have been subjected to bitter diatribes from those who
ran with the multitude to condemn him, but who were utterly unable to
comprehend his nature.

Shelley at Eton displayed that fearlessness of character which ever
strongly distinguished him. He opposed with passionate ardour the system
of fagging which was pursued, and his individual force was such that he
kept down the hateful system, so far as he was personally concerned. As
for the stories told of his residence, both here and at Oxford, are they not
too familiar to need repetition ? Doubtless, his eccentricities have been
exaggerated ; whilst his serious periods of reflection and isolation — during
which his fruitful imagination conjured up strange visions, creating and

* Other portraits have been given of Shelley, but this description appears to be
the most authentic.

190 SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.

peopling worlds — were taken as evidences that he was unsociable, if not
morose. Probably the whole matter is a misconception. As well make
oil and water coalesce as adapt Shelley to the moods of the youths with
whom he was associated. Constantly living in another sphwe, he was
only occasionally brought down to current mundane affairs and persons.
Yet that he was capable of forming sincere and lasting friendships has
been abundantly proved. As a youth, his large soul was impatient of
all paltriness and meanness with which it came in contact, while the
pleasures of his imagination were so strong and satisfying as to draw him
away largely from ordinary communion with the human. Then, too, even
in his days of boyhood, there were floating in his mind certain undefined
schemes which he longed to promulgate for the amelioration of the race ;
and there is something beautiful, if strange, in a youth of seventeen so
impressed with the necessity of working for the good of his species as to
be contemplating the issue of a novel which was to give the death-blow to
intolerance. Concerning those anecdotes which have been taken by some
to point to incipient madness, I need not say much. After carefully
examining them, I find nothing but what may be attributed to a simple
feverishness of nerves. Earnestness and restlessness which never slept
till his body perished in the blue Mediterranean — qualities whose per-
meating influences were peculiarly exceptional in him, made him seem a
being of another type. He experienced also — but only on two or three
separate occasions in his lifetime, peculiar visions or hallucinations, which,
however, were simply the result of a surcharge of ideality, and nothing
more. But of many of his extraordinary deeds we should never have
heard, had he not developed into an unquestionably great poet. When
genius becomes manifest, it pays the penalty of having all the trivial
actions of youth unearthed, and canvassed as remarkable incidents, whose
real import is now only discovered for the first time. Occasionally these
incidents are invented. That Shelley was eccentric — a being, that is,
who does not move in the common centre, but who will have his own
orbit — is an undoubted fact ; nor does it admit of denial that his con-
sciousness of divergence from the mental constitution of others led him to
isolate himself, just as the early intimations of genius, so different in kind,
led to the seclusiveness of James Watt.

The fact that Shelley was called " Atheist " at Eton has been held to
be indicative of his opinions thus early in life, notwithstanding it has been
pointed out that the term Atheist was applied at Eton to one who ventured
to set even temporal authorities at defiance. Such speculations as these
are worthless in helping us to arrive at a judgment upon the man. We
are at a loss to know what basis of truth exists in them, and it is as foolish
as it is unjust to attempt to construct a theory of character when we are
absolutely in doubt as to the preliminary steps being sound and undeniable.
This much, and this only, is, I think, legitimately deducible from Shelley's
stay at Eton — that here was a remarkable youth, who could not possibly
be confounded with the common herd ; one whose vivid but confused

SHELLEPS EARLIER YEARS. . 191

imagination was struggling after divine forms in which to express itself;
one who was the sworn foe of injustice, and who was prepared to combat
it, even if the result involved martyrdom. But he was no Atheist as yet
in the ordinary acceptation of the term. He undoubtedly hated all
authority which did not spring from love ; but upon distinctively religious
and theological questions he had not yet begun to formulate. His idea of
abolishing God, and conducting the world upon an improved principle,
was reserved for a rather later stage of his existence.

I have a strong conviction that the brief interregnum between Shelley's
leaving Eton and his being entered at Oxford witnessed a great and
noticeable expansion of his mind. This was the result of the freedom and
solitariness which he enjoyed at home, where he busied himself deeply in
learning and in speculations. At any rate, when we next meet with him
as an undergraduate of University College, it is to see one who bent himself
to the studies which fell to his lot with an ardour which astonished those
of less sanguine temperament. Several literary efforts which he put forth
antecedent to this period really gave no adequate foreshadowing of his
powers. Passing by a play which he wrote when a mere boy, in con-
junction with his sister Elizabeth, and which probably merited no warmer
appreciation than it received from the great comedian Mathews, we come
to The Wandering Jew, a work, it is said, he wrote together with Medwin,
but which in reality was altogether Shelley's own. Some biographers
appear to have no knowledge of this effusion ; but, as a matter of fact,
all the leading ideas of Shelley's portion of it were afterwards worked
up in his poems. For his first published work, Zastrozzi, a novel, Shelley
received 40£. ; but the indiscretion of publication does not appear to
have been repeated by the publishers who issued the work. As regards
Zastrozzi, it was a mixture of the styles of Mrs. Radcliffe and Matthew
Gregory Lewis, the latter being a favourite author of Shelley's ; but a
story written by Dr. Moore about a century ago must have made some
impression on the young author. Suffice it to say, that the novel was a
wild, if eloquent, absurdity ; and that probably the most satisfactory thing
in connection with it was a magnificent banquet which Shelley was enabled
to give to eight friends out of the proceeds of the romance. Another
work, written by Shelley at a somewhat later date, St. Irvyne, was simply
the result of an extensive reading of weird tales and novels, and only those
persons who have a keener insight than is to be obtained by fair criticism
could detect in it anything which would warrant its republication. A
volume to which more interest attaches is that entitled Original Poetry by
Victor and Cazire. Stockdale, the publisher, gives the following account of
this volume and its principal author : — " The unfortunate subject of these
very slight recollections introduced himself to me in the autumn of 1810.
He was extremely young. I should think he did not look more than
eighteen. With anxiety in his countenance, he requested me to extricate
him from a pecuniary difficulty in which he was involved with a printer,
whose name I cannot call to mind, but who resided at Horsham, near to

192 . SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.

which Timothy Shelley, Esquire, afterwards, I believe, made a Baronet,
the father of our poet, had a seat called Field Place. I am not quite
certain how the difference between the poet and the printer was arranged ;
but, after I had looted over the account, I know that it was paid, though
whether I assisted in the payment by money or acceptance I cannot
remember. The letters show that it was accomplished just before my too
conscientious friendship caused our separation. Be that as it may, on
the 17th of September, 1810, I received fourteen hundred and eighty
copies of a thin royal 8vo. volume, entitled Original Poetry by Alonzo and
Cazire, or two names something like them. The author told me that the
poems were the joint production of himself and a friend, whose name was
forgotten by me as soon as I heard it." Stockdale adds that from these
trifles which he published, and from personal intercourse, he at once
formed an opinion that Shelley was not an every- day character. There
are some speculations to the effect that Shelley's coadjutor in this volume
was his cousin and first love, Miss Harriet Grove, who was on a visit to
Field Place about the time that Shelley would have written the poems ;
but I am able to state that it was Elizabeth Shelley, and not Harriet
Grove, who was his coadjutor in this volume. The volume, however, had
a brief existence, for Shelley having discovered incorporated in it a poem
(now supposed to have been written by " Monk" Lewis), he ordered the
whole edition to be destroyed. One other literary venture with which
Shelley was connected must be mentioned, viz., the Posthumous Frag-
ments of Margaret Nicholson. This book had a singular origin. Shelley
intimated to his friend Hogg his intention of publishing some poems
anonymously, when the latter read them, and expressed an adverse opinion
upon them, though he thought they might easily be rendered into bur-
lesque poetry. Shelley accordingly set to work and increased the amusing
element in the poems, and Hogg suggested the title. Margaret Nicholson
was a mad washerwoman, who had attempted the life of George III., and
was now incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. The volume was so uncommon
in style that it had considerable success in the University of Oxford.
The most revolutionary sentiments were expressed, and, as there was a
good deal of wild talk about freedom just then, it was apparently not
suspected that the volume was written as burlesque, and certainly not
that its authors were in such close proximity to the heads of Colleges.

But these works are not of substantial moment in the development
of Shelley's genius, and I therefore approach sterner events. By this
time every individual who has read of Shelley's residence at Oxford and
expulsion from the University has formed his own definite conclusions
thereupon. Yet, in what has been written, justice is frequently denied,
first to the poet, and then to the authorities. As this residence of six
months at Oxford, and its unhappy termination, formed one of the prin-
cipal turning points in Shelley's career, it will be of importance to look
at the matter somewhat closely. I must express my conviction, however,
in the outset, that so great had been the progress which Shelley had

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 193

made in free thought, that .he would himself, at no distant date, hare
felt it his duty to leave the University, as a place which had grown to be
totally incompatible with his views. It must eventually have come to
that, for he could never have smothered his convictions. Mr. Gilfillan,
ifl his Gallery of Literary Portraits, while admitting that Shelley was
harshly treated, goes on to say " that, had pity and kind-hearted ex-
postulation been tried, instead of reproach and abrupt expulsion, they
might have weaned him from the dry dugs of Atheism to the milky
breast of the faith and ' worship of sorrow ; ' and the touching spectacle
had been renewed, of the demoniac sitting, ' clothed, and in his right
mind,' at the feet of Jesus." Passing by the cruel and foolish com-
parison between Shelley and the demoniac of the Gospels, I must totally
dissent from this conclusion of Mr. Gilfillan' s, and regard it only as
another instance of his inability to understand Shelley's character. There
were more stages to pass than the authorities (had they been never so
solicitous) could have aided the poet to traverse. As the matter stands,
there is scarcely room for doubt that the authorities of the University
behaved with great harshness to the erring student and his friend.
The explanation given by Hogg of the production of the pamphlet on
The Necessity of Atheism clearly shows, I think, that its author's
judges transgressed on the side of over- severity. The whole thing
was unfortunate in this respect, that while on the one hand here was
an impulsive young student who could ill brook the indignity to which
he was subjected, as he believed, at the hands of the authorities, there
were these authorities themselves, on the other hand, who were as-
tounded at the daring of the youth who defied them. At this time
the very indefinite views of Shelley upon the question of the government
of the world and the existence of God began to assume form and
substance; but I am inclined to think, after carefully studying the
subject, that he was only feeling for the light. He meant his pamphlet
to be as much of a tentative character as of a declaratory one ; and he
would have rejoiced had those men of supposed erudition been able to
dissipate the clouds of scepticism in which he was fast becoming in-
volved. Lady Shelley's account of the pamphlet (and her testimony is
supported by Mr. Hogg) is as follows: "Notwithstanding the extremely
spiritual and romantic character of his (Shelley's) genius, he applied
himself to logic with ardour and success, and of course brought it to
bear on all subjects, including theology. With his habitual disregard of
consequences, he hastily wrote a pamphlet, in which the defective logic
of the usual arguments in favour of the existence of a God was set forth :
this he circulated among the authorities and members of his college. In
point of fact, the pamphlet did not contain any positive assertion ; it was
merely a challenge to discussion, beginning with certain axioms, and
finishing with a Q. E. D. The publication (consisting of only two pages)
seemed rather to imply, on the part of the writer, a desire to obtain
better reasoning on the side of the commonly received opinion, than any

194 SHELLEY'S EABLIEE YEAKS.

wish to overthrow with sudden violence the grounds of men's belief. In
any case, however, had the heads of the college been men of candid and
broad intellects, they would have recognised in the author of the obnoxious
pamphlet an earnest love of truth, a noble passion for arriving at the
nature of things, however painful the road. They might at least have
sought, by argument and remonstrance, to set him in what they conceived
to be the right path ; but either they had not the courage and the regard
for truth necessary for such a course, or they were themselves the victims
of a narrow education. At any rate, for this exercise of scholastic in-
genuity, Shelley was expelled." In all probability, the authorities were
not at home in discussing the troublesome questions raised by the dispu-
tatious student. They had one effective weapon within their grasp, how-
ever, which they used, viz., expulsion. Their apparent general obstinacy
and density of intellect call to mind the saying of Sydney Smith when
he complained that we should never get a wooden pavement to St. Paul's
till certain ecclesiastical dignitaries " could be persuaded to lay their
heads together." From Shelley's recorded account of the expulsion it will
be perceived that in the demeanour of the Master there was much of the
fortiter in re, but very little of the suaviter in modo ; and the best proof
we could desire that Shelley did not exaggerate in his narration is the
conduct of his friend Hogg. So convinced was he of the gross injustice
perpetrated upon Shelley, that he endeavoured to procure a reversal of
the sentence from the authorities, but only to share the same fate himself.
With regard to the whole subject, though I incline most nearly to Lady
Shelley's view of it, I cannot go the whole length of her statement.
She says that the poet was expelled from Oxford, with great injustice,
"fora pamphlet which, if it had been given as a translation of the work
of some old Greek, would have been regarded as a model of subtle meta-
physical reasoning." Perhaps so ; but however admirable as a meta-
physical exercise, the authorities would have been compelled to controvert
its positions. The ablest old Greek who ever lived would have been
dismissed from Oxford, equally with Shelley, if he had developed and
promulgated doctrines thoroughly incompatible with the religious basis of
the Colleges. On the other hand, De Quincey is wrong in his palliation
of Shelley's conduct when he puts it on the ground of his extreme youth.
He asserts that at this period he had only entered upon his sixteenth year,
whereas he had entered upon his nineteenth. The course which humanity
should have dictated in the matter of the pamphlet would have been to
allow some time for reflection on Shelley's part, in order to ascertain
whether he had affirmed and maintained what were real fixed principles
with him ; and in case he answered in the affirmative, then to give him
the option of withdrawal, after pointing out to him that by the very
nature of his tenets he was precluded from remaining a student at the
University. Had this been done, the University would have been vindi-
cated, whilst the heart of Shelley might have been saved one pang, and his
life one indignity — both of which must be regarded as unquestionably severe.

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 195

The results of the expulsion were disastrous to the poet in many ways.
Besides the anguish which the act itself caused his sensitive spirit, his father,
not in the least understanding the disposition of his gifted son, informed him
that he could no longer visit at Field Place except upon certain conditions,
to which Shelley found it impossible to accede. The bluff country member,
in writing to the elder Mr. Hogg, expressed the hope that they would re-
spectively be able to convert their sons from the error of their ways.
" Paley's * Natural Theology ' I shall recommend my young man to read,"
said Mr. Shelley. But his " young man " was too far gone for Paley, and
remained refractory. After his dismissal from College, the intimacy be-
tween Shelley and his early love abruptly ceased — another shaft of pain
from which he suffered. Miss Grove was removed from his influence : his
correspondence with Miss Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans) also
terminated in consequence of his heretical opinions.

In loneliness of heart, but with the pride of his lofty mind unsubdued
by the bolts of misfortune which had fallen upon him, we next behold the
outcast in London. He is now almost in pecuniary embarrassment, yet
the generosity of his nature is not one whit impaired ; and it is affirmed that
on one occasion he actually pawned his favourite solar microscope to relieve
a case of distress. Shelley took lodgings in Poland Street, a locality
which is said to have reminded him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and free-
dom ; and he appears to have nearly arrived at the same straits as that
favourite hero. But although his father treated him harshly, his sisters,
whom he seems to have ever deeply loved, played the partbf good Samari-
tans, sending him from their store of accumulated pocket-money sufficient
to keep him from starvation. The next important incident in his life
is one that with his soul and temperament might easily have been pre-
dicated. He fell in love. I ought, perhaps, rather to have said he was
fascinated by the aesthetic appearance of the being who stirred in him this
new feeling of admiration ; for it would appear from subsequent events that
love was too strong and too sacred a name to employ in describing the pas-
sion of Shelley for Harriet Westbrook. Certainly there was not the strength
and intensity of feeling in it which he afterwards experienced for Mary God-
win. Miss Westbrook is described as a beautiful girl "with a complexion
brilliant in pink and white, with hair quite like a poet's dream, and Bysshe's
peculiar admiration" — that is, of a light brown colour. She was of delicate
build, and at the time Shelley first saw her was about sixteen years of
age. Her father was a retired hotel-keeper, and well to do. Harriet
had a sister named Eliza, who was a constant butt for Mr. Hogg's ridi-
cule, and who does not appear to have been particularly prepossessing.
She had dark eyes, dark and plentiful hair (which she spent most of her
time in brushing), was pitted with the small-pox, and had a slight figure
and Jewish aspect. Much of the unhappiness of Shelley's life for the
next few years was due to the influence of this sister, as will probably
be one day proven. The letters of Shelley to Hogg at and near the time
of the meeting of the former with Miss Westbrook show that he had lost

19G SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.

all hope of ever being united to Miss Grove, and possibly also his affec-
tion for her was on the wane. That he had felt keenly the disappointment
in regard to her, nevertheless, not dubious. Miss "Westbrook's parents
living in London, Shelley was on one occasion (after a slight indisposi-
tion from which she had suffered) chosen to escort her back to school
at Clapham — the same school in which were Shelley's sisters. Just at this
time Sir Timothy Shelley made an amicable arrangement with his son,
who found himself on a brief visit to Field Place. A new settlement
of the property being arrived at, Sir Timothy agreed to make Shelley
an allowance of 200/. a year, and also gave him permission to live where
he pleased. This latter piece of condescension was not much of a boon,
seeing that the son had a will of his own ; but the money was the substan-
tial lifting of a cloud. A short period only elapsed after this settlement
when Shelley, being in North Wales on a visit to Mr. Thomas Grove, his
cousin, received an urgent summons from the sisters Westbrook to return
to London. When this letter came to Shelley calling him back to town,

he said —

" Hear it not, Percy, for it is a knell
That summons thee to Heaven or to Hell."

On reaching London, he found that Harriet was in the midst of a vio-
lent quarrel with her father, who wished to force her to return to school
against her will. Shelley took her part, and as a solution of the difficulty
Harriet was in, they eloped together and were married in Edinburgh. In
a letter written to Hogg (but whose authenticity Lady Shelley does not
guarantee, though I do not see why she should not do so) Shelley says :
" I shall certainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook will decide
whether now or in three weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most
horrible way by endeavouring to compel her to go to school. She asked
my advice . . I advised her to resist. She wrote to say that resistance was
useless, but that she would fly with me, and threw herself upon my pro-
tection." Mr. Rossetti believes from this that Miss Westbrook was
quite ready to live with Shelley without the ceremony of marriage : this
may have been the case ; but on the other hand it is just possible that
there was some understanding of marriage implied when Harriet expressed
herself willing to elope. This idea is further strengthened by another
passage in this same letter to Hogg, where Shelley says, " I will hear
your arguments for matrimonialism,by which I am now almost convinced."
One thing is sufficiently clear, nevertheless — that the advances as to the
elopement were made by Miss Westbrook, and that Shelley, out of a noble
consideration for her (rendered the more noble from the fact that he had
peculiar views on marriage), insisted upon their being united in matrimony.
Here we arrive at what was undoubtedly one of the most unhappy passages
in his life. It could not be expected that a man with so grand a mental
organisation and such cravings after knowledge and intellectual excellence
could long be satisfied with the restricted mind which he had now made
his own. Yet after all exordiums upon the folly of the transaction, the

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 197

character of Shelley stands out in regard to this marriage in excellent re-
lief ; and no other refutation were needed to the charge that he was a con-
temner of morals.

After a short residence in Edinburgh, Shelley and his wife went to
York, where they were joined by the elder Miss Westbrook, " a visitor,"
says Lady Shelley, "whose presence was in many respects unfortunate.
From strength of character and disparity of years (for she was much
older than Harriet), she exercised a strong influence over her sister ; and
this influence was used without much discretion, and with little inclination
to smooth the difficulties or promote the happiness of the young couple,
whose united ages amounted to thirty-five years." This exceedingly strong-
minded female appears soon to have made herself a terror both to Shelley
and his wife, reducing the latter to a condition of nervousness that boded ill
for her future health. She appears to have considered that she had a heaven-
born mission to take charge of the poet and Mrs. Shelley, and very early in
the course of his married life she had driven Shelley to the extremity of
declaring that either he or she should leave the house. This fact is of
some importance in view of what subsequently occurred, and shows that
the ground of Shelley's dissatisfac&bn with his matrimonial state was
partly prepared for him by this meddlesome individual, and that much of
the blame incurred by the ruined happiness of husband and wife should
accrue to her. The singular anecdote is related that on one occasion, when
the little party were out on an excursion in York, Harriet coolly propounded
the question to Hogg, " What is your opinion of suicide ? Did you ever
think of destroying yourself?" And the biographer adds that she often
discoursed of her purpose of killing herself some day or other, and at
great length, in a calm, resolute manner. Now, it seems to me that many
of those persons who have busily concerned themselves with the marriage
of Shelley to Harriet Westbrook, and with its tragic ending, have never
given due weight to this circumstance in their eagerness to fix upon Shelley
the greater portion of the blame for subsequent events. Instead of talk-
ing about the " mad Shelley," it would have been much nearer the truth
to assert that it was his poor wife who was afflicted with a monomania —
that of self-destruction. There exists plenty of evidence to show that
Harriet was reduced to a state of complete wretchedness by the unwel-
come presence of her sister in her new abode, though the idea of suicide
may not have been engendered by this, seeing it was a topic she invariably
discussed with the utmost freedom and fearlessness, occasionally startling
the guests at a dinner-party by asking them whether they did not feel
sometimes strongly inclined to kill themselves !

This brief statement of certain biographical facts in Shelley's life I have
deemed it incumbent upon me to make, inasmuch as they played a con-
spicuous part in the education of the man and the poet. It is impossible
to read many of those fervid lyrics and highly- strung passages in the
more important dramas and poems he subsequently wrote without per-
ceiving that they owed much of their most striking thought to his

198 SHELLEY'S EAELIEB TEARS.

personal experience. As clearly as Byron depicted in his verse the
suffering and delight of his own soul, so manifestly did Shelley draw upon
his own anguish and the exaltation which proceeded from his exquisite
sensibilities. Has not the author of Julian and Maddalo indeed himself

declared that

Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
And learn in suffering what they teach in song ?

For this reason we are bound to trace the connection between his individual
life and song. Save for those passages in Shelley's career, and others
which it may yet be desirable to mention, who knows but that the whole
tenor of his life's work might have been changed ? We have received as a
heritage the poetry of inspired passion ; poetry which is the outcome of
obloquy, of a burning sense of injustice, of the love of divine beauty, of
deep and fierce affection, and of an inextinguishable devotion to hu-
manity.

Shelley's acquaintance with Southey appears to have had no influence
in directing the genius of the former. For some of Southey's poems he
had a high admiration, but ik is scarcely possible to conceive of a long
friendship between the two. Shelley must necessarily, sooner or later,
have gone off at a tangent. Yet, though there was very little in common
between them, they appear to have kept for a brief period on amicable
relations, if indeed a close intimacy did not exist. Shelley on one occa-
sion evidently said something to the elder poet respecting his married
infelicity, or Southey had discovered it for himself, for we find the latter
remarking, in language which showed that he always knew how to accom-
modate himself to circumstances, " A man ought to be able to live with
any woman ; you see that I can, and so ought you. It comes to pretty
much the same thing, I apprehend. There is no great choice or differ-
ence." Now although Southey might not have been absolutely serious in
making this remark, and indeed most probably was not, yet his life, like
one of his best-known works, was only one long " Commonplace Book."
His books were in reality dearer to him than the human species, but with
Shelley the case was the reverse. He had a great capacity for being
either intensely happy or intensely miserable ; and his feelings were
irresistibly enlisted in one direction or the other by those into whose
society he was constantly thrown. It is imperative to remember this in
endeavouring to pass judgment upon him for his share in the impending
tragedy after his marriage with Harriet Westbrook. His temperament
was so keen and ardent that he could not regard with indifference any
associations in which he stood towards mankind.

With respect to Shelley's first marriage, I am able to state that docu-
ments exist (which will be published at a future date) fully demonstrating
that the idea adopted by many too readily and persistently, that Shelley
was largely responsible for the death of his wife, is totally erroneous. The
memories of some men are not cleared for years from the aspersions

SHELLEY'S EARLIER TEARS. 199

freely cast upon them, and the generou8-hearted poet himself would in this
case be the first to applaud the reasons which do not for the present
permit the full weight of obloquy to be lifted from his name. One won-
ders, however, that after the ascertained facts which have been published
of Shelley and his "character, there should still be those who have an
appetite for slander, and a belief that he was capable of conduct from
which he would have recoiled with loathing. I see in this man no trace
of the feeling which would cause others to suffer, but instead sadness and
regret for pain that he might at any time have thoughtlessly caused —
even more than that — for pain which the world would have entirely
absolved him from causing, but responsibility for which he was ever too
ready to take upon himself.

It has been manifested to a certainty that before Shelley parted
from his first wife he had been convinced of their mutual incompatibility,
and that they had lived unhappily for a considerable period preceding
the actual separation. Some have nevertheless asserted that there was
no estrangement, and no shadow of a thought of separation till Shelley
became acquainted with Mary Godwin. Happily for Shelley, this
charge is easily disposed of. The poet never saw Mary Godwin till some
date between April and June, 1814, whilst Shelley's own statements, and
the letters of his friends, prove that there was an estrangement between
him and his wife long before that period. The whole subject matter of
contention as regards this marriage resolves itself, after close examination
of authoritative documents, into these simple statements — the separation
was not abruptly forced on Mrs. Shelley ; it did not take place because of
any third person ; the wife, equally with the husband, discovered that
they were ill-suited to each other, and that it would have been better
had they never met ; and lastly, whatever may have been the precipitating
causes, the separation was the result of a mutual understanding. The
world knows the disastrous end of Mrs. Shelley ; but from all blame in
the tragedy the poet is completely free. Controversy on the subject is
unnecessary, as evidence of an irrefragable character exists to prove the
truth of the statement. But Shelley, as might be readily imagined, was
deeply affected by the event. Leigh Hunt declares that it completely
unmanned him for a period, and that he suffered remorse at having
brought his wife into a sphere which she was not qualified to fill. One
writer says — " I am well aware that he had suffered severely, and that
he continued to be haunted by certain recollections, partly real and
partly imaginative, which pursued him like an Orestes." Captain
Medwin affirmed that the sad circumstance ever after threw a cloud over
the poet, and all biographers speak of the genuineness and strength of his
sorrow. Documents, however, yet to be published clearly show that in
Shelley's feeling there was -no mingling of self-reproach, for his conscience
was clear. The fact that Shelley once proclaimed himself an Atheist has
been quite sufficient in the eyes of many to prove that he was capable of
conduct leading to the death of his wife, or, indeed, that he was equal to

200 SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS.

the commission of almost any other enormity. It is always your " hard-
and-fast-line " Christian who is severest in his censures upon humanity —
that being who clings tenaciously to the letter, but exhibits very little of
the spirit of Christianity. It was doubtless some such knowledge as this
that Shelley possessed of his traducers which led him to breathe open
defiance to the world, and which has given to us one of the most tragic
exhibitions of man fighting against fate to be found in the annals of
mankind.

Carlyle speaks of Shelley " filling the earth with inarticulate wail ; like
the infinite, inarticulate grief and weeping of forsaken infants." In some
respects this is a brief but accurate digest of the poet's life ; in others, it
hath in it small remnant of appropriateness. In that Shelley was driven
to wild despair by the injustice of the world, which led him to send up
such a wail to heaven as hath rarely been heard from the voice of
gifted mortal such as he, Carlyle's definition is good ; if it be meant to
represent Shelley's accomplished work, it is wholly inadequate in ex-
pression. It is true that, as we have seen, he was " cradled into poetry
by wrong," and some notes of his divine music have been marred in
consequence. Naturally, his voice should not have been given to wailing ;
he was fitted to be one of the most competent utterers and interpreters of
the great harmonies of the universe. His apprehensions of beauty
and of the Divinity should have been clearer than those of most other
mortals ; now and then there is a shaft of light in his poetry which seems
to pierce even through the Infinite ; but the darkness of desolation fell
upon him, and he was outraged and blinded by grief and anger because
he could not find the Christian's God in the Christian.

No rhapsody, or misinterpretation of the issues of this man's life, will
this affirmation be found to appear when it is grasped in its full signi-
ficance. On the very threshold of existence Shelley was thrown from the
natural track of his spirit, and he found himself even in boyhood in an
antagonism with the world deeper and more complete than often falls to
riper manhood. The jar thus caused \gas never overset. It was not a
great mind unhinged, as some have vainly supposed ; it was a great heart
driven from its moorings and unable in the long years to find anchor.
The wonder ought to be, not that one of his temperament should occa-
sionally rail at society, but that he should have preserved his noble
volitions of good through all this.

Two events in his life I have just dealt with because of a belief that
they were great operating causes in the production of much which we
discover in Shelley's writings. To what, for instance, do we owe Queen
Mob, a poem which, for some inscrutable reason or another, is always
associated with the name of Shelley as though it were at once both the
flower and fruit of his genius ? It was simply the crying out of a sensi-
tive spirit against that by which it had been injured and crushed. It took
the wild form of rank infidelity from a strong feeling of disgust which
animated the writer, at the time of its production, against those professors

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 201

of religion whose lives were all that the young poet had to argue upon in
search of the truth or the falsity of their doctrines. The poem is the
autobiography of Shelley in his youth, and when the mind was in a transi-
tion state. What does he himself say upon the subject ? Some years
after its publication he writes : — " I doubt not but that it is perfectly
worthless in point of literary composition ; and that, in all that concerns
moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of
metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature.
I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and domestic oppression ;
and I regret this publication, not so much from literary vanity as because
I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of free-
dom." Further on in the same letter he has these significant observa-
tions— "Whilst I exonerate myself from all share in having divulged
opinions hostile to existing sanctions, under the form, whatever it may be,
which they assume in this poem, it is scarcely necessary for me to
protest against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the
excellence of monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be,
by such equivocal arguments as confiscation and imprisonment, and
invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ties of
nature and society." After these expressions, and other proofs which
could be adduced to the same effect, it is not a little singular to find it
calmly assumed that Queen Mab is the full expression of its author's
beliefs, or rather negation of beliefs, respecting religion and God — a
position from which he never swerved. Nothing could be more unjust
than such an assumption in view of the overwhelming existing evidence to
the contrary.

I shall not be the apologist for unquestionable errors which Shelley
committed ; that would be to believe him already in possession of the per-
fection of humanity for which he strove : neither on the other hand will I
be a silent witness when any stone is ruthlessly cast at his memory. It
is impossible, for instance, to apportion the precise blame which should
fall to his lot in connection with the circumstances of his first marriage and
its results ; but it is not impossible to say with perfect accuracy and truth
that he has been much maligned in this matter. Even so fine and genial
a being as James Kussell Lowell has adopted some of the charges as
genuine from which it was to be hoped Shelley had been cleared, and he
takes too gross a view of the relations between Shelley and Mary Godwin.
Lowell has doubtless erred through defective information ; but in other
cases this is not so. How strange it is that man should be so much more
on the alert to mark the evil rather than the good in his fellow-man ! Of
all lives of great men with which I am acquainted, I think this has beep
most peculiarly the case with Shelley. Transcendent as were his virtues
when compared with his faults, the lime-light of a malevolent scrutiny has
been turned on the latter, while the former have rarely, if ever, been
brought into the prominence they deserve. If to be an apologist for
Shelley is to endeavour to show the man truly as he was, then I would

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 182. 10.

202 SHELLEY'S EAELIEB YEARS.

rank with his apologists, regretfully longing that the ability of the defence
were not more commensurate with the strength of its inspiration.

Lei me admit at once, however, in arriving at the discussion of another
important event in Shelley's life — his meeting and subsequent elopement
with Mary Godwin — that Shelley was to blame in setting at naught the cus-
toms of society. The fact that by the teachings of her father and the writings
of her mother, the mind of Miss Godwin had become familiarised with the
idea that marriage was one of those institutions which a nobler era of
mankind would inevitably sweep away, did not relieve Shelley and his
companion from their obligations to society as constituted. That new era
not having arrived, it is obvious that to resolve at once to be governed by
its laws was a foolish act, and one not tending to the well-being of society.
There is a certain grandeur in the dream that the world will one day be a
great commonwealth, in which men will share and share alike ; but it
would be both inconvenient and objectionable if my neighbour endeavoured
forcibly to bring about this equalization by making a raid upon my pro-
perty. We cannot yet get rid of the policeman in morals. But having
said this, our condemnation of Shelley refines into pity and sympathy when
we remember him as he actually was on first meeting with Mary Godwin.
By reason of his very nature he was sorrowing with no light sorrow, and
was afflicted with no common melancholy. There is something touching
in the story as related by Lady Shelley : — " It was in the society and
sympathy of the Godwins that Shelley sought and found some relief in his
present sorrow. He was still extremely young. His anguish, his isola-
tion, his difference from other men, his gifts of genius and eloquent
enthusiasm, made a deep impression on Godwin's daughter Mary, now a
girl of sixteen, who had been accustomed to hear Shelley spoken of as
something rare and strange. To her, as they met one eventful day in St.
Pancras churchyard, by her mother's grave, Bysshe in burning words
poured forth the tale of his wild past — how he had suffered, how he had
been misled, and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in future years
to enrol his name with the wise and good who had done battle for their
fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms to the cause of
humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed her hand in his, and linked her
fortune with his own." And a beautiful union of souls this afterwards
proved, for love and reverence were never more strongly blended or
apparent than in the passion which was only severed in these hearts by
death. Indefensible as the act of elopement was in the eyes of society, I
believe that Shelley's love for Mary Godwin was the only thing that saved
him when a greater trouble than almost any which he had yet endured
overtook him.

Shelley's friendship with the celebrated philosopher William Godwin
is one of the most interesting passages of literary history. It began in
romance, and culminated in deep affection. The author of Political Justice
came of a Nonconformist family, and, having been educated at the Hoxton
College, was himself for some time a Nonconformist minister. The close

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. . 203

spirit of speculation, however, in which he indulged, led to a change in
his religious opinions ; and, resigning his ministerial position, he devoted
himself still more assiduously to historical and metaphysical inquiries.
His novel of Caleb Williams is distinguished for an originality which entirely
removes it from the category of ordinary fiction. The man himself is a
striking figure for his noble independence of character, and the absence of
personal feeling which marked the whole course of his polemical strife.
He succeeded in attracting as his disciples some of the best spirits of the
age> by whom the philosopher was regarded with mingled feelings of
affection and veneration. Shelley, inflamed with the desire to be of some
use to his species, was not likely to remain unknown to Godwin for any
length of time. Accordingly, in the year 1812, and while residing at
Keswick with his young wife, he wrote a letter to Godwin, in which is to
be distinctly traced a fine spirit of enthusiasm, though, for want of proper
direction, one which threatened to be of no use to society. In the course
of his communication the writer observes : — " I have but just entered on
the scene of human operations ; yet my feelings and my reasonings corre-
spond with what yours were. My course has been short, but eventful. I
have seen much of human prejudice, suffered much -from human perse-
cution, yet I see no reason hence inferrible which should alter my wishes
for their renovation. The ill-treatment I have met with has more than
ever impressed the truth of my principles on my judgment. I am young.
I am ardent in the cause of philanthropy and truth ; do not suppose that
this is vanity ; I am not conscious that it influences this portraiture. I
imagine myself dispassionately describing the state of my mind. I am
young. You have gone before me, — I doubt not, are a veteran to me in
the years of persecution. Is it strange that, defying prejudice as I have
done, I should outstep the limits of custom's prescription, and endeavour
to make my desire useful by a friendship with William Godwin?"
Godwin does not quite seem to have known what to make of this letter
from a Paladin who was anxious to " ride abroad redressing human
wrongs;" but he afterwards took kindly to Shelley; and the latter, in
another epistle to the philosopher, confesses to being filled with the most
intoxicating sensations that Godwin should have been brought to take a
deep and earnest interest in his welfare. The specific public results which
sprang from their friendship cannot be dwelt upon at this juncture, but
one thought it is difficult to repress, viz., the singularity of the fact that
two men differing so utterly in their mental organisation should have been
brought into close union. On the occasion of Shelley's visit to Ireland,
he discovered the full value of the philosopher's superior wisdom ; and if
the poet at more than one subsequent period was rebellious under Godwin's
advice, there never was an instance when, as quickly as he discovered it,
he did not frankly confess his error. In one juncture Shelley sought
Godwin's aid and judgment upon literary matters, and the letter he received
in reply is a remarkable specimen both of sound judgment and criticism.
After referring to the proper attitude of the student in considering the

10—2

204 SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEA&S.

life's work of great men, he proceeds to say : — " Sbakspeare, Bacon, and
Milton are the three greatest contemplative characters that this island has
produced. As I put Shakspeare and Milton at the head of our poetry, I
put Bacon and Milton at the head of our prose. Yet what astonishing
prose writers had we in Sir Thomas Browne and Jeremy Taylor ! not to
mention two others, only inferior to them, Eobert Burton and Izaak
Walton. Hohbes and Shelton also, as prose translators, may almost rank
with Chapman in verse." He then compares these writers with the more
modern, concluding by a pungent personal application : — " Those were
the times when authors thought. Every line is pregnant with sense, and
the reader is inevitably put to the expense of thinking likewise. The
writers were richly furnished with conception, imagination, and feeling ;
and out of the abundance of their hearts flowed the lucubrations they
committed to paper. You have what appears to me a false taste in poetry.
You love a perpetual sparkle and glittering, such as are to be found in
Darwin, and Southey, and Scott, and Campbell." Putting out of court
all questions upon theological matters, there were just those qualities of
robustness of intellect and firmness of purpose in Godwin which were
invaluable to the po.et at this period, when he was in danger of allowing
his prodigious talents to become mere wasted forces. One result of the
correspondence which passed between the poet and the philosopher was
that Shelley set himself to the study of history, which he described as a
" record of crimes and miseries." Of the total sum of Godwin's influence
over the poet we have no adequate conception ; but while the intimacy
confirmed Shelley in proving all things, to see whether they were honest
and true, fearless as to the consequences of inquiry, it doubtless also led
him into a more exact mode of thinking and writing — which indeed is
observable in his poems after he had sat at the feet of this philosophical
Gamaliel. And Godwin was admirably seconded by his daughter. In
her love and counsel Shelley at length discovered his sheet anchor. To
her he could unburthen himself, not only looking confidently for sympathy,
but also for intellectual appreciation and interchange of ideas. An appa-
rent insolence in the expression of his infidelity now gave place to moder-
ation, though the extreme nature of his views was unflinchingly shared by
his wife. Shelley's second love, who was five years his.junior, is described
as " rather short, remarkably fair, and light-haired, with, brownish- grey
eyes, a great forehead, striking features, and a noticeable air of sedateness."
One writer has compared her with the classic bust of Clytie. Careless as
to her personal appearance, she exhibited qualities of mind which fully
challenged Shelley's admiration ; she had received by nature a large share
of the endowments of her parents. The strength of her character, and
the acuteness of her intellect, made her an inestimable companion for her
erratic husband, whose love for her appears to have amounted almost to
idolatry. Of her feelings towards him, some idea may be gathered from the
passionate bursts of anguish written in her diary after his melancholy death.
More bitter than almost any experience through which Shelley was

SHELLEY'S EARLIER YEARS. 205

called upon to pass — making the already impassable gulf between him and
society still deeper and wider — was that which arose out of the Chancery
suit in regard to his children. Shelley desiring to have possession of
his offspring after his first wife's death, Mr. Westbrook refused to give
them up, and instituted proceedings in Chancery, filing a bill in which he
alleged that their father was unfit to have charge of them on account of
the alleged depravity of his religious and moral opinions. It is more
than possible that this was not the real motive for Mr. Westbrook's proceed-
ings, but rather that in consequence of what had gone before, and
remembering his daughter's miserable fate, he had determined to thwart
Shelley in this important matter. Whether such a speculation be correct
or no, however, history records the decree that Shelley was not allowed to
have the custody of his own children. Yet, though the poet's character
was ruled to be dangerous, and offensive to public morals, the poet's
pocket was drawn upon in order to pay for teachings in which he did not
believe. For this purpose he was mulcted in a sum of 200£. a year.
Widely as I differ from Shelley's religious opinions, there is that in this
decree of Lord Eldon's which strikes a severe blow at the strict prin-
ciples of justice. Justice, in fact, was defeated on that very judgment
seat where it is supposed to be enshrined. Let us see to what dilemma
the support of such a decree would lead. It gives the power into the
hands of the Lord Chancellor of saying what opinions should and should
not be taught to a child, and makes him more the absolute master of human
souls than the parents of the children whose cases are decided before him.
Lord Eldon did not define precisely where the line was to be drawn in
sceptical opinions, beyond which, if a man passed, he was to be branded
as totally unfit to retain the possession of his children. By what right
was the Lord Chancellor's orthodoxy to overrule Shelley's unorthodoxy ?
According to his decision, it would seem that the surviving maternal
relatives of any child might procure its custody from the father, if they
held ordinary religious views, and that father . professed, let us say,
Moravian or Sandemanian principles. It is impossible to agree with those
who say that Shelley had no ground for complaint in being deprived of
his children. The outraged heart of the father is the best answer to that,
whilst the harshness of the decree was made still more apparent from
the fact that Shelley had nominated as guardian of his children (if yielded
up to him) a lady who was in every respect qualified to fulfil the charge.
This trial probably sank deeper into Shelley's soul than any other. He
has repeated references to it, which mark the keenness of his anguish — an
anguish which time failed to obliterate. One terrible poem he wrote
upon the author of his woe and despair, and in his Masque of Anarchy he
further described the Lord Chancellor in these scathing lines : — .

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown ;
His big tears (for he wept well)
Turn'c] to millrstones as thev fell;

206 SHELLEY'S EABLIEB YEABS.

And the little children, who
Round his feet play'd to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knock'd out by them.

The spectacle of a divinely-gifted man, thus buffeted to and fro, with
the measure of his sorrows apparently proportioned by fate in subtle irony
to the greatness of his capacity for suffering, is one which would surely
move any human being to pity. Circumstances appeared always to fight
against Shelley ; his sensitive nature was continually subjected to trials
from which more phlegmatic spirits are exempt. Restless and agitated as
the sea, the billows were ever surging round his heart, and never falling
into peace and calm. Some of those incidents in his life which have
begotten the numerous passages of fiery indignation and invective in his
poems have been already glanced at. The misery which he caused to
others bore no proportion to the misery which fell upon himself. And
yet, when the dross of his nature has been weighed to the uttermost grain,
it is contemptible and insignificant compared with the genuine gold of
which he was mostly wrought. I have reviewed the preparation which
Shelley had in the school of adversity for the work to which all his
suffering was but the introduction. And in this lies the key to the develop-
ment of his character. From the unfortunate and the unhappy, we could
not fail to educe further and almost unique interest were we to pass on to
another phase of his existence, and see how this being, who was the sport
of the gods, endeavoured to lift humanity by the spirit of sacrifice to that
height of dignity and happiness which had been the dream and ambition
of his life. Shelley the politician, the sceptic, and the philanthropist is
but the natural sequence to the Shelley sketched and foreshadowed in the
preceding pages.

207

Cfwxtgfrte

ENDLESS books have been written about the Laws of Thought, the
Nature of Thought, and the Validity of Thought. Physiologists and
metaphysicians have vied with one another to tell us in twenty different
ways how we think, and why we think, and what good our thinking may
be supposed to be as affording us any real acquaintance with things in
general outside our thinking machine. Thales affirmed that Man was
created on purpose to Think (to know and to contemplate), and Descartes
was only sure that he existed because he was tolerably satisfied that he
Thought (cogito, ergo sum). One school of philosophers tells us that
Thought is a secretion of the brain (i.e. that Thought is a form of
Matter), and another that it is purely immaterial, and the only reality in
the universe — i.e. that Matter is a. form of Thought. The meekest of
men presume to think — this, that, and the other ; and the proudest dis-
tinction of the modern sage is to be a " Thinker," especially a
" free " one. But with all this much- a- do about Thought, it has not
occurred to any one, so far as I am aware, to attempt a fair review
of what any one of us thinks in the course of the twenty-four hours ;
what are the number of separable thoughts which on an average pass
through a human brain in a day ; and what may be their nature and
proportions in the shape of Recollections, Reflections, Hopes, Con-
trivances, Fancies, Reasonings, and so on. We are all aware that when
we are awake a perpetual stream of thoughts goes on in " what we are
pleased to call our minds," sometimes slow and sluggish, as the water in
a ditch ; sometimes bright, rapid, and sparkling, like a mountain brook ;
and now and then making some sudden, happy dash, cataract- wise over
an obstacle. We are also accustomed to speak as if the sum and sub-
stance of all this thinking were very respectable, as might become
" beings endowed with the lofty faculty of thought ; " and we always
tacitly assume that our thoughts have logical beginnings, middles, and
endings — commence with problems and terminate in solutions — or
that we evolve out of our consciousness ingenious schemes of action, or
elaborate pictures of Hope or Memory. If our books of mental phi-
losophy ever obtain a place in the Circulating Libraries of the planet
Mars, the " general reader" of that distant world will inevitably suppose
that on our little Tellus dwell a thousand millions of men, women, and
children, who spend their existence as the interlocutors in Plato's
Dialogues passed their hours, under the grip of the dread Socratic
elenchus, arguing, sifting, balancing, recollecting, hard at work, as if
under the ferule of a schoolmaster.

208 THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.

The real truth about the matter seems to be that, instead of taking
this kind of mental exercise all day long, and every day, there are very
few of us who ever do anything of the kind for more than a few
minutes at a time, and that the great bulk of our thoughts proceed in
quite a different way, and are occupied by altogether less exalted matters
than our vanity has induced us to imagine. The normal mental loco-
motion of even well-educated men and women (save under the spur of
exceptional stimulus) is neither the flight of an eagle in the sky, nor the
trot of a horse upon the road, but may better be compared to the lounge
of a truant school-boy in a shady lane, now dawdling pensively, now
taking a hop-skip-and-jump, now stopping to pick blackberries, and now
turning to right or left to catch a butterfly, climb a tree or make dick-
duck-and-drake on a pond ; going nowhere in particular, and only once in
a mile or so proceeding six steps in succession in an orderly and philo-
sophical manner.

It is far beyond the ambition of the present writer to attempt to
supply this large lacune in mental science, and to set forth the truth of
the matter about the actual Thoughts which practically (not theoretically)
are wont to pass through human brains. Some few observations on the
subject, however, may perhaps be found entertaining, and ought cer-
tainly to serve to mitigate our self- exaltation on account of our grand
mental endowments, by showing how rarely and under what curious
variety of pressure we employ them.

The first familiar remark is, that every kind of thought is liable to be
coloured and modified in all manner of ways by our physical condition
and surroundings. We are not steam thinking-machines, working evenly
at all times at the same rate, and turning out the same sort and quantity
of work in the same given period, but rather more like windmills, subject
to every breeze and whirling our sails at one time with great impetus
and velocity, and at another standing still, becalmed and ineffective.
Sometimes it is our outer conditions which affect us ; sometimes it is
our own inner wheels which are clogged and refuse to rotate ; but, from
whatever cause it arises, the modification of our thoughts is often so great
as to make us arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions on the same
subject and with the same data of thought, within an incredibly brief
interval of time. When the President of the British Association, with
truly manly candour, has frankly answered objections to his splendid in-
augural address, by referring to the different aspects of the ultimate
problems of theology in different "moods" of mind, — all lesser mortals
may confess their own mental oscillations without painful humiliation,
and even put forward some claim to consistency if the vibrating needle
of their convictions do not swing quite round the whole compass, and
point at two o'clock to the existence of a Deity and a Life to come, and
at six, to a nebula for the origin, and a " streak of morning cloud "
for the consummation of things. Possibly also the unscientific mind
may claim some praise on the score of modesty if it delay for the moment
to instruct mankind in either its two- o'clock or its six-o'clock creed

THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING. 209

and wait till it has settled down for some few hours, weeks or months,
to any one definite opinion. Be this as it may, however, the genuine
honesty of the distinguished man of science in question has placed for
ever on record the enormous fluctuations to which a masterly intel-
lect, specially trained in those sciences which are supposed to purge the
mental eyes from the distorting films of prejudice and sentiment, is yet
subjected; and it may be safely taken for granted that if "moods"
determine for the hour the whole theology of a philosopher, "moods"
must also influence, for the mass of mankind, an indefinite share of
their faith in all supersensual truths — as for example in the distinctions of
right and wrong, and the love of friends, no less than in theological verities.
Not to dwell for the present on these serious topics, it is only neces-
sary to carry with us through our future investigations, that every man's
thoughts are continually fluctuating and vibrating, from inward as well
as outward causes. Let us glance for a moment at some of these. First
there are the well-known conditions of health and high animal spirits, in
which every thought is rose-coloured ; and corresponding conditions of
disease and depression, in which every thing we think of seems to pass, like
a great bruise, through yellow, green, blue and purple to black. A liver
complaint causes the universe to be enshrouded in grey; and the gout
covers it with an inky pall, and makes us think our best friends little
better than fiends in disguise. Further, a whole treatise would be needed
to expound how our thoughts are further distempered by food, beverages
of various kinds, and narcotics of great variety. When our meals have
been too long postponed, it would appear as if that Evil Personage who
proverbially finds mischief for idle hands to do, were similarly engaged with
an idle digestive apparatus, and the result is, that if there be the smallest
and most remote cloud to be seen in the whole horizon of our thoughts,
it sweeps up over us just in proportion as we grow hungrier and fainter,
till at last it overwhelms us in depression and despair. "Why?" we
ask ourselves, — " why has not A. written to us for so long? What
will B. think of such and such a transaction ? How is our pecuniary
concern with C. to be settled ? What is the meaning of that odd little
twitch we have felt so often here 01" there about our persons '? " The
answer of our thoughts, prompted by the evil genius of famine, is always
lugubrious in the extreme. " A. has not written because he is dead. B.
will quarrel with us for ever, because of that transaction. C. will never
pay us our money, or we shall never be able to pay C. That twitch which
we have so thoughtlessly disregarded is the premonitory symptom of the
most horrible of all human maladies, of which we shall die in agonies and
leave a circle of sorrowing friends before the close of the ensuing year."
Such are the ide'es noircs which present themselves when we want
our dinner — and the best-intentioned people in the world, forsooth ! re-
commend us to summon them round us by fasting, as if they were a
company of cherubim instead of imps of quite another character ! But
the scene undergoes a transformation bordering on the miraculous when

10-5

210 THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.

we have eaten a slice of mutton and drank half a glass of sherry. If we
revert now to our recent meditations, we are quite innocently astonished to
think what could possibly have made us so anxious without any reason-
able ground ? Of course, A. has not written to us, because he always
goes grouse- shooting at this season. B. will never take the trouble to
think about our little transaction. C. is certain -to pay us, or we can
readily raise money to pay him ; and our twitch means nothing worse
than a touch of rheumatics or an ill-fitting garment.

Beyond the alternations of fasting and feasting, still more amazing
are the results of narcotics, alcoholic beverages, and of tea and coffee.
Every species of wine exercises a perceptibly different influence of its own,
from the cheery and social " sparkling grape of Eastern France " to the
solemn black wine of Oporto, the fit accompaniment of the blandly dog-
matic post-prandial prose of elderly gentlemen of orthodox sentiments.
A cup of strong coffee clears the brain and makes the thoughts transparent,
while one of green tea drives them fluttering like dead leaves before the
wind. Time and learning would fail to describe the yet more marvellous
effects of opium, hemlock, henbane, haschish, and last not least, the wonder-
working beneficent chloral. Every one of these narcotics produces a
different hue of the mental window through which we look out on the
world; sometimes distorting all objects in the wildest manner (like opium),
sometimes (like chloral) acting only perceptibly by removing the sense of
disquiet and restoring our thoughts to the white light of common-sense
cheerfulness ; and again acting quite differently on the thoughts of different
persons, and of the same persons at different times.

Only secondary to the effects of inwardly imbibed stimulants or
narcotics are those of the outward atmosphere, which in bracing weather
makes our thoughts crisp like the frosted grass, and in heavy Novem-
ber causes them to drip chill and slow and dull, like the moisture from
the mossy eaves of the Moated Grange. Burning, glaring Southern sun-
shine dazes our minds as much as our eyes ; and a London fog obfuscates
them, so that a man might honestly plead that he could no more argue
clearly in the fog, than the Irishman could spell correctly with a bad pen
and muddy ink.

Nor are mouths, eyes, and lungs by any means the only organs
through which influences arrive at our brain, modifying the thoughts
which proceed from them. The sense of Smelling, when gratified by the
odours of woods, and gardens, and hay-fields, or even of delicately per-
fumed rooms, lifts all our thoughts into a region wherein the Beautiful,
the Tender and the Sublime may impress us freely ; while the same sense,
offended by disgusting and noxious odours, as of coarse cookery, open
sewers, or close chambers inhabited by vulgar people, thrusts us down
into an opposite stratum of feeling, wherein poetry entereth not, and our
very thoughts smell of garlic. Needless to add, that in a still more
transcendent way Music seizes on the thoughts of the musically-minded,
and bears them off in its talons over sea and land, and up to Olympus
like Ganymede. Two easily distinguishable mental influences seem to

THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING. 211

belong to music, according as it is heard by those who really appreciate
it, or by others wh6 are unable to do so. To the former it opens a book
of poetry, which they follow word for word after the performer as if he
read it to them ; thinking the thoughts of the composer in succession with
scarcely greater uncertainty or vagueness than if they were expressed in
verbal language of a slightly mystical description. To the latter the
book is closed ; but, though the listener's own thoughts unrol themselves
uninterrupted by the composer's ideas, they are very considerably coloured
thereby. "I delight in music," said once a great man of science to the
writer ; "I am always able to think out my work better while it is going
on ! " As a matter of fact, he resumed at the moment a disquisition con-
cerning the date of the Glacial Period at the precise point at which it had
been interrupted by the performance of a symphony of Beethoven, having
evidently mastered in the interval an intricate astronomical knot. To
ordinary mortals with similar deficiency of musical sense, harmonious
sound seems to spread a halo like that of light, causing every subject of
contemplation to seem glorified, as a landscape appears in a dewy sunrise.
Memories rise to the mind and seem infinitely more affecting than at
other times ; still living affections grow doubly tender ; new beauties
appear in the picture or the landscape before our eyes, and passages of
remembered prose or poetry float through our brains in majestic cadence.
In a word, the sense of the Beautiful, the Tender, the Sublime, is vividly
aroused, and the atmosphere of familiarity and commonplace, wherewith the
real beauty and sweetness of life is too often veiled, is lifted for the hour.
As in a camera-oscura, or mirror, the very trees and grass which we had
looked on a thousand times are seen to possess unexpected loveliness.
But all this can only happen to the non-musical soul when the harmony to
which it listens is really harmonious, and when it comes at an appropriate
time, when the surrounding conditions permit and incline the man to
surrender himself to its influences ; in a word, when there is nothing else
demanding his attention. The most barbarous of the practices of royalty
and civic magnificence is that of employing music as an accompaniment to
feasts ; a confusion of the realms of the real and ideal, of one sense with
another, as childish as that of the little girl who took out a peach to eat
while bathing in the sea. Next to music during dinner-time comes music
in the midst of a cheerful evening-party, where, when every intellect
present is strung up to the note of animated conversation and brilliant
repartee, there is a sudden douche of solemn chords from the region of
the pianoforte, and presently some well-meaning gentleman endeavours
to lift up all the lazy people, who are lounging in easy- chairs after a good
dinner, into the empyrean of emotion * ' sublime upon the seraph wings
of ecstasy " of Beethoven or Mozart. Or some meek damsel, with plaintive
note, calls on them, in Schubert's Addio, to break their hearts at the
memory or anticipation of those mortal sorrows which are either behind
or before every one of us, and which it is either agony or profanation to
think of at such a moment. All this is assuredly intensely barbarous.
The same people who like to mix up the ideal pleasure of music with

212 THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.

incongruous enjoyments of another kind would be guilty of giving a kiss
with their mouths full of bread and cheese. As to what we may term
extra-mural music, the hideous noises made by the aid of vile machinery
in the street, it is hard to find words of condemnation strong enough for
it. Probably the organ-grinders of London have done more in the last
twenty years to detract from the quality and quantity of the highest kind
of mental work done by the nation than any two or three colleges of
Oxford or Cambridge have effected to increase it. One mathematician
alone (as he informed the writer) estimated the cost of the increased
mental labour they had imposed upon him and his clerks at several
thousand pounds' worth of first-class work, for which the State practically
paid in the added length of time needed for his calculations. Not much
better are those church bells which now sound a trumpet before the good
people who attend "matins" and other daily services at hours when
their profane neighbours are wearily sleeping, or anxiously labouring at
their appointed tasks.

Next to our bodily Sensations come in order of influence on our
thoughts the Places in which we happen to do our thinking. Meditating
like the pious Hervey "Among the Tombs" is one thing; doing the
same on a breezy mountain side among the gorse and the heather, quite
another. Jostling our way in a crowded street, or roaming in a solitary
wood ; rattling in an English express train, or floating by moonlight in a
Venetian gondola or an Egyptian dahabieh, though each and all favour-
able conditions for thinking, create, undoubtedly, distinct classes of lucu-
brations. If we now endeavour to define what are the surroundings
amongst which Thought is best sustained and most vigorous, we shall pro-
bably find good reason to reverse not a few of our accepted and familiar
judgments. The common idea, for example, that we ponder very pro-
foundly by the sea-shore is, I. am persuaded, a baseless delusion. We
think indeed that we are thinking, but for the most part our minds
merely lie open, like so many oysters, to the incoming waves, and with
scarcely greater intellectual activity. The very charm of the great deep
seems to lie in the fact that it reduces us to a state of mental emptiness
and vacuity, while our vanity is soothed by the notion that we are
thinking with unwonted emphasis and perseverance. Amphitrite, the
enchantress, mesmerizes us with the monotonous passes of her billowy
hands, and lulls us into a slumberous hypnotism, wherein we meekly do
her bidding, and fix our eyes and thoughts, like biologized men, on the
rising and falling of every wave. If it be tempestuous weather, we
watch open-mouthed till the beautiful white crests topple over and dash
in storm and thunder up the beach ; and if it be a summer-evening's
calm, we note with placid, never-ending contentment how the wavelets,
like little children, run up softly and swiftly on the golden strand to
deposit their gifts of shells and seaweed, and then retreat, shy and
ashamed of their boldness, to hide themselves once again under the flow-
ing skirts of Mother Ocean.

Again, divines and poets have united to bolster up our convictions

THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING. 213

that we do a great deal of important thinking at night when we lie awake
in bed. Every preacher points to the hours of the " silent midnight,"
when his warnings will surely come home, and sit like incubi on the
breast of sinners who, too often perhaps, have dozed in the daytime as
they flew, bat- wise, over their heads from the pulpit. Shelley in Queen
Mab affords us a terrible night-scene of a king who, after his
dinner of " silence, grandeur, and excess," finds sleep abdicate his
pillow (probably in favour of indigestion), and Tennyson in Locksley
Hall threatens torments of memory still keener to the " shallow-
hearted cousin Amy " whenever she may happen to lie meditating —

In the dead, unhappy night, and the rain is on the roof.

Certainly if there be any time in the twenty-four hours when we might
carry on consecutive chains of thought, it would be when we lie still
for hours undisturbed by sight or sound, having nothing to do, and with
our bodies so far comfortable and quiescent as to give the minimum of
interruption to our mental proceedings. Far be it from me to deny
that under such favourable auspices some people may think to good pur-
pose. But if I do not greatly err, they form the exception rather than
the rule among bad sleepers. As the Psalmist of old remarked, it is
generally "mischief" which a man — wicked or otherwise — " devises
upon his bed ; " and the truth of the observation in our day is proved from
the harsh Ukases for domestic government which are commonly promul-
gated by Paterfamilias at the breakfast- table, and by the sullenness de
parti pris which testifies that the sleepless brother, sister, or maiden
aunt has made up his or her mind during the night to "have it out"
with So-and-so next morning. People are a little faint and feverish when
they lie awake, and nothing occurs to divert their minds and restore them
to equanimity, and so they go on chewing the bitter cud of any little
grudge. Thus it comes to pass that while Anger causes sleeplessness,
Sleeplessness is a frequent nurse of Anger.

Finally, among popular delusions concerning propitious conditions of
Thoughts, must be reckoned the belief (which has driven hermits and
philosophers crazy) that thinking is better done in abnormal isolation
than in the natural social state of man. Of course there is benefit
quite incalculable in the reservation of some portion of our days for
solitude. How much excuse is to be made for the short-comings, the
ill- tempers, the irreligion of those poor people who are scarcely alone
for half an hour between the cradle and the grave, God alone can tell.
But with such reasonable reservation of our hours, and the occasional
precious enjoyment of lonely country walks or rides, the benefits of
solitude, even on Zimmermann's theory, come nearly to an end, and there
is little doubt that instead of thinking more the more hours of loneliness
we devote to doing it, the less we shall really think at all, or even retain
capacity for thinking, and not degenerate into cabbages. Our minds need
the stimulus of other minds, as our lungs need oxygen to perform their
functions. After all, if we analyse the exquisite pleasure afforded us by

214 THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.

brilliant and suggestive conversation, one of its largest elements will be
found to be that it has quickened our thoughts from a heavy amble into
a gallop. A really fine talk between half-a-dozen well-matched and
thoroughly cultivated people, who discuss an interesting subject with the
manifold wealth of allusions, arguments, and illustrations, is a sort of
mental Oaks or Derby-day, wherein our brains are excited to their utmost
speed, and we get over more ground than in weeks of solitary mooning
meditation. It is superfluous to add that if Our constitutional mental
tendency be that of the gentleman who naively expressed his feelings
by saying impressively to a friend, " I take great interest in my own
concerns, I assure you I do," it seems doubly desirable that we should
overstep our petty ring-fence of personal hopes, fears, and emotions of
all kinds, and roam with our neighbours over their dominions, and into
further outlying regions of public and universal interest. Of all ingenious
prescriptions for making a miserable moral hypochondriac, it is difficult to
imagine a better than the orthodox plan of the " Selig-gemachende Kirche"
for making a Saint. Take your man, or woman, with a morbidly tender
conscience and a pernicious habit of self-introspection. If he or she
have an agonizing memory of wrong, sin or sorrow overshadowing their
whole lives, so much the better. Then shut the individual up in a cell
like a toad in a stone, to feed on his or her own thoughts, till death or
madness puts an end to the experiment.

But if the sea-side and solitude, and the midnight couch have been
much overrated as propitious conditions of thought, there we, per contra,
certain other conditions of it whose value has been too much ignored.
The principle or law of the matter seems to be that real hard Thought,
like Happiness, rarely comes when we have made elaborate preparation
for it ; and that, further, the higher part of the mind which is exercised
in it works much more freely when a certain lower part (concerned with
" unconscious cerebration") is busy about some little affairs of its own
department, and its restless activity is thus disposed of. Not one man in
fifty does his best thinking quite motionless, but instinctively employs his
limbs in some way when his brain is in full swing of argument and reflec-
tion. Even a trifling fidget of the hands with a paper-knife, a flower, a
piece of twine, or the bread we crumble beside our plate at dinner, sup-
plies in a degree this desideratum, and the majority of people never carry
on an animated conversation involving rapid thought without indulging
in some such habit. But the more complete employment of our uncon-
scious cerebration, in walking up and down a level terrace or quarter-
deck, where there are no passing objects to distract our attention, and no
need to mark where we plant our feet, seems to provide even better
for smooth-flowing thought ; and the perfection of such conditions is
attained when the walk in question is taken of a still, soft November
evening, when the light has faded so far as to blur the surrounding
withered trees and flowers, but the gentle gray sky yet aflbrds enough
vision to prevent embarrassment. There are a few such hours in every
year which appear absolutely invaluable for calm reflexion, and which

THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING. 215

are grievously wasted by those who hurry in-doors at dusk to light candles
and sit round a yet unneeded fire.

There is also another specially favourable opportunity for abstruse
meditation, which I trust we may be pardoned for venturing to name.
It is the grand occasion afforded by the laudable custom of patiently
listening to dull speakers or readers in the lecture-room or the pulpit.
A moment's reflexion will surely enable the reader to corroborate the
remark that we seldom think out the subject of a new book or article, or
elaborate a political or philanthropic scheme, a family compact, or the
menu of a large dinner with so much precision and lucidity as when
gazing with vacant respectfulness at a gentleman expatiating with elaborate
stupidity on theology or science. The voice of the charmer as it rises
and falls is almost as soothing as the sound of the waves on the shore, but
not quite equally absorbing to the attention, and the repose of all around
gently inclines the languid mind to alight like a butterfly on any little
flower it may find in the arid waste, and suck it to the bottom. This
beneficent result of sermon and lecture-hearing is, however, sometimes
deplorably marred by the stuffiness of the room, the hardness and shal-
lowness of the seats (as in that place of severe mortification of the flesh,
the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street), and lastly by the unpardonable
habit of many orators of lifting their voices in an animated way, as if
they really had something to say, and then solemnly announcing a plati-
tude— a process which acts on the nerves of a listener as it must act
on those of a flounder to be carried up into the air half-a-dozen times in
the bill of a heron and then dropped flat on the mud. Under trials like
these, the tormented thoughts of the sufferer, seeking rest and finding none,
are apt to assume quite unaccountable and morbid shapes, and indulge in
freaks of an irrational kind, as in a dream. The present writer and a
considerable number of sober-minded acquaintances have, for example,
all felt themselves impelled at such hours, to perform aerial flights of
fancy about the church or lecture-room in the character of stray robins
or bats. " Here," they think gravely (quite unconscious for the moment of
the absurdity of their reflection) — "here, on this edge of a monument, I
might stand and take flight to that cornice an inch wide, whence I might
run along to the top of that pillar ; and from thence, by merely touching
the bald tip of the preacher's" head, I might alight on the back of that
plump little angel on the tomb opposite, while a final spring would take
me through the open pane of window and perch me on the yew-tree out-
side." The whole may perhaps be reckoned a spontaneous mythical self-
representation of the Psalmist's cry : " Oh, that I had wings like a dove,
for then would I flee away and be at rest."

Another kind of meditation under the same aggravated affliction is
afforded by making fantastic pictures out of the stains of damp and
tracks of snails on the wall, which often (in village churches especially)
supply the young with a permanent subject of contemplation in " the
doctor with his boots," the " old lady and her cap," and the huge face
which would be quite perfect if the spectator might only draw an eye

216 THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.

where one is missing, as in the fresco of Dante in the Bargello. Occa-
sionally the sunshine kindly comes in and makes a little lively entertain-
ment on his own account by throwing the shadow of the preacher's head
ten feet long on the wall behind him, causing the action of his jaws to
resemble the vast gape of a crocodile. All these, however, ought perhaps
to be counted as things of the past ; or, at least, as very " Rural Recrea-
tions of a Country Parishioner," as A. K. H. B. might describe them. It
is not objects to distract and divert the attention which anybody can
complain of wanting in the larger number of modern churches in London.
But if our thoughts are wont to wander off into fantastic dreams
when we are bored, they have likewise a most unfortunate propensity to
swerve into byways of triviality no less misplaced when, on the contrary,
we are interested to excess, and our attention has been fixed beyond the
point wherein the tension can be sustained.

Every one has recognised the truth of Dickens' description of Fagin,
on his trial, thinking of the pattern of the carpet ; and few of us can recall
hours of anguish and anxiety without carrying along with their tragic
memories certain objects on which the eye fastened with inexplicable
tenacity. In lesser cases, and when we have been listening to an intensely
interesting political speech, or to a profoundly thoughtful sermon (for even
Habitans in Sicco may sometimes meet such cases), the mind seems to
"shy " suddenly, like a restive horse, from the whole topic under con-
sideration, and we find ourselves, intellectually speaking, landed in a ditch.
Another singular phenomenon under such circumstances is, that on
returning, perhaps after the interval of years, to a spot wherein such
excessive mental tension has been experienced, some of us are suddenly
vividly impressed with the idea that we have been sitting there during all
the intervening time, gazing fixedly on the same pillars and cornices, the
same trees projected against the evening sky, or whatever other objects
happen to be before our eyes. It would appear that the impression of
such objects made on the retina, while the mind was wholly and vehe-
mently absorbed in other things, must be somehow photographed on the
brain in a different way from the ordinary pictures to which we have
given their fair share of notice as they passed before us, and that we are
dimly aware they have been taken so long. The sight of them once again
bringing out this abnormal consciousness is intensely painful, as if the
real self had been chained for j^ears to the ppot, and only a phantom "I"
had ever gone away and lived a natural human existence elsewhere.

Passing, now, from the external conditions of our Thinking, if we
attempt to classify the Thoughts themselves, we shall arrive, I fear, at the
painful discovery that the majority of us think most about the least
things, and least about the greatest ; and that, in short, the mass of our
lucubrations is in the inverse ratio of their value. For example, a share
of our thoughts, quite astonishing in quantity, is occupied by petty and
trivial Arrangements. Rich or poor, it is an immense amount of thought
which all (save the most care-engrossed statesmen or absorbed philo-
sophers) give to these wretched little concerns. The wealthy gentleman

THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING. 217

thinks of how, and where, and when he will send his servants and horses
here and there, of what company he shall entertain, of the clearing of
his woods, the preservation of his game, and twenty matters of similar
import ; while his wife is pondering equally profoundly on the furniture
and ornaments of her rooms, the patterns of her flower-beds or her
worsted-work, the menu of her dinner, and the frocks of her little girls.
Poor people need to think much more anxiously of the perpetual problem,
" How to make both ends meet," by pinching in this direction and earn-
ing something in that, and by all the thousand shifts and devices by
which life can be carried on at the smallest possible expenditure. One of
the very worst evils of limited means consists in the amount of thinking
about sordid little economies, which becomes imperative when every meal,
every toilet, and every attempt at locomotion is a battlefield of ingenuity
and self-denial against ever impending debt and difficulty. Among men,
the evil is most commonly combated by energetic efforts to earn, rather
than to save ; but among women, to whom so few fields of honest industry
are open, the necessity for a perpetual guard against the smallest freedom
of expense falls with all its cruel and soul- crushing weight, and on the
faces of thousands of them may be read the sad story of youthful enthu-
siasm all nipped by pitiful cares, anxieties, and meannesses — perhaps
the most foreign of all sentiments to their naturally liberal and generous
hearts.

Next to actual arrangements which have some practical use, however
small, an inordinate quantity of thought is wasted by most of us on
wholly unreal plans and hypotheses which the thinker never even
supposes to bear any relation with the living world. Such are the end-
less moony speculations, " if such a thing had not happened " which did
happen, or, "if So-and-so had gone hither" instead of thither, or, "if
I had only said or done" what I did not say or do, " there would have
followed" — heaven knows what. Sometimes we pursue out such endless
and aimless guessings with a companion, and then we generally stop
short pretty soon with the vivid sense of the absurdity of our behaviour ;
unless in such a case as that of the celebrated old childless couple
looking back over th^ir fireside on forty years of unbroken union, pro-
ceeding to speculate on what they should have done if they had had
children ; and finally quarrelling and separating for ever on a divergence
of opinion respecting the best profession for their (imaginary) second
son. But when alone, we go on weaving interminable cobwebs out of
such gossamer threads of thought, like poor Perrette with her pot of
milk — a tale whose ubiquity among all branches "of the Aryan race
sufficiently proves the universality of the practice of building chateaux
en Espayne.

Of course, with every one who has a profession or business of any
kind, a vast quantity of thought is expended necessarily upon its details,
insomuch that to prevent themselves, when in company, from "talking
shop" is somewhat difficult. The tradesman, medical man, lawyer,
soldier, landholder, have each plenty to think of in bis own way ; and

218 THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING.

in the case of any originality — of work such as belongs to the higher
class of literature and art — the necessity for arduous and sustained
thought in composition is so great that (on the testimony of a great
many wives) I have come to the conclusion that a fine statue, picture,
or book is rarely planned without at least a week of domestic irritation
and discomfort, and the summary infliction of little deserved chastisement
on the junior branches of the distinguished author or artist's family.

Mechanical contrivances obviously give immense occupation to those
singular persons who can love Machines, and do not regard them (as the
writer must confess is her case) with mingled mistrust, suspicion and abhor-
rence— small models, in short, of the Universe on the Atheistic Projection.
Again for the discovery of any chemical desideratum, ceaseless industry and
years of thought are expended ; and a Palissy deems a quarter of a life-time
properly given to pondering upon the best glaze for crockery. Only by
such sacrifices, indeed, have both the fine and the industrial arts attained
success ; and happy must the man be counted whose millions of thoughts
expended on such topics have at the end attained any practical conclusion
to be added to the store of human knowledge. Not so (albeit the thoughts
are much after the same working character) are the endless meditations of
the idle on things wholly personal and ephemeral ; such as the inordinate
care about the details of furniture and equipage now prevalent among
the rich in England ; and the lavish waste of feminine minds on double
acrostics, embroidery, crochet, and above all — Dress. A young lady
once informed me that after having for some hours retired to repose,
her sister, who slept in the same room, had disturbed her in the middle of
the night : " Eugenie, waken up ! I have thoughts of a trimming for our
new gowns ! " Till larger and nobler interests are opened to women, I
fear there must be a good many whose " dream by night and thought by
day " is of trimmings.

When we have deducted all these silly and trivial and useless thoughts
from the sum of human thinking — and evil and malicious thoughts, still
worse by, far — what small residuum of room is there, alas, for anything
like real serious reflection ! How seldom do the larger topics presented
by history, science, or philosophy engage us ! How yet more rarely do we
face the great questions of the whence, the why, and the whither, of all
this hurrying life of ours, pouring out its tiny sands so rapidly in the hour-
glass ! To some, indeed, a noble philanthropic purpose or profound
religious faith gives not only consistency and meaning to life, but supplies
a background to all thoughts — an object high above them to which the
mental eye turns at every moment. But this is, alas ! the exception far
more than the rule ; and where there is no absorbing human affection, it
is on trifles light as air and interests transitory as a passing cloud, that
are usually fixed those minds whose boast it is that their thoughts "travel
through eternity."

Alone among Thoughts of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, stands
the grim, soul-chilling thought of Death. It is a strange fact that,
face it and attempt to familiarize ourselves with it as we may, this one

THOUGHTS ABOUT THINKING. 219

thought ever presents itself as something fresh, something we had never
really thought before — " I shall die f " There is a shock in the simple
words ever renewed each time we speak them in the depths of our souls.

There are few instances of the great change which has passed over
the spirit of the modern world more striking than the revolution which has
taken place in our judgment respecting the moral expediency of perpetually
thinking about Death. Was it that the old Classic world was so intensely
entrancing and delightful, that to wean themselves from its fascinations and
reduce their minds to composure, the Saints found it beneficial to live
continually with a skull at their side ? For something like sixteen centuries
Christian teachers seem all to have taken it for granted that merely to
write up " Memento mori," was to give to mankind the most salutary
and edifying counsel. Has anybody faith in the same nostrum now, and
is there a single St. Francis or St. Theresa who keeps his, or her, pet skull
alongside of his Bible and Prayer-book ?

A parallel might almost be drawn between the medical and spiritual
treatment in vogue in former times and in our own. Up to our generation,
when a man was ill the first idea of the physician was to bleed him and
reduce him in every way by " dephlogistic " treatment, after which it
was supposed the disease was " drawn off," and if the patient expired
the survivors were consoled by the reflection that Dr. Sangrado had done
all which science and skill could effect to preserve so valuable a life. In the
memory of many now living, the presence of a medical man with a lancet
in his pocket (instantly used on the emergency of a fall from horseback or
a fit of apoplexy, epilepsy, or intoxication), was felt to be quite provi-
dential by alarmed relations. Only somewhere about the period of the
first visitation of cholera in 1832 this phlebotomising dropped out of
fashion, and when the doctors had pretty nearly abandoned it, a theory
was broached that it was the human constitution, not medical science,
which had undergone a change, and that men and women were so much
weaker than heretofore that even in fever they now needed to be sup-
ported by stimulants. Very much in the same way it would appear that
in former days our spiritual advisers imagined they could cure moral
disease by reducing the vital action of all the faculties and passions, and
bringing a man to feel himself " a dying creature " by way of training
him how to live ; while now-a-days our divines ^endeavour to fill us with
warmer feelings and more vigorous will, and tell us that —

'Tis life of which our veins are scant ;
O Life, not Death, for which we pant ;
More life and fuller, that we want.

Is it possible human nature is really a little less vigorous and pas-
sionate than it w^as when Antony and Cleopatra lived on the earth ; or
when the genius of Shakspeare made them live on the stage ?

220

WHAT is it that is dead?

Somewhere there is a grave, and something lies
Cold in the ground, and stirs not for my sighs,

Nor songs that I can make, nor smiles from me,
Nor tenderest foolish words that I have said;

Something there was has hushed and will not be.

Did it go yesterday,

Or did it wane away with the old years ?
There hath not been farewell, nor watchers' tears,

Nor hopes, nor vain reprieves, nor strife with death,
Nor lingering in a meted- out delay ;

None closed the eyes, nor felt the latest breath.

But, be there joyous skies,
It is not in their sunshine; in the night
It is not in the silence, and the light

Of all the silver stars ; the flowers asleep
Dream no moro of it, nor their morning eyes

Betray the secrets it has bidden them keep.

Birds that go singing now
Forget it and leave sweetness meaningless ;
The fitful nightingale, that feigns distress

To sing it all away, flows on by rote ;
The seeking lark, in very Heaven. I trow,

Shall find no memory to inform her note.

BISTE VIATOR. 221

The Voices of the shore

Chime not with it for burden ; in the wood,
Where it was soul of the vast solitude,

It hath forsook the stillness ; dawn and day
And the deep-thoughted dusk know it no more ;

It is no more the freshness of the May.

Joy hath it not for heart ;
Nor music for its second subtler tongue,
Sounding what music's self hath never sung ;

Nor very Sorrow needs it help her weep.
Vanished from everywhere ! what was a part

Of all and everywhere ; lost into sleep !

What was it ere it went?

Whence had it birth ? What is its name to call,
That gone unmissed has left a want in all?

Or shall I cry on Youth, in June-time still ?
Or cry on Hope, who long since am content ?

Or Love, who hold him ready at my will ?

What is it that is dead ?
Breath of a flower ? sea-freshness on a wind ?
Oh, dearest, what is that that we should find,

If you and I at length could win it back ?
What have we lost, and know not it hath fled ?

Heart of my heart, could it be love we lack ?

AUGUSTA WEBSTER.

222

terming %xt&t

IT is nearly a year ago since the present writer mourned in this magazine over
the Government's refusal to send out another Arctic expedition, and called
attention to the fact that the northernmost land in the globe is no longer of
an Englishman's naming. The first of these blots upon the national
honour has been wiped away by the Conservative Premier, and even Radicals
may hope he may be rewarded by having the removal of the second asso-
ciated with his name. Mr. Disraeli, with characteristic acumen, has seen
that on few questions was a penurious policy so likely to be distasteful as
on this, and he deserves all credit for his insight. And now, when the Ex-
pedition is almost on the eve of sailing, some remarks on its preparation, its
route, its chances of success, and possibilities of failure, and on the results
previously obtained by ourselves and other nations, may not prove uninter-
esting to those who, during the long quiescence of England, have forgotten
the story with which, in Franklin's days, every one was familiar, and who, if
asked whether our venture was going to be made east or west of Greenland,
or east or west of Spitzbergen, would find it perhaps difficult to answer.

And, first, it is to be feared that the revulsion of feeling which has
come over the nation since the Government's decision may be to some ex-
tent prejudicial to the prestige of the enterprise. So long as an Expedition
was discountenanced on the ground that it was practically impossible to
reach the Pole, no one felt disposed to underrate the perils of the attempt.
But now that every newspaper has had its say on the subject, people are
beginning to talk as if the question was only one of time and money, and
to discount beforehand the patient bravery, the consummate skill, and also
the good fortune, by which alone the great quest of so many centuries can
be achieved. That is not the spirit in which we should watch the depar-
ture of the Expedition. We should not gauge its utility by its geographical
discoveries, however striking they may be. Surely the fact that 150
lieutenants volunteered for the service within a few weeks after the
announcement of the Government's intentions, is in itself no slight
return for the outlay ; and if, a year and a half or two years hence, our
adventurers should return with one more story of failure, we should feel
their failure to be merely nominal, and the gain to the nation in prestige
and example great and real. If we reflect that the mere accident of a bad
season may suffice to frustrate all that experience and bravery can
unitedly effect, over-confidence will appear more than usually out of
place. To have counted the cost beforehand, to be prepared in case of
failure to renew the attempt, not to expect success while straining every
nerve to secure it, and to feel that if captains and crews do their duty, that
alone is gain for England,— this, assuredly, is the spirit in which the nation
should see the Expedition set out, as it is certain to be the spirit in which

THE COMING- AECTIC EXPEDITION. 223

Captain Nares and his men will leave us. We may, on the other hand,
feel confident that Sir Leopold McClintock and his coadjutors will not for-
get that it is in opposition to the wishes of a certain influential portion of
the public that the enterprise has been undertaken, and that therefore it
is doubly incumbent upon them to take care that failure is due to bad for-
tune only and not to want of foresight. When Captain Koldewey's expe-
dition set out, the German contractors made it a point of honour to supply
them with the very best stores they could procure. Recent revelations
may make us fear that in our own country commercial honour is less valued
than commercial success. Let us hope no firms but those of the highest
credit have tfeen employed on the outfit of the Expedition, and that the
most vigilant supervision has been exercised over its every detail.

Its organisers must have had an anxious time of late. First and
foremost there was the choice of ships, and here we may be sure no
keener eye to make an all-important selection could have been found than
Sir Leopold McClintock' s. Then there must have been many a consul-
tation about boats and sledges, and the best mode of converting the
vessels into winter- houses. The proper amount of coal to be taken on
board, the quantity and quality of prophylactics against scurvy, the selec-
tion from men and officers volunteering for the service, are all points
demanding the utmost discrimination, and a slight error of judgment in
any one of them might entail the ruin of the whole enterprise. Let us
hope that there has been no penny-wise economy in provisioning the
Expedition, nor in the selection of its personnel, but that the sole and
single aim with which the Committee has acted has been to secure the
best ships, the best equipment, and the best crews at its disposal. With-
out a complete medical scrutiny no volunteer would, of course, be ac-
cepted. Too clean a bill of health — and not physical health only — could
not be required from every candidate. A weak man's death, a down-
hearted man's grumbling might at a critical moment double the sufferings
or even endanger the safety of his companions. The records of all Arctic
story prove that nowhere is example more contagious, or feebleness of
body or mind more depressing, than in the long monotonous struggle with
darkness and cold. Whether the enterprise succeeds or fails, may it never
turn out that there has been any oversight in inquiring into a man's
character or any perfunctory examination of stores. Each of such points,
however minute in itself, yet as being possibly the " little rift within the
lute " requires and has doubtless received the utmost attention. But if
we suppose all these precautions to have been taken, one preliminary still
remains to be settled before the Committee can be said to have got the
responsibility of the enterprise finally off its hands. The proper time
of setting out is a point of cardinal importance. No one will deny that
to get betimes through that dangerous region of Baffin's Bay called
Melville Bay into the North Water, is to have won half the battle. The
probability is, that in an ordinary season the passage would be effected about
the end of June or the beginning of July. Still, prudence would seem to
recommend that a discovery-ship should be in Baffin's Bay at the begin-

224 THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

ning of June, so as to take advantage of an unusually favourable season.
If the season proved unfavourable, some preliminary acclimatisation and
experience would do tbe crews no harm. If it were favourable, it is
possible, that, since after Melville Bay is passed the passage to Smith's
Sound is comparatively easy, the goal of the Expedition might be reached
and the ships come safe home again before next Christmas. It need
hardly be said that no such swift success is probable. On the contrary,
the ultimate success of the voyage will most likely depend on the fore-
sight with which plans are prepared for the first winter in the ice, and
for the sledging operations, which will precede a crowning effort to
reach the Pole in 1876. But the mere chance of an earlier end to the
Expedition is well worthy of consideration. It is impossible, too, to
doubt that, however minutely the scheme for a longer stay may have been
elaborated, the Captain will be left at liberty to use his own discretion in
special circumstances ; and as some ships have sailed through Melville
Bay without any hindrance at all, and in 1873 a whaler — the Arctic —
reached the North Water by June 9, it is not perhaps presumptuous to
hope that our ships may be well on their way by the end of May.

To mention the North Water is, as it were, to enter on the technicalities
of the present Expedition. Before we venture to follow its fortunes further,
it may be well to explain what considerations have led to its taking that
route at all, and this will be best effected by a brief survey of the results
obtained by previous voyages. It is a little curious, and may be some
consolation to those who think the national spirit has been cankered by
money-grubbing, to notice that, whereas the early Arctic expeditions were
often due to commercial rivalry and much the same sort of emulation as
that which causes the annual tea-race from China, it is the spirit of honour
and the love of science which have been the mainsprings of those of late
years, and notably of this last of 1875. No fabled glories of Cathay
allure our imaginations. We do not dream of shores sown with gems, or
of a short cut to the treasure-lands of the East. We have not now even
the hope of relieving a lost expedition to spur us on. Nay, love of
science itself has only borne a subordinate part in promoting the present
attempt. Primarily it has sprung out of national emulation rekindled
by the success not only of the Americans, but of an inland people like the
Germans. Now as there are three avenues to the untraversed region
round the Pole — one east of Greenland through the sea on either side of
Spitzbergen ; another west of Greenland through Davis' Straits, Baffin's
Bay, and Smith's Sound ; and the third by Behring's Straits ; so there are
three main chapters into which all Arctic history may be divided — explora-
tions of the North-West Passage, or the attempt to show that Behring's
Straits* might be reached from Europe by the sea north of North America ;
explorations of the North-East Passage, or the attempt to show that
Behring's Straits might be reached from Europe by the sea north of

* Before 1728, the year of Behring's discovery, for " Behring's Straits " "some
unknown straits " would have to be substituted.

THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 225

Norway and Siberia ; and explorations northwards towards the Pole.
Some of these explorations have been conducted with the avowed object
of discovery, some from the hope of finding a short passage to the Indies
or of reaching a richer fishing-ground, a few from scientific motives, and
the most famous of all from noble international rivalry in attempting to
rescue Sir John Franklin. The general result of* all these explorations
has been that the unknown region round the Pole has been steadily
though slowly circumscribed. At a rough estimate an area of over two
million square miles still remains undiscovered. Bat the circle has been
uniformly contracting, and on every side wedges, as it were, have been
driven into it of, it may be, an island in one quarter which has been cir-
cumnavigated, or of a mountainous shore skirted in another, which, though
unexplored, is clearly the outline of a vast interior ; while conjecture,
almost amounting to certainty, enables us to picture to ourselves a large
portion of space which the eye of man has never seen. The outer circle
of the great polar basin is formed by the three continents of Asia, America,
and Europe. But an inner uneven circle has of late been traced, which
is marked off by the northern shores of Spitzbergen, Greenland, Grinnell
Land, the Parry Islands, Wrangel Land, New Siberia, and Franz Joseph
Land. It must, however, be remembered that though we may use the
term "circle " for convenience, it would be wholly misleading if it con-
veyed the notion of a central sea round the Pole surrounded by a belt of
land. Whether there is sea or land at the Pole itself is uncertain, but it
seems probable that no central land-locked ocean exists. We know,
indeed, that north of Spitzbergen there is water about 500 miles from the
Pole, but we also know that Greenland has been tracked to within 534
miles of it. We are more likely to be correct in imagining the unknown
region to be Irregularly broken up into great patches of ice-bound sea,
intersected by water-lanes in summer, such as that between Iceland and
Spitzbergen, or that between Banks Land and Behring's Straits ; into
vast tracts of ice-bound land like Greenland and Grinnell Land ; and into
groups of islands such as the Parry Islands, New Siberia, Spitzbergen,
and (apparently) Franz Joseph Land. We may even give more precise
shape to our conjectures without indulging in mere guesswork. Very
strong reasons have been adduced for the theory that Grinnell Land
stretches far westwards north of the Parry Islands in the direction of
Wrangel Land. Wrangel Land and Grinnell Land may, in fact, be
merely the western and eastern portions of the same country, though pro-
bably it will be found that each is a large island with other large islands
or batches of islands intervening. So, also, it is something more than a
conjecture that whoever advances much farther up Smith's Sound will
find that Grinnell Land trends westwards, and that beyond it, and before
coming to the Pole, a large island exists. Such then are the broad geo-
graphical results that have been actually obtained or conjectured from pre-
vious investigation. How they have led to the selection of Smith's Sound
as the best route for the new Expedition now remains to be shown.
VOL. xxxi — NO. 182. 11.

226 THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

It has been said above that Arctic history may be divided into an
account of north-western, northern, and north-eastern explorations. The
first of these fields of discovery has been occupied almost exclusively by
Englishmen. In the second also they have been pre-eminent, though they
have been run close by the Americans. In the third the Russians have borne
away the palm. The Dutch in old times, and Sweden and Norway lately,
have been conspicuous for their enterprise in the seas of Spitzbergen and
Nova Zembla, and both these islands were for the first time circumnavi-
gated in our day by a Norwegian seaman, Captain Carlsen. Quite
lately the Germans have begun to emulate the maritime nations. A
North-German expedition in 1869-70 surveyed a considerable portion of
East Greenland (finding, among other discoveries, coal-seams in its moun-
tains), and an Austro-Hungarian expedition discovered in 1873 a new
and extensive group of islands north of Nova Zembla. Thus the honours
of Arctic discovery are shared by many nations. Englishmen discovered
the North- West Passage. Englishmen led the way to Smith's Sound.
Englishmen discovered the straits between Nova Zembla and the main-
land. Englishmen first sailed north of Spitzbergen. And fifty years ago
an Englishman went nearer the Pole than any man out of legend ever
went before or since. Americans, on the other hand, have seen and
sailed farthest north. The Austro-Hungarian expedition has made the
last great geographical discovery. And the Russians, though they have
never actually performed it, have proved the existence of a North-East
Passage. Now all these efforts, spreading over several centuries, have
steadily tended to show that the Pole is unapproachable from this, that,
and the other side, till by a process of elimination we have been reduced
to one route only as holding out any reasonable prospect of success,
namely the route west of Greenland by Smith's Sound. If we glance first
at the widest avenue to the Pole, namely the Spitzbergen seas, it is
curious to observe that all modern exploration has done little more than
confirm the experience of Hudson two centuries and a half ago, while no
one has since sailed east of Greenland fifty miles further north than he
did in his little vessel of eighty tons. He found an impenetrable belt of
ice between Greenland and Spitzbergen in one voyage, and between Spitz-
bergen and Nova Zembla in another, and though some ships have since
pushed somewhat higher, it has only been to find that impenetrable belt
not of drifting floes but of old solid ice facing them at last. For a
long time the notion that ice could only be formed in the neighbourhood
of land stimulated adventure, but this delusion has been dispelled by
modern observations, and Payer and Koldewey, the latest explorers in
those seas, have from an opposite opinion been forced by the same ex-
perience as Hudson to come round to the conclusion that in this quarter
it is hopeless to attempt an approach to the Pole by sea. They are only
two out of many who have started with one conviction and returned with
the other, but Payer's opinion is of peculiar importance on this
point. North of Spitzbergen not only had numerous attempts failed in
the same way, but the same conclusion had been forced on five Swedish

THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 227

expeditions sent out for scientific objects between 1858 and 1872. More
to the east however, there had been rumours of open water seen
again and again, and till Payer's voyage some people had imagined
that the Pole might be reached from the sea north of Siberia.
Baron Wrangel indeed, Russia's most distinguished explorer, was of
opinion that Smith's Sound was the most practicable route, and
Payer's experience will probably have given the coup de grave to other
surmises. He utterly failed to make a north-east passage north of Nova
Zembla, as he hoped to do, and being carried further north by the ice,
came upon a land more bleak and^desolate even than Greenland. " The
land," he says, " before us appeared to be utterly void of life : immense
glaciers looked down upon us from between the desolate mountains, which
rose boldly in steep doleritic cones and plateaus. Every object around us
was clothed in a mantle of glaring white, and the ranges of columns of
the symmetrical mountain terraces looked as if they were encrusted with
sugar. In no single instance could we see the natural colours of the rock,
as in Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Nova Zembla." Leaving his ship and
marching northwards, he saw the signs which deluded Kane and others
into the idea that they had reached the shores of an open Polar sea.
" A water sky of a dusky colour made its appearance in the north ; foul
yellow vapours collected below the sun, the temperature rose, the ground
under our feet became soft, and the snowdrift broke under us with a
rumbling noise. We had previously noticed the flight of birds from the
north — here we found the rocks covered with thousands of auks and
divers. Traces of bears, hares, and foxes were met with everywhere, and
seals reposed sluggishly upon the ice. We were justified, therefore, in
believing that open water was near at hand." Soon the belief was rudely
dispelled. On the height of Cape Fligely he was " now in a position to
judge of the extent of coast water. It turned out [to be a ' polynia '
bounded by old ice, within which floated ice-masses of recent formation."
From what he saw on this occasion, Lieutenant Payer deduced that the
theory of an open Polar sea was as untenable as the theory that the
Polar basin is covered with ice throughout the year. The truth, he con-
siders, lies between the two extremes. " The hope of finding a navigable
sea in latitudes not hitherto attained, is not yet extinct, and is most likely
to be realised by hugging the coast, but depends in a large measure on
a favourable year." He proceeds to declare his preference for the route
by Smith's Sound, but makes his hopes even from that route dependent
on " an expedition reaching a winter harbour in a latitude as high as
that reached by the last American expedition." His own track, he points
out, " carries no weight in considering this question, for we are indebted
for our progress to a floe of ice, and not to our own ' exertions. The
difficulties which any succeeding navigator would have to contend with on
this route may be estimated from the fact that, on our return, we found
the sea encumbered with ice to such an extent that even boat navigation
was hardly possible, and we were obliged to haul up our boats many
hundred times, and drag them over the ice. We certainly should not

228 THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

have been able to return in our vessel, although the summer of 1874
was exceptionally favourable." Thus we see that all attempts made in
many directions, in varieties of seasons, and daring a long course of
years, to break through the solid wall of ice which exists in the Spitzbergen
seas, have failed. That ice varies in thickness from twenty to thirty feet.

Those who have sailed through Behring's Straits eastwards have found
the same solid barrier to the north, only on a still more formidable scale.
Impenetrable though the pack appears in the Spitzbergen seas, here it is
still more so, for the ice is some sixty feet in thickness, and the hopeless-
ness of an attempt to force such a barrier must be proportionately greater.
It is true that here there is no such drift as that which defeated Parry's
attempt to perform with boats and sledges what he could not do by ship,
but to counterbalance this no ship could here get anything like so far north
as Parry because the pack ice is encountered in a much lower latitude,
and as, moreover, the surface of the ice has been described as a mass of
hillocks from forty to a hundred feet high, a sledge expedition would be
out of the question. In Baffin's Bay, on the contrary, the ice is on an
average only five or six feet thick, and there only appears to be a practic-
able along-shore route towards the Pole. It is, too, a great advantage
that this route should already have been tracked to within 534 miles of
the Pole, and if we could only count on our pioneer ship having the luck
of the Polaris, we might feel sanguine as to its prospects of success.

Smith's Sound derives its name from the first governor of the East
India Company, who was also the first governor of the Company of Mer-
chant Discoverers of the North- West Passage. Its entrance lies between
Cape Isabella on the west and Cape Alexander on the east coast, the dis-
tance between the two being a little over forty miles. For two centuries
after it was discovered by Baffin in 1616 it was a mere nominis umbra,
if so much as that, for even so late as 1818 Baffin's Bay was thought to
exist only in the imagination of the man who gave that sea its name. In
1818 Captain John Eoss sailed within sight of Smith's Sound, and so far
proved that Baffin had been neither an impostor nor a dreamer of dreams.
But Eoss himself did not evince remarkable ardour or intelligence, and,
after being stopped in Lancaster Sound by some visionary mountains
across which a ship sailed in the following year, returned home, leaving
it to be supposed from his observations that there was no outlet north-
wards or westwards from Baffin's Bay. By 1852 all the other sounds of
that bay had been examined, and in that year Captain Inglefield, who was
engaged in the search for Sir John Franklin, looked into this one and saw
that the capes christened by Eoss were the portals of what seemed an
open sea. The following year came Kane's heroic voyage, and his steward
Morton, who saw a point between 550 and 560 miles from the Pole, saw
also off that point what again seemed an open sea. Up this "sea,"
named Kennedy Channel by Kane, Kane's surgeon, Dr. Hayes, travelled
with a sledge in 1861, only to find the water turned into ice, but ice of
such a nature as to lead him to the conclusion that it had been piled up
by the pressure of an ocean to the north. Finally in 1871 Captain Hall

THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 229

in the Polaris sailed a little over forty- seven miles beyond the northern-
most point which Dr. Hayes reckoned he had reached in a sledge, being
then between 534 and 533 miles from the Pole. Though his vessel was
caught in the ice there, the sea was navigable further on. He called
it Robeson Straits, and it is noteworthy that it is considerably
narrower than the entrance to Smith's Sound. And here it is that we
must hope Captain Nares will take up the work where it has been left off
by those three gallant Americans, so that the discoveries which were
begun by Davis and Baffin may be completed by their countrymen, and
the northern as well as the southern coasts of this ocean- inlet may be
known by English names. We must hope. But those who are most
familiar with Arctic history will do no more. If Hall sailed to 82° 16' N.,
Kane only got as far as 78° 45', and Hayes only as far as 78° 17', when
the ice caught their ships. Perhaps the severity of our winter in England
may be no omen of an unfavourable condition of the ice next summer in
the Polar Sea. But certainly there is little to make us confident that
Captain Nares will be able to sail even as far as Captain Hall. On the
one hand, it is true, the Polaris was a small and badly- equipped vessel,.
and was, moreover, leading the way ; while the Bloodhound and the Alert
will sail in her track, and with a perfection of equipment which, in minia-
ture, will, we trust, rival that of the Abyssinian expedition. But, on the
other, there is the fact that, in all the long annals of Polar voyaging, no
authentic evidence exists of any other ship in any season, however favour-
able, having got so far north as Hall. It is far more likely that the lead-
ing English ship will, in spite of its superior steaming power and power
of charging the ice, be ice-locked somewhere nearer the point where Kane
was stopped. If that is the case, it means that the chances of reaching
the Pole are enormously diminished, because the distance to be traversed
by sledges will be enormously increased, and sledging is the most crushing
part of the discoverer's toil. And not only would the actual distance
from the Pole, even if the sledges could go there in a straight line, be far
greater ; but, as they might have to follow the indentations of the coast,
it might be multiplied perhaps threefold.

The plan of the Expedition is, it is said, as follows. Two ships are to-
proceed to the entrance of Smith's Sound this year. One will stay there
and set to work establishing depots northwards ; the other will sail north-
wards, and, when stopped by ice, or when arrived at the farthest point
from which it seems practicable to keep up communications with its
consort, will in the same spider-like fashion begin stretching out a line
of depots northwards. This will be the work of the autumn and winter
of 1875, and in 1876 the advanced ship will send out a sledging ex-
pedition towards the Pole, which instead of carrying all its commissariat
along with it will find much of it cached in the depots of the previous
year. Now ten miles a day is good average sledge-travelling, and if
the advanced ship steamed as high as the Polaris it is argued that
the sledging party might easily perform the 500 and odd miles to the
Pole and back in 100 days. We do not say it could not. But surely

230 THE COMING ARCTIC EXPEDITION.

there is a flaw in this reckoning. Five hundred miles as the crow
flies are one thing. To go 500 miles north, following the coast, is quite
another. On the most liberal calculation the distance should, it may
be imagined, be reckoned as double. Do what we will to lessen its
dangers, that will be a tremendous undertaking. The majority of people
who read glib newspaper articles have probably the vaguest notions of
what such an expedition means. In the first place there is the chance
of the dogs dying, and without dogs it is quite certain we should never
reach the Pole, unless we succeeded in outsailing Captain Hall. Again,
it is not smooth ice that has to be traversed. A sledge has generally
to keep to what is called the ice-foot or solid ice clinging to the shores
of the straits, because in the centre the ice becomes sooner rotten in
the summer. Should this ice cease or become so rotten as Hayes and
Payer found it, the party would have to take to the boat. For we presume
no advance is to be expected along the snow and glacier- covered border
of the land itself. And here where the talk of an open sea may have made
some people think the perils of the attempt will be over, it may very likely
prove they have only begun. Let any one recall to himself the dangers, de-
scribed by so many graphic pens, which beset a strong ship manned by a
full crew in the Polar seas, and then think of a frail boat with its boat's
crew launching on what may be a stormy sea with every peril from the
ice as great or greater than further south. Surely when those who for
years have decried an expedition suddenly turn round and say that " the
foremost ship might approach within 500 miles of the Pole ; and, with
the knowledge of sledge -travelling we now possess, the distance there and
back might be traversed in 100 days," they are blowing hot much too
soon after blowing cold. Such language in such a quarter argues either
considerable ignorance or careless under-valuation of the hazards to be
undergone. No, not all the experience of all the explorers that ever
lived could make the Expedition other than a terrible struggle against
terrible odds. Our main hope lies in our steamer outstripping Captain
Hall's. Could it do this, and do it early in the summer, the wisest policy
might after all be to make the grand attempt this year. Should we there-
fore be daunted by such an outlook, and shrink from the venture ?
Bather let our motto be Ne cede mails sed contra audentior ito. If
immediate success is only to be won by good fortune, an immediate
return in some shape is certain. And even if the present enterprise fails,
it will, we may be confident, do something to lessen the risks of future
explorers. The same people who make light of the difficulties to be
encountered now would be the first to throw cold water on a repetition of
the attempt should those difficulties prove insurmountable. It is more
prudent and more patriotic to be prepared for partial failure. If Captain
Nares can reach the Pole, so much the better. If he can get beyond
Hall and Parry it will be a grand contribution to future discovery. But
if he does neither, but simply does his best, let us be satisfied, and deter-
mined never again to desist from the enterprise which is our birthright
till patient toil is finally crowned by triumph. A. H. B.

MB. REYNOLDS WAS IN FULL DRESS. HE WORE HIS RED VELVET COURT SUIT AND HIS SWORD. HE
CAME UP CARRYING THE FLOWERS HE HAD ORDERED IN THE MORNING, AND PRESENTED THEM

WITH A LITTLE COMPLIMENT FULL OF bonhommie AND GRACE.

231

CHAPTER VII.

THE ARMENIAN CONVENT.

HE little room
looked very
empty and de-
serted without
Angelica. The
two men worked
on in silence.
Miss Angel was
away among her
grand acquain-
tances. " Per-
haps she might
come home pre-
sently, absorbed,
pre-occupied as
usual ; she might
not even like to find him there," thought poor Antonio bitterly.

Presently he raised his head, and, starting from his seat, ran down
the narrow stairs. Old John Joseph was hammering, and had heard
nothing, but Antonio had caught the plash of the oars and the echo of
Angelica's voice. The boat came up to the steps, and particles of streaming
moonlight seemed to glisten under Angel's feet as she came from the boat,
carefully assisted by M. de Horn in his Hamlet-like garb.

Then the boat slid off once more with many gentle good-nights and
cautions from the lady glistening and glittering in the shadowy seat.

" Tell your father I will hear of no denial, my sweet Angel," said
the lady ; " you must positively bring me his consent to-morrow. Good-
night, my dearest creature." Then the Count's " good-night, Madam,"
in a deep voice that seemed to echo into the night. The oars dropped
slowly into the water, and Antonio and Angelica stood for a moment silent
and alone.

" What did she mean ? " he asked, suspiciously.

Angelica's heart was very full. Cross as Antonio was at times,

she trusted him sincerely. She seized his hand and cried, " Oh,

Antonio, advise me; I know so little. You know these dear and

noble people. Yes, they are good and generous, are they not ? They

232 MISS ANGEL.

will be true friends, will they not ? You were not in earnest, were you,
when you warned me against them ? Tell me. Shall I go to England,
Antonio ? The Ambassadress will take me there with her— will
establish me there, and introduce me to her friends. The people here
love art. They praise me, they are good to me ; but money is hard to
win, and my father and I can hardly live by our talents. In England,,
so they tell me, I should earn enough for him, for myself, for all our wants.
Look," and she opened her hand, and some gold glistened in the moon-
light ; " this is only a part of what I have earned this week. It is more
than I received from the Cardinal Bishop himself. Antonio, you must
come too. We will all go to England and grow rich, and then return to
our beloved Italy and enjoy the fruits of our labour."

" You will never come back if you once go there," said Antonio, and
he held her hand, in which the gold still lay shining, and with his long
fingers folded hers over upon it. " Don't let me see it," he said, with
some sudden spasm ; " they have bought you. It is your life, and your
soul, and your art that you are selling. You give up your friends,
your tranquil life, to seek all this excitement, and vanity, and folly. Go,
Angelica. You women are all alike ; you cannot live without admiration,
and lies, and flattery." He was trembling with emotion and his tone waa
full of reproach.

" Oh, Antonio ! " said Angelica, with her gentle voice stopping his
angry burst. She was so sweet and innocently trustful that night that
he could not go on ; it was only when she resented his scoldings that he
had the courage to continue them. There was a moment's silence be-
tween them ; he still held her hand.

" You are right to distrust me," he said, suddenly letting it fall. " I
am a bad adviser, Angelica. I am jealous of your success. Yes ! I am
jealous. I do wish you to stay here — obscure, unspoiled, unflattered ;
dressed not as you are now in that woman's silks and satins, but in your
shabby gown, of which each darn is dear to me and honourable to you
who wear it. I would keep you if I could," he said, with a harsh voice*
that suddenly failed and broke

I do not think Angelica understood him in the least. " You talk so
strangely," she answered ; " but you will never make me believe that
you are jealous of your poor little friend. If you had had all my advan-
tages, all the teaching, and . . . ."

Antonio began to laugh. " We shall never agree about art," he said.
" Come, your father is expecting you ; come and tell him your news."

Antonio's heart was very heavy as he followed Angelica across the moon-
light terrace. " Oh, Antonio, what will my father say? " she exclaimed,
falteringly. Antonio knew only too well what had been in old Kauffinann's
mind all along. Angelica feared to tell him and shrank from the thought
of parting, but John Joseph had hoped from the first that some such,
scheme might be suggested. What was the pain of temporary parting,
compared to such a prospect for his daughter ? The old man gave his.

MISS ANGEL. 233

ready consent. Angelica was to travel to England in the Ambassador's
train, in comfort, honour, and doubtless without expense. It would be
folly to refuse so good an offer.

" Yes, father," said Angelica cheerfully, but great bitter tears were
gathering in her eyes, and they glittered in the moonlight.

It was the last 'day of her stay at Venice, and Antonio had brought
a boat to row them once more out towards the Lido. It was not a
gondola, but a common rowing-boat, belonging to a fisherman, a friend
of his. They were very sad, but very happy somehow.

The boat travelled slowly. Old Kauffmann and his daughter sat side
by side on the low seat ; she had clasped his arm with her hand.

" Papa, you will come — you will not delay ? " she said.

" No, child, I will not delay," he answered ; but in his heart the
wily old painter thought that Angelica, living under the care of those
grand signori, would meet with more consideration and esteem than in
his modest home. He would not hurry — he would take his time. His
business called him to Coire, to Morbeegno. It was for her good, and he
did not shrink from the sacrifice ; but it was hard to make. He felt that
he was a man who did not shrink from pain when it was for her benefit,
and he sighed.

" Father, why do you sigh ? " said Angelica ; " you have some plan
that you keep from me — some wicked scheme; confess," — and the
reproachful blue eyes looked into his.

" No, my child," said John Joseph, very gently. " Antonio will tell
you that I have no hidden scheme. He is coming when I come. We
have quite settled to travel together," — and he patted her hand.

" Yes, I am coming," said Antonio from his oars.

Sometimes water and sky and light and soul meet in one happy
climax. So it seemed to these people that lovely autumn evening. The
convent stands upon an island, and they reach it as the sun is setting
crimson over the hills of Istria ; wide stretches the Lagoon, wide stretches
the evening; the great flame-like lines of the two horizons meet in
some new and wondrous glory. Antonio rowed on steadily, the island
comes into sight, and the convent cupola, and they float up' by the old
crimson wall, over which some dark heads are watching for the boat, and
some great red pomegranate flowers are hanging in clusters.

The sunset is crimson too, and so are the waters which toss them
along the steps, where an Armenian monk is standing in his straight-cut
dress. As Antonio rowed up another boat flashed past with its gay
hangings and rowers, a voice cried out a gay " Good-night ! "

The Ambassadress, her little daughter, Lady Diana, and de Horn
were all sitting under the awning ; de Horn bowed low ; Angelica blushed,
and waved her hand in answer to their greetings.

"Do you wish to go back with them?" said Antonio, frowning.
" You are ashamed of my fish-boat."

234 MISS ANGEL.

" Antonio, you are absurd," said Angelica, justly provoked. " I want
to stay with my father this last evening."

It was a strange place they had come to in the midst of this great
shining plain of sea — this convent standing in the garden. The evening
light had begun to shine upon the walls and the cupola and its golden
cross. Everything here seemed splendid and ascetic somehow — crimson,
and silent. The pupils in their little olive gowns stood about the walls
watching the sunset ; the great red flowers growing along the avenues,
balsams and oleander-trees, and pomegranates seemed gulping in the
light as it flowed triumphant across the answering floods. The monks
came out, reserved, dark-robed, quietly contained, and waited upon the
terrace. Nature flashed sumptuous and impulsive, while these human
beings stood watching in silence.

The Prior of the convent advanced slowly, followed by a brother. He
wore a streaming purple stole over his black robe and passed on. The
brother who had admitted the little party greeted Antonio as an old
acquaintance, and told him his designs were being executed to the general
satisfaction of the community. Then he looked at Angelica with his
peaceful face, neither sunset nor sunrise reflections were in it, but a
tranquil evening calm.

" See how the west is shining through the avenue," he said. " I
have seen many beautiful sunsets here these twenty years," and he raised
his hand and pointed down a cypress-walk. The dark branches seemed
to smite the vast serenity overhead.

As the monk spoke in his quiet voice, Angelica looked at him
curiously with her blue eyes. They had come out upon one of the shady
terraces. She was standing by a great tree that cast some faint aromatic
incense from its many blossoms ; her hair was shining, her white gown
glowed with prismatic colours.

The brother stopped for a minute, resting his arms on the wall.

" I do not envy your Venice," he said reflectively. " It is too much
in the world ; too full of life, noise, and distraction."

Angelica looked at him, wondering and sympathetic. " I think I

understand your feeling," she said, " and yet " She did not finish

the sentence. Her eyes must have finished her thought, for the brother
walked on a little way. Antonio answered the look.

"It would not suit you to stay here, Angelica," he said. "You
could not bear to spend your life peacefully, watching the changes from
the terrace."

" Would it suit me ? Antonio, we are not all made alike ; " and she
looked hard at him, trying to be clear, to explain her meaning.

Then she suddenly remembered how the day was burning up, the last
day of her old familiar life. Some sudden terror overwhelmed her. She
looked at her old father, and could have cried, but that would have dis-
tressed him, and she only smiled as she turned to him.

" Just now, at this minute," she said, " I feel as if I should like to wait

MISS ANGEL. 235

and wait, to put off to-morrow, oh ! for so long a time ; but if Hived here
always, one day I think something would come down like a cloud and hide
all the glory, and a voice in- my heart would cry out with reproach, * An-
gelica, for shame ! go forth ! why have you missed your vocation ? ' I
must take courage," she said, with a sigh, and she walked away from
them for a little way. Old John Joseph looked over the wall into the
water. Antonio could hear his low sobs ; but it was Angelica he followed
after a moment's hesitation.

" Dear Angelica, don't be unhappy," he said, kindly ; " you are quite
right ; you have decided wisely. You must forgive me for having troubled
you. It was but prejudice and jealousy of those fine people — unworthy
of me and of you. I daresay they are better than I think them."
" Trust me," he said, and his thin face gathered some colour, and his
pale looks flashed into earnestness. "I will take care of your father;
and when I am with him you know that he has a son."

" I do know it, Antonio," said Angelica, gratefully; and she put her
hand into his.

They rowed home very quietly, watching a sumptuous panther-like
cloud now floating across the sun. Nobody spoke. The ripples and
gleams of the Lagoon grew wider and more serene, reaching from the
present into the coming night

The gods seemed to be there invisible. Ariadne herself seemed trans-
lated into the moment, and her crown of pale stars began to shine over-
head.

Before they reached home, a great red moon, splendid and sorrowful,
the last glory of that long day, mounted quietly from beyond the islands.

Afterwards, in later days, Angelica used to look back to these old
times with a strange half-mournful longing.

CHAPTER VIII.

ARCADIA.

KAUFFMANN felt that his grief at parting from his daughter was to be ex-
pressed by no vulgar leave-taking, but by a solemn farewell on the Piazza.
With all the company looking on he was glad to be able to bless Angelica,
and to burst into tears under the very eyes of the Ambassador, and amid all the
bustle and audience which belonged to the state of the great English noble-
man— gondolas arriving at the starting point, couriers, porters staggering
with heavy luggage, in which my lady's beautiful clothes were packed ; my
lord himself swearing, if the truth must be confessed, and stamping about
in a pair of huge boots ; Lady Diana standing a little apart, with a book
in her hand, while her maid and her man-servant scolded and superin-
tended the packing of her carnage. The children were come, and stood
in a shy cluster by their governess, with travelling hoods tied under their
chubby faces.

236 MISS ANGEL.

Everyone and everything was ready for the start except old
Kauffmann, who had not yet taken leave, and her ladyship, who was late.
She had sent word that the first carriageful should start without her, but
this my lord would not hear of.

Angelica's heart was heavy enough now that the moment of parting
was come. She made the best of it, however, knowing her father's sus-
ceptibility. "We shall see Verona, father, and Genoa and the south of
France ; and we shall stop at Paris," she said, wistfully looking at the loved
haggard face. " We will go there together coming back ; and tell Antonio
he is to come too. Where is Antonio ?"

" Here he is," said Zucchi, stepping forward from behind.

"Ah, my child, at your age you may well have hope," said John
Joseph, shaking his head; "but at mine, who shall say what a day may
bring forth?"

Angelica turned very pale. " Oh, father, why should you talk so
sadly ? Heaven has been so good to us always," she faltered. " Together
or apart, dearest dear, it is the same Providence that will keep us that has
given to me my kind father, and to you your little Angelica, who loves you
so." She clung to his arm as she spoke. At that moment the Ambassa-
dress at last arrived in her gondola, stately and collected, chiefly concerned
for the comfort of a small dog she carried under her arm. Everybody
uncovered, and made way for the great lady.

" Here is my faithful muse ! " she said, and gaily greeted Angelica,
with a very unconcerned nod to old Kauffmann, who immediately stepped
up to her with tearful eyes and clasped hands, and would have gladly made

a long and moving speech if he had had opportunity. Lady W

seemed much too absorbed to listen. There was no time to lose. The
Ambassador laid his hand on the old man's shoulder, and said, very
kindly, "My lady will have good care of your daughter, M. Kauffmann.
Don't be disturbed about her." And then, as the old fellow broke into
hysterical grief, he added, somewhat perplexed, ' ' You know, if you repent
your consent, it is not too late for you to keep her even now." But terrible
as parting was, not to part would have been a still greater misfortune, and
old Kauffmann, much alarmed, was silent immediately, and tried to gulp
his tears. Antonio felt very angry with him, but forgave him for Angelica's
sake.

"Good-bye, Angel," he said, cheerfully; "I like your Ambassador ;
he has a good heart — and don't fear for the old father."

" Will you give him some Marsala wine for his dinner ?" said Angel,
with quivering lips.

Then somebody signed to her to get into a carriage. It was Lady
Diana's ; two more maids, and the younger little girl had already scrambled
in. The outriders spurred their horses, the footmen sprang on to the
steps, and the whole procession started off along the road to Verona.
Angelica eagerly stretched from the window, and followed her father with
her eyes, as Antonio led him away ; then she fell back into her corner.

MISS ANGEL. 237

Lady Diana leaned out to get one last view of the wonderful city. As
she did so she caught sight of a man's pale face, looking after them, half
concealed by an archway. It was Count de Horn. Lady Diana shot a
suspicious glance at Angel, who was quietly rubbing away her tears with
her handkerchief. For nearly a mile they neither of them spoke. Little
Charlotte whispered to her nurse. The wheels rolled on ; the tassels
and handles jingled and jogged. They were driving along a flat plain
bounded by delicate hills. Nobody looked at them, and for a long way
Angelica went on crying ; but as there are rainbows in the air, so there
are rainbows often shining after tears. Angelica cheered up in a little
while, and tried to talk to her companion.

Lady Diana was, however, absorbed in her book, which had just come
out, called The Vicar of Wakefield.

People sometimes live together for years apart in peaceful misunder-
standing. It is those who are on the border lands of feeling who

Angelica and Lady Diana had enough of sympathy to dislike one
another cordially. Lady Diana was not happy with her cousin's wife, and
the mere fact of that lady's sudden infatuation for the young painter had

set the poor woman against Angelica. Lady W not unfrequently took

these passing fancies ; she had had one once for Diana herself, but that
was when she first married, ten years before, when Diana was a girl of
seventeen. They neither of them could bestow what the other wanted.
Judith wanted admiration, not love ; poor Diana wanted love. There was
nothing in her to -be admired, she sometimes thought, with a sigh ; but
there was something to be loved, she used to feel in her heart, although
little by little even that something seemed drying up and turning to
strange bitterness and pain. She had loved her cousin dearly. She had
given her heart to the children, and now Judith in a hundred ways
seemed to be trying to alienate him and them from her. Diana had
always been brought up with her cousin. She was tenderly attached to
him, had been used to him all her life, and she might have lived on

happily, trusting in his friendship, if Lady W would have allowed

her to do so. She was not an unreasonable woman, and very little would

have made her happy. Lady W wanted her to marry Count de Horn

— anybody who happened to strike her own fancy ; but Lady Diana also
had her ideas, and was not to be reasoned out of them. How it all
happened that she marred her life I do not know. Perhaps her brusquerie
frightened people. Her standard was certainly a high one, and you
always somehow felt that she was carrying the scales to weigh you in.

Miss Angel looked at her as she sat engrossed in her marble-covered
book. She saw a stout, pale-faced person, very much over-dressed
(Lady Diana left her clothes to her maid, who was fond of bright colours).
She was plain, uninteresting, dull, looking older than she really, was, and
speaking less kindly than she really felt. One thing only seemed to draw
Angelica to her — a curious, indescribable sense of truthfulness of nature

238 MISS ANGEL.

and reliability that was like Antonio. Angelica felt thankful at that
moment to remember that he was with her father.

Antonio was always as good as his word ; he kept with old Kauffmann
all that clay, and only left him cheered and sitting in the starlight at his
favourite wine- stall, with old Pintucci as a companion. Then Antonio
went away; he had work to do, and some heaviness of heart to shake
off, and he longed to get away and be alone.

The next day a little scrap of pencilled paper came back by one
of the returning couriers. It was hastily scrawled over with more good-
byes and messages for Antonio. He read them with a half- sarcastic
smile. " She wants me to take care of her father; that is what she
means," he thought ; and yet, though he doubted, the little messages were a
comfort to him — she was kinder absent, on paper, than present and in words.

But Antonio was morbid where Miss Angel was concerned. He used
to contrast her fate and his ; he was only some seven years older in years,
but how many in feeling, in experience — a long illness and shattered nerves
had stood him ten years' experience. His hair at thirty was as grey
as old Kauffmann's ; his hand trembled at times like an old man's, and his
temper was crabbed and uncontrolled ; he had no part in life but that of
a convenient friend, taken up, put down, made use of. It made him
furious at times to think of it. Poor Antonio would have gladly been
young, handsome, rich, splendid, for her sake ; but that was not possible.

It was, however, possible to love her — possible : it was impossible not
to do so. With all her faults, her childish inconsiderateness, her curious
hallucinations about herself, and her absurd vanity (which, after all, was
not to be wondered at), Antonio felt he could not but love her. He was
much the prouder of the two, much the more revengeful, much the more
self-conscious, if the truth were known. It does not follow because a
person is not handsome, or particularly prosperous, or successful in his
affairs, that he is to experience every self-denying virtue. Antonio's in-
tellect was in many respects far in advance of his powers, and of Angelica and
of the people she lived among : he was constantly chafed by a position which
certainly was not equivalent to his abilities. He did not care for money
for himself, but he liked to be able to help others, and his want of
means was a bitter thorn in the side of a generous and yet orderly man.
Although in his heart he felt that no one else in all the world could love
her as he would have done, yet there were times when he gladly would
have forgotten her if he could. Why was he to waste his good affections
upon this careless and light-hearted girl ? What had she done to deserve
a good man's heart, or an indifferent man's heart, for the matter of that ?
You need not be specially good to suffer. " People were what they
happened to be," thought Antonio. He had no intention of succumbing to
fate ; he had plenty of courage, and meant to make the very best he could
of his powers, such as they were ; and if he rated himself highly, it was
because he was a sensible man, and knew what was in him. A
livelihood was to be made, and he had determined some time before that

MISS ANGEL. 239

England was the place to make it in. He had English friends of his
own. He had travelled with one of them, an architect, who promised
him work in London in the winter. He should see Angelica then.
Where had she travelled to, now, on her journey ?

The lady of Antonio's dreams has ascended into realms un-
dreamt of by struggling mortals trying to earn their daily bread
from day to day. It was a curious experience for the painter-maiden
to find herself suddenly one of an important company, travelling with
relays of horses, with servants in attendance, putting up in the best rooms
of the inns along the road, talking and hearing talk of lords, and palaces,
and mansions as if they were things of course. Here were splendid wax-
lights burning on her dressing-tables, servants at her call, and orders to
give almost for the first time in her simple life. She had lived with great
people before. When she had been painting the Cardinal at Como, he
had asked her to breakfast. The Bishop had invited her to see his pic-
tures, but there had been no real intimacy as now. She might have felt
shy but for the Ambassadress's charm of manner, and Angel was too
simple and credulous not to trust her companions, whoever they might be,
and to believe in all they told her.

The Ambassador 'was invariably kind ; the little girls were delightful.
If only her father had been there, Angelica would have had nothing to
wish for. They crossed the sun-gilt and bountiful country where the lovely
garlands were hanging from branch to branch. Pan sits in a field piping
on his two reeds to the peasants. White oxen come up to listen. The
vines are heavy with brown fruit, the shadowed chestnut-trees burst from
the valley, those mild valleys castle- crowned and billowing to golden fore-
lands. Some indescribable balm, and strength, and ease of heart seems to
belong to all these lovely modulations of form and colour. The bridge span-
ning the stream leads to the town below, to red roofs, vine bowers, from
whence the people are looking up. A far-away cottage door opens wide, a
woman comes out, and flings a handful of fruit to some children. . . .

The great carriages roll on, shaking and jolting, with the faces at the
windows. The distant shadows and hills enclose the golden plains, deli-
cately piled wreath upon wreath, now flying, now enclosing once again.
Something seems to sing a Laus Deo : " Accept ! accept ! open your
hearts ; open wide your hearts ! " is the hymn echoing along the way.

Lady Diana, who had let her book fall, looked round ; no one had
spoken, it was only her own soul that had cried out.

It was quite dark when they reached Verona, and came to a great busy
courtyard, full of hospitality and confusion. Angel stepped away unnoticed,
and went for a little way along a black and narrow street.

The apertures of the houses were lighted, curtains swung before the
doors ; the citizens were gossiping within after their day's work. The sky
was black and starless, you could scarce distinguish it from the sloping
roofs. Angel did not go far, she heard clocks striking in the darkness
overhead. She heard the river rushing by the bridge. She felt that life

240 MISS ANGEL.

had begun in earnest, and that this strange black veil of darkness hid a
future of which she could form no conception as yet. But she would work
to please her father, and to fulfil the mission that she felt was hers, and
to earn money for them both. She might laugh as others did, and talk
and seem to forget, but in her heart she did not forget that it was her aim
to strive for beautiful and noble things, to teach others to look up at a
high ideal. Antonio should see this was no idle fancy.

A sudden tipsy shout from one of the little drinking- houses frightened
the young prophetess, and she turned, and ran back as quickly as she could.

" How flushed you look, child," said Lady W., as Angelica came
along the gallery where she was standing with her children.

Window after window was lighted in honour of the Ambassador and
his suite. Most of them opened on to the gallery, and Lady W. was
waiting whilst her attendants packed and made ready.

" You must remember that you belong to us now ; you must not run
off alone," said she, gravely.

" Not go alone ! " said Angelica ; " I have been used to go alone all
my life."

" You are a person of consequence now, child," said Lady W.,
smiling ; " you must pay your penalty."

Next morning poor Angelica ventured no farther than the busy court-
yard of the inn, although she longed to start off and see the place of
which she had heard so much. She watched the people coming and
going along the galleries ; the oleander-trees in flaming rows. The
great cathedral bell was going. A storm was brewing, the white and grey
clouds heaving from beyond the roofs. As she stood there she heard a
tramping along the wooden gallery ; the Ambassador came up with his
boots, leading little Judith by the hand. Perhaps he read Angelica's
wishes in her eyes, for he asked her if she would accompany them in their
morning's walk, and the girl gladly accepted. They went a little way
through the streets, between the quaint crowded houses, across a wide
piazza, towards a great arched gateway leading from the busy world out-
side into a silent cathedral. My lord passed in, first taking off his cocked
hat, and little Judith tripped beside him. Miss Angel had seen many
cathedrals ; this one ^seemed to her to be an after-thought — an echo of
those where she had so often knelt by her father's side.

Looking about, they passed on across the marble pavement into a
little cloistered court that lay behind the nave. It led to the Baptistery.
In this little court were some tombs and slabs engraved with coats- of-
arms and inscriptions. A priest was standing thoughtfully absorbed in
deciphering one of these flat grave-stones. He looked at Angelica as she
passed. It was a kind and troubled face that attracted her strangely,
and she looked down from his face to the inscription he had been gazing at.

IN PATIENCE POSSESS TE TOUR SOULS

was rudely carved on the marble slab.

MISS ANGEL. 241

" Patience !" cried Angelica, answering her own thought; "there
are so many things better than patience."

The Priest looked up surprised. " Yes, but when other things have
failed," he said in a despairing sort of way, " then patience is still left
to us."

" No, no ! " cried little Miss Angel, impetuously ; " hope for some-
thing must remain while there is life. Patience is only death, only
despair."

Long after she remembered the little scene — the sad-faced priest, the
solemn text, at a time when her own soul seemed failing for fear. But
even then Angel was true to her creed. She might despair and die, or
live and strive to hope for better things ; but simple blind submission was
a thought unbearable to her, and false to her own heart.

When Angel came back she was surprised to find that Lady W. did
not seem to approve of her sight-seeing, although this time she had not
again gone alone.

" If you had come to me, I should have taken you myself," said her
patroness.

The journey proceeded in beauty and tranquillity. The weather
frowned upon them as they neared the Mediterranean, with its long rolling
breakers, its bordering groves and hills. The olives climb the steep
acclivities, and from their smoky pyre rise white villages, like flames
bursting from the summits. They stopped to change horses at a little
place called Bordighiera, on the coast of the Mediterranean.

Tfre sun had come out and the clouds had disappeared ; a sort of
dimmed brightness was everywhere. On the sea, on the village, in a little
smiling grove beyond a wall, where a small gate swung upon its hinges,
Miss Angel went up an avenue of lemon and olives, and breathed the
sweet morning pastoral silence. Close at hand was an old ivy-grown well.
She sat down, resting upon the margin. The pretty pensive figure itself
was not unsuggestive, looking thoughtfully down into the water. Her
heart beat with hope, with a sort of romantic delight and sweet absurdity.
Some peasants passed ; a woman carrying a load of leaves and tendrils of
vines, and driving a beautiful white cow with long arched horns.

Then came the shepherd, followed by some goats trotting with tinkling
bells, and, lastly, two little children, with goat-skin coats ; one had her
hands full of unripe olives.

The youngest was carrying something held carefully against its little
breast. The child looked up with two wild eyes at the pretty lady leaning
against the old iron crank of the well. Something in her look invited his
confidence, and he held up a little dead bird as he passed.

" What are you going to do with it ? " Angel said, kindly.

" We are going to dig a grave," said the child. "It is dead ! " and
the little thing walked on with careful steps.

When Mrs. Angelica Kauffmann sent her picture to Maiden Lane, it was
somewhat pompously entitled " Shepherd and Shepherdess in Arcadia,

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 182. 12.

242 MISS ANGEL.

moralising at the side of a Sepulchre, while others are dancing in the
distance ; " but it was some vague remembrance of that morning dream
which first suggested it to her.

She is not the only dreamer to whom Arcadia has been revealed.
Mightier dreams than hers have reached that mystic country.

" Auch ich in Arkadien," writes Goethe as a motto to his Italian
Journey. " Et in Arcadia ego " Sir Joshua has painted on a tomb, in the
background of a smiling picture.

" What can this mean ? " says Dr. Johnson, looking at it ; "it seems
very nonsensical. I am in Arcadia."

" The King could have told you," says the painter ; " he saw it yes-
terday, and said at once, « Ay, ay ! Death is even in Arcadia ! '"

After all, Arcadia would be a sorry, stagnant sort of place without its
tombstones. There is so much in life which is death. The progress of
life itself is a sort of death, of change, of absorption. There is death to
evil as well as to good, death to pain, to progress, and to death itself; when
with a sudden uplifting of heart in the fulness of time, Faith and Hope
seem at last to overflow the barriers that divide us.

CHAPTER IX.
THE " ANNUAL REGISTER " FOR 1766.

To read of the times when Miss Angel came to take up her abode
among us is like reading the description of a sort of stately ballet or court
dance. 'Good manners had to be performed in those days with deliberate
dignity. There is a great deal of saluting and snuff-taking, compliment-
ing and exclaiming ; people advanced and retreated bowing to the ground
and balancing themselves on their high heels.

With all the dignity there is also a great deal of noise, shouting and
chattering. There are runners with torches, splendid footmen in green and
golden liveries surrounding my lady's chair.

The King of Denmark is entertained in splendid fashion. The Princess
of Brunswick visits England. Cornelly lights up Soho Square with wax-
candles, while highwaymen hang in chains upon the gallows in distant dark
country roads. Our young King George is a bridegroom, lately crowned,
with this powdered and lively kingdom to rule, and Charlotte Regina to
help him.

There are great big coaches in the streets, and Mr. Reynolds' is
remarked upon with all its fine panels ; but Cecilia can still send for a
chair when she wishes to be carried to Baker Street ; Vauxhall is in its
glory and lights up its bowers. Dr. Burney gives musical parties.
The cards fly in circling packs ; the powder-puff's rise in clouds ;
bubbles burst. The vast company journeys on its way. In and out of
society golden idols are raised ; some fall down and worship, others burst
out laughing. Some lie resting in their tents, others are weeping in the

MISS ANGEL. 248

desert. Pre-eminent among the throngs one mighty shade passes on its
way. Is it a pillar of cloud sent to guide the straggling feet of the
weary ? From the gloom flash rays of light, of human sympathy not un-
spoken. How many of us still wandering impatient might follow that
noble hypochondriac, nor be ashamed of our leader. He walks along,
uncertain in his gait, striking alternate lamp -posts, an uncouth figure in
soiled clothes, splendid-hearted, with generous help for more than one
unhappy traveller lying wounded by the roadside. Do we not read how
noble Johnson stoops and raises the prostrate form upon his shoulders,
and staggers home to his own house ? He has not even an ass to help
him to bear the burthen.

The first time that Angelica saw him, she was in her dream of pre-
occupation and happiness and excitement : were the thieves about her
even then ? The second time she was alone and in sorrow, breaking her
sad heart and despairing. Then came to her the shabby feet bringing
good tidings, the deep and truthful voice speaking strange comfort, the
kind hands raising her and giving the balm of hope renewed to her
bruised soul.

Sir Joshua might assist a friend in sorrow, but he could not give
comfort, for he did not realise as Johnson did 'the depths to which a
human heart may sink.

Meanwhile Angelica laughs and holds her own. Her thieves, if thieves
they are, are well-mannered ones : they pay her compliments, bring her
tickets and flowers, invite her to dance and to sing and to all sorts of
pleasant things, and ask to have their portraits taken along with their
betters. How was she to know them from her real friends ? How was
she to believe those who warned her ? Her very power over others
blinded her to their faults, she could make people charming and kind by
her own gaiety of heart and out-going grace.

She had not seen very much of the worldly world as yet. Everything
was new and full of interest. She watched all the figures go by, but she
had no clue by which to form some judgment, and with one accord An-
gelica's complimentary contemporaries united to dazzle and to blind her.
If you had heard the babble of the stream as it passed by Angel's not
unwilling ears, the compliments, the half-truths, the exaggerations, you
would have forgiven her for believing not all but too much of what she
heard. Compliments were as much part of the manner of the time as
the snuff and the powder-puffs.

Miss Burney's Diary gives one a specimen of the good-natured exag-
geration.

" The sweetest book ! " cries Mrs. Thrale ; " the most interesting! the
most engaging ! oh, it beats every other book ! " " The most elegant novel
I ever read in my life ! such a style," says Lady Saye and Sele. Then
Mr. Soame Jenyns breaks forth in a higher strain: "All creation
is open to the authoress ; no human being who ever began that book had
power to put it down." Even Miss Burney in her usual modest confusion

12—2 .

244 MISS ANGEL.

feels that this is almost beyond her deserts ; and takes refuge with the old
housekeeper who is coming to the door, and exclaims to her mistress,
" Ah ! madam, how happy are you to have Minerva in the house."

Angel was not Minerva only, but all the heathen divinities combined with
all Christian graces, a sort of combination of Muses and Virtues, according
to her admirers ; of brilliant talents, of frivolity and heartless flirtation,
according to her enemies. And Angelica herself ? She never thought
about herself, but gratefully accepted kindness, hoped, loved, believed, was
happy, was miserable, without much method, innocent and unresenting.
Rossi describes Angelica at this time as not very tall of stature, but of
slight well-proportioned figure ; she had a dark clear complexion, a
gracious mouth, white and equal teeth, well-marked features. Above all,
he says, her azure eyes, so placid and so bright, charmed you with an
expression it is impossible to write ; unless you had known her you could
not understand how eloquent were her looks.

" II Ranolds " painted her, continues old Rossi, and Bartolozzi en-
graved the picture, and she painted herself many times. Sometimes she
painted herself happy and brilliant, sometimes old and sad. There is one
picture in the dress of her country, when the dimness of life and its
troubles had passed over her path : it is all there, marked upon her face
in sad and noble lines that detract from her beauty.

The house in Charles Street stood in a little park or garden, which had
been deserted for many months ; while the house was closed, and the
inhabitants were basking in brighter horizons than that of Berkeley Square.

T»ady W had given Angelica two little rooms on the ground floor.

The larger and darker was to serve as a bedroom ; the second, with its
glass doors and delicate inlaid chimney, was to be her working place for
the present. As soon as she had made her way in the London world, and
had earned a little money to start with, she was to be established in a
studio of her own ; but here for the winter Angelica was well content to
put up her canvases, and to begin work the very first morning after her
arrival. She was not particular, and she could contentedly settle down in
one corner or another. If this one had been a little larger it would have
suited her perfectly. The garden itself was green and neatly kept. Lord

W had a turn for such arrangements. There was a sort of terrace

walk that ran round the house, and led to the bench beneath the trees.
They were shady enough, and flourishing, notwithstanding London smoke.
Light mists and drifts from the square passed across the garden. Some-
times bright skies lit up overhead, with a different quiver, indeed, to that
thrill of azure life Angel was used to, but they shone as English skies
should shine, veiled only by rain-giving clouds and gentle practical
mists.

" You must make yourself at home, child," said Lady W. kindly,
as she took her into the room. " Call for what you want — Mrs. Betty
will attend upon you. You can receive your sitters in this outer room.

MISS ANGEL. 245

Your good fairy, you see, has planned it all. Do you think you shall be
happy here ? " she said, looking at her steadily.

" Yes, indeed ! " said Angelica, taking her hand, and kissing it grate-
fully.

" I think you are a good creature," said Lady W., with a sort of sup-
pressed sigh. "I know not why I should think so. I have been dis-
appointed over and over again." So she went away, leaving her poor
little protegee somewhat perplexed as to what mysterious fidelity was
expected of her. I don't believe, to tell the truth, that Lady W. knew
very well herself; but, as other people before her, she wished everybody
to be and to do what she desired for them, and when they, naturally
enough, went their own way, she considered herself deceived, and dis-
appointed, and ill-treated by fate. She was not happy with all her
possessions. Perhaps for great and small ladies too there is no lesson
more difficult to learn than that of being contented and happy with the
happiness and interests that happen to fall to each lot. We are willing to
accept this event which does not belong to our history, that friend who does
not need our regard — the interest or occupation which is the share of some-
body else ; but our own talents, it must be confessed, we often gladly put
away in their napkins. Lady W. was a mysterious woman. She was good-
natured, self-absorbed, wanting she knew not what. She took to people
with great fervour for a time, then perhaps her expectations grew un-
reasonable, and her best and kindest nature being wounded, her selfish
and colder feelings came to add to the confusion. It is certainly trying
to live with this race of self-made demi-gods and goddesses.

Angelica found, however, that Lady W. meant to leave her very free
to lead her own life. Her breakfast was brought to her in her room.
Until dinner, which was at three, she had her time absolutely to herself,
and the sacrificial rites to Vanity were only performed of an evening.

It is certain that a studio has a charm of its own which it ia
scarcely possible to account for, no matter how shabby, hovv bare it
may be ; there is the easel, the pure light shining upon it ; there is the
painter reproducing your dream or his.

Angelica's little oval studio was a fit setting to her inspirations.
Nymphs seemed to her waiting upon the terraces, heroes were crossing
the paved hall or mounting the arched staircase outside that led to
Lady W.'s receiving rooms ; and, besides these visionary interests,
Angelica was not insensible to the pleasures of actual manipulation,
to the friendly mesmerism of her brush travelling across the canvas, her
colours lying on the palette, to the actual charm of her work, its tools,
and practice.

Perhaps authors may have the same feeling when they sit down to a
convenient table and find the faithful pen that has so patiently attended
their flights and falls lying ready for use.

246 MISS ANGEL.

CHAPTER X.
PENELLO VOL ANTE.

Miss ANGEL tried the first morning to turn her mind to her " Arcadia,'*
and began to sketch it upon the canvas, but it was in vain ; she, could not
apply, and no wonder, for all London seemed to come between her and
her tranquillity. To her great relief and satisfaction, the door opened
very soon, and Lady W. came into the painting-room : " Now, my sweet
Kauffmann ; leave your work," she cried. " Come, child, come! I have
ordered the coach. I am dying to take you to call at Mr. Reynolds'."
" Sweet Kauffman," without an instant's hesitation, laid down her palette
and tripped into the next room to get ready. She found that Mrs.
Betty was waiting there by her mistress's orders with a pretty and
mysterious garment for Angelica to wear upon this great occasion. The
waiting- woman tried it on ; the young girl looked at herself in the dim
mirror, pushing back her lace. The glass reflected the pretty figure, the
black silk shoes, the sprightly hands.

Lady W. was pleased with Angelica's artless pleasure in her new French
hood. But she hurried her impatiently. "He goes out early. Come!
do not let us delay. Now it is my turn to take you to see pictures," said
Lady W. They had not far to go. The great coach turned the corner,
crossed Piccadilly, turned up by Leicester Fields, of which one side was
open in those days, and stopped at the door of a comfortable-looking
house.

"Mr. Reynolds was not at home; Miss Reynolds was engaged," the
servant said.

Lady W., much disappointed, cast a glance at Angelica. " Might we
not go in ? " said Angelica ; and Lady W. immediately swept into the
hall, desiring the servant to lead them to the studio. The dining-room
door was open on one side of the hall, the staircase led to a long broad
gallery, carpeted and hung with pictures, and opening into the studio.
There were sofas and comfortable fires burning ; the gallery was evidently
used as a sort of sitting-room. There was a spinet in a recess, and
a child's doll sitting bolt upright upon the keys. With shy, curious eyes
Angelica looked about, noting everything with suppressed interest. What
dignified personages are these hanging to the walls ? A picture was
leaning against the back of a chair just outside the studio door, and it
attracted Angelica. It was the portrait of, a young man, in a crimson
military coat, with gold embroidery, powdered hair, and a very gentle and
charming face.

" That is Sally Lennox, and that is her cousin," said Lady W.,
pointing with her fan to a figure in a picture, in which Juno and the
Graces had taken mortal shape, surely the most graceful and beautiful of
that day. Libations were flowing, and tranquil altars to beauty were
raised in shady groves by the courteous painter. As a contrast to the

MISS AtfGEL. 247

dream, a reality was hanging opposite. The portrait of a man with a
squint, a saturnine-looking face, a long, lean figure.

" What an ugly fellow ! " cried Angelica, gaily, standing on tiptoe to
look ; " he is much too ugly to be so well painted. I wonder he does
not frighten those beautiful ladies away."

" That, madam, is Mr.Wilkes, the celebrated patriot," said an attendant,
who had followed them. The man was an Italian half- secretary, half-
assistant, to Mr. Reynolds. " This is the well-known Colonel Barre," he
continued, and he pointed out another long, lean form, in a military coat.

On the opposite side of the gallery smiled two charming persons who
will hold their graceful place in life, while Sir Joshua's cera and lacca
and olios (as he notes them in his Diary) still exist. When these particles
are dispersed into space the names of the beautiful actresses will still re-
main associated with his art ; Clarinda, as she writes herself on his list of
sitters, is charming Mrs. Clive ; and Mrs. Abington is also here, smiling,
and gracious, and forgetting the irritation caused by Garrick's wrongs
towards her.

The attendant told Angelica that the portrait of the young officer in
the crimson coat was that of young Mr. Andre". "He is just gone into
the army," said the man, " and the picture is for him to give to his
mother. Mr. Reynolds told me it was the likeness of the uniform that
the young gentleman was specially anxious about more than that of his
face."

Most of the finished pictures were hung in the gallery. In the studio
were only those upon which the painter was engaged. It was a good-
sized, room, with a window high up in the wall, and a high raised chair
for sitters.

Angelica started rapidly forward. " This light is excellent," she ex-
claimed ; " I never saw it so arranged before." She also looked with
reverence at the palettes with their wooden handles, at the great pencils
with their long stocks, and then she suddenly sprang up into the sitter's
chair.

She was still perched there when the master of the house himself
walked in, and after one surprised glance, made his obeisance to Lady W.
This lady had thrown herself into a graceful attitude, and stood leaning
against the side of the great chair. She bent her head, graciously
composed, while Angelica, in some confusion, came down from her high
perch.

Mr. Reynolds came forward, dressed in his velvet coat and with a bag
wig; he was of middle size, and looked young for his age, he was a
little deaf; but in those days in private he needed no trumpet; his
clear eyes shone with placid benevolence under their falling lids. He had
scarred lips, mobile and sensitive. His voice was singularly pleasant as
he spoke.

" I have brought you — guess who this is that I have brought you," Lady
W. said, continuing to look so charming herself that the painter could only

248 MISS ANGEL.

make another low bow and say, "You have brought me a vision of
Paradise, madam. My poor place seems illumined by such gracious
apparitions. I am sorry," he continued, " to have been out when you
arrived. I had been sent for to a friend in difficulties, who adds to mine
by taking up time that might have been better spent. Was not my
sister here to attend upon you ? "

" Mrs. Reynolds was not dressed," said Marchi, the outspoken at-
tendant : " she begged me to make her excuses. She was in no fit state
to appear."

Mr. Reynolds looked vexed, and immediately began to point out the pic-
tures. Angelica looked, listened, and thrilled with admiration and reverence.
Once turning round, the painter met the expressive flash of her eager eyes.
How different was that language from the languid fine lady criticism to
which he was now hardened. Something told him that this was no ordinary
visitor, that one instant's glance between the two said more than half-
a-dozen commonplaces interchanged. He stopped short as he was walking
by Lady W. " You have not yet introduced me to your friend," he said.
" Can this be indeed . ..." he looked at Angelica curiously and kindly.

" Yes, this is Miss Kauffmann," said Lady W. " You have found her
out at last. Did I say one word too much ? " she asked, smiling. He
did not answer directly, but went on talking to Lady W. for a minute, and
then turned to Angelica.

" Will you honour me by permitting a visit to your studio to-morrow
morning?" said the great painter to the quivering, smiling, charming
little painter in her pretty quaint dress. The satin trimmings glistened
in the sloping light of the high window, the light just caught the turn of
her white throat and the shining pearls Mrs. Betty had looped in her hair.
The painter's kind glances seemed also to shine, Angelica thought, and she
blnshed up with innocent pleasure. Mr. Reynolds accompanied them
ceremoniously to the door of her house. As they descended the pretty
old turning staircase Angel was amused to see a little figure wrapped in a
sort of cloak appearing in a doorway — a little middle-aged lady, who
advanced towards them : she then seeing that Mr. Reynolds was there,
vanished again with extraordinary celerity.

" To-morrow ! Do not fail us, false man," said Lady W., holding up
her mitten. Then she asked casually whether Lord Henry had shown Mr.
Reynolds his last attempt. " Shocking daubs, are they not?" said Lady
W. with a sort of forced laugh ; but the experienced painter answered
gravely that there was merit in them not to be passed over.

"There ! Is he not charming ? " cried Lady W., as they drove off
in the great coach. " I told you so ... It is decreed in the book of
fate. ..." And all the way home Lady W. was her brightest and most
charming self. All that afternoon and evening she loaded her protegee
with kindness and pretty speeches. Lady Di, who was a good woman at
heart, but not more perfect than her neighbours, began to feel even more
provoked and indignant than usual. Angelica, who had tried in vain to

MISS ANGEL. 249

conciliate her at first, now accepted open warfare, and at every new com-
pliment looked round in childish glee to see how Diana frowned. Then
came Lord Henry, joining in with his cousin Lady W., and echoing her
words. He called himself a passionate admirer of art ; and it was from
him that Lady W. had learnt to take an interest in pictures, that is to
say, in the pastels and the copies, and the copies of copies, that Lord
Henry affected.

Next morning, true to his appointment, Mr. Reynolds walked across
Berkeley Square, and found the two ladies of the house standing looking
out by the gate of the Park.

" Miss Kauffmann is at home in her painting room. Come this
way," said Lady W. . . " Let us take her by surprise : you can enter by
the glass door."

The surprise was very short, for Angelica had been listening to
every footstep.

Once she thought Mr. Reynolds had come, but it was only Lord
Henry Belmore, who, rather to her annoyance, asked leave to wait in her
studio for Lady W., with whom he was going out. She let him sit down
where he would, and went on with her painting. — Then came more steps
on the terrace and voices, and Angelica looked up, blushed and sprang to
open the window.

This time she saw the person she was waiting for so impatiently.
"Here is a friend," said Lady W., as they all came in; then her
voice changed : " Henry, you here ! we were waiting for you outside."

" Surely you told me to come to the studio," said Lord Henry : then
he stepped up to her and, in a low voice, said something, and the two
walked off into the garden.

" How long had he been here ? " Lady Di asked.
" A long time," said Angelica: "ten minutes — more, I painted the
heel of my Cupid's little foot again while he was here."

" And you evidently suffered from his vicinity," said Mr. Reynolds,
smiling; "for your picture is charming; but you will have to repaint
your Cupid's foot."

" Do you really mean it ? I assure you I was not thinking of any-
thing but my work. I had forgotten Lord Henry's presence."

" If I may venture to advise I should not recommend your ever paint-
ing witho *t. a model," said Mr. Reynolds: " some of the French school
maintain that it is better to trust to one's own impressions ; but there I
cannot agree."

Angelica grew interested ; but, for the sake of argument, she attempted
to contradict Mr. Reynolds, and declared that the little foot was not out
of drawing, but though she contradicted, her own looks contradicted her
words as she glanced up with deprecating blue eyes, knowing that people
always forgave her when she looked them in the face.

"lean only speak from my own experience," said Mr. Reynolds,
smiling. " I may be wrong."

250 MISS ANGEL.

Lady Diana saw it all. She said to herself that Angelica was a vulgar
flirt and Mr. Keynolds a vain dupe ; and then, this odd woman, reproaching
herself for secret feelings that she dared not express, said suddenly :
" Because Miss Kauffmann has well-shaped eyes it does not follow that you
should deny what you know to be true, Mr. Keynolds : her pictures are
out of drawing : it is all very pretty and sentimental, but quite false to
nature."

Mr. Reynolds disliked anything approaching to a scene. "My
admiration and respect for Miss Kauffmann's work are too sincere for me
to hesitate to declare what seems to me to be its excellence, or what in it
might still further be improved,-" he said. " Correctness of eye is only
to be acquired by long habit ; when anything is properly made our
own it becomes part of ourselves and operates unperceived. We may
thus exercise a kind of instinctive rectitude of mind and of conduct, which
will supersede all rules."

He spoke quietly, continuing on purpose to give Angelica time to
recover from Lady Di's unprovoked attack ; he was as much annoyed with
that lady as it was possible to a man of his gentle and controlled nature.

The tears of vexation shining in Angel's eyes did not mend matters
or soften him towards her adversary. With some sudden brightness and
effort, Angelica brushed them away unaffectedly, and said : " Thank you,
Mr. Reynolds ; you have given me heart again, and in truth Lady Diana
is not the first person who has warned me of my defects ; they warn me
from kindness," said the girl, turning suddenly to Lady Di. She could
not bear to say a harsh word.

" It was from no kindness," said Lady Di, turning pale; "you are
quite right, people should forbear to speak unless they are in sympathy
with those they criticise — although the picture is out of drawing," and she
walked out of the room.

CHAPTER XI.
FlOBI.

BEFORE Mr. Reynolds left, he fixed a day for their next meeting, and
asked leave to paint Miss Angel's portrait. She delightedly agreed. If
Angelica felt somewhat forlorn at times, she always brightened up after
a talk with Mr. Reynolds. He spoke with all Antonio's directness
and sympathy, and with authority as well. They had many long talks
together ; she enjoyed her sittings very much, and spoke to him openly
of all her old life and new hopes, in which he took unfailing interest. It
was at this time that Angelica wrote long happy letters to her father in her
uncle Michael's farm. When was he coming — .was Antonio with him — was
he not rejoiced at his child's good fortune ? — Happy as she was she missed
him sadly at times, and longed for his paternal sympathy and advice and
help. She had visited many painters, she told him, Mr. Cipriani among the

MISS ANGEL. 251

rest ; but chief of all was Mr. Reynolds, the first painter in the town.
He has her own peculiar manner, writes Angelica. His portraits are
almost historical ; he has a flying brush (un penello volante), and
a great knowledge of chiaroscuro. Then she told her father of all the
kind things people said. Mr. Reynolds himself had asked her to paint
his portrait : those she had executed had already given satisfaction.
Lady W. had promised her letters of introduction to the Duchess of
Argyll. The Princess of Brunswick was to sit to her. She had
heard that the Queen herself had asked with interest concerning her.
Mr. Reynolds was the kindest, the most untiring friend. " I might indeed
think too much of his kindness," wrote Angelica, " but that I have vowed
to think only of my art, and have closed my heart to all other passions."
There is a little paper still in existence which the girl traced one night in
a thoughtful mood.

" Not easily shall I bind myself: Rome is ever in my thoughts. The
Holy Spirit will direct me."

Then she wrote again to the old father in the distant farm-house
with the too familiar goatherd, detailing more and more success. The
Princess of Brunswick was in London at this time, and had ordered a
portrait of Angelica herself, and this picture had procured for her the
honour of a visit from the Princess of Wales, thjB mother of the King ;
such an honour had never before been done to any painter, writes
Angelica ; now she is beginning to put by money, now she may think
of a home for her dear to come to, now she may begin to see her way
clearly established. " Her letters, at this time," says Rossi, " are those
of a person at the summit of tranquillity and joy." A little later on
she tells John Joseph of a proposition of marriage and of her refusal,
and it was soon after this that Mr. Fuseli left London and went abroad.
But notwithstanding these letters, old John Joseph still delayed.
Antonio was in despair. He could not afford to wait any longer for the
obstinate old man who was deaf to his daughter's entreaties. She wanted
him sadly. Notwithstanding all their kindness, she felt very lonely.

She had been longing for some word of protective admonition ; she had
an instinctive desire for protection, it was as necessary to her as liberty. Mr.
Reynolds seemed to give her more sense of ease by his few kind words
than did all the compliments and adulations to which she was now so
used ; sometimes unduly excited about her work, sometimes utterly de-
pressed and hopeless, the bracing sense of the truth as it struck another
person's mind came to her with an unspeakable relief, not the partial truth
of adverse criticism, which is always hard to bear, but the considerate
judgment of one so high in authority, of a person qualified to speak. And
for him was- it not a new experience of happiness to have such a sweet
model bringing new life, light, and colour, into his hard-working existence ?
" Miss Angel ; Fiori " is written in that book of fate his diary for the year.
He need not have written it down, his mind was full of her and her con-
cerns. The flowers were for her birthday, when Lady W. had graciously

252 MISS ANGEL.

promised to bring her to sup in Leicester Fields. They were all to as-
semble in Charles Street first and to go to see Mr. Garrick in Hamlet.
"Make yourself beautiful, my Angel, and do not be late," said Lady W.

Angel was glad that Mr. Reynolds was expected, and she went to dress
with a light heart, feeling that friends were true, life was worth living, and
even dress worth dressing. Miss Angel spared no pains in her attire that
evening, and showed her wit in a sacque and petticoat of white silk,
resembling net-work — not unlike that one worn by Mrs. Nollekens at her
wedding. It was shot with grey and embroidered with rose-buds. The
deep and pointed stomacher was pinked and gimped. The sleeves of this
dress closely fitted the arm to a little below the elbow, from which hung
three point-lace ruffles. Her neckerchief was of point, and confined by a
bunch of rose-buds, and the three rows of pearls were tied with a narrow
white satin ribbon behind. They were Roman pearls, but not the less
becoming to her slender throat.

Her hair was piled over a cushion (cushions were rising in favour
steadily year by year).

She wore a small cap of point lace to correspond with her ruffles.
Her shoes were of the same material as her dress, with Bristol spangles
and heels three inches high. She came in smiling and laughing in her
wildest spirits, prepared to enjoy, and to admire, and to be admired, if the
truth must be confessed.

As she entered the room, she saw a figure standing against the light.
"Is that you, Mr. Reynolds?" she said, for she was still thinking of
him. " Have you been waiting long ? " Mr. Reynolds was fond of
speaking Italian, and often used that language ; but this deep, angry
voice sounded very unlike his gentle tones.

" I have been waiting for many weeks, and y>u are not yet ready for
me, I see." Surely that was not Mr. Reynolds ; some one stepped out
of the shadow, and Angelica uttered a little exclamation, for Antonio's
dark eyes were flashing at her, angry, happy, suspicious, melting at the
Bight of her again, frowning at her greeting. For one minute she was
herself enchanted to see her old companion ; she clapped her hands and
darted up to him with a glad exclamation : " Antonio ! Antonio ! who
thought of seeing you ! My father, where is he ? "

Zucchi was silent, looking at her admiringly. He had never dreamt
of her in such beauty and brilliance : but was it indeed Angelica ? "I
have broken my promise, Angelica ; I have come without your father," he
said at last. " But it was in vain I urged him. I should have lost my
year's work had I waited longer. I left him ten days ago at Morbegno ;
he is well, and well cared for. He will come, he says, when you are in
your own house."

" So much for your promises," cried Angel, bitterly disappointed and
unjust to poor Antonio. " You have left him, poor dear ! Who is one to
trust if one cannot trust you ? you, who are always warning one against
others ; you, who "

MISS ANGEL. 258

The door opened as she was speaking, still eager and excited, and a
servant announced Mr. Reynolds, and almost immediately after Lord
Henry Belmore and M. Fuseli. Lady W. affected an artistic society.
She had met the young painter with the lion head not long before, and
taken to him, perhaps among other reasons, because she had been some-
what piqued by his indifference.

Mr. Reynolds was in full dress. He wore his red velvet court suit and
his sword. He came up, carrying the flowers he had ordered in the
morning, and presented them with a little compliment full of bonhomie
and grace. The expression of his face was very kind as he bent before
the young deity at whose shrine they all seemed to lay down their arms.
As Mr. Reynolds stepped forwards, Angelica's passing anger was dis-
tracted. She had forgotten it all ; but Antonio's heart sank with gloomy
apprehension. Her anger had pained him less than her pleasure now
did. Was ever any one so absurd, so proud, so sensitive as this shabby
little painter ?

Not Mr. Reynolds in all his glory, not Angelica radiant and supreme,
could guess the depths of that curious nature. Angelica might have
understood him if she had had time or wish to do so ; but she was pre-
occupied, impatient ; her beautiful silk dress rustled at every step ; her
many lovers and friends were all arriving, saluting, talking, and calling
her away. The door kept opening, and admitting first one person and
then another. Lady W. made her state entry, followed by my lord in his
blue ribbon. Zucchi saw some of the people present glance at him with
surprise ; and when the lady of the house entered, her look of inquiry
and amazement might have disconcerted a far more experienced man of
the world than he.

" This is my old friend Antonio Zucchi," said Angelica, coming
forward with her quick familiar voice ; " he came to bring me news of
my father, dearest lady." Then she turned to him more constrainedly,
for Lady W.'s somewhat haughty stare was still upon Antonio. " You
must come to-morrow morning when I am alone, Antonio, and then we
will talk over our business ; " and she held out her hand.

" Our business ! " said Antonio, coldly; " I have no business. I
came as a friend to see you ; it is time I should retire and leave you to
your acquaintance,"— and he bowed to Lady W. ; not without dignity,
and then to Angel.

" Will not Miss Angelica's friend honour me with his company to-
night ? " said Mr. Reynolds, always courteous and considerate of others,
and he came forward as he spoke. Antonio stiffly declined, made him a
haughty bow, and was gone. Once outside he could control himself no
longer. As he ran downstairs, he impatiently struck his hand upon his
head, muttering something like " False ! false ! " to himself. He did not
even see Lady Diana, who passed him on her way to join the company and
heard his words. As she opened the door, she was shocked and revolted
by Angelica's gay burst of laughter. Angelica's first feeling had cer-

254 MISS ANGEL.

tainly been that of present relief. Everybody looked more at ease as
Antonio left the room, and the voices rose. But although Antonio was
gone, he still seemed present to Angelica in some mysterious way.
Diana did not know that her good spirits were partly caused by his
coming. A little later on and Angelica became a little distraite, and it was
the Kauffmann, and not Mr. Reynolds, who begged for a repetition of M.
Fuseli's remark. — What were they all talking about ? The new erection
in the King's gardens at Kew ; — the Chinese tower, designed by Cham-
bers, and costing ever so many thousands.

" I cannot say I admire it," said Mr. Reynolds. " We are dwellers in
London, and not at Pekin."

" But we drink Bohea out of China cups; we wear brocades and
crapes from China," said Angelica ; and she held up one of the long loose
sleeves.

" And we, madam, are certain to be charmed by anything you choose
to wear or to do," said Mr. Reynolds, bowing again ; "but you did not
erect the Chinese tower."

CHAPTER XII.
" HAMLET."

MR. GAREICK was acting Hamlet that night in powder and court dress,
facing the infinite in a periwig and treading the great globe of life in paste
shoebuckles. There was something magnetic in the night ; misty as it
was, with vapours enclosing the theatre and creeping in from outer door-
ways and veiling the brilliant charms of the ladies present ; the rouge on
their cheeks, the pretty crimsoned lips. Then the great play itself seemed
to spread and spread and drive out all other impressions. It was not
only on the stage that it was being acted.

The play seemed to grow and grow, to become the life of those human
beings all assembled there ; they were come together to see a play, to
laugh at one another and make signs and to admire and criticise, but they
remained to listen to the secrets of their lives unfolded.

Garrick's faithful adorer, Miss Hannah More, sajt palpitating in a box
by Mrs. Garrick's side.

Zucchi was in the pit : he knew none of the people ; it had suddenly
occurred to him to come too, and there he waited in his place, looking for
one face which had not yet appeared.

In a stage-box sat the shabby and noble figure of a man, with a
seamed and benevolent countenance, and by his side an intelligent little
ferretty person, peeping forward to get a better view of the audience.

" They're come, sir," he said, " the whole party ; they have secured
two excellent boxes. There is Mr. Reynolds and Fuseli, and there is the
fair observed of all observers. Mr. Reynolds has not invited me to sup

MISS ANGEL. 255

with him to-night. I hear he is giving a great festivity ; you, of course,
are privileged." . [

" There is no privilege, Sir, in being admitted to a house where
friendship has established a right of way," said the big, shabby man.
"But to-night I shall refrain; Mr. Beynolds is not unbiassed by the
transient influences of those inferior to him in intellect. Miss is far
more reliable, she would make my tea undisturbed by any circumstances."

Mr. Bos well was craning to get a good view of the "transient in-
fluences " now surrounding Mr. Keynolds. Lovely, smiling, splendid
Lady W. had never looked more stately and beautiful than she did that
night. Her charms seemed diffused somehow, she ' and Angelica were
opposite to each other, like two mirrors reflecting one another. A
summer, a spring blooming in brightness, their fans waved, the flowers
seemed to fill the box. Even Lady Diana looked her best.

Mr. Boswell then discovered that Miss Angel was peeping at Dr.
Johnson, also that Dr. Burney and his daughters were in another part of
the theatre. " Mrs. Thrale should not have been absent on such a night
as this," he remarked.

The play began, and Mr. Boswell was silent.

In great acting there is some subtle measure impossible to describe,
time passing in a certain harmony, and that night, when Hamlet
stood upon the stage, a mysterious intelligence not to be explained seemed
certainly, and at once, to flash between him and his audience. The
plain, commonplace -looking man became instantly, and without effort,
the master of all these splendid people who were watching him. It was
as if he were the pulse that flowed through their veins. This hour was
his own, as this mood was his, to which he gave the note, the time, the
life almost.

How nobly he stands listening, while the poor Ghost moans its awful
plaint ! Hamlet's beautiful voice seemed to strike home to every heart
when he answered in clear tranquil tones. Then rise passion and remorse,
and woes thicken as the play goes on, and the notes come full and dull
with passion, and the words seem to break bounds and jar and clang . . .

Is the noble prince maddened as he turns in heart scorn, rending and
railing at all those he has loved and trusted hitherto ?

Through this storm of shaken life comes white Ophelia, wandering,
with her pale and tender face.

Mrs. Addington was not acting that night, but a young actress whose
utter simplicity and sweetness touched them all.

" I did love you once," said Hamlet.

"Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so," says Ophelia.

" Get thee to a nunnery," he cries remorselessly, carried far beyond
the mood of love, but tender still, even in this moment, when a swerving
finite nature is suddenly brought to face the infinite truth, as it lies between
them awful, inevitable.

The scene was so tender, so inexpressibly sad and despairing, it

256 MISS ANGEL.

raised all the audience out of their petty chatter and racket of snuff-
boxes. Miss Hannah burst into tears. Was some great power there among
them all alive and speaking by the mouth of this little David again ?

It was a relief to every one when Everyday comes in once more and the
players distract the jarred soul and bring him back for an hour into
common words and daily life.

" Mr. Garrick outdoes himself to-night," said Mr. Boswell.

" Sir," said his tutor, " you mean that Garrick outdoes your pre-
conceived opinion of his powers. He has played his part with memory.
He is a good repeater of other men's words."

But when Mr. Eeynolds came into the box presently and made some
slight objection to a detail in Hamlet's performance, the old man rose
up in wrath.

Mr. Reynolds did not stay to argue the matter ; he has left a record
of some such dialogue with his old friend. He was in haste to return to
his companions.

It was not only Miss Hannah More whose then youthful tears flowed
that evening. For little Angelica the doom of the inevitable seemed to
strike almost for the first time. The knell sounded in her ears, poor
Ophelia's story seemed so unutterably sad. " How could he leave her ? "
she said ; " oh, how could he leave her ?" and she turned to Mr. Reynolds
and then laughed and tried to wipe away her tears. "I am ashamed,"
she sobbed, all confused. " Might I be permitted to retire to the back of
the box ?" She moved her chair as she spoke.

Both Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Fuseli came forward together and each on
either side held out a hand to assist her. Angelica half laughed again,
and looked from one to the other gaily through her passing tears ;
then she put out her two little hands and raised herself with the help
of both the gentlemen.

Some one in the pit, who had been looking on, turned very pale and
made a furious indignant movement.

" How angry that man looks," said a casual spectator to his companion.
" Is he not a countryman of yours, Mr. Cipriani ? "

" My countrymen are apt to look angry when they are vexed," said
Mr. Cipriani. He was a dark- eyed man with a long nose and a brown
face full of refinement and intelligence. " Your countrymen take life
more calmly, Mr. Nollekens," he added, laughingly.

" That man is frowning at Mrs. Kauffmann up among her fine birds.
My heart, how she seems to be carrying on with Mr. Reynolds! " said
Mr. Nollekens.

" She is of a gay and innocent temper, and thinks not of evil tongues,"
said Mr. Cipriani kindly; "she has real talent, she brought me some
drawings yesterday."

SHE HAD WANDERED OFF INTO THIS DAY-DRKAM, AND ALMOST FORGOTTEN MR. REYNOLDS HIMSELF,
WHO WAS STANDING PATIENTLY WATCHING THE BRIGHT EXPRESSION OF THAT SMILING FACE.

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE

MARCH, 1875.

CHAPTER XIII

" TAKE OF THIS GRAIN WHICH IN MY GARDEN GROWS."

LL the house in Leicester
Fields was lighted up ready
to receive the company ; and
for once Mr. Reynolds had
given special orders that
everything was to be pre-
pared for his guests' com-
fort. I think it was on this
occasion that the new din-
ner-service was ordered in,
and the cut glass, which is
mentioned in history. Mr.
Reynolds himself must have
chosen it, for Miss Reynolds
was of too anxious and timid
a disposition to order the
occasional chaos of the house
upon her own responsibility.
Mr. Reynolds stood by
the fire behind Angelica's
chair while the supper was going on. Mr. and Mrs. Garrick were to have
come, but Garrick was tired after his performance, and sent an excuse. He
had spoken an epilogue, which had taken them all by surprise. Not one of
them had recognised him in the clownish countryman who came on with a
spade under his arm. Mrs. Garrick herself had been wondering who it
could be, when her little dog suddenly began to wag his tail as he lay on her

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 183.

13.

258 MISS ANGEL.

lap concealed, and then she knew that, though they were deceived, Flash
had discovered his master. It was Mr. Fuseli who told the little story,
with which Lady Di was enchanted. Lord Henry seemed to think it
would be a subject for Mr. Eeynolds' pencil.

" Does your lordship mean the little dog's tail ? " said Angel, laughing.

Lady W. frowned : she did not like Lord Henry's suggestions to be
lightly treated.

Angelica was in a curiously excited condition that night. She was
unlike her usual placidly cheerful self, so easily, gaily pleased with the
story of life as it reached her ; Hamlet had stirred the very depths of
her heart. Then came the reaction of outer things, the compliments,
the admiration, the scent of the flowers seemed to rise into her brain,
the lights dazzled, the talk carried her away. Mr. Fuseli made no secret
of his devotion. If Mr. Reynolds was more reserved in his manifesta-
tion of interest, it was not that he felt less. She knew that he was with
her all along. He threw in a word from time to time, attended quietly
to her wants, never left her side, seemed young, interested, responsive as
any of them that night.

Lord Henry, who was also somewhat excited, filled up Lady W.'s
glass, and called for a toast. " Shall we drink to beauty?" he cried.
" To the living Muses among us?"

" Let us drink to our rivals," said Mr. Reynolds, smiling, and bowing
to Angelica.

Mr. Fuseli cried out that he would not drink such a toast. " I shall
drink mine in silence," he said, and looked at Miss Kauffmann.

" Drink what toasts you will," cried Angelica, starting up from the
table with a gay laugh. " I shall go and enjoy a different feast." She
walked across the room, and across the passage, and up the short flight
of steps that led into the studio, of which the great doors were open.
Her heart was still beating ; she was still treading upon air. She was
standing looking at a lovely picture on Mr. Reynolds' easel, when she
heard a step on the polished floor, and looking round she saw that her
host had also left the supper-table, and come in search of her. He had
come, yielding to the impulse of the moment, and, for once in his
tranquil life, carried away by the influence of something that seemed
stronger than himself, than that habit of self-control by which he justly
set such store.

Angelica had in that instant become a painter again, as people do who
have two lives to lead. She was looking at the picture, and for a moment
she had forgotten the painter, and was wondering at the breadth, and depth,
and grace of that lovely combination of colour, of feeling, of flowing ease.

It was no depth of divine despair that overmastered her now as when
she had gazed at the great triumphant Titian in the gallery at Venice,
it was with some sort of hope that she could look, and admire, and try
to realize the gracious mystery of this new master's art.

This picture happened to be the full-length portrait of the beautiful

MISS ANGEL. 259

Lady Elizabeth Keppel, represented as a bridesmaid sacrificing to
Hymen : the sad fate of this lady excited much feeling at the time ; she
married Lord Tavistock, who was killed by a fall from his horse not long
after, and the poor young wife died of a broken heart, and was mourned in
all the odes and elegies of the day. Is there any sign of this sad coming
shadow in the lovely radiant picture before which Angelica is standing in
her old attitude, bird-like, pensive ? It is the old attitude ; but I am not
sure that Antonio wa£ not right, and that the shabby grace of the darned
green gown was not more becoming than all the delicate silk and present
rosebud embroideries. Dress was certainly one of her special gifts, and
what she wore, became a part of herself. It is just as characteristic of
some other women to be beautiful, notwithstanding their clothes.

" I am trying to find out what charms you have used, Mr. Eeynolds,
in this lovely, wonderful picture. I think you breathe upon the canvas
and will the life into your creations : I cannot account for the result you
attain to in any other way."

He did not answer immediately, then he smiled. " The only in-
cantations I have used here are a little colour and oil mixed with magylp,"
he said, " and a coat of varnish, dear lady. Perhaps while you are in
the room," he repeated, " my poor works may seem to breathe for a few
minutes ; but that is your doing, not mine. You must know," he added,
with some change of voice, " what difference your coming makes to this
house and to its master, who also comes to life in your presence I think.
Can you not understand me ? " he said. " Can you not guess what? if I
dared ... if I were so presumptuous as to form a hope, that hope would
be...?"

Angelica was beginning to understand this earnest gaze — this grave
emphatic manner. Lady W. had prophesied and prophesied, and Mr.
Eeynolds had given hints before now, and her own heart had sometimes
spoken ; his beautiful pictures had spoken a hundred times, and suddenly
Miss Angel looked round in not unrelenting consternation and excitement.
With a sort of flashing thought she pictured all future possibilities to
herself. Was this quiet, tranquil gentleman -her future husband ? Was
this great lighted house her home ?

Then she thought of her father. She seemed to see him installed in
this sumptuous and comfortable haven. She had wandered off into this
day-dream, and almost forgotten Mr. Eeynolds himself, who was standing
patiently watching the bright expression of that smiling face. Alas ! as
she smiled, his heart failed. He could read faces ; that was his trade.
Good will he read upon those smiling lips, enthusiasm in those blue eyes ;
but not one melting gleam of personal tenderness and feeling, not one
relenting emotion of heart-felt response, not one answer to his own
strange, unexpected throb of heart.

" I am presumptuous," he said, " and yet I must persist in my pre-
sumption. Dear lady, tell me do you understand me ? Can similarity of
taste and feeling, and my deep and heartfelt homage, which will never be

13—2

260 MISS ANGEL.

less sincere than now, whatever your answer may be, stand you in the
place of those many parts in which I know I am deficient?" Angelica
blushed up crimson, but she was quite collected. Mr. Reynolds saw it,
he felt his own agitation growing almost beyond his control. He turned
away to recover, and to regain his calm. As he turned away, Angelica
looked after him with grateful eyes. All his kindness, all the advantages
he offered her, were present to her mind. Did she love him ? Antonio
would say she had sold herself for money. No ; no. If she accepted Mr.
Reynolds, it would not be for any sordid reason. He must not think such
reasons influenced her. She would not deceive him, it was out of very
truth and sincerity that she hesitated, and flaunted her fan.

" But, Mr. Reynolds, you have your art ? Is she not your mistress ?"
said Angelica, coquettishly.

"You know my infirmity. I did not catch your meaning," said Mr.
Reynolds, immediately coming back, and when Angelica repeated her
sentence, which certainly was scarcely worth the trouble of repeating, he
sighed, in answer, —

" Art may be a mistress that we painters must be content to worship
with a hopeless passion. She cannot be a wife, an equal, a living friend
and helper, answering to the need of our human hearts."

His tone was so simple, that it touched Angel very much.

" But why did you then think of me, Mr. Reynolds ?" said she, with a
slight quiver, and a sort of laugh. " I am sure you have repented already,
and to let you into a secret, you are right in so doing."

If Angelica answered flippantly, it was not because she did not feel his
words, but because some instinctive honesty prevented her from letting
him imagine that she had any deeper emotion than that which she really
experienced.

Compared to his, her own feeling seemed to her so slight, so worthless,
that she was ashamed. She stood looking at him gratefully, with one- of
her azure looks. " If I marry, as I suppose I must," she said, " I fear
my future husband will have to be content with a second place. With a
third," she went on, looking down, and clasping the little velvet at her
wrist ; " for I have my father's happiness to think of as well as my own.
Believe me," she said, smiling gaily, " it will be vastly more sensible to
leave things as they are. " If I were to marry you, it would not be you
so much as the things you could give me. Those I can do without, my
friend I cannot spare. No, Mr. Reynolds," she said suddenly, "No shall
be my answer."

Miss Angel had been honest ; her conscience gave a secret throb of
approbation, but I think, woman like, she intended him not to be content
with such an indefinite reply.

He did not quiver or show much change of manner when Angelica gave
him her bright saucy denial, and yet to him it seemed far more ultimate
than she had any idea of. Reynolds went on quietly talking, so quietly
that Argelica asked herself in amazement whether she had dreamed that .

MISS ANGEL. 261

he had proposed ; he showed her one or two pictures, explained what
pigments he had used for them, and when Lady W. came in from the
supper-room with expressive looks and eyes directed curiously upon the
two, he waited till she joined them, asked her opinion of his picture,
quietly included her in the conversation, and then walked away with her.

Angelica stood by the picture looking after them in a strange and
overpowerc d state of mind. It was now her turn to be agitated. She
watched Lady W.'s silk dress shining and Mr. Reynolds' sword -swinging
as he walked, then they joined some of the company and a burst of laughter
reached Angel standing alone by the great easel. All the pictures seemed
looking at her reproachfully. " What have you done ? why have you vexed
our good master?" they said. "Howkintl he was; how considerate;
how manful were his words — what a true gentleman he is in all his ways
— what have you done ? why have you done it ?"

Little Miss Reynolds came flitting through the rooms looking for a
handkerchief she had dropped : she found Angel still alone in the studio,
and exclaimed, in surprise — '« Alone ! Bless me, my dear, how is this ? —
what has happened ? has Joshua made the offer ? With all his faults,
child, he will make a good and faithful husband."

" Did he tell you ? " said Angel, bewildered and longing for sympathy.

" Tell me — not he, child. He is as mum as the church steeple to me;
sisters play a small part in men's lives. So he has done it, hey ? You
need not fear telling me. I understand it all — don't cry, my dear — don't
cry. I have no doubt you spoke very prettily ; trust me — it will all
come right ; and I'm sure I don't know where he could find a sweeter
wife," paid the little old maid, looking at her with kind eyes.

CHAPTER X1Y.

PUT OUT THE LIGHT.

LADY W. liked to wind up her little passing interests with some triumphant
catastrophe which flattered her sense of power, and rid her of any uncom-
fortable feeling of responsibility. Something had vexed her the night
of Mr. Reynolds' entertainment. She was very cross going home, and
scarcely spoke to Angel. Was my lady getting tired of her, as she had
wearied of so many others ?

It was Lady Diana who talked and who praised the supper, the house,
the host.

Angel was absorbed in the thought of what had occurred. She could
not make up her mind whether or not to repeat it all to her friend.

When she would have said good-night to her patroness at the foot of
the stairs as usual, Lady W. responded very coldly. For the first time
the gracious lady looked ungracious. She answered the girl's inquiring
glance with a cold " Good-night, Kauffmann."

262 MISS ANGEL.

Angelica could scarcely believe that the tone was for her. " Are you
not well?" she said.

" I am quite well, only sorry to have to speak to you, Kauffmann,"
Lady W. answered ; " but I must tell you that your manner to-night was
vastly too free for the society into which I have introduced you. I cannot
countenance free manners in my box at the play, and I have been much
annoyed by the levity of to-night. My lord observed upon it, and has
begged me to remonstrate."

A faint sound from my lord was heard, but it died away, and he
suddenly disappeared by some back stairs.

My lady was fluttering her fan in some agitation. Lady Diana, and
the footmen, and the maids were all round about.

Angelica turned pale, stood silent, justly wounded, and then said, with
simple dignity, " I will speak to you to-morrow, madam, in private, not
now," and she walked away to her own room, trembling, with beating
pulse, bewildered, offended.

A fire was burning, and candles had been lighted, by Mrs. Betty,
unaware as yet of the favourite's disgrace, but the maid immediately began
to suspect something amiss when Angelica burst into tears. As I have
said before, it was not the first time such scenes had occurred.

Lady W. rustled up with her beautiful twinkling satin feet, feeling
immensely virtuous and superior : she discoursed to Lord W. for an hour
on Angelica's enormities, suddenly remembering, as vexed people do,
many others which had never occurred to her till that moment. The
girl's manner to Henry Belmore was most flippant and unbecoming, her
ways were unendurable. She had used her but to bring Mr. Reynolds
to her feet, but his good sense evidently kept him back.

Poor Lord W. knew of old that it was hopeless to try and stem this
torrent ; he set his watch a few seconds wrong in his perplexity, gave
precise directions to his valet about being called in the morning, and as
to the preparation of a pot of glue he should require to complete a little
nest of boxes he was engaged upon.

Poor Angel ! coldness from those she loved chilled her and pained
her as much as their love vivified and warmed ; and she loved Lady W.,
whose kindness had been unending, and whose praises had been very
sweet to her. Was it possible that people spoke truly when they said
that people changed ? Ah ! no, she could not believe it, never, never.
Angelica was not yet old enough to stretch her interests beyond the radius
of her own longings, and of those who loved her ; that is the gift of later
years, and perhaps the one blessing that supplements their emptiness.
No one had ever in her recollection been unkind to her before. She was
half- amazed, half- indignant ; could it be true ? Had she been free ?
Had she forgotten what was becoming to her station ? What had she done ?
She dismissed Mrs. Betty with the curious eyes, tore off her rosebud
dress impatiently, and flung it on the floor in a heap ; then she put on

MISS ANGEL. 263

an old dressing-gown she used to wear in Italy. That, at least, was her
own ; little else. The very fire which warmed her resentment was given
to her by the person who had insulted her ; the person whom she loved,
and whose unkindness cut all the more cruelly because she loved her.
Lady W. had been unkind, and they seemed suddenly parted. Mr.
Reynolds had been too kind, and they seemed parted too ; it was all
utterly bewildering. Had she shown herself ungrateful to him ? Was she
being punished now for the pain she had inflicted on another ? Was this a
warning not to be neglected by her ? Was it too late to undo the past ?

Angel was still sitting there, broken and overcome by the different
emotions of the day, when some one knocked at the door, and, to her
surprise, Lady Diana came in.

" I wanted to talk to you," said she, in her abrupt voice, and putting
down the light that she was carrying.

She came up to the fire, and stood leaning against the tall chimney,
silent for a moment ; a little round glass overhead reflected the two, in
their flowing robes and emotions. Lady Diana also had assumed a loose
chintz morning robe, all her 'hair was falling about her pale face, which
was brightened with some unusual look of sympathy and interest.

" I hardly know how you will like what I am going to say, but it is
well meant, although you may not think so," she began in her abrupt
voice. " I thought I should find you distressed ; I could not help coming
to speak on what has happened."

"I am foolish, perhaps," said Angel, beginning to cry again. " I

don't wish to trouble any one. I don't ask " she could not finish

the sentence.

Lady Diana began walking up and down the room, then stopped
suddenly.

" After what has occurred, the sooner you are able to establish your-
self in a home of your own, the better chance there will be for the con-
tinuance of your friendship with Judith. But it is not at once that the
remembrance of such scenes passes away."

" I should be the most ungrateful of women if anything ever made
me forget my grateful friendship for Lady W.," cried Angelica, looking up
with her overflowing eyes, and then, to her surprise, she saw that there
were tears in Lady Diana's eyes — real tears.

" Are you sorry for me ? How good of you. I was feeling so lonely
as you came in ; I was longing for mamma, for my father ; longing for
Antonio, for some one to advise me," cried quick little Angelica, meeting
this unexpected sympathy, and then as quickly she drew back frightened
again, suddenly remembering Lady Diana's long and many unkindnesses
that she had forgotten for a moment.

" I don't wonder you mistrust me," said Lady Diana, who seemed to
read her heart. " I have been cold and unkind, and you must forgive all
that ; and if I mean to try and be kind to you now, be generous enough
not to repulse me," said the elder woman. " You must remember that

264 MISS ANGEL.

I have loved these people all my life, and that I saw you come suddenly
into my place, absorb my rights, my words, my looks, and my home
happiness. Was it not natural that I should feel hurt and wounded ?
My happinesses are few enough. I love these children ; and my cousin
W. has been a brother to me all my life, and even Judith is dearer to me
a thousand times than I am to her, but I am a cold-hearted woman, and
I did not come to talk of myself," she said, blushing up. "I came to
talk to you, and to say, Will you let me help you to choose a home,
where you may be independent and free ? and will you let me lend you
enough money to pay your rent this year ? You shall pay it back as you
like and when you will ; " and she held out a pocket-book. " This is a
hundred pounds. You can have as much more if you will. I scarcely
deserve that you should take it from me."

" But do you indeed think I ought to leave ? " faltered Angelica,
reluctant and shrinking from such a desperate measure, although a few
moments ago it had been what she wished.

" Believe me, indeed, it will be best for all our sakes," said Lady
Diana, gravely. " I know this house better than you do. I have made
up my mind and paid my price. I am content to be discontented ; surely
you would never be satisfied with that."

" Content with discontent ? no, indeed," said the young painter.
" Why should any one accept such a fate ? Perhaps you are waiting
for something," she added, simply, looking at her visitor, who now for the
first time seemed to her capable of interesting, and of being herself
interested.

" I tell you this is my fate," said Lady Diana, impatiently ; " and I
expect nothing and ask nothing. Count de Horn would have married me
for my money at Venice. Judith was very angry when I refused him.
She cannot understand, she who values money and position so much, how
a woman, placed as I am, lonely and insignificant, can be better content with
such a fate as mine than she is herself with her own fortunes. She cannot
forgive a refusal. Good-night, you poor little thing," said Diana, taking
Angelica's hand. " I shall like to come and sit to you in your new
painting-room, and I will bring my friend Anne Con way to you, and while
you stay here remember that Judith has a right to be first in her own
society."

" Yes," said Angel, " I will try. I fear you have made me too happy ;
I have forgotten my own position."

Lady Diana looked hard at Miss Angel as she spoke. "You might
remember if you chose that a very good and high position may be yours,
one that many of us would not refuse," she said.

Angel blushed up. How lovely she looked, all softened by tears and
then brightened by emotion !

" It is too late," she faltered. " That I have not accepted; but the
hundred pounds I will take gladly from you, if you will never be unkind
to me again."

MISS ANGEL. 265

" Here, child ; good-night ! " said Lady Di, kissing her shyly, and
running out of the room.

Angelica went to bed somewhat comforted ; but all night long
strange horrors and dreams haunted her comfortable alcove ; dreams
and terrors that not all the counterpanes and eider-downs could keep
away. She saw Mr. Reynolds in trouble, and some one seemed hiding
behind one of the pictures, and then came a scream, and she awoke. She
herself had screamed, but there was no one to hear her. She was
thankful when morning light came, and Mrs. Betty with a cup of choco-
late. Here was the morning ; was everything as it had been before ? Not-
withstanding cockcrow and morning light, Lady W.'s coldness continued.

Angelica's portrait was not yet sent home. She had begged Mr.
Reynolds to keep it for her until she moved into her own house. It had
been taken out of the studio the night of the supper, and carried into the
painting-room, where Marchi used to work upon his master's pictures.
The next morning, when Mr. Reynolds walked in as usual, the picture
had been replaced. There it stood, facing him, with its half conscious,
half unconscious, witcheries. His heart sank very much when he walked
up to it, and for an instant he felt almost inclined with his long- stocked
brash to paint the whole canvas over, for it seemed when he came up to
smile at him as Angelica herself had done the night before ; but painting
out a picture could make no change in his feelings towards her. If feelings
could be so easily displaced the world would be far less furnished than it
is at present. Painting pictures of other people would be more to the
purpose, thought the workman with a sigh. Some little details were still
to be finished upon this one : the fur on the cloak, the shadow of the throat,
and while he added what was wanting, the man became a painter again.

He was able to think calmly, and to make deliberate resolutions.
Henceforth he would never again be faithless to his life's true interest.
This had been an extraordinary phase, utterly unexpected, a phase which
was over for ever. What had he been about ? He was a " working man,"
as old Johnson had called him one day in jest. He was no professed
lover or squire of dames. She had been right as regarded him, though
perhaps wrong as to herself, thought the painter with some natural bias ;
and for one moment a thought of her as she had looked, standing there
by the easel smiling in her shining silks, nearly overcame his resolve ; a
fancy of her there, among them all, cherished and tenderly appreciated,
and faithfully loved. . . . The brush fell idly as he painted this picture
with certain colours, more fleeting still perhaps than his olios and ceras.
Fate had decided otherwise. He felt certain that she had no feeling for
him. Without it, it would be folly for her to marry one so much older,
so little suited. Something had gone out the night before when the
house had been lighted so brilliantly. He was surprised to find now how
easily this blow had fallen. He was very sad, very much pre- occupied ;

13—5

266 MISS ANGEL.

but he felt that on the whole circumstances had fallen out better than he
had sometimes expected, less well perhaps than he had hoped.

For some little time past all his future had seemed suddenly illumined
by new interests and by a new light. Now nothing of it was left — it was
extinguished — that was all. No ray seemed left, absolutely none ; and
he saw things once more in the old bald daylight.

He was not shaken or distressed, but changed somehow. It seemed
to him as if the Angelica he had loved had died the night before ; and as
if he had now to learn to live again without her. And this old stock
phrase is full of meaning to those souls new born, into this hackneyed
old life through pain and secret pangs.

It is not for any one to say how far Mr. Keynolds was right or wrong
in his determination henceforth to rule his life, not to be ruled by the
chances of it. Such things are ordered by the forces of each individual
nature. People will be true to themselves whatever part they may deter-
mine upon ; only the difference is that some try to play a higher part and
fail perhaps, ani are ashamed, and others try for a smaller part and
succeed, and are content.

Mr. Reynolds was still turning over these things in his mind,
when Miss Reynolds, the little lady in the dressing-gown and morning
wrapper, peeped into the room. She saw her brother standing there,
listless, unoccupied. The penello volante, so rapid, so assured in its flash,
hung idly by his side. She could see his face reflected in the looking-
glass from which he used to paint.

A very strange expression of pity and regret appeared in his looks.
Were tears in his placid eyes ? No ! that was not so ; for he started and
turned quickly, and seeing her, asked in his usual voice what she wanted ?

"I want my pocket-handkerchief, brother," said Miss Reynolds,
startled. " I forgot it last night ; " and then she took courage, and went
up to him and took his hand, paint stock, and all, and held it in both hers,
and looked at him beneath her big cap — "I should wish you happy,
brother," she said; " I saw a certain lady in tears, standing in this very
spot, a few hours ago ; at least, if not here, it was there by the great
easel ; or, no ! they have moved it, and put the little one in its place ; and
oh ! brother, you are still a young man, and much admired by many ; do
not trifle with a sweet girl's happiness, to say nothing of your own, not
that any one can judge for you, but one can't help one's hopes ; and
happiness is such a blessing, and must add so much to one's life, at
least, so I should imagine."

" Thank you, Frances," said Mr. Reynolds, both touched and vexed
by her agitation, as he always was. " Thank you, my dear ; I hope we
shall all be happy."

" She seemed sadly disturbed," said Miss Reynolds, " a little bird . . ."

"Thank you, my dear," said her brother again, patting her shoulder.
"Leave me now, I must go to my work, or I shall be sadly disturbed."
Miss Reynolds opened her mouth to say more, but her courage failed.

MISS ANGEL. 267

was never at ease with her brother, and yet her kind heart yearned
towards him, and she longed to say something to comfort him in his
evident depression. She was beginning another allusion to an old adage
which she thought applicable to the present state of things ; but he again
signed to her to stop, and Marchi, who had followed her into the room,
now announced an early visitor. Miss Reynolds, suddenly conscious of
her petticoat and dressing jacket, turned and fled.

CHAPTER XV.
UND HACHE ALL' MEIN WUNSCHEN WAHR.

THE sympathies and consolations of light, of harmony, of work, are
as effectual as many a form of words. They are substitutions of one
particular manner of feeling and expression for another. To hungry,
naked, and imprisoned souls, art ministers with a bountiful hand, shows
them a way of escape (even though they carry their chains with them) ;
leads silently, pointing into a still and tranquil world enclosed within our
noise-bound life, where true and false exist, but harassing duty and
conflicting consciences are not, nor remorse, nor its terrors, nor sorrowful
disappointments. A wrong perspective or faulty drawing may be crimes
in this peaceful land ; renewed effort is the repentance there practised.
Angelica was never more grateful to her pursuit than now when time
was difficult on her hands. The house was not to be ready for three
weeks, and during these she must needs remain in Charles Street.

She tried not to think much, but the sense of estrangement was there
nevertheless — estrangement from the three people whose good opinion she
most valued. If only Antonio would give some sign ; if only Mr. Reynolds
would come — if only Lady W. would be her own kind self — how suddenly
eased her heavy heart would be ! She painted steadily, rising betimes to
catch the first gleam of the sun dawning through the crowding mists.

Orders came in from one side and another. A message from the
Queen, that filled her with excitement, was transmitted by Lord Henry, who
had been to Windsor. Lady W.'s coldness did not change ; she scarcely
congratulated her, she seemed utterly unconcerned, and gave the poor child
many a pang that she was unconscious of ever having really deserved.

Mr. Reynolds came not ; Antonio came not ; Lady W. was as much
absent as though she were gone on a long journey. Would she ever
return, Angelica wondered ? Besides the natural separations of life, of
circumstance, there is also one great difficulty to be surmounted. It is
that of moods and mental position. Our secret journeys and flights have
to be allowed for as much as those open departures we make with many
farewells, and luggage, and tickets, and noisy bustle. There was a
powdering-closet on the second story of the house in Charles Street,
adjoining Lady Diana's room. It was only a small room, divided by a wall
with a hole in it and a sliding panel scooped to the neck. On one side

268 MISS ANGEL.

stood the barber and his assistant, to the other came the household with
the heads that needed powdering ; they would boldly pass them through
the aperture, by which means their clothes were preserved from the flying
clouds. Lord W. was standing in this guillotine, receiving a last touch
from the barber, when Angelica passed the open door one morning on
her way to the nursery upstairs. She turned, hearing herself called.

" Is that Miss Kauffmann ? I cannot see ; pray wait one minute ; " and
in a minute my lord appeared in fall dress, with his star, and his smart
velvet coat, and snowy wig, and gleaming buckles. He was going to
Court. He had been invited to dine at the Royal table. Little Judith
and Charlotte and Elizabeth were trotting downstairs to see him before
his start ; before they came up, Lord W. turned to Angelica, and
in a hurried voice said, "I wanted to speak to you. Dear lady, if
you think, of deciding upon a house, will you make use of my security ?
would you let me advance you a hundred pounds ? " and he hastily
pulled some notes out of his embroidered pocket, and tried quickly to pass
them into her hand.

Angelica thanked the golden little benefactor with grateful emotion :
"Indeed, I would gladly accept your kindness," she said, openly, " but
Lady Diana has lent me some money."

She would have said more, but she saw him look uneasy ; a door
opened, and the figure of Lady W. appeared upon the landing. " What
are you plotting ? " said she : "I seem to have disturbed you," and she
flashed a quick penetrating look at Angelica.

" My lord is plotting to do me kindness and to give me help. He
would help me pay the rent of the house I have engaged," said Angelica.
She went up to Lady W. and looked at her with a great sweetness.
" Indeed, dear lady, you would have little to fear if none but such as I
were to conspire against you — I, who owe so much, so very much, to
your goodness."

" Do you still remember that?" said Lady W., softened by the very
charm which raised her jealousy. She slowly put out her hand to Angel,
who held it gratefully in her own. For a minute the two women
looked hard at .one another. Then Lady W. suddenly melted ind kissed
the young painter on the brow. " Take this," she said, for my sake, and
she slipped a ring off her own finger to Angelica's : it was a little cameo
set in brilliants, which the girl wore ever after. This tacit reconciliation
greatly softened the pain of parting, for the younger woman.

As she stepped across the threshold of the little house she had taken,
Angel's heart beat tumultuously, and her eyes sparkled. Here at last
was a home. After her many wanderings, her long journeyings and
uncertainties, here was a home. Here she could bring her father ; dear,
poor, proud, silly papa ! Here she could work in peace/live her life, and
be beholden to none.

The woman servant Lady W. had recommended was standing, curtr

MISS ANGEL. 269

seying, at the foot of the stairs. The lamp had been lighted. It was a
Roman three-beaked lamp that Angelica had found in some old shop, and
bought after much hesitation. A fire had been lit in the studio. The
little old house stood warm and welcoming, with an indescribable sense
of rest about it, of proprietorship.

No bride coming to her new happy home for the first time could have
felt more proudly excited than this little impulsive, well-meaning, foolish
creature, who had, by sheer hard work and spirited determination, earned
a right to this panelled nest. There was a drawing-room in front, with
windows into Golden Square : that was the studio. It led into her bed-
room, beyond which came a dressing-room. On the second floor was
her father's bedroom ; the dining-room was down below, with windows
looking to the Square, and wooden cupboards by the fireplace. Angelica,
to her surprise, found a beautiful old oak cabinet standing in the studio
when she entered it on this eventful evening. She eagerly asked from
whom it came. Had Lady W. graciously sent it as a sign of goodwill ?
The woman could tell her nothing. Some men had brought it the day be-
fore. They had left a piece of paper with Miss Kauffmann's name. She
had put it on the shelf.

The piece of paper told its story, although there was no name but
Angelica's own upon it. But how well she knew those straight lines, black
and even, although here and there the letters seemed to tremble, as
writing might do that was seen through water. Antonio had not quite
forgotten her then ? he was not quite gone — dear, kind old Antonio !
Angelica went up and kissed the wooden doors that seemed to speak a
welcome from her new-found, faithful old friend.

She was dancing about the room half the evening, straightening her
few possessions, pulling out canvases, spreading her two or three mats to
the best advantage. Then she began to write to her father. He must
delay no longer ; his house was ready ; his child was longing for his
presence. She sent money for the journey ; she should be miserable
until she had seen him sitting there just opposite by the fire. He must
not mind dark days and cold biting winds ; he should be warmed and
comforted in his home whatever the world outside might prove to be. . .
Then she told him how the orders were coming in faster than she could
execute them. And Antonio had sent a beautiful gift that made the
whole place splendid. She could not thank him : she knew not where to
seek him. . . .

As bhe wrote, Angelica looked up, hearing a sound. There stood
Antonio himself, looking thin indeed, grey, more bent than usual, but kind,
smiling, natural : his own gentlest self. His affection was ready to show
itself by bright and friendly signs that evening, not by cross-grained
reprimands and doubts.

These happy meetings come to all now and then ; unexpected, unhoped
for.

Angelica cried out with many questions, welcomes, explanations. How

270 MISS ANGEL.

had he come ? Was he hidden inside the cabinet ? she asked with a
laughing, grateful look.

" I am very glad you liked it," said Antonio, smiling. " I thought it
would please you when I saw it in the old shop at Windsor."

" Kind Tonio ! " said Angelica. " But " — and she hesitated. " How
could you ... it must have cost "

Antonio began to look black, and scowled at her for an instant.

" You think so much of the cost of things, Angelica. You measure
your gifts by their value. Be reassured, the cabinet was a bargain, and
I have plenty of money just now. I am painting the ceilings of a royal
palace at Frogmore, and if you will, I am desired to ask you to undertake
one of the rooms."

" I ! " cried Angelica. " I have never done anything of the sort."

" Mrs. Mary Moser is engaged upon a very pretty set of panels,"
Zucchi continued, " and they would be glad of some of your work as well.
You might paint allegories to your heart's content," he said, smiling.

" You are a magician, Antonio ! " cried Angelica, gaily, leaning back
on her chair, and looking at him with the old familiar winning eyes.
" Only wait till my father comes, and then I will go anywhere, do any-
thing. They tell me I am to paint the Queen and the Princess shortly, at
Windsor Castle. Is it not like a dream to be at home once more — to
have a real house with doors and windows ? To be sitting here, you and
I, on each side of the fire ? "

" It is like a dream to see you once more at ease, and in peace," said
Antonio, between his teeth, " and to find that your head is not quite
turned by your flatterers, since you can look pleased to welcome an old
plain-spoken friend in a shabby coat."

It was one of the happiest evenings Angelica ever spent in all her life.
The ease and liberty seemed delightful, after the restraint of the house in
Charles Street. Antonio's presence was happiness too ; he was in his
best and most sympathetic mood. He had returned to her. No thought
of what might or what might not be came to disturb her. Mr. Reynolds
was also in her thoughts ; that other friend, so tranquil, so reliable, surely
she need never feel a doubt about him. Was she right ? Is it so ? Are
calm ripples and placid silences the proof of deepest waters ?

Antonio after some time remembered to explain his appearance. He
had heard from M. Cipriani that she was coming, he said ; the news had
filled him with happiness. Then he smiled and added that he had not
come up from Windsor, inside the cabinet, but on the carrier's cart.

Angelica asked him, with some curiosity, where he had been living all
this time. Antonio told her that he had been staying with some good
friends at Eton. " My friend is a kind old man, with six daughters,"
said Zucchi. "He is the drawing- master, and lives in the College. The
young ladies are charming. They would be only too glad to receive you,
if you should be sent for to work at the Castle ; they would make you very
welcome."

MISS ANGEL. 271

" Six young ladies!" cried Angelica; " take care, take care,
Antonio."

Antonio was silent for a moment. " A painted trellis would be out of
place," he said suddenly, looking up at the ceiling, " in this smoky city ;
but I will paint you a trellis, if yoa like."

" Yes," said Angelica, " and paint me a little blue sky, Antonio, and
a bird, and some scent of orange-flowers." So they went on talking, and
the warm happy hours passed on. Then a clock began to strike slowly.

" Is that twelve ? " said Miss Angel.

" I don't know," said Antonio. Neither of them cared to shorten this
peaceful meeting, snatched out of the cold and darkness and noise
and racket all round about, and belonging to their friendship. But as
the clock finished striking, Antonio's heart began to sink, and he felt
somehow that the happy evening was over. And the Kauffmann, too,
sat looking thoughtfully into the fire, of which while they talked, by some
chance, one-half had gone out and turned to blackness, while the other
still burnt ruddy.

" Look there," said Angelica, " how oddly the fire burns." Antonio
poked it with his foot.

" You know the superstition ? " he answered ; " they were speaking of
it at Dr. Starr's only a day or two ago. It means, so they say, that two
people who love each other are about to be parted ; " and he looked at
Angelica as he spoke. She was playing with her wristlets ; a little flush
was in her cheeks. " Antonio," she said, " do you think that people who
are parted once can meet again? "

" That depends very much upon fortune's favours, and still more upon
their own wishes," eaid Antonio, drily. " Chance gives you a sight of
people ; but you have yourself to make one in the meeting; " and then
his voice softened. " We have met to-night, Angelica, and have been
very happy. Perhaps, next time I see you, some lord will be here, with
his coach-and-six, and you will not have so much time to give me."

" Time is nothing at all in friendship ; you can't measure things by
time," said Miss Angel. " There is no lord in question, Antonio ; but,
shall I tell you all ? there is some one I often think of."

" Some one who loves you ? " Antonio asked in a dry voice. He
was standing up and preparing to go. " Can he keep you, Angelica ?
Has he got plenty of money ? Is he highly esteemed at Court ? Has he
servants in proper liveries ? "

" How can you speak in that unkind way ! " she cried. " I open my
heart to you, and this is how you answer me."

" Excuse me," said Antonio ; " I was only talking as all your other
friends will talk ; for myself I say, if you love any one from your heart,
were he as rich as Croesus, marry him ; ask no one's advice, and make no
more difficulties."

" He is not as rich as Croesus. I did not know I loved him when he
spoke to me," said Angel, penitent without much cause ; " but when yoa

272 MISS ANGEL.

spoke just now about friends meeting, I could not help thinking of him,
and wondering if it might ever come about. I think, Antonio, if he spoke
to me again ... He is older than I am ; I can trust him and look to
him."

" Is it that lord I saw in the box at the play ? " asked Antonio.

"It is no lord," Angelica repeated, very much agitated; "it is a
worker like ourselves ; it is Mr. Keynolds, Antonio."

11 What ! the deaf man ? " said the younger painter.

" I thought you would have cared about my interest," said Miss Angel,
hurt by his tone and change of manner; " but I see you are indifferent,
that you have not one thought to give to me."

" You see very wrongly," the other answered. " I could even approve
of your marriage if you cared for the proposed husband. But that you do
not, Angelica. Good -night ! " and he was gone.

CHAPTER XVI.

THROUGH WINTER-TIME TO SPRING.

WHILE Antonio was walking home through the black midnight streets ;
while Mr. Reynolds was sitting in his own studio composing an article for
the Rambler (the studio was still haunted by some paling ghost of Miss
Angel) ; while the painter had quietly made up his mind to abandon the
siege of the difficult fortress he had incautiously attacked, the fortress
itself was secretly preparing to surrender, for it was built upon the sandy
foundation of impulse, of youthful ardent imagination.

With all her faults, as I have said, Angelica was a genuine woman,
incapable of deceiving any one, unless indeed she herself were deceived,
and whatever she might realize now, she had at the time truly felt that
gratified vanity was no return for true feeling. Misunderstandings are far
more difficult things than people imagine in love or in friendship. Some
instinct protects travellers in that strange country where all is instinct, and
if they disagree it is that from some secret reason they do not belong to
each other, for quarrels are nothing to those who are united in sympathy.

If Mr. Eeynolds spoke to her again, would she give him a different
answer ? " Perhaps I might graciously be pleased to allow that I was less
indifferent than I had once appeared to be," she thought, and she tossed
back her curl and opened wide her eyes, and discovered it was nearly one
o'clock and time for bed.

Antonio came next morning before Angel was up. He was used to
workmen, and to hurrying their reluctant hammers and whitening-pails.
He took upon himself to dismiss two or three on the spot, feeling sure
that Angelica's little store would be soon expended if she gave orders on
the same scale as Lady W., who had sent in this army in all kindness and
inexperience. Zucchi himself acted as chief artificer and foreman : the

MISS ANGEL. 273

men seeing him take his place so naturally, imagined that he was the
owner of the house and obeyed his orders. When Miss Angel appeared
in her wrapping-gown and cap, she found that Antonio had accomplished
wonders in a hard morning's work, that everything was in order in the
studio. The Princess, followed by the whole Court, might come when she
would.

" I hope you forgive me for interfering," said Zucchi ; "you must
remember how quickly money goes in this country, and that one man's
day here costs three times as much as with us."

" The days are much shorter and blacker here than with us," said
Angelica. " They ought to be cheap enough : how good of you, Tonio,
to come to my help ; what shall you want for your work ? See here,"
she said, running into her room and coming out again with Lady Diana's
pocket-book. " I have saved 80/., and Lady Diana has lent 100£. for
my rent. I am to get 15/. for three fans I am painting, to-morrow."

" Do you mean that this is all you have got to reckon on ? " cried
Zucchi. " I thought those rich had loaded you with their miserable
favours. Is this their dole in return for what you have done for them ?
You will be starving in a month or two, if you go on at this rate, my
poor child : where is your father, that old mummy ? Why does he not
come to take care of you ? " he said, very much agitated.

Antonio, brought up in the severe order of poverty, had an exaggerated
horror of want and of debt, as he had of Angelica's incapacity. Angelica
was perfectly justified under the circumstances in doing as she had done ;
but it is certain that Antonio's cranky anxieties saved her money, labour,
and many a consequent worry just at this time.

He used to come for an hour in the morning and for an hour in the
evening. Angelica was not always there ; but on her return she was sure
to find some trace of his presence and of the industry of the trembling
hands. From the very first so many people came to Angelica's studio
that his presence was little remarked upon. The Lord Essex of those
days was her great friend and patron, so was Lord Henry Belmore, not to
be rebuffed, and Lord W. would also hurry in and out occasionally ;
Mr. Fuseli came many times ; Mr. Boydell and his brother, the artistic
alderman, were entirely captivated with the young artist, and so indeed
were many others too numerous to mention.

All that winter the little house had been alive with voices, and footsteps,
and greetings,, and exclamations of wonder and admiration from friends,
lovers, patrons, and admirers of both sexes. In the engrossment of
settling down, of feeling her own success and importance, Angelica thought
less of Mr. Reynolds than she did later when the first excitement of this
new way of living had somewhat palled upon her. Who could have imagined
that this cold foggy life was to be so full of vibrating emotion and of
romance ? Rome, with all her wonders, had contained far more common-
place experiences than this black and vapour-haunted city. Lady Diana
came often at first, then more rarely, for she looked on with doubtful appro-

274 MISS ANGEL.

bation at Miss Angel's experiences. Lady W. also came. She seemed
to have forgiven Angelica. Angel, standing in the deep windows of her
studio, could see her torches flaring up the street as the Lady travelled
homewards in her chair ; as the lights would disappear into the fog, Angel
would ask herself if she was indeed the little girl of a year ago, who had
stood eating grapes and looking over the Kialto. The remembrance of it
sometimes came over her so vividly that she seemed to breathe the air, to
hear the voices, the sound of the feet trailing upon the bridge. Zucchi's
voice did not jar upon these recollections, although he sent them flying.

All that winter Angelica was too busy, too engrossed to look back
often ; the present was all in all. She rarely met Mr. Reynolds ; but
when she did come across him he seemed to avoid her, she thought, and
just at this time she was content that it should be so, and glad of the
postponement. That all would come right she never questioned ; of her
power to call anybody to her feet she scarcely doubted. " I can look at
people," she once told Antonio, half in jest and half in earnest, " and
make them turn pale and do anything I wish ; but I don't, Antonio. I
could make you much kinder if I tried. But I am used to your scoldings."

Antonio left the room, banging the door.

So time, and sitters, and days passed by in turn, the house in Golden
Square prospered and flourished, and Angelica was delighted with her own
triumphs and successes, and the time drew near for old Kauffmann's arrival.

The Princess of Brunswick had given so flattering an account of the
young painter that the Princess of Wales, the mother of the King, sent a
message to say that she was coming to visit Angelica in her studio. " Such
an honour was never paid to any other painter," writes Angelica to her
transported old father. He read the letter to his sister, the farmer's
widow, to the dairy-maid, to the cure after mass, to the goatherd, to the
very goats upon the mountain slope. The whole valley participated in the
Kauffmann's distant honours and glories. They urged him to lose no time,
to start off immediately to the golden scene of his daughter's triumph. " In
London, that great city, the applause," says Rossi, " was universal. The
public papers contained verses in different languages written in her praise."

It required no little courage and dogged opposition on Antonio's part
to continue his system of detraction and plain speaking as he called it.
One can never account for the curious phases of people's mind. To him
Angelica was an inadequate genius ; but a more complete woman perhaps
than any other he had ever known ; more complete in her feminine power
than all the six Miss Starrs at Windsor put together ; than the Princess of
Brunswick in her velvet mantles ; than Lady W. with all her beauty, her
gentle affectations, and cultivated vapours.

Sometimes Antonio coming in would find the young painter sitting
surrounded by a circle of admirers. Not unfrequently she would be
talking nonsense in a high, ecstatic voice. "Yes! " she would say, "I
will confess to you all that it has been a something beyond me that has
ever driven me onward through life, seeking for the most beautiful and

MISS ANGEL. 275

ideal representation of the truth. That is why I try to give some deep
allegorical meaning to all that I depict. If I have painted this picture of
my friend Mary Moser as ' Prudence sacrificing to Duty and enchaining
the wings of Cupid,' it is because I have felt that in the most commonplace
form and feature " (here there was a little suppressed titter in the circle
which Angel did not notice — Mr. Fuseli alone frowned and looked annoyed)
" there is often a moral, a suggestion far beyond the passing moment, and
to that we must cling if we would not utterly weary and sicken of the dull
disappointments and realities of life." She started up as she spoke, a
slim prophetess in a white falling dress, pointing to the picture she had
just completed. Some classical recess in the wall just behind made an
arch above her head. It was an April evening ; the window was open ;
the dusk was creeping in. A great vase of spring flowers stood on a table
by her side.

" I do not comprehend," said Antonio, in his slow English, " why an
allegory should be of more value to the world than a truth. I should
have imagined until now that a good likeness, carefully painted, is what
one wishes for, in remembrance of a friend, not a classical allusion to some-
thing else which does not concern anybody in particular."

Miss Angel blushed up. Some secret conscience warned her that she
had been making a display, but why was Antonio to lecture her in public ;
she said nothing, but she showed by her manner that she was displeased.

Contradiction from Zucchi always roused the secret gipsy in Angelica's
character. True friends are sorts of magnifying glasses. Antonio was a
true friend, and saw her perhaps as she really was, with some slight ex-
aggeration.

For Antonio alone, perhaps, she was but herself — no wonder such
as all these people would have declared her to be, no mighty mistress of
her art, but a sweet and impulsive-hearted girl whose arch bright looks,
half-saucy, half- appealing, went straight to his heart, whose constant
self-denying work and application he knew how to appreciate. Perhaps
she pursued her way too triumphantly ; perhaps if her pictures had cost
her more, they might have been better worth the sweet lifetime she had given
to them, the hours of youth, of gaiety, and natural amusement and interest
sacrificed to these smiling ladies vaguely waving their arms or reclining
upon impossible banks. He praised her colouring, and Angel's cheeks
would burn in answer. Her sentiment was charming, but her drawing
was absurd, and he did not scruple to tell her so.

CHAPTER XVII.
A GAME OF CARDS.

A GREAT many things exist that it is useless to close one's eyes upon,
and yet the very wants and disappointments and ineffectual effoits may
themselves be a sort of proof of the possibility of the things to which we

276 MISS ANGEL.

cannot quite reach, the love we cannot quite hold, the duty we cannot
quite fulfil. Is life a science ? Are not its very deviations sometimes the
key to its secrets ? Are we all philosophers with instincts which set us to
work upon its awful problems ?

Angel was not philosophizing just now. She had not written her
little flyleaves of late, or sat pondering her simple articles of faith. I
do not think she was living with her best self all these months. A new
phase had come over her ; it is one which people decry, but to me it has
always seemed a sort of game no better nor worse than any other — the
great game of the London world and its odd interests and superstitions.
From being a spectator you are insensibly absorbed in the performance.
You begin to understand the points, the tricks, the turns of it— the value
of this trump-card played against that one. Two for a queen, three for
a king, and knaves and diamonds have their value too, and you uncon-
sciously sort your hand and play your trick, and find yourself one day
deeply excited by this lively living whist-marking, dealing out, bidding.
It is but a game, and one day the humblest player may throw down his
cards with a weary shrug. I don't know that there is greater harm than
in any other pursuit until the day comes when men give their honour
and women stake their hearts' truth, and their children's happiness, and
the peace of their homes. Was Angelica in danger of staking her poor
little heart?

Miss Angel was not in love with anybody, as I have said. She
thought more of Mr. Keynolds at that time than of any other person. If
Mr. Reynolds had ccme back, she would have accepted him. She always
turned to her remembrance of him with gratitude and confidence, and
somehow her conscience approved and Antonio approved, but Mr. Rey-
nolds himself seemed to avoid her. His reserve gave her some concern,
but she trusted to Miss Reynolds to remove it. Although Mr. Reynolds
absented himself, Miss Reynolds was her constant visitor, and from her
the young painter used to hear of his doings — of the work he was engaged
upon, of the people he lived with. Lord Charlemont had proposed him
for the Dilettante, the beautiful Duchess of Manchester was sitting to
him, so was Nelly O'Brien, whose bright eyes still meet our admiring
glances. He was as constant as ever to his club ; he came, he went, he
worked, perhaps harder than usual, and yet

" Something is amiss," said Miss Reynolds, hesitating. " Perhaps you
can tell me what it is ? " she said, one day, with one of her impulsive darts.

They were riding in Mr. Reynolds' big coach, which had just then
stopped at Dr. Burney's door, in Poland Street. More than once the
great primrose coach had conveyed Angelica to Dr. Barney's musical
parties. On this occasion, in an interval of Piozzi's singing, Miss Rey-
nolds returned to the discussion.

" He is not himself," said the elder lady, anxiously. " I have never
seen my brother so dull — so depressed in manner "

" I think he has forgot me altogether," said Miss Angel. " The

MISS ANGEL. 277

other evening at the market, when I would have spoken to him (I had
sent away a couple of my friends on purpose), he would not come near
me ; he merely said, ' Are you enjoying the scene, my dear young lady ?
Do not let me be the means of dispersing your attendant knights ; ' and
he passed on. Tell me — what does it mean ? " cried Miss Angel, sud-
denly, and she seized Miss Reynolds' mitten in her quick hand. " It is
hard to be estranged from those whose affection one values." Angel's
eyes filled with tears as she spoke, her fan slipped to the ground, some-
one sprang forward to pick it up — a stately-looking person in mourning
garb. It was an old friend who had lately appeared in London society,
Count de Horn, whom she had first known at Venice. Angelica took the
fan from him with a pretty little " moue," and let him kiss her hand as
he returned it and departed with one more bow. She hastily brushed
her tears away behind its sheltering cupids. She was not sorry that
Miss Reynolds should see she was not without adorers still, although
Mr. Reynolds chose to be absent for such long weeks together. She was
surprised when she looked up to notice some expression of disapproba-
tion in Miss Reynolds' .face ; her eyebrows were working, her little round
button mouth was quivering.

"What is it, my dear lady?" said Angelica. "Are you vexed?
are you "

" Oh ! it is not I, dear child, whose opinion matters," said Miss Rey-
nolds, looking about perplexed, " nor does my brother's, for the matter of
that, and indeed it was I who said it, and he only replied, ' Poor child !
she is not used to our English ways.' But you must have remarked that
he is fastidious about ladies' behaviour — he puts me in mind of my father
in that ; and if he objects to the persons who pay you court, dear child,"
said Miss Reynolds, tenderly, taking Angel's hand in hers, " has he not
a good reason — one that you cannot resent ? "

Miss Angel blushed up. "Bear Miss Reynolds," she began. Miss
Reynolds coloured in her turn and went on unheeding. " People say
that my brother is not the first to have some reason to complain. You
do not mean — you do not realize — oh, my dear, forgive an old woman
who has long, long since passed beyond such things, but who can still re-
member and who, if she speaks harshly, only wishes you well from her
very heart. You are worthy even of his affection, and his sadness cuts
me to the quick."

Angelica did not answer.

CHAPTER XVIII.

BE THE FIRE ASHES.

SOME odd phase had come over the girl. A week ago I believe she
would have turned away from such words, preoccupied perhaps, or amused,
or offended. Now it seemed as if she had for the first time faced the

278 MISS ANGEL.

seriousness of life as it passed — realized the fact that people could suffer
from her light indifference — suddenly understood that slight and indeter-
minate as most events are, they are, after all, our lives, and we have
nothing else to live with.

She had played with other people's happiness of late. She had had
real happiness and inflicted real pain. She had received a lesson from
Mr. Reynolds that she scarcely deserved from him, although it might
perhaps have applied more truly to her relations with Zucchi, with poor
Fuseli, about whom her conscience did not acquit her. Mr. Dance, too,
had reproached her. She would forget it all if she could. Why could
she not forget it ? Were they all speaking the truth ? Was it indeed an
unpardonable crime to be pleased and interested and happy in the society
of more than one person ?

As thoughts run on indeterminately without words or sense, they
turn into moods, into phases of mind. All the next day Angelica came and
went about her work with the impression upon her of her conversation
with Miss Reynolds. Coming in from a short walk, she found her old
maid-servant standing in the passage ; she was holding a great bunch of
roses that had just come from Leicester Fields with a note from Miss
Reynolds : —

" MY DEAREST MlSS KAUFFMANN,

" My brother sends you these from his garden at Richmond ;
he hopes to do himself the honour of calling upon you to-day. Shall
you be at home at about five o'clock ?

" Your ever most faithful and affectionate Servant,

"F. R."

All that morning Angel had been somewhat tired. Her painting had
not satisfied her. Lady Diana had come, and, finding Count de Horn in
the studio, had gone away almost immediately with marked coldness of
manner.

Angelica began to long for a little of the placid sunshine of old days.
The roses and the straggling sunbeam wandering up the old staircase
carried her right away.

The Count's manner had vexed her, she could hardly tell why. She
felt instinctively that Mr: Reynolds would not have approved. It was not
familiarity ; it was uneasiness, some want of bearing. How different his
affected courtliness was from Mr. Reynolds' simple courtesy !

She put the roses carefully in water. They had given her a sense of
rest. Their fragrance filled the room as she sat down to her painting,
and worked on undisturbed by outward things. But that day her hand
trembled as Zucchi's did. The canvas seemed to dazzle before her.
Some strange tumult had taken possession of the young painter.

She was engaged upon a pretty and delicate medallion which Lord
Essex had ordered. Some Venus, some Cupid, reclining in balmy gardens
very far from Golden Square and from its work-a-day inhabitants. To

MISS ANGEL. 279

our excited Angelica the lights seemed flashing from the picture, the Cupid's
eyes seemed to meet hers. She felt almost frightened at last, and turned
away with an impatient movement, as the tall doors open wide, and with
the quiet swinging step and dignity that are peculiar to him, Mr. Rey-
nolds walks into the room. For a minute Miss Angel, usually so out-
coming, was silent and embarrassed in her reception. He was calm and
friendly, greeted her somewhat shyly. She saw him presently glance at
the flowers.

"Thank you for sending them," she said. "You know my love for
roses. These have come out early."

" Some roses we know bloom in November," said the painter, with a
little bow to the November rose now quivering before him.

Angelica looked up somewhat wistfully. She could not face those
anxious, bland glances. Something — what was it ? — in his calm supe-
riority seemed to fascinate her will, to compel her willing service. To
this impetuous, impressionable, fantastical young person, it seemed as if
his judgment and tender consideration might be the calm haven for which
she longed. Poor little thing, she was suddenly tired of the rout, so tired
of it all — tired of her hard work, tired of the compliments which in her
heart she did not accept, longing for some anchor to her labouring craft.

She dragged forward a chair, and bestirred herself to make him
welcome. " I knew you would come, Mr. Reynolds ; something told me
you would come to-day, even before I received your flowers."

" What made you expect me ? " said Mr. Reynolds, looking surprised.
"I have often thought of coming, wished to come, but it was only this
afternoon when my sister told me that you had honoured me by remarking
my absence that I decided "

He stopped, arrested by the strange expression of her face. There
was something spiritual, half rapt, half excited, in her looks at that
moment. She shook back her great curl ; her colour rose.

Had he been unhappy all this time ? So his words now implied (they
had, in truth, no such meaning). Could she set it all right, make him
happy once more ; by a single word ensure her own lasting peace, his ever
present friendship ? She started from her chair.

"Perhaps some instinct spoke to me," she cried, a little wildly;
" perhaps we are less indifferent to each other than you may have
imagined. I have not forgotten the honour you once did me. If you
also remember — if you also remember," she repeated, " as your sister has
led me to suppose that you do, I might give a different answer now to that
which I gave you then."

She looked up, expecting to see a smile upon his face, a reflection of
her own excitement. "I have thought much and deeply since last we
met," she said. " It is not too late to try and make amends to you for
my mistake." Angelica's heart was throbbing fast.

Reynolds looked very pale, and for a moment he in turn could scarcely
meet Angel's looks. " My child," he said, " I will not, must not take

280 MISS ANGEL.

advantage of your confidence. When I spoke to you before, I was in a
different mood, carried away by a passing impulse, which I cannot regret,
since it has brought me this generous mark of your goodness. But
you were right in your decision. You yourself caused me to reflect. I
could not hope to make one of your young and ardent nature happy, and I
could never be happy, feeling that I had sacrificed your life to a friendship
which will be yours whatever chances. I scarcely know what words to
use to tell you, my dear, of my respect and gratitude — to tell you how I
am honoured by your noble confidence. I hope to prove to you," he
added, " that I am not unworthy of it."

Angelica scarcely heard what words he was saying. Afterwards she
remembered them, and they were some consolation to her ; but at the
time some sudden feeling of overwhelming shame, of indignation, almost
of horror at what had occurred, overcame her completely. It seemed to
her that she had been mad, bereft of her reason ; and now for once
Angelica spoke against her nature, against her own conviction. " You
are right," she said, coldly; "I spoke under misapprehension; we have
neither of us that regard for each other which would warrant the step I
foolishly proposed — a step suggested by another person."

" But we are friends for life," said Mr. Eeynolds. " Is it not so ? "
She could not answer at that moment, and she was thankful when, by
some curious chance, Lady W. was announced by the man-servant, coming
in for the second time upon their estrangement. That first explanation
now seemed almost a meeting compared to this cruel moment. How
Angel got through the next half hour she scarcely knew. She was con-
scious of Mr. Reynolds' mute appeal and courteous, grateful, almost de-
precating manner ; of Lady W.'s renewed interest and affection. It all
seemed to her to be meant for some other person — some one who was not
present. She was thankful when they left her at last. Zucchi happened
to come in as usual, and she imploringly whispered to him to take them
away, that she wanted to be alone. She must be alone, and she sank
down upon the low couch in the now darkened room. She covered her
face with her hands, with a sort of despair in goodness in human nature.
Was there no single person to trust in all this world ?

Had she been actuated by vanity when she turned to this grave and
good man ? Ah, no ! her conscience absolved her ; but what had she
done ?

Miss Reynolds had deceived her unpardonably and most cruelly. An-
gelica felt as if she could forgive her friend in time, but not yet. And
as for her friendship, was this her experience of it ? It was very, very
late, and she sat there, half worn out, without spirit to move. She felt
that there was something in her that the slightest movement or word would
awaken.

Was this what she had unwillingly inflicted upon others — this miserable
torture of heart ? Had some demon taken hold of her in her trouble ?

281

" GOLDSMITH," says Lord Macaulay, " lived in what was intellectually
far the best society of the kingdom — in a society in which no talent or
accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was
cultivated with splendid success. There probably were never four talkers
more admirable in four different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk,
and Garrick ; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all the four."
Many a reader, as he has come upon this passage, must have paused to
reflect who this Beauclerk was who is thus matched with Johnson, Burke,
and Garrick, and whose society was an honour to Goldsmith. He may at
length have called to mind the lively, the learned, the witty, the fashion-
able Topham Beauclerk as he is shown to us in the pages of Bos well. In
a late number we have given a sketch of Bennet Langton. We shall do
our best to present a companion portrait of the friend of his college days
and of his mature life — Topham Beauclerk. We have, we feel, a far
harder task before us, for Langton's life lay in a much narrower circle.
The books that tell of Johnson tell also of him, but Beauclerk knew a world
that was known to neither Langton nor Johnson. He was a man of
fashion, as well as an accomplished scholar and an eager student, and had
mixed with men whom neither Johnson nor Langton would have cared to
have known. Though we have not failed in diligence in consulting the
memoirs of last century, yet we have not succeeded so well as we had
hoped in gathering information about many periods of his life. Es-
pecially had we wished to illustrate his marvellous conversational powers
to which so many of his contemporaries bear witness, but the good say-
ings of his that we have come upon are but few indeed.

Topham Beauclerk's wildness and wit may well have come from one
and the same source, for he was the great-grandson of Charles II. and
Nell Gwyn. Boswell says that " Mr. Beauclerk's being of the St. Albans'
family, and having, in some particulars, a resemblance to Charles II.,
contributed, in Johnson's imagination, to throw a lustre upon his other
qualities." In another passage we learn that Johnson had an extraordi-
nary partiality for that prince and took fire at any attack upon him.
Beauclerk's father, Lord Sidney Beauclerk, the fifth son of the first Duke
of St. Albans, was not unworthy of his illustrious grandparents. " Sir
C. H. Williams calls him ' Worthless Sidney.' He was notorious for
hunting after the fortunes of the old and childless. Being very hand-
some he had almost persuaded Lady Betty Germaine (Swift's correspondent)

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 188. 14.

282 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.

in her old age to marry him. He failed also in obtaining the fortune of
Sir Thomas Reeve, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, whom he used to
attend on the circuit with a view of ingratiating himself with him. At
length he induced Mr. Topham, of Windsor, to leave his estate to him."
If Mr. Topham together with his fortune left him also his famous collec-
tion of pictures and drawings, it is likely enough that from them his god-
son derived much of his accurate taste and judgment in painting and sculp-
ture. It was certainly not to his mother that Beauclerk owed the powers
of his mind. In the course of his tour to the Hebrides Johnson one day
told Bos well the following anecdote of this lady : " Beauclerk and I, and
Langton, and Lady Sidney Beauclerk, mother to our friend, were one day
driving in a coach by Cuper's Gardens (an inferior place of popular
amusement), which were then unoccupied. I, in sport, proposed that
Beauclerk and Langton and myself should take them ; and we amused
ourselves with scheming how we should all do our parts. Lady Sidney
grew angry, and said, * An old man should not put such things in young
people's heads.' She had no notion of a joke, Sir ; had come late into
life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding."

It was at Trinity College, Oxford, that Beauclerk formed an acquaint-
ance with his fellow- collegian Bennet Langton. Boswell says that
" though their opinions and modes of life were so different, that it seemed
utterly improbable that they should at all agree, yet Mr. Beauclerk had
so ardent a love of literature, so acute an understandiog, such elegance
of manners, and so well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr. Langton,
that they became intimate friends." They entered college within a few
months of each other in 1757, when Beauclerk was eighteen years old.
" Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, passed a considerable time
at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton should associate
so much with one who had the character of being loose, both in his prin-
ciples and practice ; but by degrees he himself was fascinated." The re-
semblance to Charles II. was too much for him. " And in a short time
the moral, pious Johnson and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk were com-
panions. * What a coalition ! ' (said Garrick when he heard of this) ; ' I
shall have my old friend to bail out of the round-house.' " Boswell goes
on to say that " it was a very agreeable association. Beauclerk was too
polite, and valued learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies
of infidelity or licentiousness ; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities
of Beauclerk and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the scenes
in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beauclerk could
take more liberty with him than anybody with whom I ever saw him ; but,
on the other hand, Beauclerk was not spared by his respectable companion,
when reproof was proper. Beauclerk had such a propensity to satire, that
at one time Johnson said to him, ' You never open your mouth but with
intention to give pain ; and you have often given me pain, not from the
power of what you said, but from seeing your intention.' At another time,
applying to him, with a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said, * Thy

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 283

love of folly and thy scorn of fools — everything thou dost shows the one,
and everything thou say'st the other.' At another time he said to him,
1 Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue.' Beauclerk not seeming
to relish the compliment, Johnson said, ' Nay, Sir, Alexander the Great,
marching in triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had
more said to him.' " The pious Johnson at times so far forgot to correct
the evil that he saw in his friend, that he even allowed himself to be led
astray. When he was staying at Beauclerk's house at Windsor, " one
Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him insensibly
to saunter about all the morning. They went into a churchyard, in the
time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of
the tomb-stones. * Now, Sir (said Beauclerk), you are like Hogarth's idle
apprentice.' " On another occasion, as Boswell tells us, ''when Beauclerk
and Langton had supped at a tavern in London, and sat till about three in
the morning, it came into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see
if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped vio-
lently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in
his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a night-
cap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were
coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told
their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their pro-
posal : ' What, is it you, you dogs ! I'll have a frisk with you.' He
was soon dressed, and they sallied forth together into Covent Garden,
where the greengrocers and fruiterers were beginning to arrange their
hampers, just come in from the country. Johnson made some attempts
to help them; but the honest gardeners stared so at his figure and
manner, and odd interference, that he soon saw his services were not re-
lished. They then repaired to one of the neighbouring taverns, and made
a bowl of that liquor called Bishop, which Johnson had always liked, while
in joyous contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, he repeated
the festive lines —

Short, O short then be thy reign

And give us to the world again !

They did not stay long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat,
and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased
•with their amusement that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the
rest of the day ; but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast
with some young ladies. Johnson scolded him for ' leaving his social
friends to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd girls.' "

Shortly after Beauclerk must have left college, we learn by a letter
of Mrs. Montague's that this lively young gentleman came within a very
little of being married. " Mr. Beauclerk," she writes, " was to have been
married to Miss Draycott, but by a certain coldness in his manner she
fancied her lead mines were rather the objects of his love than herself,
and so after the licence was taken out she gave him his conge. Rosa-
mond's pond was never thought of by the forsaken swain. His prudent

14—2

284 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.

parents thought of the transmutation of metals, and to how much gold the
lead might have been changed, and rather regret the loss." A few
months later in the same year Beauclerk, let us hope to drive away his
grief for the loss of his bride, went the grand tour. Langton accompanied
him, at all events part of the way. Johnson wrote to Mr. Baretti at
Milan, " I beg that you will show Mr. Beauclerk all the civilities which
you have in your power, for he has always been kind to me." Five
months later he writes to the same gentleman, " I gave a letter to Mr.
Beauclerk, who, in my opinion, and in his own, was hastening to Naples
for the recovery of his health ; but he has stopped at Paris, and I know
not when he will proceed." In George Selwyn's letters we read, " Top-
ham Beauclerk is arrived. I hear he lost 10,OOOL to a thief at Venice,
which thief, in the course of the year, will be at Cashiobury." Johnson,
with Beauclerk's example before him, had perhaps some reason for
saying that " Time may be employed to more advantage from nineteen to
twenty- four almost in any way than in travelling ; when you set travelling
against mere negation — against doing nothing — it is better to be sure ;
but how much more would a young man improve were he to study during
those years. How little," he went on to add, " does travelling supply to
the conversation of any man who has travelled ! — how little to Beauclerk ! "

Beauclerk, a few years after his return, had an opportunity of repaying
the civilities he had received from Mr. Baretti. That gentleman, as our
readers will remember, was put on his trial for murder. He had been
assailed in the grossest manner possible by a woman of the town, and
driving her off with a blow was set upon by three bullies. He thereupon
ran away in great fear, for he was a timid man, and being pursued had
stabbed two of the men with a small knife he carried in his pocket. One
of them died within a few hours of the wound. In his defence he had
said, " I hope it will be seen that my knife was neither a weapon of
offence nor defence. I wear it to carve fruit and sweetmeats, and not to
kill my fellow-creatures." It was important to prove that abroad every-
one carried a knife as a matter of course, not for offensive or defensive
purposes, but simply for convenience in eating. The " Hon. T. Beau-
clerk gave evidence as follows : —

" In France they never lay anything upon the table but a fork, not
only in the inns, but in public-houses. It is usual for gentlemen and
ladies to carry knives with them without silver blades. I have seen those •
kind of knives in toy-shops." (Baretti's knife had "a silver case over
the blade, and was kept in a green shagreen case.") Garrick testified to
the same custom. He was asked, " When you travel abroad do you carry
such knives as this ? " He answered, " Yes, or we should have no
victuals." Had Johnson by this time been to the Hebrides his evidence
also might have helped to confirm the statement of his friends. In a
letter he wrote from Skye to Mrs. Thrale he states, " Table-knives are
not of long subsistence in the Highlands ; every man, while arms were a
regular part of dress, had his knife and fork appendant to his dirk."

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 285

Beauclerk also bore evidence to the position Baretti held in his own country.
He was asked, " How long have you known Mr. Baretti ? " He answered,
" I have known him ten years. I was acquainted with him before I went
abroad. Some time after that I went to Italy, and he gave me letters of
recommendation to some of the first people there, and to men of learning.
I went to Italy the time the Duke of York did. Unless Mr. Baretti had
been a man of consequence he could never have recommended me to such
people as he did. He is a gentleman of letters, and a studious man."
In 1768 Beauclerk married the eldest daughter of the second Duke of
Marlborough, two days after her divorce from her first husband,
Frederick Viscount Bolingbroke, the nephew and heir of the great
Lord Bolingbroke. Boswell reports a conversation with Johnson,
which sets forth the history of this unhappy affair. " While we were
alone," he writes, " I endeavoured as well as I could to apologize for a
lady who had been divorced from her husband by Act of Parliament. I
said that he had used her very ill, had behaved brutally to her, and that
she could not continue to live with him without having her delicacy
contaminated; that all affection for him was thus destroyed; that the
essence of conjugal union being gone, there remained only a cold form, a
mere civil obligation ; that she was in the prime of life, with qualities to
produce happiness ; that these ought not to be lost ; and that the
gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while
thus unhappily situated. Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in
question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be
justified ; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave
me a proper check. * My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle

virtue and vice. The woman's a , and there's an end on't.' " As

Lady Diana Beauclerk did not die till the year 1808, she lived to see this
story, so slightly veiled as it was by the omission of names, submitted to
the world. A short time before the divorce Horace Walpole writes : " Lady
Bolingbroke has declared she will come into waiting on Sunday se'nnight ;
but as the Queen is likely to be brought to bed before that time, this may be
only a bravado." It may be interesting to mention, with a view to help us
towards forming a kind of link with the past, that the child that was soon
after born to the Queen was the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen
Victoria. In a letter written to Selwyn by Gilly Williams we read,
" Lady D. Spencer was married at St. George's on Saturday morning.
They are in town at Topham's house, and give dinners. Lord Ancram
dined there yesterday, and called her nothing but Lady Bolingbroke the
whole time." In another letter he says, "Topham goes on with his
dinners. Keport says neither of them will live a twelvemonth, and if it
is so, their life ought to be a merry one." Johnson on one occasion gave,
as regards this marriage, an instance of that real delicacy of mind that
beneath all his outside roughness belonged to him in so high a degree.
He was talking of Blenheim, and said " he should be very glad to see it,
if properly invited, which in all probability would never be the case, as it

286 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.

was not worth his while to seek for it. I observed " (says Bos well) " that
he might be easily introduced there by a common friend of ours, nearly
related to the Duke. He answered, with an uncommon attention to
delicacy of feeling, ' I doubt whether our friend be on such a footing with
the Duke as to carry anybody there ; and I would not give him the
uneasiness of seeing that I knew he was not, or even of being himself
reminded of it.' " Lady Di Beaucleik in her second marriage seems to have
been a faithful and devoted wife. Johnson writes to Boswell some years
after the marriage, " Poor Beauclerk is so ill that his life is thought to be
in danger. Lady Di nurses him with very great assiduity." When he
died he left his children to her care ; and, if she died, to the care of Mr.
Langton. David Hume describes her as being " handsome, agreeable,
and ingenious beyond the ordinary rate." Horace Walpole often speaks
in very high terms of her powers as an artist. In writing of a portrait
she had drawn of the Duchess of Devonshire he says, " The likeness is
perfectly preserved, except that its paintress has lent her own expression
to the Duchess, which you will allow is very agreeable flattery. What
should I go to the Royal Academy for ? I shall see no such chefs-cTceuvre
there." In writing of another of her pictures he says, (l Miss Pope, the
actress, dined here yesterday, and literally shed tears, though she did not
know the story. I think this is more to Lady Di's credit than a torn- tit
pecking at painted fruit." Mr. Hardy, in his Life of the Earl of
Charlemont, says, " Lord Charlemont has often mentioned to me that
Sir Joshua Reynolds frequently declared to him that many of her lady-
ship's drawings might be studied as models." Boswell bears witness to
her pleasant conversations. On the evening when he was to be balloted
for at the Literary Club he dined at Mr. Beauclerk's with several
members of that distinguished society. " Johnson," he 'writes, " had
done me the honour to propose me, and Beauclerk was very zealous for
me." He goes on to add, " The gentlemen went away to their club, and I
was left at Beauclerk's till the fate of my election should be announced to
me. I sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming society of Lady
Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate." It was from her he won a
small bett (sic) by asking Johnson as to one of his peculiarities, "which
her Ladyship laid I durst not do." Both Beauclerk and Garrick had
wondered at his pocketing at the club the Seville oranges after he had
squeezed out the juice, and " seemed to think that he had a strange
unwillingness to be discovered." Boswell, though he won his " bett,"
did not succeed in learning what he did with them.

To Beauclerk's great natural powers, and to his fine scholarly mind,
testimony is borne, as we have already said, by many competent witnesses.
Boswell, in describing a dinner at his house, says : — " Mr. Beauclerk was
very entertaining this day, and told us a number of short stories in a
lively, elegant manner, and with that air of the world which has I know
not what impressive effect, as if there were something more than is
expressed, or than perhaps we could perfectly understand. As Johnson

TOPHA.M BEAUCLERK. 287

and I accompanied Sir Joshua Reynolds in his coach, Johnson said,
' There is in Beauclerk a predominance over his company that one does
not like. But he is a man who has lived so much in the world that he
has a short story on every occasion ; he is always ready to talk, and is
never exhausted.' " Langton, in a letter to Boswell, gives further proof
of the way in which his extraordinary powers were regarded by Johnson : —
" The melancholy information you have received concerning Mr.
Beauclerk's death is true. Had his talents been directed in any sufficient
degree, as they ought, I have always been strongly of opinion that they
were calculated to make an illustrious figure ; and that opinion, as it had
been in part formed upon Dr. Johnson's judgment, receives more and
more confirmation by hearing what, since his death, Dr. Johnson has said
concerning them. A few evenings ago he was at Mr. Vesey's, where
Lord Althorpe, who was one of a numerous company there, addressed
Dr. Johnson on the subject of Mr. Beauclerk's death, saying, ' Our club
has had a great loss since we met last.' He replied, ' A loss that perhaps
the whole nation could not repair.' The Doctor then went on to speak
of his endowments, and particularly extolled the wonderful ease with
which he uttered what was highly excellent. He said that no man ever
was so free when he was going to say a good thing from a look that
expressed that it was coming ; or, when he had said it, from a look that
expressed that it had come. At Mr. Thrale's, some days before, when
we were talking on the same subject, he said, referring to the same idea
of his wonderful facility, ' That Beauclerk's talents were those which he
had felt himself more disposed to envy than those of any whom he had
known.' " And yet what great men he had known ! On an earlier occa-
sion, when Boswell had remarked to Johnson that " Beauclerk has a
keenness of mind which is very uncommon ; " Johnson replied, " Yes, Sir!
and everything comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour
when I say a good thing." Boswell replied, " You are loud, Sir ; but it
is not an effort of mind." Dr. Barnard, in those admirable verses with
which he so wittily rebuked Johnson's rudeness, shows the opinion held
by no mean judge of conversation of Beauclerk's powers :

If I have thoughts and can't express 'em,
Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em

In terms select and terse ;
Jones teach me modesty and Greek ;
Smith, how to think ; Burke, how to speak ;

And Beauclerk to converse.

Hawkins writes, " His conversation was of the most excellent kind ;
learned, witty, polite, and where the subject required it, serious, and over
all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good
humour as communicated itself to all around him." Lord Charlemont,
who was a member of the Literary Club and knew him well, said that
" he possessed an exquisite tact, various accomplishments, and the most
perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining

288 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.

a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his
manners could not always conceal ; but to those whom he liked, most
generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to
literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was
altogether one of the most accomplished and, when in good humour and
surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men
that could possibly exist." Wilkes, in a marginal note in his copy of
Boswell's Johnson describes Beauclerk as being " shy, sly, and dry." It
is a pity that so admirable a talker had not his Boswell, though, perhaps,
much of what he said depended to a very great extent on the manner in
which he said it. Lord Pembroke said, with perhaps more wit than
truth, that "Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary
were it not for his bow-wow way." There are, however, very few talkers
whose conversation if written down would still strike us with wonder.
We have gathered together the few good sayings of Beauclerk that we
have been able to find. When Johnson got his pension, Beauclerk said to
him in the humorous phrase of Falstaff, " I hope you'll now purge and
live cleanly like a gentleman." Boswell gives the following account which
he received from Beauclerk of a curious affair between Dr. Johnson and
Mr. Hervey. " Tom Hervey had a great liking for Johnson, and in his
will had left him a legacy of fifty pounds. One day he said to me,
* Johnson may want this money now more than afterwards. I have a
mind to give it him directly. Will you be so good as to carry a fifty-
pound note from me to him ? ' This I positively refused to do, as he
might, perhaps, have knocked me down for insulting him, and have after-
wards put the note in his pocket." Boswell repeated this story, with
certain other circumstances into which it is not necessary to enter here, to
Johnson. Afterwards he wrote to tell Johnson that he had become very
uneasy lest his having done so " might be interpreted as a breach of confi-
dence, and offend one whose society he valued." Johnson wrote back, "I
have seen Mr. , and as to him, have set all right without any incon-
venience, as far as I know, to you. Mrs. Thrale had forgot the story.
You may now be at ease." Mr. Croker says that there is reason to
fear that this mention of Beauclerk's name by Boswell impaired the
cordiality between Beauclerk and Johnson. It was Beauclerk who, when
he heard that Tom Davies clapped Moody the player on his back, when
in an argument that was going on "he once tried to say something'upon
our side," exclaimed " he could not conceive a more humiliating situation
than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies." A few days after this,
a discussion was going on as to the belief in immortality. Boswell writes :
" I said it appeared to me that some people had not the least notion of
immortality, and I mentioned a distinguished gentleman of our acquaint-
ance. JOHNSON : ' Sir, if it were not for the notion of immortality, he
would cut a throat to fill his pockets.' When I quoted this to Beauclerk,"
Boswell goes on to add, " who knew much more of the gentleman than
we did, he said, in his acid manner, ' He would cut a throat to fill his

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 289

pockets, if it were not for fear of being hanged.' " Johnson, as we read
on another occasion, " thought Mr. Beauclerk made a shrewd and judicious
remark to Mr. Langton, who after having been for the first time in com-
pany with a well-known wit about town, was warmly admiring and praising
him, — * See him again,' said Beauclerk." " In the only instance remem-
bered of Goldsmith's practice as a physician," as we read in Mr. Forster's
interesting Life, " it one day happened that, his opinion differing somewhat
from the apothecary's in attendance, the lady thought her apothecary the
safer counsellor, and Goldsmith quitted the house in high indignation.
He would leave off prescribing for his friends, he said. * Do so, my
dear Doctor,' observed Beauclerk. ' Whenever you undertake to kill, let
it only be your enemies.' " A hot discusion, not the only one of its kind,
one day arose between Beauclerk and Johnson, which Beauclerk closed by
an admirable saying. " It was mentioned that Dr. Dodd had once wished
to be a member of the Literary Club. JOHNSON : ' I should be sorry if any
of our club were hanged. I will not say but some of them deserve it.'
Beauclerk (supposing this to be aimed at persons for whom he had at
that time a wonderful fancy, which, however, did not last long) was irri-
tated, and eagerly said, « You, Sir, have a friend (naming him) who
deserves to be hanged, for he speaks behind their backs against those with
whom he lives on the best terms, and attacks them in the newspapers.
He certainly ought to be kicked.' JOHNSON : * Sir, we all do this in some
degree, veniam petimus damusque vicissim. To be sure it may be done
so much that a man may deserve to be kicked.' BEAUCLERK : ' He is very
malignant.' JOHNSON: ' No, Sir, he is not malignant. He is mischievous
if you will. He would do no man an essential injury ; he may, indeed,
love to make sport of people by vexing their vanity. I, however, once
knew an old gentleman who was absolutely malignant. He really wished
evil to others, and rejoiced at it.' BOSWELL : ' The gentleman, Mr. Beau-
clerk, against whom you are so violent, i?, I know, a man of good prin-
ciples.' BEAUCLERK : ' Then he does not wear them out in practice.' "
Boswell in one instance tries to give his readers a conception of Beau-
clerk's manner of telling a story. He writes, " Here let me not forget a
curious anecdote, as related to me by Mr. Beauclerk, which I shall endea-
vour to exhibit as well as I can in that gentleman's lively manner; and
in justice to him it is proper to add that Dr. Johnson told me I might
rely both on the correctness of his memory and the fidelity of his narrative.
' When Madame De Boufflers was first in England (said Beauclerk) she
was desirous to see Johnson. I accordingly went with her to his cham-
bers in the Temple, where she was entertained with his conversation for
some time. When our visit was over, she and I left him and were got
into Inner Temple Lane, when all at once I heard a noise like thunder.
This was occasioned by Johnson, who it seems, upon a little recollection,
had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his
literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and eager to show himself
a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the staircase in violent agitation.

14—5

290 TOPHAM BEAUCLEBK.

He overtook us before we reached the Temple Gate, and brushing in
between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand and conducted her
to her coach. His dress was a rusty -brown morning suit, a pair of old
shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his
head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging
loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a
little struck by this singular appearance."

Boswell records " a violent altercation that arose between Johnson
and Beauclerk, which," he writes, " having made much noise at the time,
I think it proper, in order to prevent any future misrepresentation, to
give a minute account of it. In talking of Hackman (the Rev. Mr. Hack-
man, who in a fit of frantic jealous love had shot Miss Bay), Johnson
argued, as Judge Blackstone had done, that his being furnished with two
pistols was a proof that he meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk
said, ' No : for that every wise man, who intended to shoot himself, took

two pistols, that he might be sure of doing it at once, Lord 's cook

shot himself with one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. Mr.

, who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they

disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself ; and then he eat three
buttered muffins for breakfast before shooting himself, knowing that he
should not be troubled with indigestion ; lie had charged two pistols : one
was found lying charged upon the table by him, after he had shot himself
with the other.' ' Well ' (said Johnson, with an air of triumph), ' you
see here one pistol was sufficient.' Beauclerk replied smartly, « Because
it happened to kill him.' And either then, or a very little time afterwards,
being piqued at Johnson's triumphant remark, added, « This is what you
don't know, and I do.' There was then a cessation of the dispute ;
some minutes intervened, during which dinner and the glass went on
cheerfully ; when Johnson suddenly and abruptly exclaimed, ' Mr. Beau-
clerk, how came you to talk so petulantly to me, as " This is what
you don't know, but what I know." One thing I know which you don't
seem to know, that you are very uncivil.' BEAUCLERK : « Because you
began by being uncivil (which you always are).' The words in parenthesis
were, I believe, not heard by Dr. Johnson. Here, again, there was a
cessation of arms. Johnson told me that the reason why he waited some
time at first without taking any notice of what Mr. Beauclerk said, was
because he was thinking whether he should resent it. But when he con-
sidered that there were present a young lord and an eminent traveller, two
men of the world with whom he had never dined before, he was apprehen-
sive that they might think they had a right to take such liberties with him
as Beauclerk did, and therefore resolved he would not let it pass ; adding
that ' he would not appear a coward.' A little while after this, the con-
versation turned on the violence of Hackman's temper. Johnson then
said, * It was his business to command his temper, as my friend Mr. Beau-
clerk should have done some time ago.' BEAUCLERK : * I should learn of
you, sir.' JOHNSON : ' Sir, you have given me opportunities enough of

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 291

learning, when I have been in your company. No man loves to be treated
with contempt.' BEAUCLERK (with a polite inclination towards Johnson) :
' Sir, you have known me twenty years, and however I may have treated
others, you may be sure I could never treat you with contempt.' JOHN-
SON : ' Sir, you have said more than was necessary.' Thus it ended ; and
Beauclerk's coach not having come for him till very late, Dr. Johnson and
another gentleman sat with him a long time after the rest of the company
were gone ; and he and I dined at Beauclerk's on the Saturday se'nnight
following." Johnson on another occasion showed a certain irritability
towards Beauclerk. Boswell, in speaking of the projected journey to
Italy with the Thrales, writes, " I mentioned that Mr. Beauclerk had said
that Baretti, whom they were to carry with them, would keep them so
long in the little towns of his own district, that they would not have time
to see Rome. I mentioned this to put them on their guard. JOHNSON :
Sir, we do not thank Mr. Beauclerk for supposing that we are to be directed
by Mr. Baretti." In the paper on " Bennet Langton " the anecdote about
the inscription on Johnson's portrait has been already given. It belongs,
however, as much to Beauclerk as to Langton, and, perhaps, therefore we
may be allowed to give it again. On the frame of this portrait Mr.

Beauclerk had inscribed —

Ingenium ingens
Inculto latet hoc sub corpore.

After Mr. Beauclerk's death, when it became Mr. Langton's property,
he made the inscription be defaced. Johnson said, complacently, " It was
kind in you to take it off; " and then, after a short pause, added, " and
not unkind in him to put it on." No less happy was he in the inscription
from Love's Labour's Lost which he placed under the portrait of Garrick.
" Mr. Beauclerk," as Boswell writes, "with happy propriety, inscribed
under that fine portrait of him, which by Lady Diana's kindness is now
the property of my friend Mr. Langton, the following passage from his

beloved Shakspeare —

— a merrier man

Within the limit of becoming mirth
I never spent an hour's talk withal, &c.

In the Life of Lord Charlemont are given a few letters by Beauclerk
written in a very lively manner. Langton, it will be remembered,
had said that if his friend's talents had been directed as they ought,
they were calculated to make an illustrious figure. Beauclerk in these
letters shows that he himself is fully aware of his own indolence. He
apologizes for his neglect in " keeping up an intercourse with one for
whom I shall always retain the greatest and tenderest regard," and
lays the blame on '* that insuperable idleness, which accompanies me
through life, which not only prevents me from doing what I ought,
but likewise from enjoying my greatest pleasure, where anything is
to be done." Later on he writes, saying he has been very ill, but
he goes on to add, "in spite of my doctor, or nature itself, I will very

292 TOPHAM BEAUCLEEK.

soon pay you a visit. Business, it is true, I have none to keep me here ;
but you forget that I have business in Lancashire, and that I must go
there when I come to you." (Lord Charlemont was in Ireland.) " Now,
you will please to recollect that there is nothing in this world I so entirely
hate as business of any kind, and that I pay you the greatest compliment
I can do when I risque the meeting with my own confounded affairs in order
to have the pleasure of seeing you ; but this I am resolved to do." He
owns his detestation of politics and politicians. He writes, in a letter
dated Muswell Hill, Summer Quarters, July 18, 1774 : — " Why should
you be vexed to find that mankind are fools and knaves ? I have known
it so long that every fresh instance of it amuses me, provided it does not
immediately affect my friends or myself. Politicians do not seem to me
to be much greater rogues than other people ; and as their actions affect
in general private persons less than other kinds of villainy do, I cannot
find that I am so angry with them. It is true that the leading men in
both countries at present are, I believe, the most corrupt, abandoned
people in the nation ; but, now that I am upon this worthy subject of
human nature, I will inform you of a few particulars relating to the
discovery of Otaheite, which Dr. Hawkesworth said placed the King above
all the Conquerors in the world ; and if the glory is to be estimated by
the mischief, I do not know whether he is not right. When Wallis first
anchored off the island, two natives came alongside of the ship, without
fear or distrust, to barter their goods with our people. A man, called
the boat-keeper, who was in a boat that was tied to the ship, attempted
to get the things from them without payment. The savages resisted, and
he struck one of them with the boat-hook, upon which they immediately
paddled away. In the morning great numbers came in canoes of all sizes
about the ship. They behaved, however, in the most peaceable manner,
still offering to exchange their commodities for anything that they could
obtain from us. The same trick was played by attempting to take away their
things by force. This enraged them, and they had come prepared to
defend themselves with such weapons as they had ; they immediately
began to fling stones, one of which went into the cabin window. Wallis
on this ordered that the guns, loaded with grape-shot, should be fired.
This, you may imagine, immediately dispersed them. Some were drowned,
many killed, and some few got on shore, where numbers of the natives
were assembled. Wallis then ordered the great guns to be played,
according to his phrase, upon them. This drove them off, when he still
ordered the same pastime to be continued in order to convince them, as
he says, that our arms could reach them at such a distance. If you add
to this that the inhabitants of all these islands are eat up with viie
disorders, you will find that men may be much worse employed than by
doing the dirtiest job that ever was undertaken by the lowest of our clerk-
ministers." Beauclerk might write that "every year, every hour, adds
to my misanthropy, and I have had a pretty considerable share of it for
some years past ; " but the generous indignation that blazes forth in this

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 293

letter of his belongs to any one rather than a misanthrope. It was in
such feelings as these, as well as in their literary pursuits, that he and
Johnson had so much in common. Our readers will remember Johnson's
hatred of every kind of oppression of the less civilized races, and how,
" upon one occasion, when in company with some very grave men at
Oxford, his toast was, « Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in
the West Indies.' " Another time he said, with " great emotion and with
generous warmth, ' I love the University of Salamanca ; for when the
Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering America,
the University of Salamanca gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful.' "
In a letter written a year earlier than Beauclerk's, he says, " I do not
much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in
conquest and robbery." Beauclerk's letters are very interesting from the
frequent mention made in them of the other members of the club. He
writes: "Why should fortune have placed our paltry concerns in two
different islands ? If we could keep them, they are not worth one hour's
conversation at Elmsly's (the bookseller). If life is good for anything, it
is only made so by the society of those whom we love. At all events I
will try to come to Ireland, and shall take no excuse from you for not
coming early in the winter to London. The club exists but by your
presence ; the flourishing of learned men is the glory of the State. Mr.
Vesey will tell you that our club consists of the greatest men in the world,
consequently you see there is a good and patriotic reason for you to
return to England in the winter. Pray make my best respects to Lady
Charlemont and Miss Hickman, and tell them I wish they were at this
moment sitting at the door of our ale-house in Gerard Street." (The
Turk's Head Tavern, where the Literary Club met, was in that street.)
Later on he writes, " Our poor club is in a miserable decay; unless you
come and relieve it, it will certainly expire. Would you imagine that
Sir Joshua Keynolds is extremely anxious to be a member of Almack's ?
You see what noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den is not
yet opened, consequently I have not been there ; so, for the present, I am
clear upon that score." He ends his letter by saying, " We cannot do
without you. If you do not come here, I will bring all the club over to
Ireland to live with you, and that will drive you here in your own defence.
Johnson shall spoil your books, Goldsmith puil your flowers, and Boswell
talk to you : stay then if you can." At a later date he writes :
" Our club has dwindled away to nothing. Nobody attends but
Mr. Chambers, and he is going to the East Indies. Sir Joshua and
Goldsmith have got into such a round of pleasures that they have
no time." Poor Goldsmith's round ended in less than two months
after this letter was written. In an earlier letter we read, " I have been
but once at the club since you left England ; we were entertained as usual
by Dr. Goldsmith's absurdity." " Goldsmith," he writes in another letter,
" the other day put a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor
Townshend. The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at
Drury Lane ; I mentioned the circumstance of the paragraph to him ; he

294 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.

said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about
Malagrida in it. « Do you know/ answered Goldsmith, « that I never
could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was
a very good sort of man.' You see plainly what he meant to say, but
that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. Mr. Walpole says,
that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life. Johnson has been
confined for some weeks in the Isle of Sky ; we hear that he was obliged
to swim over to the mainland taking hold of a cow's tail. Be that as it
may, Lady Di has promised to make a drawing of it." A few weeks later
he writes : "I hope your parliament has finished all its absurdities, and
that you will be at leisure to come over here to attend your club, where you
will do much more good than all the patriots in the world ever did to any-
body, viz., you will make very many of your friends extremely happy, and
you know Goldsmith* has informed us that no form of government ever
contributed either to the happiness or misery of any one. I saw a letter
from Foote, with an account of an Irish tragedy ; the subject is Manlius,
and the last speech which he makes, when he is pushed from the Tarpeian
Rock, is « Sweet Jesus, where am I going ? ' Pray send me word if this is
true. We have a new comedy here (The School for Wives), which is good
for nothing ; bad as it is, however, it succeeds very well, and has almost
killed Goldsmith with envy. I have no news, either literary or political,
to send you. Everybody, except myself, and about a million of vulgars,
are in the country." He gives an amusing account of a naval review.
" I have been at the review at Portsmouth. If you had seen it you would

have owned that it is a very pleasant thing to be a king. It is true,

made a job of the claret to , who furnished the first tables with vine-
gar under that denomination. Charles Fox said, that Lord S — wich
should have been impeached ; what an abominable world do we live in,
that there should not be above half-a-dozen honest men in the world, and
that one of those should live in Ireland. You will, perhaps, be shocked
at the small portion of honesty that I allot to your country ; but a sixth
part is as much as comes to its share ; and, for anything I know to the
contfary, the other five may be in Ireland too, for I am sure I do not know
where else to find them." We will give but one more extract from these in-
teresting letters. He writes, " I can now give you a better reason for not
writing sooner to you than for any other thing that I ever did in my life.
When Sir Charles Bingham came from Ireland, I, as you may easily
imagine, immediately enquired after you ; he told me that you were very
well, but in great affliction, having just lost your child. You cannot con-
ceive how I was shocked with this news ; not only by considering what
you suffered on this occasion, but I recollected that a foolish letter of
mine, laughing at your Irish politics, would arrive just at that point

* How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

The Traveller.
These lines were really written by Johnson, not by Goldsmith.

TOPHAM BEAUCLERK. 295

of time. A bad joke at any time is a bad thing ; but when any attempt
at pleasantry happens at a moment that a person is in great affliction, it
certainly is the most odious thing in the world. I could not write to you to
comfort you ; you will not wonder, therefore, that I did not write at all."
The great width of Beauclerk's reading is shown by the size and variety
of his library, which was sold after his death. A copy of the catalogue is
to be seen in the British Museum. The title-page is as follows :
"Bibliotheca selectissima et elegantissima Pernobilis Angli, T. Beauclerk,
S.R.S. Price three shillings. Comprehending an excellent choice of
Books, to the number of upwards of thirty thousand volumes, in most
languages, and upon almost every branch of science and polite literature,
which will be sold on Monday, April 9, 1781, and the forty-nine following
days (Good Friday excepted)." Two days' sale were given to the works
on divinity, including " Heterodox! et Increduli. Angl. Freethinkers
and their opponents;" six days to " Itineraria. Angl. Voyages and
Travels;" and twelve days to historical works. Boswell records that
" Mr. Wilkes said he wondered to find in Mr. Beauclerk's library such a
numerbus collection of sermons, seeming to think it strange that a
gentleman of Mr. Beauclerk's character in the gay world should have
chosen to have many compositions of that kind. JOHNSON : ' Why, Sir,
you are to consider that sermons make a considerable branch of English
literature, so that a library must be very imperfect if it has not a numerous
collection of sermons ; and in all collections, Sir, the desire of augment-
ing it grows stronger in proportion to the advance in acquisitions as
motion is accelerated by the continuance of the impetus. Besides, Sir
(looking at Mr. Wilkes with a placid but significant smile), a man may
collect sermons with intention of making himself better by them. I hope
Mr. Beauclerk intended that some time or other that should be the case
with him.' " Beauclerk was especially eager in scientific researches. In
the University which Johnson and Boswell amused themselves with
founding in the air Beauclerk was to have the Chair of Natural Philosophy.
Goldsmith writes, "I see Mr. Beauclerc very often both in town and
country. He is now going directly forward to become a second
Boyle : deep in chymistry and physics." Boswell, in a letter to his friend
Temple, says, " He has one of the most numerous and splendid private
libraries that I ever saw ; greenhouses, hothouses, observatory, laboratory
for chymical experiments, in short, everything princely." To all this eager-
ness after knowledge, and this delight in one of the most uncourtly of men,
Beauclerk " added the character of a man of fashion, of which his dress
and equipage showed him to be emulous. In the early period of his life
he was the exemplar of all who wished, without incurring the censure
of foppery, to become conspicuous in the gay world." In Selwyn's
Letters ^TQ read that " Madame Pitt (sister to Lord Chatham) met with
an accident (a sprained leg) leaning on Topham as she was stepping out
of her chaise, and swears she will trust to the shoulders of no Macaroni
for the future." Johnson's name for him of Beau fitted him very well.
There is a curious story given in Boswelliana that shows how a man

296 TOPHAM BEAUCLERK.

might be the leader of fashion last century, and yet far removed from
that virtue which is next to godliness. "I told Paoli," says Boswell,
" that Beauclerk found fault with Brompton's refreshing the Pembroke
family picture by Vandyck, and said he had spoiled it by painting it
over. ' Po, po ! ' said Paoli (of whom Beauclerk had talked disrespect-
fully), ' he has not spoiled it ; Beauclerk scratches at everything. He is
accustomed to scratch (scratching his head in allusion to Beauclerk' s
lousiness), and he'd scratch at the face of Venus.' " Beauclerk, accord-
ing to Paoli, would reverse the parts assigned to the lovers in Churchill's
Prophecy of Famine. There in the passage about the Highland lass we

read —

And whilst she scratched her lover into rest,

Sunk pleased, though hungry, on her Sawney's breast.

Beauclerk's health seems never to have been vigorous, and he suffered
a great deal at times. His temperament, however, was a very happy one.
Johnson one day talking of melancholy said, " Some men, and very think-
ing men too, have not those vexing thoughts. Sir Joshua Eeynolds is the
same all the year round. Beauclerk, except when ill and in pain,' is the
same." In spite of occasional altercations the affection between the men
was very strong. " As Beauclerk and I walked up Johnson's Court,"
writes Boswell, " I said, 'I have a veneration for this court ; ' and was
glad to find that Beauclerk had the same reverential enthusiasm." John-
son in his turn often showed his high regard for Beauclerk. " One
evening," says Boswell, " when we were in the street together, and I told
him I was going to sup at Mr. Beauclerk's, he said, * I'll go with you.'
After having walked part of the way, seeming to recollect something, he
suddenly stopped and said, * I cannot go, but I do not love Beauclerk the
less.11' "Johnson's affection for Topham Beauclerk," Boswell says in
another passage, " was so great, that when Beauclerk was labouring under
that severe illness which at last occasioned his death, Johnson said (with
a voice faultering with emotion), « Sir, I would walk to the extent of the
diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk.' " We are reminded how, when
he heard that Mr. Thrale had lost his only son, he said, " I would have
gone to the extremity of the earth to have preserved this boy." On Beau-
clerk's death he wrote to Boswell, " Poor dear Beauclerk — nee, ut soles ,
dabis joca. His wit and his folly, his acuteness and maliciousness, his
merriment and his reasoning are now over. Such another will not often
be found among mankind. He directed himself to be buried by the side
of his mother, an instance of tenderness which I hardly expected." When
a year later Boswell was walking home with Johnson from the first party
that Mrs. Garrick had given after her husband's death, " We stopped,"
he says, " a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames,
and I said to him with tenderness that I thought of two friends we had
lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick.
' Aye, Sir' (said he tenderly), ' and two such friends as cannot be supplied.' '

G. B. H.

297

Suit's j?wrr0wtttrhtgs antr % C0mmg

WHILE news bad still to be received from some of tbe stations for
observing the recent transit of Venus, astronomers bad already turned
their thoughts to another phenomenon, the observation of which may be
expected to throw new light on the physical condition of the sun. Prepa-
rations are already in progress for observing the eclipse of the sun which
occurs on the 6th of April next. We propose to sketch the recent history
and the present position of solar research, in order that the reader may
understand precisely what new information astronomers hope to obtain
during the approaching eclipse. But first we shall make a few remarks
on the physical aspect of the recent observations for determining the sun's
distance. For, in point of fact, the observations made on Yenus in transit
on the 9th of December last, though primarily directed to mere measure-
ment, have an important bearing on our ideas respecting the sun's
condition. On our estimate of the sun's size and mass depends the
opinion we are to form respecting his power as a ruler of matter, and
respecting the duration of his existence as the light and life of the solar
system. An error of a hair's breadth in the position of the small disc of
Venus in one of the four-inch photographs of the sun taken during the
late transit would imply a difference in the sun's volume exceeding
myriads of times the volume of the earth, and a corresponding difference
in his mass, while the estimated life of the sun would be shortened or
lengthened by millions of years. It is only necessary to consider the
absolute proportions of the sun, his mighty mass, his amazing fund of
vitality, to see how largely even minute changes in his estimated distance
must affect all these relations. A globe as large as the earth placed close
to the sun's surface would be undiscernible, save in a powerful telescope.
A globe as large as the earth, but having a surface glowing with the
intense heat of the solar surface, would, at the sun's distance, afford but the
11,600th part of the light and heat we receive from him. A globe as large
as the earth, but of the same density as the sun, and occupying his place,
would possess but the 1,250,000th part of his attractive might, and would
be utterly unfit to sway the movements of a scheme like the planetary
system. Exceeding this earth on which we live so enormously in size
and power, while emitting at each instant quantities of light and heat so
vastly surpassing that which our earth would give out, even if every mile
of her surface were caused to glow with a brightness far surpassing that
of the electric light, it will readily be conceived that very moderate changes
in our estimate of the sun's distance correspond to enormous changes in

298 THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

our estimate of his size, power, and heat. Consider, for instance, the
recent modification in the estimated solar distance from about 95J
millions to about 91J millions of miles — that is, roughly, the diminu-
tion of the estimated distance by about one-thirtieth part. This corre-
sponded to a diminution of the sun's diameter by about a thirtieth part,
of his surface by about a fifteenth part, and of his volume and mass by
about an eighth part. But the former estimate of the sun's mass amounted
to 855,000 times the mass of the earth, so that an eighth part of this
corresponded to more than 44,000 times the mass of the great globe on
which we live. By this enormous amount the former estimate of the solar
mass had to be reduced.

But there is yet another way of viewing the effects corresponding to
changes in our ideas respecting the distance of the sun, which may be
regarded as even more striking, since it relates to the sun's character as
the source of all the forms of energy with which we are familiar. For,
after all, mere bulk and mass count for little. We can even understand
(without altogether admiring) the rejoinder made by one to whom, an
astronomer had described the vast scale of the material creation — that
after all this proved only that dirt is cheap in the universe. But active
energy, as distinguished from the potential energy residing in mass, is
suggestive of purpose (whether correctly so or not need not here concern
us). Kegarding the sun as the central fire of the solar system, we see
that every second of its existence corresponds to the emission of so much
heat, or, in other words, to the exhaustion of such and such a portion of
its inherent life. Now it is a strange thought that any change in the
estimated distance of the sun corresponds to a change in our estimate of
the heat he is momentarily pouring forth on all sides, of the work he is
performing as a mighty and beneficent ruler of a scheme of circling worlds.
The quantity of heat emitted by the sun in every second is so stupendous
that all ordinary modes of representing his action fail us. It is a mere
form of words, for instance, conveying no clear ideas to the mind, to say
that in each second the sun gives out as much heat as would be given out
in the burning of eleven thousand six hundred millions of millions of tons
of coal. But not only is this so, but even so slight a change as astrono-
mers expect from the recent observations for determining the sun's
distance corresponds to the increase or diminution of the estimated out-
pouring of heat by an amount absolutely inconceivable. Suppose, for
instance, that the estimate of the sun's distance were increased or dimi-
nished by nearly a quarter of a million of miles, a mere nothing compared
with the change which lately had to be made. This would correspond to
about a four-hundredth part of the distance now regarded as probable, and
would increase or diminish the estimated surface of the sun by one two-
hundredth part. Now our estimate of the quantity of heat emitted by the
sun corresponds precisely with our estimate of the sun's surface, so that
the change supposed would correspond to the increase or diminution of
the sun's momentary emission of heat by one two-hundredth part. There-

THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 299

fore we should have to conclude that in each second the sun gave out more
heat or less heat than now supposed by the quantity of heat which would
be given out by about fifty-eight millions of millions of tons of coal. Fifty-
eight globes, each as large as the earth, and glowing with the same heat as
the sun (mile for mile of surface), would be required to give out each second
the amount of heat thus added to or taken from the solar emission in each
second of time.

Another strange thought in connection with the determination of the
sun's distance is this — that the farther or nearer the sun is from us the
longer he will continue to perform his present functions as life-giving
centre of the solar system. For in every estimate of the continuance of his
reign we have to take into account the quantity of matter contained in his
globe, and the extent of the region of space over which he bears supreme
sway ; and our estimate of his power in both these respects depends, as
we have already seen, on the views we form as to his distance.

When we add to these considerations the thought that the scale on
which all the processes taking place within and around the sun's globe,
the velocity with which every planet travels, as well as that with which
comets and meteors approach the solar globe, the proportions of every
planet in the solar system, and the distance and real splendour of every
star known to us, depend on the estimate we form of the sun's distance,
we see that the recent observations bore closest relation to all the most
interesting physical problems with which the astronomer has to deal.
Nevertheless the phenomenon to which astronomers are at present direct-
ing their attention — the approaching eclipse of the sun — is one from
which they hope to obtain more direct testimony respecting the physical
constitution of the wonderful orb which reigns over the planetary
system.

Let us turn now to the consideration of the nature and condition
of the sun and his various appendages, as at present understood, in
order that we may perceive what new information may be looked for
during the approaching solar eclipse. In considering the history of recent
researches we shall go back over fifteen years ; but we may remark at the
outset that our sketch must necessarily be so slight that many important
contributions to solar physics can only be touched upon, or may even
perhaps be omitted altogether. In such cases no slight is intended
towards the workers, the requirements of space having alone been in
question.

When the important eclipse of June 1860 was approaching, astro-
nomers were not quite certain as to the existence of any solar matter or
appendages outside the visible solar globe. Coloured objects had recently
been seen surrounding the dark disc of the moon in total eclipse, like
garnets round a brooch of jet, and outside these again the glory of the
corona had long been recognized ; but astronomers did not agree in regard-
ing these as belonging to the sun. Whether the evidence already avail-
able might not have been effectually and advantageously used to dispose

800 THE SUN'S SUBEOUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE,

of such doubts need not here concern us. Suffice it that amongst those
who so doubted were several skilful astronomers, and pre-eminent among
them M. Faye, one of the ablest mathematical astronomers of our day.
The eclipse of 1860 will be always celebrated on account of the demon-
stration which it afforded of the nature of the ruddy flames seen round the
eclipsing body of the moon. The demonstration was effected by De la
Rue and Secchi, each of whom succeeded in obtaining several photographs
of the total eclipse, showing the dark disc of the moon at successive stages
of its passage across the prominences. Thenceforth the coloured pro-
tuberances were recognized by all astronomers as unmistakeably solar
appendages. And very wonderful appendages they were necessarily con-
sidered. For these " garnets " were now seen to be not only enormously
larger than the brooch round which they seemed set — the globe of our
moon — but to exceed our own earth many times in volume. Some of
those seen in De la Rue's photographs extended more than 80,000 miles
from the sun's surface ; and several of them, at a very moderate compu-
tation of their extension over the sun's surface (of which their apparent
figure gave no direct evidence), must have occupied thousands of times as
much space as our earth's globe !

A year before this noteworthy discovery had been made, the method
of research called spectroscopic analysis had suddenly acquired new and
wonderful powers. Kirchhoff had shown how the dark lines which cross
the rainbow-tinted streak called the solar spectrum, speak of the presence
around the solar orb of the vapours of many elements familiar to us —
iron, copper, sodium, magnesium, hydrogen, and so on. His inference
was that the visible orb we call the sun, which astronomers call the solar
photosphere, is not only enveloped within a dense and complex atmosphere,
but that all round it, and extending^possibly even as far as the outermost
limits of the corona seen during solar eclipses, there are masses of vapour
which cut off the portions of the sun's light corresponding to the dark
lines in the spectrum. But, although the vapours around the sun thus
indicate their presence by darkening parts of the solar spectrum, yet
beyond question they must be themselves luminous, seeing that not only
their position so close to the sun, but the very fact that they are vaporised ;
implies an intense heat. If we could take a mass of iron (as we might
take a mass of ice), melt it and then boil it (even as the melted ice might
be boiled), and the vapour of iron rushed out through an orifice without
being immediately condensed into metallic spray, the vapour would not
be, like the vapour of water, invisible, but would glow with intensity of
heat.* Accordingly it began to be recognized soon after Kirchhoff 's

* The experiment is, of course, impossible, because, under any conditions admitting
of our watching the outlet whence the vapour was to pass, nothing like the requisite
degree of heat could be maintained. The vapour of iron is really present in the
atmosphere immediately above molten iron, but not under circumstances admitting of
our testing its luminosity. Experiments in which iron is vaporised by the electrical
discharge sufficiently establish the point in question, however.

THE SUN'S SUKEOUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 301

great discovery, that the coloured prominences, and possibly even the
corona, might be composed of those very gases whose presence Kirchhoff
recognized by the dark lines in the solar spectrum.

Several years elapsed during which no fresh light was thrown on the
solar surroundings. But a circumstance occurred in May 1866, which,
though at first sight appearing very little connected with the study of
solar physics, was destined to lead to very important results. It is curious
also as one among several instances during the last thirty years or so
where the progress of astronomy has been strangely aided by lucky
coincidences. The discovery of Neptune, for instance, would have been
impossible but for the lucky accident that the disturbance experienced
by Uranus reached its greatest amount at a time when observations had
been continued long enough to give a stand-point whence the mathe-
matician might throw his line out into space till the unseen planet
should be felt guiding him as it were in the true direction.* The
wonderful series of discoveries recently made respecting meteors and
comets would have been impossible but for two or three lucky accidents
by which precisely the sort of information required to complete the evi-
dence was obtained just when it was wanted. In the present instance
it is not quite so clear that researches in solar physics would have taken
a different course but for the event now to be recorded ; nevertheless it is
certain that this event started speculations which led directly to important
discoveries.

In May 1866, a rew star suddenly blazed forth in the constellation
of the Northern Crown — or rather a star which had long been shining so
feebly as only to be visible with telescopes of some power, acquired
suddenly the brightness of a second magnitude star. Of course this
interesting object was at once examined by spectroscopists both in England
and abroad. It was found to have a peculiar spectrum. The faint
rainbow-tinted streak crossed by fine dark lines, forming the usual
spectrum of a small star, was seen ; but upon this streak, as on a
relatively dark background, four intensely bright lines were seen in the
place ordinarily occupied by the dark lines, indicating the presence of the
gas hydrogen absorbing the brighter light from the star's photosphere.
It was manifest that hydrogen surrounded that distant sun, but that the

* This is not a supposition based merely on the probability that the search for
Neptune would not have been undertaken but for the circumstance above mentioned.
If Uranus had been discovered in the middle of the present century, mathematical
analysis applied to the peculiarities of .the motion of Uranus, on such suppositions as
Adams and Leverrier employed, would have failed to guide them to the true place of
Neptune. In fact, in one sense the eminent American mathematician, Pierce, was
quite right in stating that the true Neptune is not the Neptune eithsr of Adams or
Le\errier. Leverrier's Neptune and Adams's Neptune, though near enough together
in 1846, would now be far apart ; but they would be nothing like so far apart as
either of those hypothetical bodies would now be from the true Neptune, which is
travelling in a widely different path.

302 THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

hydrogen, instead of being relatively cool like that which surrounds our
sun and other suns of the same family (as Capella, Aldebaran, &c.), was
glowing with far greater heat than the sun which it enveloped. Beyond all
question that sun out yonder in space — an orb which, for aught that is
known, may have been as important in the scheme of creation as our own
sun — had suddenly burst into flames. Its lustre when at its brightest was
estimated at one hundred times its former and present brightness. The
sun which had blazed out in this wonderful manner gradually lost its
abnormal brightness, and has now resumed its position among stars of the
tenth magnitude.

But in the meantime a lesson taught by this star had been noted by
spectroscopists. Of course there was nothing very surprising in the fact
that hydrogen intensely heated should show its bright lines on the relatively
dark background of a rainbow-tinted spectrum. In fact, Kirchhoff's ori-
ginal discovery, as interpreted by himself, implied plainly enough that this
would happen. But when astronomers came to consider this question
— How much of the star's new light corresponds to the intensely bright
lines of its compound spectrum, and how much to the rainbow-tinted
background ? — their attention was directed to a fact very obvious when
once indicated, but the practical application of which, if not the fact
itself, had hitherto unaccountably escaped the attention of spectroscopists.
All the light from the glowing hydrogen was concentrated in four lines,
all the rest of the light was spread over the ribbon of rainbow-tinted light.
Now, the greater the dispersive power of the spectroscope employed, the
longer would be the ribbon of light, and therefore the fainter, for only
the same light is spread over it in either case ; but the increase of the
dispersive power would only throw the bright lines of the hydrogen light
further apart, and would leave them as bright as ever. Now we need pay
no further attention to this fact in its relation to the new star, but in its
relation to the spectroscopic study of the sun it is all -important. If the
light from one source can be weakened in this way by dispersion while
the light from another source is left unaffected, we are no longer necessarily
compelled, in studying the sun, to give up all hope of recognizing fainter
lights which the glory of sunlight obliterates from view. By all ordinary
methods of observation it was manifestly hopeless, for example, to look for
the solar prominences without the aid of an eclipse ; for any means by
which the intense light of the sun was effectively diminished obliterated
the faint light of the prominences altogether. But here was a means
which might reduce sunlight to any desired degree and leave the pro-
minence light unaffected, if only the prominences consist of glowing gas
and so give a spectrum of bright lines. The sunlight could be spread out
into a long ribbon of rainbow-coloured light and correspondingly reduced,
while the bright lines belonging to the prominences would only be thrown
further apart.

At this stage we find some difficulty in proceeding without hurting the
susceptible feelings of one or other of the students of science who entered

THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE -COMING ECLIPSE. 303

on this field of research. Rival claims have been advanced more or less
positively — in some cases directly, in others indirectly. We have no wish to
decide in favour of any of the claimants ; yet if we describe the facts as
they appear to us, we shall not be held guiltless by some of those who are
interested. If we describe the case as resembling that of the discovery
of sun-spots after the telescope had been invented, and say (as Sir
J. Herschel said in that case), that the question of priority is hardly
worth disputing over, we shall probably offend all those interested,
as well as their friends and adherents. As the least of two evils, we shall
give a brief sketch of the facts as we view them, premising that we have
not the slightest feeling one way or the other as to the credit, be it greater
or less, due to the contesting claimants.

It would seem that Huggins, Stone, Lockyer, and Secchi nearly
simultaneously conceived the idea of applying the principle sketched above
to the search for the solar prominences without the aid of an eclipse.
Huggins points to passages in his remarks about nebulas which indicate
his recognition of the principle so far back as 1864. Lockyer, in October
1866, in a paper read before the Royal Society, wrote as follows : — " See-
ing that spectrum analysis has already been applied to the stars with such
success, it is not too much to think that an attentive and detailed spec-
troscopic examination of the sun's surface may bring us much knowledge
bearing on the physical constitution of that luminary. . . . And may not
the spectroscope afford us evidence of the existence of the ' red flames '
which total eclipses have revealed to us in the sun's atmosphere, although
they escape all other methods of observation at other times ? and if so,
may we not learn something from this of the recent outburst of the star
in Corona ? " Those who think the method really due to Huggins, how-
ever, consider these remarks too vague to found a case upon, and quote
Huggins's detailed account of the method in the Report of the Astronomical
Society for February 1868, in which he left nothing to be desired as respects
distinctness in description. "During the last years," says this report,
" Mr. Huggins has made numerous observations for the purpose of obtain-
ing a view, if possible, of the red prominences seen during a solar eclipse.
The invisibility of these objects at ordinary times is supposed to arise from
the illumination of our atmosphere. If these bodies are gaseous, their
spectra would consist of bright lines. With a powerful spectroscope the
light reflected from our atmosphere near the sun's edge would be greatly
reduced in intensity by the dispersion, while the bright lines of the pro-
minences, if such be present, would remain but little diminished in bril-
liancy." It is to be remarked that Huggins himself seems to consider
Lockyer' s previous statement unsatisfactory, seeing that, as editor of
Schellen's " Spectrum Analysis," we find him saying that " in Mr. Lockyer's
communication to the Royal Society in October 1866, there was no state-
ment of a method of observation or of the principles on which the spectro-
scope might reveal the red flames." Secchi says that he had long had
the intention of applying the method, but was prevented by Lockyer's

304 THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

statement that nothing more could be seen round the sun's edge than on
the disc itself.

The eclipse of August 1868 approached while as yet neither Huggins,
Lockyer, Stone, nor Secchi had succeeded in seeing the prominence spec-
trum, insomuch that a general impression prevailed that the prominences
do not consist of glowing gas. A more powerful spectroscope than he
had yet used was, however, being made for Lockyer by Browning, and, for
aught that is known, this instrument would have solved the problem of
determining the nature of the prominences, but for the fact that the eclipse
of 1868 occurred in the interim, and was successfully observed. For it
was during the total obscuration of the sun on that occasion that the
spectroscope applied to the coloured prominences revealed the fact that
they consist of glowing gas. Colonel Tennant and Captain Herschel,
MM. Janssen and Rayet, in India, and Weiss at Aden, all recognized
three bright lines, red, orange, and blue, while Janssen and Rayet saw
other fainter lines ; and thenceforth it was an assured scientific fact that
the solar prominences are masses of glowing gas.

Then followed that episode, with the history of which most of our
readers must be familiar, recalling in strangeness (though far inferior, of
course, in intrinsic importance*) the circumstances attending the discovery
of Neptune. Janssen, during the eclipse, had noted the exceeding bril-
liance of the prominence-lines, and being, no doubt, familiar with the antici-
pations of Huggins, Stone, Lockyer, Secchi, and others, he recognized at
once the possibility of seeing those lines without the aid of an eclipse. He
relates that as the sun reappeared, and the prominence-lines faded away,
he exclaimed, " Je reverrai ces lignes-la en dehors des eclipses." He was
prevented by clouds from carrying out his intention on that selfsame day ;
but on the morrow " he was up by daybreak to await the rising of the sun,
and scarcely had the orb of day risen in full splendour above the horizon
when he succeeded in seeing the prominences with perfect distinctness. The
phenomena of the previous day had completely changed their character ;
the distribution of the masses of gas round the sun's edge was entirely
different; and of a great prominence" which had formed a most con-
spicuous feature on the preceding day " scarcely a trace remained. For
seventeen consecutive days Janssen continued to observe and make draw-
ings of the prominences, proving that these gaseous masses changed their
form and position with extraordinary rapidity." On September 19, or a
full month after he had first seen the prominence-lines without the aid of
an eclipse, this easy-going gentleman first thought of sending off a paper,
communicating his discovery, to the French Academy of Sciences. It
arrived just too late to anticipate an announcement addressed to the same
body by Mr. Lockyer, who, on October 16, had succeeded in seeing the
lines with the spectroscope which Browning had made for him. Mr. Lock-

* Simply because the discovery to which it related was assured independently of
the race between Janssen and Lockyer for priority.

THE SUN'S SUEEOUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 305

yer's letter had been read about five minutes before M. Janssen's was
placed in the hands of the President of the Academy.

Presently the new method was rendered much more complete and effec-
tive by an arrangement, devised by Huggins, for seeing the whole of a
prominence at once, instead of a mere line belonging to the prominence.
The difference between the original method and this new one may be thus
illustrated. Let a long straight hole, say two inches long by about a six-
teenth of an inch in width, be cut in a card, and let a small picture, say a
carte de visile, be examined through this aperture by slowly passing the
card backwards and forwards over the picture. An idea of the nature
of the picture can be formed in this way, but it would clearly be better
to have a much larger aperture cut in the card, so that either the whole pic-
ture or a much larger portion of it could be seen at once. Mr. Huggins
showed how this could be done by opening the jaws of the slit through
which the prominence spectrum was examined. The wonder was that the
idea had not been thought of earlier.*

It was now possible to study the solar surroundings at leisure. Not
only could the structure of the ruddy prominences be examined, but their
constitution. It was found that Grant, Secchi, and Leverrier had been
right in asserting that the prominences are but the higher parts of an
envelope of this ruddy matter entirely surrounding the sun. Secchi had
called this envelope the sierra, but a new name was devised for it, and
it is now commonly called the chromosphere (somewhat as the glowing
surface of the sun might have been called the phosphere had the deviser of
a name for it chanced to be ignorant that the word should be photosphere).
The chief constituent gas of the prominences is hydrogen, but there is
another gas always present, not only in the prominences but in the sierra,
which gives a yellow- orange line as yet not identified with a characteristic
line of any known element. The earliest examination of the sierra, how-
ever, showed the continual presence of several other lines, while later
examination by Professor Young, of Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.,
has shown that the spectrum of the sierra sometimes contains hundreds of
bright lines, indicating the presence of the glowing vapour of iron,
magnesium, sodium, lithium, titanium, and other elements. Only
hydrogen, however, and the unknown element just mentioned appear to
be constantly present in this solar envelope.

The actual study of the changes taking place in the solar prominences
led to the discovery that very violent action must be taking place beneath
the seemingly calm and silent surface of the glowing photosphere. In an

* It is noteworthy how slowly the simple considerations involved in the spectro-
scopic method of studying the prominences were developed, and how difficult some
astronomers found it to grasp the principles of the method. At the meeting of
the Astronomical Society where the results obtained by Lockyer and Janssen were
first announced, the Astronomer-Royal spoke of the new method as if it were a sort of
scientific conjuring trick ; yet its principle had heen not only explained in full by
Huggins a year earlier, but had been already applied by Stone at Greenwich.

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 188. 15.

806 THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

essay, " The Sun a Bubble," which appeared in the CORNHILL MAGAZINE
last autumn, the chief features of the sun's condition in this respect were
dealt with at considerable length. As we are here dealing rather with
eclipse discoveries than with the complete series of researches in solar
physics effected since 1860, we need not now consider these signs of the
intense activity of the great centre of the solar system. Let it suffice to
state that the whole of that ruddy envelope which surrounds the photo-
sphere to a height everywhere of at least eight thousand miles (so that a
globe like our earth rolled over the sun's surface would bear the same
proportion to the sierra that a cricket-ball bears to the grassy cover
of an unmown field) is rent by repeated uprushes from within, which
carry glowing gaseous matter to enormous distances above the outer
visible limits of the sierra. And from time to time there are still more
tremendous explosions and outbursts, seeming competent to carry matter
from within the very bowels of the sun to distances exceeding the span of
the whole solar system.

Now that the prominences had been thus interpreted, it was natural
that astronomers should renew their inquiries into the nature of the
corona seen during total eclipses. There was first the question whether
the corona is to be called the solar corona — that is, whether it really is a
solar appendage — and then, if this question should be answered in the
affirmative, there were further questions to be answered as to its constitu-
tion, structure, and condition.

The history of what happened at this stage is worth examining because
of the illustration it affords of the usefulness of that careful investigation
of known facts which is sometimes called theorizing, at other times specu-
lation, but is not properly described by either term.*

Kirchhoff had expressed his belief that the corona is a solar atmo-
sphere, and that to its action we are to attribute the presence of the dark
lines in the solar spectrum. He also mentioned, as affording testimony
in favour of this view, the fact that the sun's disc is less brilliant near the
edge than in the middle, " as though the globe of the sun were surrounded
by a deep atmosphere." The present writer, attracted like many others
to the interesting questions which five or six years ago were rife in the

* We may illustrate the distinction which is to be drawn between theorizing and the
deduction of a theory from the investigation of evidence, by instances such as those
questions which are set in school books to lead to algebraical equations. If we try to
guess the answer to a question of this kind, we may be said to be theorizing — we try
one theory after another, and whether we light or not upon the true reply, we are not
following any regular or systematic process. But if we solve such a question by the
proper algebraical process we are in reality analysing the available evidence syste-
matically. Each step brings us nearer and nearer to the result we require ; and the
process either leads us to that result or else shows us to what extent the evidence is in-
sufficient, as in problems of the class called indeterminate. Of course the processes
thus applied to the conditions of the original question can only educe what is already
really present in the terms of the question ; but we do not on that account question
the usefulness of such processes.

THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 807

scientific world, was struck by the fact that when the last-named piece of
evidence is closely examined it must be interpreted quite otherwise than
Kirchhoff and others had supposed. The manifest darkening 'round the
edge of the sun's disc, if to be explained by a solar atmosphere, implies a
relatively very shallow envelope, not a deep envelope. If we look at a small
opaque globe enclosed in the middle of a large glass globe, the line of
sight passes through nearly the same range of glass, whether we look at
the edge or at the middle of the small globe. But if we look at a large
opaque globe coated with a uniform thin film of glass, the line of sight
passes through a much greater range of glass when we look at the edge of
the opaque globe than when we look towards its centre. Since then the
range of the absorbing atmosphere is manifestly much greater near the
edge than near the middle of the sun's disc, the inference seemed to the
writer absolutely certain that the sun has a relatively shallow envelope —
shallower far than the sierra ; and to this envelope, not to the corona, it
seemed to him that we must ascribe the multitudinous dark lines of the
solar spectrum. In other words, he regarded it as certain that a solar
atmosphere (too shallow to be detected by any ordinary means) exists,
inside the sierra, but outside the photosphere, and that this atmosphere is
composed of the vapours of all the elements corresponding to the solar
dark lines. But while a simple but demonstrative line of reasoning thus
led to the rejection of one special line of evidence which Kirchhoff had
adduced in support of the theory that the corona belongs to the sun, other
evidence was available which proved this to be the case. It was not so
much the positive evidence in favour of the solar theory of the corona, as
the negative evidence by which all other available theories were disposed
of, which in reality established the solar theory of the corona. It could be
proved that if the corona was a phenomenon of our own atmosphere, its
light ought to grow fainter towards the place of the eclipsed sun, whereas
the light grows brighter. It could be proved that no lunar atmosphere
exists which can account for the corona ; while if the coronal beams were
caused by the illumination of matter occupying the space between the
earth and moon, then rapid changes of a striking nature would take place
which had never been described in the records of any single eclipse. No
other theory being possible, the conclusion was certain that the corona is
a solar appendage.

But such reasoning is caviare to the general. Complete, positive, and
(above all) easily understood evidence was required before such con-
clusions could be accepted. Fortunately such evidence was soon forth-
coming. In the total eclipse of 1869, the shadow of the moon passed
right athwart the United States ; and the astronomers and amateurs of
America, with the zeal for science which has long honourably distin-
guished them, set themselves to observe the phenomena of the promi-
nences, corona, &c., at so many stations that the whole track of totality
might almost be said to have been one continuous observatory. The
corona was photographed, though not in a manner which decided its position

15—2

808 THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

as a solar appendage. But spectroscopic analysis disposed of the question
quite satisfactorily, by showing that the spectrum of the corona contains
certainly one bright line (some thought there were three bright lines) — in
other words, that a portion of the corona's light comes from glowing gas.
Doubts were thrown upon this result, partly perhaps because (with that
noble insular arrogance which foreigners admire so much) some of us on
this side of the Atlantic were disposed to regard American science as in
its childhood. We have had our eyes opened since, and know that
Americans, in all departments of science, can hold their own, if not more,
with the best men of science in Europe.*

During the total eclipse of December 1870, the doubts thus raised
were to be finally disposed of by the superior skill of European, and
especially of British, spectroscopists. But the Americans, with singular
perversity, determined to take their share in the work. Nay, at one time
it even seemed as though either they alone would observe the eclipse, or
our astronomers would have to be content to go as passengers in an Ame-
rican ship, although the eclipse was to be observed close by us in Spain
and Sicily. However, the Government was roused by this news ; a letter
from the Astronomer- Royal, which had been a month or two unanswered,
was found in some pigeon-hole, and Ministers were pleased graciously to
accede to the request therein made. Three English parties were sent to
observe the eclipse in Spain, Algeria, and Sicily, besides a private
party, under Lord Lindsay, in Spain ; and the Americans divided their
forces into two chief corps- cC armee, one operating in Spain, the other in
Sicily.

So far as spectroscopic observation was concerned, little of the good
fortune of the scientific campaign fell to the lot of the English observers.
Huggins and his party in Algeria had the satisfaction of noting the phe-
nomena of a rainy day in that region ; Lockyer and his party in Sicily
were not more fortunate with the spectroscope. Professor Young, of
America, however, reobserved the coronal bright line. The Italian
astronomers, Secchi and Denza, saw two lines, one in the green part of
the spectrum, the other in the yellow-green. The great success, however,
on this occasion, was that of the photographers. Professor Winlock
(Cambridge, U.S.) in Spain, and Brothers (of Manchester) in Sicily,
secured photographs of the corona agreeing so perfectly in details as to

* Even lately, however, the great success of the Americans in analysing the light
of the corona during the eclipse of 1869 has been slurred over thus in an article
commonly attributed to Mr. Lockyer : — " In this eclipse the halo of light outside the
prominence envelope was the subject of special inquiry, and now this was photo-
graphed. At the same time that this was done, it was established that there was
some other substance lying even outside the hydrogen."— ( Times, Jan. 11, 1875.)
It is very desirable that European writers should do justice to their American fellow-
workers, for otherwise there cannot be cordial union in scientific work. It has been
with some pain that we have noticed, also, in a recently published work on the moor^
Tery inadequate recognition of American work in photographing that luminary
( earlier and more perfectly than in Europe).

THE SUN'S SURKOUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 309

show that the objects pictured were true solar appendages. (Brothers's
picture is as yet unmatched so far as the extent of corona shown in it is
concerned.)

But on this occasion a yet more remarkable discovery was effected by
Young. He determined to test the question whether there is a shallow
but exceedingly rich and complex envelope immediately above that
glowing surface which we call the sun (though in reality we begin to
perceive more and more clearly that the sun we see is only one particular
portion of the ruling centre of the solar system). It was manifest to Young
that by treating a total eclipse as, so to speak, an extension of ordinary
instrumental means for analysing the sun's light, he might recognize the
existence of an envelope too shallow to be dealt with at other times. The
moon would act like a dark cover, gradually hiding more and more of the
sun, until, for a few moments, the whole of the photosphere, but not the
shallow envelope, would be concealed. (The case may be illustrated by
slowly passing a penny over a florin, or a halfpenny over a shilling, and
noting how for a moment or two the raised edge alone of the silver coin
is seen.) For the few seconds during which the sun was thus concealed,
the shallow envelope, if such existed, remaining still visible, light would
be received from the latter alone, and whatever the nature of this light, or,
in other words, whatever the character of the envelope, the spectroscope
would reveal. It happened as Professor Young had expected. The rain-
bow-tinted streak crossed by dark line^, which constitutes the solar spec-
trum, disappeared the moment the true photosphere was completely con-
cealed, and there then sprang suddenly into view a spectrum of bright
lines only ! Where the multitudinous dark lines of the solar spectrum
had been, were now seen multitudinous bright lines of all the colours of
the rainbow, each dark line on any point of the rainbow-tinted solar spec-
trum being replaced by a bright line of the colour of that part of the
spectrum. So that it was clear that the envelope thus discovered is
formed of the same gases which produce the dark lines of the solar spec-
trum ; or rather it was clear that the dark lines are formed by the absorp-
tive action of this envelope, though the gases present in it are really glow-
ing with intense brilliancy. It is only by comparison with the still
more intense light of the solar photosphere that the lines corresponding to
these gases appear dark.

Thus two new solar envelopes were recognized, or at least their exist-
ence demonstrated, on this occasion — one, the outer corona, lying high
above the inner corona and prominence-envelope, while the other lies
below the prominence-envelope, and even far within the sierra of which
the prominence- envelope must be regarded as the outer portion.

Observe, then, how complex the sun already appeared, compared with
the glowing orb in which astronomers formerly believed. The analysis of
sun-spots had shown that at least three envelopes exist within the photo-
sphere, or that three lower levels are revealed in the larger spots — viz.
the level corresponding to the penumbral fringe, then that belonging to

310 THE SUN'S SURKOUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

the dark umbra, and thirdly that belonging to the so-called black nucleus.*
The photosphere itself marks the position of a fourth envelope, or at least
of a fourth solar level. Fifth comes the shallow complex atmosphere
discovered by Young. Sixth, the sierra discovered by Grant, Leverrier,
and Secchi. Seventh, the prominence region. Eighth, the inner and
brighter corona. And ninth, the outer radiated corona. As to the depth
of these successive envelopes, it is probable that the lowest level of the
deeper spots lies about 10,000 miles below the photosphere. Young's
atmosphere extends some three or four hundred miles above the photo-
sphere ; the sierra from eight to ten thousand miles ; the prominence
region to a height of thirty or forty thousand miles, with occasional exten-
sions to a hundred thousand miles or more ; the brighter corona to from
two to three hundred thousand miles, with expansions in places to four or
iive thousand miles ; while, lastly, the outer corona is so jagged in outline
that it is difficult to define its extension, but certainly some of its radia-
tions reach to a distance of fully a million miles from the glowing surface
of the sun we see. When we note that some of the envelopes here spoken
of as single are in reality multiple — the shallow atmosphere including pro-
bably some thirty or forty distinct envelopes, the sierra nine or ten, the
prominence region two or three, and the two coronas perhaps nine or ten
others — it will be seen what an amazingly complex subject of research the
sun has become in modern times. That great discovery of Kirchhoffs,
the interpretation of the spectrum, which promised to make all clear to
us, has in reality only taught us to know more certainly what inscrutable
mysteries surround the glowing centre of the planetary system.

But the next eclipse after that of 1870 — the Indian eclipse of December
1871 — revealed fresh wonders, showing that even the outer corona is but
the inner part of a solar envelope (or rather appendage) whose outermost
limit lies altogether beyond our ken.

For on that occasion, besides the notable success obtained by photo-
graphers, it was demonstrated that the corona shines in part by reflecting
the sun's light. Janssen, the skilful French spectroscopist, succeeded in
recognizing in the faint rainbow-tinted ribbon of light (on which the bright
coronal lines are seen as on a background) dark lines corresponding to those
which are most conspicuous in the solar spectrum. Here, then, was the
most convincing evidence of the existence of matter capable of effectively
reflecting the sun's light. And no reasonable doubt can exist that the matter
whose presence was thus indicated is no other than the meteoric and cometic
matter which other researches had taught us to recognize as plentifully
strewn throughout the regions around the sun. How far this matter
extends we do not certainly know. The zodiacal light, which is now com-

* Professor Langley, of the Alleghany Observatory in America, by careful telescopic
research, has shown that the real structure of the sun is far more complex than had
been supposed. A picture of a typical portion of the sun's surface, recently pub-
lished by him, surpasses in completeness anything yet achieved by telescopists.

THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE, 811

monly explained as due to the light from millions of minute bodies,
extends visibly at least as far as the orbit of the earth. The occurrence
of meteoric displays caused by the passage of such bodies through our own
air proves in another way the same fact. But we know also that some of
the meteor systems through which our earth passes travel far beyond the
orbits of Uranus and Neptune, even to distances more than double that of
the outermost known planet. So that to those enormous distances, though
with an almost infinite sparseness of distribution, the meteoric and cometic
matter which is now associated with the coronal envelopes of the sun
must be regarded as unquestionably extending.

Seeing, then, that the sun is found to be the centre of a system of
envelopes so wonderful, rising higher and higher above his glowing sur-
face until they merge into systems extending beyond the outermost known
planet, it gives a new interest to eclipse observation to consider that, during
the total obscuration of the bright central region which we call the sun,
the outer parts of that amazingly complex orb become discernible. By
day the sun's light blinds us to hosts of orbs like himself, which at night
come into view. But by day also the glory of the sun hides from us the
wonderful system of envelopes and appendages of which he is the centre,
and the lustre of day passes away so gradually after sunset that the faint
light of the solar envelopes does not become discernible while the sun-
surrounding region is above the horizon. It is only when the neatly
hiding orb of the moon conceals the glowing central orb, while all around
remains within the range of vision, that we perceive the envelopes and
appendages which are in reality the outer parts of the sun himself. Then
only can we study with advantage the fainter of these envelopes, whether
by direct telescopic scrutiny, or by spectroscopic analysis, or by securing
photographic records.

It will therefore, we think, interest our readers to learn what are the
plans by which astronomers hope on this occasion to extend their knowledge
of the sun's surroundings. As we write there are unfortunately divided
counsels in the astronomical camp ; but we hope that when these lines
appear the actual plan of operations will not only have been settled to the
satisfaction of all, but that it will include both the lines of research which
we are now about to indicate.

In the first place it has been suggested that advantage ought to be
taken of the present opportunity to determine whether the envelopes
surrounding the sun sympathise, so to speak, with the disturbances
affecting the central orb. We know that the sun-spots wax and wane in
number, attaining their successive maxima at intervals of about eleven
years, while in the mid interval (or nearly so, for the wave of disturbance
is not quite symmetrical) not only are no spots seen, but the whole
surface of the sun presents an appearance of uniformity singularly dif-
ferent from its ordinary mottled aspect. Now the last four occasions on
which these minima of spot disturbance — or we may say these indications
of quiescence — took place, were the years 1833, 1843, 1855-56, and

312 THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

1866-67. If these intervals were exactly equal, we could confidently
assign the next epoch of probable quiescence ; but it will be observed
that they are not equal, being successively ten years, twelve-and-a-half
years, and eleven years. The average interval for these three periods
somewhat exceeds eleven years, and if the current period should have
that length, the next epoch of quiescence would occur in 1877-78. But
if the current period should be no longer than that between the minima
of 1833 and 1843, the next minimum would occur in 1876-77. We are
now near enough to the probable epoch to make it desirable to secure on
this occasion such pictures of the corona as would serve for comparison
with those obtained in 1870 and 1871, when the sun-spots were almost
at their maximum of frequency and size. The next great total eclipse
will be that of 1878, visible under favourable conditions in America, and
it is quite possible that on that occasion the minimum of sun-spot
frequency will be more nearly approximated to. Still it would be a pity
to lose the present opportunity, when also the totality will last consider-
ably longer than in 1878.

Now no satisfactory or trustworthy pictures of the corona can be
obtained except by photography. Nothing ever obtained by mere draughts-
manship has had the slightest real value. We know from the experience
of past eclipses that the corona can be photographed, notwithstanding the
delicacy of its light. Those, therefore, who wish to learn whether the
corona sympathises with the sun in those perturbations to which the spots
are due, have insisted on the desirability of obtaining good photographs
of the corona on this occasion. And in this view we altogether agree with
them.

On the other hand, a method of research of extreme delicacy and
difficulty, but also promising results of extreme interest if success-
fully applied, has been proposed by certain students of solar physics.
It has been found, by a method of research invented by Mitscherlich,
and recently carried out by Mr. Lockyer, that the spectra of different
elements show a greater or smaller number of lines, according to the
varying conditions under which the glowing vapour of the element exists.
And as the conditions of heat and pressure throughout the sun's whole
mass necessarily vary with distance from the centre, it follows that
particular lines may be indicated for lower levels, which are wanting at
greater distances from the sun's centre. We are now speaking of matter
outside those parts of the sun which are, as it were, concealed from view
by the intense brightness of the photospheric region ; though of course
there is every reason to believe that within this region a similar variety
of structure exists, the most complex solar regions (those which alone
contain all the known elements) being nearest to the centre.*

* " From the absence of the characteristic lines of some metals, such as gold,
silver, platinum, &c , from the solar spectrum," says Guillemin in his Les Phtnomenes
de la Physique, " it was believed, at first, that these bodies are not found in the sun, at

THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 313

Now, if by any means the observers of the coming eclipse could deter-
mine how high the envelopes showing various spectral lines extend from
the surface of the sun, the result would clearly be one of great interest.
For not only would it show to what distance the vapours of particular
elements extend, but it would indicate also the conditions of temperature
and pressure under which those vapours exist. But there is no time during
totality to deal with all ihese different spectral lines, even at any given
part of the sun's edge, far less all round the sun. Fortunately the lines
need not be measured, however, in this slow way. Professor Young
pointed out nearly four years ago that, by reverting to the original form
of the spectroscope, each envelope might be seen apart from the rest.
When we look at the sun through an ordinary prism (like one of the glass
drops of a chandelier), we see a spectrum which in reality consists of a
multitude of images of the sun, of all the colours of the rainbow, over-
lapping each other so as to produce a ribbon of rainbow-tinted light. If
the sun only gave out a certain order of red light, another of yellow,
another of green, and so on, we should see so many pictures of the sun,
each well denned, pictures of the intermediate tints being wanting. The
slit of a spectroscope is merely a device to make the source of light as
narrow as possible, so that the images may overlap less, and that, if any
are wanting, dark spaces may appear. Now in the case of the solar pro-
minence-ring and corona during totality this device is not wanted. The
prominence-ring shines with four special tints — red, orange-yellow, blue-
green, and indigo. If we look at the ring through a series of prisms,
without any slit, we shall see the single ring of prominences transmuted
by the action of the prisms into four images — a red ring of prominences,
an orange-yellow ring, a blue-green ring, and an indigo ring. Similarly
with that green part of the coronal light which in the ordinary spec-
troscopic method produces the green line : when the simple train of
prisms is used this portion will produce a green image of the corona,
or of so much of the corona as contains the glowing gas which gives this green
light.

All this has been practically tested. During the eclipse of December
1871, Respighi saw the several pictures of the prominence- ring and the
green picture of the inner corona. But, the various images were not

least in the outer strata which form its atmosphere ; but this conclusion is too absolute,
as is shown by new researches due to Mitscherlich [according to whom the presence
of certain substances in a flame has the effect of preventing the spectra of other sub-
stances from being formed, of extinguishing their principal lines, &c."] We follow
the translation edited by Mr. Lockyer, except in the passage within the brackets,
which is taken from the original — having somehow disappeared in the translated
edition, where it is replaced by the remark that probably certain "observations by
Frankland and Lockyer before alluded to " (in the English edition) may explain the
researches of Mitscherlich. Unfortunately nothing in the English version indicates
either the nature of Mitscherlich's researches, or that the French text has not been
followed in this place.

314 THE SUN'S SUBKOUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE.

bounded on the outside by a well-defined edge. The light simply became
too faint at the outside of these several ring pictures to be discerned, so
that he could not tell how far the corresponding envelopes really extended.
And in the case of the green image of the corona the visible extension
was far less than the already proved extension of the gaseous matter
which produces the green coronal light. Now, if it had been proposed
on the occasion of the approaching eclipse to attempt to renew Ee-
spighi's experiment under more favourable conditions, all astronomers
would probably have agreed that interesting results might be obtained,
though they would have recognized also the fact that no observer, however
skilful, could successfully observe, measure, and record the extension of
the several solar envelopes. But a much more difficult task has been
suggested — namely, to photograph simultaneously these several images, or
as many of them as may possess sufficient photographic power to delineate
themselves. We need not concern ourselves here to examine how the
mechanical difficulties of the problem were to be overcome. Suffice it to
say that by keeping the telescope fixed and following the solar movement
with a perfect plane mirror, so driven by clockwork as to reflect the solar
rays continuously into the telescope, the unwieldiness of the spectroscopic
and photographic combination attached to the telescope becomes of no
detriment, since the heavily burdened telescope is not required to
follow the shifting sun. But where astronomers are divided, or rather,
we may say, where astronomers really are at issue with physicists, is
on the subject of the possibility of getting any photographs at all with
light demonstratively so feeble as the green light of the corona. And,
oddly enough, astronomers maintain that physicists are wrong on the
physical part of the question. The light of the corona as a whole has
been analysed, and it is as certain as well can be that the green light
is but a very small portion of the total coronal light. The whole light
acting at once to form a photograph does not show the full extension of
the corona, the outskirts simply losing themselves through excessive faint-
ness ; how then, argue astronomers, can physicists expect that a minute
portion of that light can produce any photographic trace ? How much
less can this minute portion be expected to show the whole extension of
the green solar envelope !

Unfortunately the scheme thus proposed by physicists excluded the
photographing of the corona by the method formerly used, or in any
other satisfactory manner. Yet, even if the hopes of the physicists were
well based, one great result of their success would have consisted in the
means afforded for comparing the extension of the gaseous green corona
with that of the corona shining by reflecting the sun's light. This com-
parison would be even more interesting than any which could be instituted
between the various gaseous envelopes. However, as we write, an effort
is being made to secure the provision of adequate appliances for obtaining
good photographs of the corona by the old method ; and, whether the new
method is likely to fail or not, no one is disposed to be very earnest

THE SUN'S SURROUNDINGS AND THE COMING ECLIPSE. 315

in opposing it so long as it does not exclude the safer method. Pro-
bably, when these lines appear, it will be known that both methods are
to be used, and the explanation given above will enable the reader to
understand what is expected from either, and thus to appreciate the
importance of the news telegraphed home to us on the 6th of April
next.

tti

FROM THEOPHILE GAUTIER.

UNDEB thick trees, about it swaying,

A hump-backed hovel crouches low ;
The roof-tree bends — the walls are fraying,

And on the threshold mosses grow.

Each window-pane is masked by shutters,

Still, as around the mouth in frost
The warm breath rises up and flutters,

Life lingers here — not wholly lost.

One curl of silver smoke is twining

Its pale threads with the silent air,
To tell God that there yet is shining

A soul- spark in that ruined lair.

F. H. DOYLE.

316

MEDIEVAL Florence was the scene of endless revolutions, attended by all
that has rendered the word a terror. In the course of time the wiser
Florentines learnt to think of taking shelter from the tyranny of faction
under the rule of a single prince. Nor, during the greater portion of the
fifteenth century, was there much doubt as to whence that prince was to
come. Such influence had been acquired for the house of Medici by its
great wealth and a succession of singularly able chiefs, that all the errors
of the son of "the Magnificent" merely delayed for a generation the
recognition of his family as the hereditary lords of Florence.

With the attainment of supremacy in their native city, the Medici
seem to have lost for a while their commanding ability. Clement VII.,
the head of the family, A.D. 1521-34, perpetrated many gross political
mistakes. He selected for successor a youth of birth as questionable as
the heir of Olivarez, and thus alienated his relatives. He endeavoured
to rule as a prince rather than as a party chief, and thereby drove the
aristocracy into fierce opposition. His necessities compelled him to
impose heavy taxes, and this lost him the affections of the masses.
Finally, his character, no less than his cloth, rendered him averse to
severity, and thus, while abundantly hated, he was not at all dreaded.

The capture of Borne by the followers of Bourbon was followed at
once by revolution at Florence. Not a voice was raised in favour of the
Medici, for the leaders of the movement were all noble. Eventually
these leaders had no great reason to congratulate themselves on their
handiwork. Like all men of high birth, they proved but indifferent
demagogues, and disgusted the people from the outset by their mode-
ration. Their popularity, therefore, and with it their share of power,
dwindled rapidly to nothing.

Thanks to the events which disabled the Pope and drew the attention
of Charles V. to other quarters, the Florentine revolt was allowed full
swing for the next two years, and innumerable were its fantastic pranks.
The most astonishing experiments were tried with the machinery of
government, and the most startling laws enacted. Conspicuous among
the latter were the religious ones. Capponi, the leader of the primary
revolutionists, being a man of decidedly serious views, took it into his
head, at an early period, to make the whole community as sternly moral
as himself — by statute. The time was not badly chosen. It was the
period of Luther, and the religious questions of the day were as keenly
debated at Florence as elsewhere. Capponi' s whim, therefore, met with
extraordinary success. He proposed that the Saviour should be declared

THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE. 317

King of Florence, and the thing was done in magnificent form. And he
brought forward numerous laws against vanity, luxury, profanity, in-
temperance, &c., all of which were enthusiastically carried. Capponi was
re-elected gonfalonier, an unprecedented thing at Florence, to be violently
thrust from office three months afterwards. But his successors felt bound,
in deference to public opinion, to carry out the moral rule which he had
instituted. They, too, punished swearing, prohibited gambling (pensioning
a cardmaker, whose trade had been ruined thereby), shut up the taverns,
and employed tinerant preachers to hold forth in the thoroughfares.
But in the midst of their religious fervour they did not omit to frame a
law which enabled the authorities to dispose of political criminals with
such hideous rapidity, that he who walked free and fearless at noon,
was frequently arrested, tried — that is to say, tortured — and beheaded
before sunset !

At the outset of her revolt, Florence plunged headlong into the war
on the side of France. This was a senseless step. A French alliance
was notoriously fatal to the Italians of that era. And, besides, the
French monarch was then actually in league with the Pope, whose autho-
rity the Florentines had just discarded. But the emblem of Florence
was a lily ; that of France was also a lily ; and a prophet had declared that
"lily with lily must always nourish." For this reason the excellent
democracy of Florence plunged heart and soul into the French alliance.
So long as the French armies were in the neighbourhood the Florentines
supplied them liberally with money and recruits. But one of these
armies was exterminated at Naples ; and another — the last which France
sent into Italy for many a day — was destroyed at Landriano, June 21,
1529. Clearly the lilies had not flourished together ; and one of them
was destined to prove even more unfortunate alone.

Shortly after Landriano, the Pope and the Emperor came to an
understanding, and joined forces, with the view of recovering the plunder
that had been seized by various little princelings during their quarrel.
This was no very censurable step. Few of the said princelings had any
right to the said plunder. The other Italian States, who had taken part
in the French league, saw how things were likely to go, and made peace
with the conqueror on tolerably easy terms. And Florence might have
done the same, had not the government by this time fallen into the hands
of stump-orators and men of broken fortune ; the chief magistrate of the
day, Francesco Carducci, having been twice a bankrupt in the course of
no very long career as small tradesman. Peace was about the last thing
to be desired by gentry like these. It was not unlikely to send a few of
them to the gallows, and it was certain to hurl the whole unsavoury
phalanx from power into their original penniless obscurity. War, on the
other hand, was not very promising in prospect. But it might prove
successful : and whatever the event, it was sure to secure them in place
and affluence so long as it might last. So this worshipful seigneury
resolved that by hook or by crook war should go on. Thus felt not a

318 THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE.

few of their fellow- citizens, and the prudent at once shut up shop and
emigrated ; even though the precious government had put on an appear-
ance of moderation, and despatched an embassy to Charles V., who was
by this time in Italy.

This embassy was chiefly composed of good men and true, since such
a monarch was not likely to pay much attention to mere stump -orators.
But the necessary powers were withheld, and the good men and true were
besprinkled with people on whom Carducci and his confederates could
thoroughly rely. The Emperor was in daily apprehension of a Turkish
invasion of his German dominions, and the Pope had no wish to ruin what
he considered his patrimony by war and siege. The potentates, there-
fore, offered terms so favourable that the ambassadors despatched one of
their number to Florence to lay them before the council and entreat their
acceptance. Had this been done, it is pretty certain that an accommo-
dation would have ensued. But the messenger was an agent of Carducci' s,
and at his request he suppressed the true terms, and submitted totally
false ones to the cpuncil ! We need not characterize the trick : it oozed
out shortly afterwards. But Carducci and his confederates were popular
favourites, and a favourite of the people is a monarch that " can do no
wrong." After this there could be no hope of peace. So Charles thought;
and he ordered his lieutenant, the Prince of Orange, who then commanded
in Naples, to begin the war at once, and push it vigorously. The embassy,
however, still haunted the Pope, fed him up with hopes of a peaceful
termination of the difficulties between himself and his townsmen, and thus
induced him to hamper the movements of the Prince until the Florentines
were ready to meet him sword in hand. Then they threw off the mask,
grossly insulted Clement at a public audience, and were dismissed to
return no more.

Florence was soon ready for war. Vast sums were raised, much by
heavy taxation, and much by other means. From time to time a score or
two of the wealthier citizens — bad or lukewarm patriots, of course — were
selected by the government, and forced to lend a large amount to the
State. And the property of those who persisted in absenting themselves,
after due notice, was confiscated and brought to the hammer : as most of
this property was disposed of much below its value, there was no lack of
purchasers ; and every one who bought became thenceforth bound up with
the revolt. With the money thus raised munitions were provided, forces
raised, and the fortifications repaired.

By the end of August, 1529, the Prince of Orange was on the march
for Tuscany, at the head of 16,000 men. Less than half of this force
consisted of old soldiers. The rest were new levies, chiefly from .Calabria.
Few of them, however, could be termed raw recruits ; for the constant
feuds of this country had habituated them to war, and they were com-
manded by chiefs capable of moulding far more unpromising materials
into good soldiers. This was a powerful army, as armies then went. The
Florentines, however, had one of twice its numbers, and hardly inferior

THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE. 319

materials. One-third consisted of urban and city militia, who were sure
to fight fiercely in defence of their hearths. Another third was formed
of the remnants of the celebrated black bands of Giovanni de' Medici,
recruited from Arezzo and the hills thereabouts — a neighbourhood reputed
to provide the best native warriors. The rest were bands of free lances,
mostly the property of Italian nobles, Malatesta, the gouty old lord of
Perugia, heading the largest company, of 5,000 men. And as the
Florentines were well provided with money — a thing in which their
opponents were notoriously deficient — their troops were far better equipped.

The Arno cuts Florence in two, and the Prince of Orange immediately
seized and entrenched the commanding points to the south. But Florence
was then one of the great cities of the earth, and his army was far too
weak to invest even that section of it with any completeness. As for the
northern side, it remained unmolested, except by a few weak partisans, for
several months longer. No sooner, however, was it evident that the
Florentines meant to abide, and the Prince to press a siege, than recruits
began to pour into his camp. Every Italian noble of that day had
numerous feudal and personal foes, and every man who owed a grudge to
any of the free lances within the beleaguered walls, took service with the
Prince. Florence, tflb, was a city well worth sacking. So those excellent
recruiting officers — the thirst for plunder and the thirst for vengeance —
continued to swell the pontifico-imperial ranks until towards the close of
the siege they numbered full 50,000 men. This, however, was not a
circumstance on which such a chief as the Prince either could or would
calculate ; and as the skirmishes in which the daring of the garrison daily
involved his men, cost him more blood than he could afford as yet to lose,
and as no amount of artillery that he could collect was likely to make any
serious impression on those ramparts, he determined, if possible, to bring
the matter to a speedy issue in another way.

From time immemorial the Florentines had been accustomed to hold
high festival on the 10th of November — St. Martin's Eve. And they were
too proud and confident to abate one jot of their merriment in the face of
a foe. The day, therefore, was spent most uproariously. The night came
dark and rainy ; the camp subsided into silence ; and so, but far more
slowly, did the town. Every light was extinguished at length, and not a
sound was to be heard save the ceaseless patter of the rain. " Now,
Madame Florence," said the Prince of Orange, " get ready your brocades,
for by sunrise to-morrow we mean to measure them with our spears."
The dull smothered tread of many feet followed the remark, and without
other sound, like a dense cloud through the dreary midnight, the army
moved from its entrenchments to the assault. Three-fourths of the
distance was traversed, not a leader spoke, not a sword clanked, not a
whisper rose from the ranks : Florence gave no sign of alarm. The misty
host drew nearer, holding its breath as it gave its flanks to the outworks.
There were four hundred scaling-ladders in the van, and ten thousand
desperadoes ready to climb them. Two minutes more would see the

320 THE SIEGE OF FLOKENCE.

ramparts won. A broad red flash leapt out into the darkness from a
neighbouring bastion. Fifty men fell; a rattling peal drowned their
death- cry, and in an instant the long line of the works in front was bright
with torches and alive with armed men. Then came the rush of battle
and the uproar. The veterans of a hundred battles, the victors of Pavia,
the plunderers of Borne, planted their ladders and threw themselves against
the ramparts. In vain : some were slaughtered with the sword, others
were pelted with boiling oil, Greek fire, beams, tiles, and every conceivable
missile. Not a man could mount that terrible wall. So the trumpet
wailed the retreat, and the baffled multitude withdrew, leaving five hundred
of their bravest behind them.

Florence was not to be surprised, and it was certainly not to be
battered into submission. Nothing but a strict blockade could reduce it,
and until reinforcements should render that operation practicable, the
Prince resolved to devote his attention to certain troublesome partisans.
The principal of these was a churchman. Witnessing the sack of Rome,
this man swore a vendetta against the perpetrators, which he took good
care to keep. Wherever there was a chance of striking a blow at the
sacrilegious robbers, thither sped the Abbot of Farfa and his merciless cut-
throats. And when Florence decided on hostility, the excellent clergyman
rushed up to avenge the Pope by slaughtering his soldiers. In order that
there may be no mistake as to his nationality, we beg to state that the
Abbot of Farfa was by birth and long descent — an Italian. He performed
his self-appointed task with singular audacity and success. But what
rendered him most terrible was an ugly habit of torturing his prisoners to
death after the manner of the American aborigines, and a still more ugly
habit of exposing the remains of his victims in ingeniously hideous atti-
tudes. After a weary chase — skilfully conducted, and a stubborn fight —
gallantly contested, the wild priest was taken, and his band destroyed.
As for the man himself, Papal commanders could hardly slay such a
devoted adherent of the Papacy. So they clapped him in prison until
they reasoned him out of his illogical method of taking vengeance, and
then turned him loose again to exercise his recently acquired tastes upon
the Florentines.

A large detachment was needed for this man-hunt. The second night
after its departure, the imperial army was reposing in its usual reckless
style. The sentinels were few and careless, and the officers of the watch,
like the Prince, were most of them employed in gaming, and not a few,
like the Prince, with their soldiers' pay. For Philibert, during this very
siege, nearly produced a mutiny by losing the whole contents of the
military chest at play. Such, however, was then the custom among
captains — more than one sovereign, like Francis I., finding himself com-
pelled to place the offence among those whose punishment was death.
About midnight a terrific clamour burst out in a distant quarter of the
camp. The Prince and his captains mounted in haste, and galloped to
the scene, to be enveloped and swept along by the foremost wave of a

THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE. 321

torrent of fugitives that augmented every instant ; for behind, in fierce
pursuit, was the best soldier in the Florentine garrison — Stefano Colonna —
and three thousand daring swordsmen. Colonna had crept out in the
night, with these attendants, to pay a flying visit to his cousin and mortal
foe, an officer of rank in the imperial camp. The cousin, fortunately for
himself, was absent, but his command was surprised and nearly anni-
hilated ; and Colonna, following up his stroke with admirable skill and
vigour, was now rolling up the whole long line of the besiegers. Unfortu-
nately, he was not properly seconded. There was no commander-in-
chief in Florence, and no unity of purpose in its military measures.
Every captain there did pretty much as he pleased. The present sally
was Colonna' s own idea, and its promise was far too brilliant for that
powerful principle — envy — to allow his brother officers to second him as
they might and should have done. By desperate efforts on the part of the
Prince and his lieutenants, the destroying column was at length arrested
in its course, and by sheer weight of numbers pushed back into the town,
but not until it had wrought great havoc in the imperial lines, killing 400
men and wounding 900 more. And all with the sword ; for Colonna, like
the thorough soldier that he was, had forbidden his followers to carry any
other weapon.

The sally was repelled, but the disaster was hardly less serious to
Philibert. His soldiers, who subsisted chiefly by plunder, and who were
held together, in a great measure, by the hope of sacking the city, threw
off the bonds of discipline and roved the country by troops. Many towns,
too, encouraged by the news which spread far and wide, losing nothing as
it went, rose and slaughtered their garrisons. Had there been a worthy
chief, or even a healthy spirit in Florence, the siege might have been raised
at any time during the ensuing month. For the Imperialists would not
have stood against a vigorous effort, and as there was nothing to prevent
the re-occupation of the mountain forts behind them — hardly a man could
have escaped. But Carducci and his colleagues were not the men for the
occasion. Like all mere demagogues, they dared not venture on any
strong measure until public opinion had pronounced. And the Florentines
were then too busy with their great annual election, to care for anything
beyond the walls. The Prince, therefore, had ample time to restore the
spirit of his army, and make good his losses.

In December 1529, Carducci ceased to be gonfalonier. But he
retained all his former influence, having been appointed chief of the three
who composed the committee of war. Besides, the new gonfalonier,
Girolami — a vapid, violent declaimer, of no decided character — was com-
pletely under his control.

The government now found it necessary — chiefly to satisfy the
soldiery — to appoint a commander-in-chief. As usual in such cases, the
man of highest rank, Malatesta, was selected. They could not have made
a worse choice. He was valiant, skilful, and of vast warlike experience,
but he was altogether untrustworthy. Being a feudal chief, he had no
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 183. 16.

322 THE SIEGE OF FLOKENCE.

sympathy with the Florentine traders, and as his domains lay within the
Papal territories, there were many reasons why he should conciliate the
Pope. Indeed, he had already come to an understanding with Clement ;
the gist of it was that the siege was not to be raised, that on no account
were the Imperialists to he allowed decided success, and that matters were to
be so managed as to bring about the termination of the war by a capitula-
tion between Clement and the citizens. Malatesta's appointment took
place towards the end of January 1530. It was accompanied by a great
deal of noisy show, and, therefore, delighted the people.

By this time the army of the Prince had so largely augmented that he
was enabled to stretch his blockade round the northern portion of the
city also. But not very strictly at first ; and the few garrisons which the
Florentines still maintained without continued to introduce convoys of
provisions for several weeks longer without much difficulty. Nor did the
Imperialists offer any opposition to the egress of individuals — that is, if
they could manage to evade the strict watch maintained at the gates. Indeed,
the coronation of Charles V. taking place in February, a large number of
the show-loving Florentines actually obtained permission to pass the
blockading lines in order to witness the ceremony. Charles, however,
left Italy immediately afterwards, and as the Pope had now given up all
hope of an amicable arrangement, the Prince of Orange received orders to
press the siege in earnest, and the mildness of the investment terminated.

This period of the strife opened with a chivalrous incident. Ludovico
Martelli and Giovanni Bandini had been conspicuous amongst the ardent
youths who took part in the first revolutionary movements. The latter
was the Admirable Crichton of his sphere, and as a natural consequence
of his extra allowance of brains, his republicanism cooled with the pro-
gress of events, until he was now, with many another high-born Florentine,
in arms against the city. Not so his friend, who had developed into one
of the wildest of the democrats. In neither case, however, was this
divergence altogether the result of political convictions. The preference
of the beautiful Maria Eicci had something to do with it. She was an
ardent Palleschi, and, therefore, the two suitors, particularly the rejected
one, Martelli, took opposite sides with a little more fervour than they
might otherwise have shown. The lady remained in the city, and Martelli,
very unwisely, omitted no opportunity of seeing her. On one of these
occasions, she treated him to a set homily on the numerous perfections of
Bandini, dwelling especially on his knightly accomplishments. "I hope
soon to show you that I am not so inferior to him even in these things as you
seem to suppose," replied Martelli. Next morning a challenge, drawn up
in proper form, was despatched with a flag of truce to Bandini. It was
accepted by the latter with a reluctance that did him no discredit, and,
after a tedious negotiation, the details of the duel were arranged. It was
to take place on Saturday, the 12th March, to be a fight of two against
two, the weapons swords, the manner on foot, and the Prince of Orange
to provide and keep the lists. The last consisted of an enclosure of

THE SIEGE OP FLORENCE. 823

sufficient size, divided into two by a rope stretched across it, for it was
agreed that the parties were not to assist each other in the fight. At the
appointed hour the champions made their appearance, and were led into
the champ clos with all the usual minute forms. Martelli was accompanied
by a pronounced republican of mature years, Dante Castiglione ; and
Bandini had for friend a mere youth, one of the pupils of the sculptor
El Piffero. Each had his head bare, was clad in hose and shirt, the
latter having the right sleeve cut off at the elbow, and wore an iron
gauntlet on the right hand. Bandini had provided the weapons, and the
challengers were allowed first choice. The former bending back his blade,
as if to prove it, snapped it in two between his fingers. A dispute ensued,
Bandini's friends pressing to have the broken weapon replaced, and
Martelli's opposing the proposition as against the laws and usages of the
duello ; and as the umpires allowed it to be correct, Bandini was com-
pelled to fight with the stump. The two encounters began at the same
moment, but that between the seconds was the first decided. The young
artist immediately received two wounds, one on the sword arm and the
other on the face. These he quickly repaid with three, one of them a
severe one through the right arm. The advantage was now with him,
for Castiglione was compelled to grasp his sword with both hands. But
the youth lost his temper, made a blind rush, and received a terrible
thrust, which penetrated through the mouth to the brain. He screamed,
dropped his weapon, and falling headlong, rolled over and over in agony,
being removed from the lists to die the same evening.

Castiglione turned to see how the battle went with his friend. It was
a sickening sight. Martelli rushed blindly at Bandini ; the latter sprang
aside and cut him over the head. This was repeated many times. Mar-
telli next grasped his antagonist's sword, who drew it through his fingers,
gashing them fearfully. He then attempted to parry Bandini's strokes
with his left arm ; and so the fight went on until he was covered with
wounds and blinded with blood. As a last effort he planted the hilt
of his weapon against his breast, and rushed desperately forward. But
Bandini easily avoided the onslaught, and dealing him a last stroke over
the head, called on him to surrender. Martelli had no alternative ; he
spoke the fatal word, and was carried away even .more wounded in mind
than body. As for his antagonist, he received only two slight hurts. The
lady paid one visit to the defeated champion ; but, as she had been com-
pelled to take this step much against her will, it did more mischief than
good. Three weeks after, Martelli died.

One on each side having fallen, the victory was ascribed to neither — a
decision that sorely puzzled the superstitious, who had looked upon the
duel from the first as symbolic of the war and its issue.

Another week passed, and then, for the first time since the opening of
the siege, the government of Florence found itself face to face with a
serious difficulty — a lack of funds. It was one, however, with which the
ruling faction was eminently fitted to grapple. Carducci and his friends

16—2

824 THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE.

seized a quantity of Church and corporate property and brought it to the
hammer. Besides this, they issued a proclamation inviting individuals to
give up their plate, in order that it might be coined into money ; and the
thing was done in a burst of enthusiasm — to such an extent that, with
the aid of some Church plate, full 53,000 new ducats were struck before the
month was out. This sacrifice was followed by a grand religious ceremony,
in which all Florence took the sacrament, and after which every soldier and
citizen in the city made oath to resist to the last extremity. No serious
effort, however, was made against the foe, and the blockade would have
dragged its slow length along, with intolerable tedium, to the inevitable
surrender, had it not been for the stirring nature of certain secondary
operations.

Florence still garrisoned a few of her former possessions, among them
— Pisa, Lucca, Yolterra, and Empoli. These towns had always been
quite as factious as the capital. Indeed, it was chiefly by siding with one
party against the other that Florence had introduced her authority and
confirmed it over both. The war had revived these factions, and in
Volterra, some sixty miles to the south-west, the citizens adverse to
Florentine supremacy had possessed themselves of the town and driven
the garrison into the citadel. The governor communicated with his
superiors, demanded succour, and received it. A force of 1,000 men
was equipped with admirable celerity, and instructed to cut its way to
Empoli. There it was to place itself under the principal Florentine leader
without, Ferrucci, who was to strengthen it with a portion of his garrison
and do the rest. ;The plan was about as mischievous as could be conceived.
The possession of Volterra could exercise no possible influence over the
event of the war. But so long as Empoli was held by such a man as
Ferrucci, Florence might laugh at all attempts to starve her into surrender.
Nevertheless, the invaluable was risked to secure the worthless, in a way
peculiar to mad democracy, for this expedition — so thoroughly foolish —
was exceedingly flattering to the popular vanity. In Florentine estimation,
it was rivalling ancient Eome, which had sent an army into Africa when
Hannibal was at her gates.

The expedition was much better conducted than planned. Giugna, the
leader, was a right good soldier. Starting at midnight on the 24th of
April, he pierced the enemy's lines, and reached the river Cesa before his
progress could be arrested by the masses which Orange directed against
him. There, however, he found himself in a decided scrape. The Imperial
cavalry had headed him off, and dense masses of infantry were closing
round his flanks and rear. But, just in the nick of time, Ferrucci came
up with his garrison and carried him off.

Ferrucci left Giugna with 800 men at Empoli, and marched himself
with double the number on Volterra. He set out early on the 27th, and
— though his men were heavily armed and still more heavily laden with
provisions, ammunition, and scaling-ladders — he completed the march of
40 miles before sunset. Giving his troops one hour's rest, he led them to

THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE. 825

the assault. The streets were strongly barricaded ; but he carried the
first and most important defence that night, and then went to rest. Next
morning, awed by his stern and daring character, the foe surrendered —
just as 3,000 Imperial cavalry galloped up in relief. " Gallantly done ! "
said Orange. " That Ferrucci is a man worth contending with ; but I'll
soon give him a Roland for his Oliver." And despatching a reinforcement
to Marmaldo, the leader of the cavalry, with orders to besiege Volterra, he
hurried the Marquis del Vasto with an imposing force against Empoli.

The Florentines were soon aware of these detachments, and organized
a powerful sally against the denuded lines. It took place on the 5th of
May, and was led by Colonna, who did his duty brilliantly. He carried
the key of the enemy's position with no less skill than valour, slajdng the
commander, a tried soldier, and driving out the remnant of his men, all
Spanish veterans, in frightful confusion. But instead of seconding
Colonna with powerful masses, Malatesta fed the fight by driblets, until
the skilful dispositions of Orange restored the balance. The battle then
degenerated into a series of skirmishes, which closed with the day. The
Prince spent the next few weeks in quietly strengthening his entrench-
ments, and in watching the progress of events elsewhere, while the
Florentines wasted theirs in idle processions, diversified by a few trifling
skirmishes and a good many executions.

Meanwhile, the sieges of Volterra and Empoli were closely pushed.
Ferrucci, in the former city, was greatly pressed for money, which he
raised with some violence. He punished the revolt with an enormous
fine, he forced contributions from the wealthy by torture, he seized the
Church plate, and he sold the relics of the saints by auction. But all this
he did for the service of the State. His worst enemies — and he had many
bitter ones — allowed that he was as incorruptible as he was able.

Marmaldo sent a trumpeter to summon the town. Ferrucci dismissed
this man with contempt, but threatened to hang him should he return.
Marmaldo replied by a sharp assault, effected a lodgment in one of the
suburbs, and then repeated his summons. Ferrucci kept his word, and
hung the trumpeter in sight of both armies. Marmaldo as publicly vowed
revenge for this and another cruel act that had just come to his know-
ledge. Ferrucci, who, it seems, had been badly treated by some Spanish
soldiers in a former war, and who, therefore, had pledged himself to
mortal hate against the whole nation, finding fourteen Spaniards in
Volterra, had shut them up in a tower and starved them to death. Such
cruelty, however, was not peculiar to Ferrucci. Little quarter was given
by any side during this horrid war, and many deeds were done which drew
down hideous reprisals. Marmaldo, however, had to postpone the fulfil-
ment of his vow for the present. His force was not equal to the capture
of Volterra when defended by such a captain, so he abandoned the lodg-
ment, and remained at observation until Empoli fell.

Giugna, the new commander of Empoli, like many another gallant
partisan, was out of place in a beleaguered fortress. After a few days'

326 THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE.

defence he consented to a parley. This was the time of all others when it
Behoved a good captain to be vigilant. Giugna was not so. and during
the parley the Imperialists broke in. A terrible scene ensued, in which
Bandini, the victor in the recent duel, honourably distinguished himself
by his efforts to retain the soldiery. Empoli fell on the 29th of May, and
the disaster, which was soon known, greatly exasperated the Florentines.
The unfortunate captains were all proscribed ; Giugna's son, a child of
eight, was beheaded ! And as the niece of Clement, Catherine de' Medici,
afterwards Queen of France, was then residing in a convent in the city, it
was proposed in the council, by some to abandon her to the common
soldiers, and by others to suspend her by a rope from the walls, and thus
expose her to the fire of the enemy. There are not wanting annalists who
assert that these atrocities were actually practised.

Another great sally followed on the 10th of June. It was, as usual,
ably conducted by Colonna, and, as usual, deliberately spoiled by Mala-
testa. This failure produced more proscriptions and executions, mixed up
with imposing religious processions, forced loans, and sales of corporate
property. Immediately after the sally, Clement, for the last time, pro-
posed to treat on easy terms, but the infatuated Florentines refused to
receive his ambassador. Privations, however, began to be severely felt ; for
though the Florentines could raise money to any extent, now that Empoli
had fallen it was no longer possible to introduce supplies. Yet still a
large proportion of the citizens remained as presumptuous, as enthusi-
astic, and as tyrannic as ever. That extreme section, however, was soon
shown to be far less numerous than it announced itself, or even than its
victims suspected ; for the reign of terror was shortly afterwards pushed
to such a pitch, that the anti- revolutionists, in sheer despair, ventured to
show themselves in open opposition, and were astonished to find them-
selves a positive majority. From that moment the executions ceased, and
the revolution was doomed.

A deputation from all classes waited on the government, pointed out
the hopelessness of foreign aid, and the impossibility of continuing their
passive resistance much longer, and demanded a prompt and decisive
effort or peace. The deputation was openly supported by Malatesta and
his troops, so the government was compelled to choose, and decided to
make the effort. The plan was soon formed. Ferrucci was to take as .
many men as could be spared from Volterra, to move straight down to the
coast, thence northward through Leghorn to Pisa, gathering reinforce-
ments as he went. From Pisa he was to advance to Pestoija ; and
thence he was to make a dash at Florence, whose garrison was to second
him by a stupendous sally. Two men of rank volunteered to bear these
orders. They traversed the hostile camp in disguise on the night of the
13th of July, and by sunset of the 14th were safe at Volterra. Their suc-
cess was soon known at Florence. Nobody, friend or foe, doubted that
Ferrucci would do all that man could do. And the next three weeks was a
period of such unutterable suspense as beleaguered city has seldom known.

THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE. 327

Ferrucci did not waste a moment in carrying out his instructions. He
would have preferred another course — a dash at Borne, after the manner
of Bourbon, which, if not successful — and he had laid his plans to command
success — would yet compel the Prince to break up the siege and follow in
pursuit. Nor was he the man to be deterred by any scruple. He was
one of the many high-class Italians whom classic studies, Christian cor-
ruptions, and the ferocious warfare of the period had reduced to downright
paganism. Ferrucci, however, with all his paganism, was a man of men.
At the word of command he gave up his own plans without a murmur,
rose from a sick bed to make his arrangements, and marched ere sunrise
next morning with 1,500 men on the desperate enterprise. Marmaldo
followed hard on his track ; but Ferrucci gained Pisa with greatly augmented
forces by the 18th. At Pisa his unparalleled exertions threw him into a
fever, which disabled him for a fortnight ; and during that time Orange
completed the precautions which he knew so well how to make.

Ferrucci resumed his march with 4,000 men on the 31st of July. It
was nearly hopeless ; but he was the slave of duty, and pushed on. On
the night of the 3rd of August he encamped among the mountains of
Pestoija. The spot is still known as the Field of Iron. A few miles off, on
one flank, was a force equal to his own — with Marmaldo. More distant, on
the other flank, was Vitelli, with a similar band ; and the Prince of Orange
himself was advancing on foot at the head of 10,000 men. Ferrucci knew
his danger well. He had never expected to make his way to Florence with-
out stern opposition ; but he had calculated on the necessities of the siege
preventing the Prince from meeting him with any great disparity of force
and he saw at once that Malatesta, at least, was a traitor, and success
beyond his reach. Even yet he might have escaped by abandoning his
baggage and taking to the hills ; but his orders pointed straight on, and
the antique spirit of the man was not to be driven from the path of duty,
though it led to destruction. Starting with the dawn on his last march,
he pushed for the neighbouring town of Gavinina, determined to fortify
himself there. But as he entered the gate on the one side, Marmaldo
broke over the feeble wall en the other. The adverse hosts met, breast
to breast, in the market-place, and for three terrible hours the battle swayed
up and down the narrow streets. Marmaldo, though a splendid soldier,
was no match for Ferrucci. The latter fought in the foremost rank — it
was his custom in such emergencies — and he was well supported, for his
captains and soldiers idolized him. Few, indeed, equalled his prowess, for
Ferrucci was a giant in size ; but all fought as became the followers of
such a chief, and quarter was neither asked nor given.

Vitelli and the Prince, apprised of the conflict, hurried to the scene.
Philibert was seated in front of a tavern four miles off, at Lagone, when
the news came. He called for wine, drank success, and rode off with his
men-at-arms, followed, at a slower pace, by the infantry. At the bottom
of the rocky ascent that leads to Gavinina, he met a party of Marmaldo's
horsemen in hasty flight. The Prince collected his immediate followers,

328 THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE.

rode through the fugitives, and charged up the hill, where Marmaldo was
evidently hard pushed. Towards the top, the road narrowed between
lofty banks, and the pass was swept by a company of Ferrucci's arque-
busiers. The Prince plunged fearlessly into the line of fire, and instantly
fell, pierced by a three-ounce ball. His body-guard fled, spreading the
report that their commander was slain and Ferrucci victorious. This
report reached Florence, and great was the excitement there. But no
token of disaster was observed in the Imperial camp ; and as night fell,
the citizens noticed their own mercenaries packing up their goods and
making other preparations ominous of retreat. Then the fatal truth was
suspected, and a few hours later their worst fears were confirmed.

The Prince, indeed, was slain, but the panic of his body-guard had
extended no further. The rest of his troops came speedily into action, so
did those of Vitelli, while Marmaldo's men, sadly shaken and terribly
diminished, redoubled their exertions. All closed round the doomed
Ferrucci and his band. They were reduced to the merest handful. Still
the stubborn chief, though covered with wounds, continued the action ;
nor was it until the weapon dropped from his weary hand as he stood alone
among his foes that he consented to surrender. His captor, one of the
detested Spanish bands, endeavoured to shield him ; but Marmaldo's
vengeance was not to be baffled. The dying hero was led out, and, under
the old chestnut-tree in the market-place, Marmaldo passed his sword
through his breast. " Personally, I admired him," said Marmaldo, after-
wards ; " but I could not forget my trumpeter, and," he added, in the
tone of a true Pagan, " the manes of the Prince demanded the sacrifice."

Even after this event there were men in Florence mad enough to think
of prolonging the strife. These were the upstarts, who would lose every-
thing by surrender, and the fanatics, who persisted in believing, to the
last, that heaven would send an army of angels to deliver the city. But
far more numerous were those who clamoured for surrender. The Impe-
rialists, aware of these differences, chafed to storm the place. Malatesta,
however, while encouraging division within, kept a shrewd eye on the
army without, and held his mercenaries well in hand to repel any attempt
at escalade. None was attempted. A few days enabled the peace party
to overawe their opponents, and then the town surrendered to the Pope.
The terms, considering the period, were not severe. Severity, indeed, was
hardly requisite. All things weighed — the waste of wealth, her ruined
trade, the ravages of famine and pestilence (for the latter had swept twice
through the city since 1527), and the loss of such men as Ferrucci —
Florence had suffered enough.

329

0f

THE difficulties and inconveniences attendant on the preservation of
lifeless bodies, and the respect and reverence generally allowed to be
due to them, not to mention a sincere regard on the part of the survivors
for their own health and comfort, have given rise amongst all nations to
a firm belief in the necessity of erecting some party wall between the
living and the dead. There are indeed secondary causes of tombs and
• sepulchres which have also contributed to the establishment of this creed,
such as devotional feeling, legal enactment, and the force of custom.
Again, among a certain class of anthropophagi, who consider, with Words-
worth, that "woman," and man also, is "a creature not too bright or good
for human nature's daily food," there is the jealous dread of a friend or rela-
tive being*found and eaten after death by some detested member of a rival
tribe. There is, too, that tender seed of affectionate regard which, bud-
ding somewhat late into panegyric flower in the obituary of the Times, can
burst into full expanse of bloom only on the marble tombstone. This
is sown by those who are for establishing their character of generosity by
eulogizing, when dead, people whom they have reviled on every possible
occasion when alive. Lastly, there is that desire, almost, however, too rare
to be regarded, of such heart-broken mourners as are well content to air
their vanity and advertise their riches by the magnificent mausoleums
of their dead relations. Perhaps, however, the chief cause — notably in
the embalming of the Egyptians — is that fond hope of man never to die,
of mortality to put on immortality, which would not allow even the body to
fall into dissolution ; referring to which, says Pliny in his heathen speech,
Qua malum ista dementia est, iterari vitam morte f quceve genitis quies
unquam, si in sublimi sensus anima manet, inter inferos umbra ? Such a
credulity, he adds, doubles the pangs of destruction, and takes from us
the benefit of Nature's best boon — Death.

One animal alone, complains the compatriot of Catullus, is vexed with
unbounded desire of existence, one animal alone with superstitious con-
siderations of futurity, one animal alone with the care of burial. He
commends the practice of the Hyperboreans, whose homes are in the
woods and caverns, amongst whom there is no sickness, in whose dis-
position discord is unknown. These die simply from satiety of life.
Crowned, and having feasted, they leap from some lofty rock into the
sea — Hoc genus sepulturce beatissimum — the most blessed burial in the
world. Neither he nor the indifferent Lucan would have cried, " Ah, my
brother!" or "Ah, his glory!" had he been one of the subjects of

330 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

Coniah, when Jeremiah prophesied the burial of that monarch with the
burial of an ass.

Ulysses held not the opinion of these, at least as he appears in the
Hecuba of Euripides, where he says that during life a very little would
suffice him ; but that, after death, he wished for a very honourable tomb,
inasmuch as that favour would be much more lasting. . But the Cynics
agreed with Pliny in treating all care of the dead with contempt. One
answer of Diogenes, when interrogated about the mode of his interment, is
a curious instance of philosophic unconcern in that matter. But this weak-
ness of human nature is one among many which philosophy has found it
not easy to eradicate. It has existed from the creation of those gigantic
barrows of Stonehenge on the' Salisbury plain, and other vast pyramids —
" works of Memphian kings " — which stand in their still loneliness, defying
the force of Time on the borders of the Nile, to the heaping up of the little
hillock of yesterday in our churchyards, the cairn, tumulus, or barrow, of
many yesterdays in many lands, with its headstone bright and new from the
hands of the mason, telling the legend which will be so soon illegible, with
weeds. The heathen body was alike averse to dissolution, entered alike
its unavailing protest against conversion into fleeting ashes or crumbling
dust ; but its knowledge of futurity, unenlightened by revelation, was as
the knowledge of an infant in the womb concerning this world, and
the pagan only possessed some such poor argument as that of Garosse
for his belief. " The most brutal of all brutes," says the learned Jesuit,
" instructs us in the doctrine of immortality, for the pig pushes always
forward, never contented with the present, but urging the earth with his
nose, cries in his own language Plus ultra." Such is the sentiment and
the voice of Nature.

" To me, indeed," says Cicero in the second book of his treatise
De Legibus, " to me, indeed, the most ancient form of sepulture
seems to be that which Cyrus adopted." This king, according to
Xenophon, told, his sons not to set him, when dead, in gold or silver, but
as quietly as possible in earth, the nourisher and producer of all things
good and fair. Those, indeed, who come unto her as a last city of refuge
she will in no wise cast out, but receive them, rejected by all the world,
in her wide bosom, with the true and unselfish love of a mother towards
her children. Yet even from earth's tender arms will men tear, like
wolves, what was once their enemy, as Sulla unearthed Marius. Fearing,
perhaps, a like fate for himself, the first of the Cornelian race commanded
his body to be burned. No such fear presented itself to him who blessed
the men of Jabesh Gilead for their burial of Saul.

The Egyptians considered fire as an animated beast, eating everything
it seized, and after all its food was swallowed dying with that which it had
devoured ; therefore they did not burn their dead. The Egyptian physicians
embalmed Israel — though we are told Jacob was afterwards interred in that
part of Abraham's landed estate known as the field of Machpelah, for which
he pleaded so pathetically with the sons of Heth, in order that he might bury

ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 331

his dead out of his sight. The manner of embalming is described fully in the
" Euterpe " and by Diodorus Siculus. It was shortly this : — The dead per-
son's female friends, supposing him to possess them as a man of property,
having disfigured their faces with dirt, ran about in public half naked, with
dishevelled hair. Arriving eventually at the embalmer's shop, they were
shown there samples of embalmed models, just as an enterprising wine-mer-
chant of the present day offers you samples of his excellent or fruity, or
full-bodied, or the Keverend Sir Charles Jodrell-recommended, madeira.
These samples, minutely described by Herodotus, were ticketed at dif-
ferent prices, and the disconsolate made such a selection as was suit-
able at once to their sorrow and their circumstances, combining doubtless,
in the majority of cases, economy with emotion. These accordingly acted
thus ; but the man who made the first gash with a sharp Ethiopian stone
for the sake of disembowelling the dead had a hard time. No sooner,
says Siculus, had he done so, than he was pursued with curses and mis-
siles, for the Egyptians think such a man worthy of hatred. Necessary
to the operation as a pantaloon to a pantomime, and rewarded, like that
unhappy artist, for his necessary action by the ingratitude of insult and
injustice, the reflective mind naturally asks with wonder, " How could
this cutter or paraschister be procured ? " But a solution of the diffi-
culty will doubtless be found in a consideration of the accursed love of
gold. The dead was returned to his^friends in a box made in his own
likeness. He then became an honoured though somewhat silent guest in
the house of his survivors. The bloodless shadow shut up in the scented
wood or stone shared henceforth the fortunes of those who were once
its fellows ; it failed not to attend them both at bed and at board, and
followed the family who had gone to such expense in its interest, cleaving
to it as Euth clave to her mother-in-law. But to every rule there is an
exception. There was one also to this otherwise inviolable attachment.
An embalmed parent was not only an ornamental article of furniture, a
memorial of the transitory nature of human existence ; he was, alas !
also a satisfactory security to a money-lender. A fast young Egyptian
might borrow a considerable sum on the body of any one of his deeply
regretted relatives, supposing of course that he or she had been em-
balmed in a highly respectable manner. It is almost needless to say that
respectability and riches were, even at that early period of the world's
history, in many respects synonymous expressions. Great dishonour,
however, was attached to any one who did not redeem this kind of
pledge at the earliest opportunity. Tempora mutantur I Not a pawnbroker
in the present age could probably be found willing to lend even a six-
pence on such a deposit. But the Egyptians held their dead in high
esteem. They were also a very susceptible people : on the death of a
cat they shaved off one of their eyebrows. They also introduced, it is
said, the black dress, which represents, among us, sincere sorrow so well
that it has usurped the name of " mourning ; " for which folly of fashion
Mr. Jay ought to be especially joyful, although it is not, unfortunately

332 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

for that gentleman, now the custom to extend our sympathies so far as to
wet expensive crape with warm tears for crows fallen asleep, or to purchase
a suit of inky raiment for a deceased fish, as we are told by Macrobius,
Crassus did, who on a day found a favourite lamprey dead in his fish-
pond, or stewe, and mourned for it as it were a daughter. He afterwards
buried it with the accustomed funeral rites, and when Domitius said,
" What a fool to lament a lamprey ! " the disconsolate mourner answered,
as well as his sobs would allow him, " I indeed weep bitterly for this
fish, but you shed no tear for the loss of three wives." Thus he with a
nipping taunt put that emperor to silence.

The Persians, like the Egyptians, avoided cremation, considering fire
not indeed an animal but a god, and thinking it a dishonour to the Deity
to impose on him the office of an undertaker. This opinion was shared by
Pythagoras, who desired that no mortal should partake in anything
divine. But the Persians, smearing over the body with wax, probably
with a view to preservation, deposited it in earth. The Magi, according
to the certain knowledge of Herodotus, never buried a body till after it
had been partially devoured by dogs and birds.

" Of what mighty moment is it to Theodoras," says the philosophic
Plutarch, " whether he decays under ground or above it." Only those,
he was of opinion, who retain the fables of their infancy, are affected by
a consideration of the manner of the disposal of their dead bodies. As a
bone well moistened in vinegar and ashes may be sundered by a thread,
and as men easily bend and fashion ivory which has been soaked in
Egyptian beer, but not otherwise, so such a consideration can only wound
those whose minds have been long steeped in ignorance and effeminacy.
Such an one must Mrs. Oldfield have been, the "poor Narcissa," who,
according to Pope, thought it odious to be buried in woollen, and wished
for a charming chintz and Brussels lace to adorn her lifeless carcass.
She is said to have been handsomely dressed in her coffin by her own
direction. The poet's "Betty, give this cheek a little red," is but an
exact reflection in too many instances of that idle vanity in woman which
would cater for admiration at the very point of departure, and continue
its lifelong custom and delight in deceiving mankind even after death.

The Scythian kings were, according to Herodotus, buried in a square
grave, but their bodies were first stuffed with parsley and other ingre-
dients, and then, sewn up and well waxed, were carried about in a waggon.
Politeness required hard things of those whom the dead body honoured
with a visit ; each man was expected to chop off a piece of his ear, to
lacerate his nose, and pierce his left hand with an arrow. Accordingly
this visit usually created, to borrow a flower from the newspapers, "a
gloomy sensation in the neighbourhood." As the courteous but ill-
educated German host at whose house one of the French kings, with all his
pomp of retinue, had been staying, said, wishing to leave a last lasting
good impression on the monarch's mind, Ah, Monseigneur, je n'oublierai
jamais LE memoire de ce jour, so the mutilated Scythians were little likely

ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 333

to lose the memory of the gracious visit of their king. The royal body
was then placed in its grave and a roof erected over it, and by its side, as
companions per .tier tenebricosum, were deposited the firstlings of the
monarch's menage in the way of domestic utensils, and, previously
strangled, his groom, his lackey, his messenger, his cupbearer, a concu-
bine or two, and his cook ; then fifty young men, his chief favourites,
were impaled on fifty horses, and left to guard the grave. Altogether this
royal interment must have been a matter of considerable expense, and
one would imagine caused some little especial excitement amongst those
whom the king delighted to honour. The burial of a private citizen was
comparatively simple. His friends placed his body on a cart, and made a
round of calls on all his relatives. It was incumbent on these to set out and
prepare a great feast ready for his arrival, of which they expected him to
partake, but on his failing to do so, those who brought him eat, drank,
and made merry in his stead. After being carried about in this way till
his presence was disagreeable, he was ultimately interred. But the
exequies of some of the tribes of the Scythians were yet simpler. Having
suspended the deceased body on a line, they left it. Others, combining
duty with convenience, dined on their dead. About these, Lucian
determines that they were not studious of friendship, drawing this con-
clusion from other circumstances, but especially from this fact, that they
were accustomed to eat their ancestors. The famous Ilicet, " the end of
joy, the end of sorrow," as Swinburne says, whose poem with this title
has been so grievously misunderstood, would correspond to some post-
prandial benediction of these Scythians, if they indulged in any, or grace
after meat. The Scythian cart is an exceptional feature, and may have
been the origin of our "hearse," or castrum doloris, though the original
meaning of that word seems to be an ecclesiastical chandelier, or trian-
gular harrow (Fr. herce), on which candles were placed a discretion during
the funeral obsequies.

There is no great difference in the funeral ceremonies of the various
peoples of India. Among the Mahrattas, who may be chosen as a great

type, a rffcTt, or frame of wood, on which to lay the body, is bought at
the market, as soon as any person has died, with some eight yards of
white linen to wind up the corpse, and TT^H"* or cow-dung cakes, for fuel,
and an earthen pot. The women in the meantime sit watching the
corpse and weeping in the dim light of a lamp which is kept burning
ten days, the usual time of the duration of mourning. The men assemble
on the verandah. As soon as the body has been placed on the frame, a
basin of water is thrown over it, and the male relatives shave off their

moustaches. A species of vegetable called cfSEJJ, or basil, is then put on

the body, which is also sometimes adorned with flowers. Then the chief
mourner leads the procession, with a sherd of the earthen pot containing

fire in his hand, followed by four supporting the rfT^t ^^e gereral

334 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

company follows, bare-headed and bare-footed, but no women or children
are ever present. Those who carry the corpse repeat continually the

sacred name of their god Kama. A certain tribe called 3J?TCn"3ft> chiefly

composed of money-lenders, say, ^^"Hsu, W^T<R> or> "Rama,
speaks, our brother Rama." On reaching the burning- ground, which is

called ^t*fT^T' or c*tv °f 6°^» ^rom ^e ye^ow fringe of the flames, men
are immediately hired to build the pyre, the body is placed on it, and long
wooden matches are applied. When the sharp detonating explosion of the

skull is heard, they say the deceased has reached ^ff^Jl?^, or the place

of beatitude ; they then with one accord crack a cocoa-nut. The bones
are collected and thrown into the Ganges.

In Thibet there is terrestrial and celestial burial. In the latter a
body is burnt and the ashes given to friends, in the former it becomes
the food of dogs and birds. There is for the most part a quadrumanous
indifference amongst the Thibetans, when not disturbed by the Lama
priests, red or yellow, as to the disposition of their dead.

In Otaheite the common folly of expectation of continued duration,
and the desire to avoid the night of nothing, has led to embalming, as
in Egypt. Each member of the deceased's family contributes to defray
the expense of this operation. As this people, like the Japanese, en-
tertains a serene disbelief in any future state whatever, it cannot be
charged with the absurdity of the subjects of Pharaoh, who preserved
bodies for reanimation without brains. The process is shortly this. The
dead, being cleaned and washed, and stuffed with antiseptics, is adorned with
sumptuous apparel, and reclines en grande tenue on a sofa as if alive.
So in this land it is literally true that every house has its skeleton. It is
then furnished with choice provisions. Several scenes are acted before it
in which it was once wont to delight. Favourite books and beautiful girls
are introduced for its inspection. The sweetest music of Otaheite satisfies
its ears. The gums and ointments in its body furnish it with the dain-
tiest perfumes. Its head is circled with a coronet of flowers. Occasionally,
as in Scythia, it makes a round of calls, visiting its most intimate friends ;
but this pleasure is transitory ; it is soon brought home and placed in a
corner. There it leans against those who have gone before, with its dry,
dusty, and bloodless face, which sometimes demands tears, but never drops
them ; and there — with mouth wide open, but not for song — it moulders
gradually away, a ruin of old mortality and the forgotten times of a
passed world. Soon it becomes a question as idle as those of Tiberius
concerning the female appellation of Achilles and the song of the Sirens to
ask its name. So the dream of diuturnity in its former tenant ends,
and it serves but as one more sad proof that it is feeding the wind and
ploughing the waves to hope for any patent of security against oblivion
under the sun.

But this vanity of affecting integral external conservation has not

ON THE DISPOSAL OP THE DEAD. 335

been without good fruit. It has afforded harmless amusement to an-
tiquarians in ticketing sarcophagi at their own discretion, a gentle
stimulant of fearful curiosity to the visitor at the British Museum, in
which the mummies are the chief attraction, and valuable specifics to the
faculty of former times. We may believe that Francis I. carried in his
pocket as a charm a piece of Pharaoh ; but when we are assured that the
ancient Saxons mixed Mizraim with their meat, we are forced to conclude
that the writer has mistaken for "mummy" "mum," a composition
of wheat and ale. After all it is as well, perhaps, to subsist in books as
in bones, and there may be no better bitumen than the virtue of Seneca
or Epicurus, no myrrh or salt more antiseptic than the wit of Lucian or
Bidpai.

The disposal of their dead by different nations, ever since that
disastrous water-burial of forty days, has been generally more or less
affected by the diversity of their religious beliefs. The libations which
the Eomans poured over the ashes of those on whom they prayed
that dust might rest lightly, not, as Martial says satirically, lest the
dogs should find a difficulty in unearthing their bones, were supposed
to nourish their subtle shadows, which wandered by Cocytus, named
of lamentation loud, and Phlegethon, whose waves rolled torrent fire. If
a man died and left none to perform these sacred rites behind him, it was
thought that he found hunger a sharp thorn, starving in the city of the
dead. The Komans, as many other nations, gave wages for weeping to
women, styled by them praeficae. These " sophists of lamentation," as
Lucian calls them, first countenanced that weeping — for "women must
weep," as Mr. Kingsley assures us — which has now become so fashion-
able. These led the song of sadness and commenced, for sufficient
considerations, that cutting of hair which the dead held dear. Of little
consequence was it to these, as little indeed as to those laughable if not
pitiable merchants of sorrow whom we now call mutes, whether the
condition of the dead was better or worse ; they contented themselves with
honouring the custom which brought them hire. These praised the good
and evil indifferently for gain ; but they delivered an illustrious example,
inasmuch as they praised only the absent, and never themselves.

There is a pretty fable of ,33 sop on this subject of a rich man who
had two daughters, whereof one having died, professional mourners were
hired to make lamentation. Then her sister said, " Alas for us and woe
to us wretched ones, for this is our own familiar sorrow, and we cannot
sufficiently weep, while those to whom it is of no concern beat their breasts
thus and so passionately bewail." But the mother, out of long- experi-
enced time and wisdom, gave her this present counsel, " Wonder not, my
daughter, if these weep for wages."

The religion of the Romans induced them to put an obol, a coin of the
least value, into the corpse's mouth, as pay for Charon, with his beard of
snow and eyes of flame, the unamiable ferryman of hell. Nothing can
be done, it seems, even there, without money. It is difficult, however,

336 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

to determine what divine voice declared an obol to be the proper payment
for being punted in that light, leaky, lurid, and ferruginous pinnace across
the Acherusian marsh, too deep to wade through, too broad to swim over,
or for the spare ghost of Lesbia's lamented sparrow to pass by flying.
Nor has the torch of inspiration as yet shed any light on the nature of
traffic, if traffic there be, in the world below, whether the obol of ^Egina,
of Athens, or of Macedon was current in that market of everlasting
twilight. The bodies were washed which were about to bathe in Lethe,
and precious ointments, which might have been sold for much and given
to the poor, were wastefully consumed on carcasses already passing into
corruption and a stink. The season's finest flowers fell on their up-
turned faces, just as in some villages now the perfumes of lavender,
marjoram, and rosemary are married to rottenness and putrefaction;
and they were finely attired in rich and fashionable raiment, lest they
might catch cold on the journey, or be discovered naked by the three -
headed and decent Cerberus. For flowers roses, when they could be
gotten, were always preferred ; they fleeted fast, but their brief existence
was perhaps as dear as the dry and dusty immortality of the immortelles
in Pere la Chaise. These ceremonies were accompanied by that noise of
women's wailing which destroys all the majesty of grief, by showers of tears
which, according to Chrysostom, clear the air of sorrow, by beating of
breasts, and tearing of ensanguined cheeks and valuable raiment and hair
unbought, by defiling the head with dust, and by a general display of
grief which made the living more pitiable than the dead; for those
wallowing on the floor dashed their faces against the stone, but these
lay silent and decorous, sober and dignified, crowned with their diadems
of flowers. After the body had been fired with averted face the word
" Yale " was uttered, in which we must suppose regard was had rather to
custom than to etymology. This was cried thrice with a loud voice, but
not even the voice of Stentor can wake the dead, like the kiss of the
fairy prince in Tennyson's tale.

It is very well for poets to sing that the dust of those who differ in
dignity is alike, and for parsons to improve that truth with less for-
cible if more lengthy language. There has been always, and it may be
said there will continue to be, so long as human nature remains the
same, one grave for the rich and another for the poor — a large pyre for
the generation whose eyes are lifted up, and a little one for the lowly and
meek. Those at Rome were buried in the Puticulae, beyond the Esquiline
gate, a portion of which being afterwards bestowed by Augustus on
Ma3cenas, was converted by him into a garden, where a man might enjoy a
walk in the sunshine, without seeing any sad mevwnto mori in white
and mouldering bones. But here at one time a wretched slave used to
carry the body of his fellow, packed in a cheap and narrow coffin, to their
common burial-ground ; here the criminal suffered the reward of his crimes,
and rested in a place not to be disturbed by any legislation of this world ;
and here wolves and Esquiline birds were requested to fight among them-

ON THE DISPOSAL OP THE DEAD. 837

selves for a rich repast afforded by the unburied members of those old ladies
who had been unfortunate enough to excite Horace's indignation. But
the nobles, the blue blood of patrician Rome, lay far apart from this vile
contaminating herd. The wonted fires of hatred against the plebeians lived
safely in ashes which rested so distant from the Puticulaa as the Campus
Martius. It has been affirmed that lawyers were honoured by burial
here for having kept the citizens in healthful concord while alive, but the
reason given is incomprehensible, except as a stroke of lively satire.

The burial-grounds of St. Giles and Westminster Abbey are not more
widely distinct with regard to their use as places of interment than were
the two Ceramici in the city of the violet crown, if Suidas may be believed.

So, too, the Hebrews made a difference among those who called
corruption father, and mother and sister the worm. Josiah, in his holy
zeal, brought out the goddess Asherah, or "the grove," as it appears,
somewhat darkly, in our version, unto the brook Kedron, and there burnt
her ; and, not contented with that, afterwards stamped her small to
powder. He then cast this powder on the " graves of the children of the
people." By this Hebraism we must understand the common burial-
place ; though why the poor people should have been insulted with this
casting of unholy dust in the faces of their dead is not clear. Urijah,
too, we are told, was cast into the graves of the "common people," a
phrase which is expressed in Hebrew by the same words which the exe-
getists have before, somewhat capriciously, it would seem, translated
"children of the people." But Uzziah was buried with his fathers, in
the field of the burial which belonged to the kings ; and Joab in his own
house in the wilderness. The Spartans seem to have buried their dead
within their city wall, after the institution of Lycurgus, who wished thus
to accustom the Laconian youth to honour death, but not to fear it. In
the beginning of the Roman State every man appears, like Joab, to have
been interred in his own house or garden, a circumstance to which may
probably be ascribed the origin of the worship of the lares. The law of the
Twelve Tables, however, forbad burial within the city. The idea of choosing
a church as a place of burial seems not to have existed in any nation of
antiquity. Corpses were not by the Greek or Roman or Asiatic suffered,
through the pride or superstition of their former occupants, to decom-
pose in or near the habitations which were consecrated to their gods. A
window to this practice was opened by Constantine, who is said to have been
buried in the Church of St. Peter at Rome. The custom was forbidden by
Valentinian and Theodosius. Gregory the Great gave as a reason for bury-
ing people in churches the hope that their relations, looking continually on
their graves, might be led to offer up prayers for them. Orate pro anima
miserrimi peccatoris has brought no little profit to the ecclesiastical purse.
In 1775 there was an editdu roi in Paris against the abuse of interment in
places set apart for prayer. But reason and law are alike of little avail when
pitted against inveterate custom and gross ignorance. The congregation
continued to give humble and hearty thanks over the bodies of their
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 183. 17.

388 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

friends and relations ; corruption and magnificence walked side by side ;
and, mingled with the heavy perfume of the sacred incense, rose the foul,
pestilential vapours breathed out of the wet earth in the sunshine after
the rain.

In England we have -early instances both of cremation and interment.
The ancient Britons were indifferent whether they concluded in water,
after the theory of Thales, or whether, after that of Heraclitus, declining
a material degeneration into mud, they shut up in fire, and left behind
them only a few ashes as the material keepsake of their having been. It
was to them a matter of unconcern whether ashes returned to ashes or
dust to dust, whether their bones, like those of the King of Edom, were
burnt into lime, or whether they lay buried in the land of worms. The
Druids, says Pomponius Mela, taught that souls were eternal, and that
there was another life after death, in order that men might fight with greater
courage, not considering the be-all and the end-all here. To countenance
this idea they burned and buried with the dead such articles as are but of
use to . the living. A strange assortment of utensils has indeed been
found in urns and coffins, the appurtenances of affectionate superstition
and blind solicitude — coins, combs, nippers, lamps, lachrymatories, and here
and tli ere a Jew's-harp, which the relations of those gone before imagined
they might require after their limbs had been loosened by lasting cold,
and they had left all the passes of this world to accompany Kabelais in
his search for le grand peut-etre. But the presence of these objects, of
use or interest to the living, was inimical to the repose of the dead.
Trajan had but little chance of resting in peace in his urn of gold.
These deposits, frequently of great value, afforded a rich prey to other
robbers than the learned Dousterswivel. From our religious point of
view supererogatory, they have yet afforded much valuable scientific in-
formation.

The custom of burning seems to have ceased with paganism. The
Saxons having been blessed with the light of the Gospel, suffered the
light of their funeral fires to be blown out. Of all the heathen nations
the Danes retained the custom of burning the last, being the last to become
Christians. Some of their urns, as in other nations, are larger than others.
These were intended to confer greater dignity on the contents. The ashes
of a herdsman, however, weigh little less than those of Hannibal, which
Juvenal estimated at a few ounces. A very tiny pitcher was too large for
him dead for whom alive the whole world was too small. The larger urn
but supplied the deficiency of weight in the dead, as a larger house supplies
the deficiency of worth in the living.

Other animals than man practise sepulture or cremation ; not to mention
that illustrious bird the phoenix, the little busy bee is wont to carry out its
dead, and many of its fellows accompany the exequies as mourners. There
is a tradition, of which we leave it to the natural historian to determine the
truth, that ants, those examples for the sluggard, enclose their dead,
grieving bitterly, in husks of grain, just as humanity casts its dead into

OH THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 839

a coffin. For the children of the people, or the common herd of ants,
there is, says Plutarch, a cemetery especially appointed. Cleanthes, though
he denied that other animals than man were endowed with reason, says
that he once saw some ants travelling in a direct line, and wearing a nar-
row way to a neighbouring people, supporting the dead body of one of
their own on their shoulders. When they reached the territory of their
destination they were met by several outlying sentinels, who having held
a colloquy with the heads of the advancing host, descended to their own
hollow home to communicate with their rulers, and after a while re-
appeared. This descending and ascending of these small angels was re-
peated several times, and it may well be supposed that they acted an
intermediate part in the negotiation of some unforeseen difficulty which
an evil destiny had called into being. At last these brought out, though
not without extreme difficulty, a worm, apparently as the price of the
redemption of the corpse ; for as soon as this chattel had been received by
the other party they left the body of their dead friend and in all haste
departed. Such acts as these, and the preliminary biting of corn, lest the
wet ground of winter should cause their grain to grow ; their civil habit of
giving place to any burdened traveller on their highway ; their endurance
of toil and their exemplary prudence, have rendered these insects an image
of goodness — a tiny drop of clear water in which is reflected our world of
virtues. An elephant, says ^lian, however urgent the mission on
which he travels, if he meets with a dead brother by the way, casts with
his trunk a branch, or a little earth, or a particle of wandering sand, on
his unburied bones as a holy rite, and to avoid any accusation of impiety,
which these classical beasts consider themselves liable to when neglecting
to comply with such funereal ceremonies. Therefore he thrice throws on
him the dust or the broken bough, and goes on his way in haste, not
having dishonoured the common end of all.

Grotius is of opinion that no praiseworthy deed was ever done by man
without God having placed the example and pattern thereof in a brute.
The silkworm, which encloses its inconsiderable and shrunken body in a
soft and silken winding-sheet of flossy gold, may have given the first hint
to the embalmers of ancient Egypt in their endeavours to render the
bodies of their dead like the shoes of the holy people in the wilderness.
The primitive method of burial among the Garamantes, which consisted
in scratching a hole in the sand and putting the dead in it, without more,
might have been taken from the observance of rabbits and foxes and other
troglodytes, who, like the friars in " La Favorita," dig their graves during
life, and may be imagined exhorting one another with sentences of a like
kind — Fratei! scaviam Vasilo in cut s'addorme il duol. Martial tells little
tales about an ant, a viper, and a bee, each shut up and shining in amber,
like ^Ethiopian corpses in crystal; " the bee, I suppose," says the poet,
" wishing this tomb of nectar in return for its life of labour." These
buried with such a golden burial in the frozen tears of the sisters of
Phaethon require no Siste, Viator, on their grave— a legend which has

17—2

340 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE

been ingeniously transferred from the heathen highway to the Christian
Church, where it bewilders with its mysterious significance a congregation
scarcely, except in a metaphorical sense, to be called " travellers," and
who will certainly stay, if decently educated, till divine service be concluded.

Martial's tales may be regarded possibly as idle fables, but few will
venture to question the veracity of St. Jerome, 'who gives a yet more
startling account of interment by brutes in his life of the holy Paul of
Thebes, the first Christian hermit. The blessed Paul, being now 118 years
old, was bidden in a dream to take a journey into the desert to meet one
still holier than himself. On his way, with his face set against the
burning sun, he finds a hippocentaur, and having crossed himself inquires
the residence of his fellow-servant. But the hippocentaur, gnashing out
upon him with his teeth something barbarous, and breaking rather than
uttering speech, distorted his mouth, horrid with bristles. Nevertheless
he indicated the way by the extension of an off fore-foot. Jerome, not
wishing to lead any one astray, professes himself at this passage of the
narrative uncertain as to whether this animal was the Devil, or one of the
monstrous growths of the wilderness. The blessed Paul eventually finds
Antony, the object of his search, a man of gravity from his youth upwards,
and a venerable athlete of the Church, and then expires without being desired.
Antony, thereupon, regrets that he has not a spade by him to dig a grave.
Being in this difficulty, and reflecting that it was three days' journey to the
nearest monastery, behold, two lions run out suddenly from the interior, with
their manes floating over their necks. Quibus aspcctis primo exhorruit, says
St. Jerome, which indeed was very natural. Afterwards, reflecting on the
Deity, and fortified by a prayer, he cared for them as little as a fox for a
couple of turtle doves or two young pigeons. The lions in the meantime
advanced straight to the body of the blessed old man, and there stood
wagging each his tail, and roaring so that one might know they were
lamenting as far as their nature allowed. They then commenced dig-
ging up the ground with their feet at a little distance, and vieing with
each other in tossing out the sand, they soon made a hole large enough
for a human body. Then, as it were asking hire for their labour, they
came up to Antony moving their ears, with dejected necks and licking his
feet and hands. Antony immediately knew that they sought his bless-
ing. And when he had given it they departed, and so Paul was buried.
This history, if it were lawful to compare sacred things with profane,
might be likened to the familiar legend of the Babes in the Wood, whom
pious Robin Redbreast covered with fallen leaves, a tomb as satis-
factory, and perhaps more widely celebrated, than that of Ninus or
Ozymandias.

The fashion of interment of some nations is from our point of view
extremely eccentric. The Massageta wife did not, for instance, wait till
her husband, having fallen sick, was dead, but mixing him with a little
mutton made her meal. The people of that nation said that it was far
better to be devoured by women than by worms. Moreover, if their

ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 341

relations lingered, they charged them straitly, and sometimes besought
them with tears in their eyes, not to delay, as their flesh was by such idle
folly likely to become deteriorated. Valetudinarians were probably rare in
that country, and Barry's Revalenta Arabica would doubtless have hung
on hand. Nor was it of any use for an invalid to deny with an oath that
he was sick. His relatives, careless of his denial, nevertheless arranged
the banquet. Few, it is recorded, of the Massagetse reached old age. Other
nations, less impatient, waited till all was over, and then, having had the
head gilt, devoured the body. Others buried their dead in the bowels of
beasts. No Greek dormitory was to be discovered in their metropolis,
no Hebrew house of the living, no Christian garden or God's acre ; they
gave the image of Divinity to dogs, God's work to wolves, and Nature's
master- piece and the perfection of creatures to crows and jackals.

In this article want of epace forbids anything but an allusion to tho
Nasamones, who buried their dead in a sitting posture, and took the greatest
care lest they should die recumbent ; to the ^Ethiopians, who enclosed their
bodies, being embalmed, in a species of crystal, where they are very con-
spicuous and not in any way offensive ; to the Chinese, who formerly burnt
the servants with their masters, but are now content with burning the
images of the former, doubtless to the supreme satisfaction of the per-
sons signified, cut in tin-foil; to Birmah, Mexico, Peru, where the dead are
burnt, unless paupers, when, as the process of cremation is expensive,
they are thrown into the river with a stone.

But a little larger mention must be made of that tribe of savages in
Northern Africa who, if travellers may be believed, sigh and weep when
a man is born, but fall to dancing and singing when he dies. This, how-
ever, they do less for joy than to conceal sorrow. They soon lay aside
tears and lamentations, but it is long ere they subdue sadness and regret.
It is considered creditable in women to cry, but in men not to forget.
These benighted heathens think it foolish to lament a common con-
dition of nature which, for all they know, may lead to the greatest
happiness, and must be an exemption from all earthly ills. There-
fore they hire no tears when they burn their corpses ; for they
practise cremation, though they also bury them where their land is sterile.
There is no ostentation in their funerals, nor any destruction of good cloth
or linen garments ; they place nothing about the dead which might be
useful to the living, considering it to be an idle waste to do so. Then the
body is perfunctorily fired and the ashes thrown into the air. Those who
desire it deposit them in the ground, and the sod rises as their sepulchre,
but they despise the high and laborious honour of monuments. After this
they repeat some verses suitable to the age and condition of the " person who
was," for so in their language they express the dead. As, for instance, if
he who died was a youth, instead of lamenting his immature death, as other
nations, they say something of this kind, not that they suppose it will be
heard by the dead, but that their words may teach wisdom to the living :
" You, being at rest, will no longer thirst or feel hunger or any cold; love

842 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

and ambition will never trouble you more. You are now exempt from
distress and from disease. You have escaped from envy and from hatred,
rom pain and from fever, from lightning and from tempest, from murder
and from death." They say such things as these, nor do they suppose
that eyes which cannot see will be saddened with darkness, or that ears
which cannot hear will be solaced with panegyric. They ridicule the
ceremonies of other countries so far as they understand them, satirically
observing of the common practice of binding up the jaw, that it is done
doubtless to prevent the deceased laughing at the absurdities which take
place at his funeral. But these, having thus disposed of their dead in
silence, with the exception of the few words just mentioned, return to their
homes, and eat and drink as usual, nor is it necessary for any one to stand
by and encourage them to do so by a suggestion that nature will give
way unless supported.

uLove," says the lady — bride, concubine, or church, whoever she
may be — who speaks in the Song of Solomon, " love is strong as death."
In the service of the Solemnisation of Matrimony, the man having taken
the right hand of the woman, gives his troth to her to love her only
until death parts them. This seems to show, notwithstanding the
opinion of the Shunamite, that over love too destruction reigns supreme.
Still some, by mingling their ashes, have passionately endeavoured to
prolong their living union. Thus Domitian ordered his dust to be
mingled with that of Julia. There is some shadow of satisfaction to
those who have lived and loved on earth in this contemplation of being
for ever neighbours in the grave, in the quiet, silent seat, the lasting house
of clay appointed for all men living. The passionate prodigality of
Artemisia, who drank the ashes of Mausolus, is feebly represented at
the present day by a lukewarm desire which is satisfied by being side
by side with the beloved object.

Petrarch, in one of his epistles, complains that the sentiment of piety
was so low at his time that scarcely a dozen people could be found true
believers. This gangrene was indeed so general that atheism was no
longer considered a vice, and the most shameless provision was made
by wicked men in their wills for the disposal of their body. Some
were so lost to all sense of decency and devotion as voluntarily to
resign the privilege of interment in consecrated ground, perhaps from a
malignant desire to disappoint the ecclesiastical labourer of his hire, and
to declare that their bodies should be opened for the advancement of
science, and afterwards cast at the roots of an unfruitful tree for the pur-
poses of manure. There is a will of a brutal lawyer of Padua, whose
only excuse may be said to be madness, of which these are excerpts : —
(1.) Any one who weeps at my death to be disinherited.
(2.) He who laughs the loudest to be my chief heir.
(3.) The walls of my house not to be hung with black, nor the floor to
be covered with it ; but on the floor flowers to be scattered, and green
boughs hung against the walls. None to put sackcloth on their loins.

ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 343

(4.) All the pipers, singers, and musicians of the town to be summoned,
with all their instruments, and to play their merriest madrigals.

(5.) No priest to appear in sable to sadden the general joy ; nor any
requiem to be sung, nor Miserere, nor Libera, nor mortuary mass, but only
Bacchanalian and erotic melodies.

The evil example spread like wildfire or a drop of oil among men
actuated by foul infidelity or a dislike to pay the necessary fees. Another
ordered his body to be sewn up in a pig's skin ; another wished to be
buried in the market quite naked, clothed, as the Indians say, with the
points of the compass ; another in amber, as the flies, which cause more
wonder in their position than in their rarity or richness ; another in honey,
a disciple of Democritus, Alexander the Great. Another gave his body to
the anatomists, saying that Nature teaches us to use the bodies of the
dead to preserve those of the living, and that we ought not to honour what
she dishonours ; another ordered his body to be thrown into the sea, for
the benefit of his wife, who had sworn to dance on it. Most of these men
honoured their own body as little as the beggars of St. Innocent
honoured those of others, according to Rabelais, when he makes Panta-
gruel say of Paris, que c'estoit une bonne mile pour vivre, mais non pour
mourir ; car les Gueux de Saint-Innocent se chauffoient le cul des ossements
des morts. The legislation of Paris should have copied that of the Twelve
Tables, which forbad burial within the city, and also no less wisely the
presence of any gold about the corpse except that which fastened its
teeth. Another commanded that the tree called ^j.^^, or Arabian aloe,
should be planted over his grave, intending an ironical reference to the
patience required in waiting for the resurrection.

That sea-burial of him who desired it for his wife's sake would not
have suited Ovid, who preferred a less unstable requietorium on land. He
was unwilling to feed those finny fishes which the fish- eating Ethiopians
fattened with their dead. A shipwreck was indeed a matter of mighty
fear to the Greeks and Eomans generally. The concern of the brave and
swift-footed Achilles is graphically described by Homer, when that chief-
tain found himself about to bulge in the river Xanthus ; so the limbs of
the pious Eneas were loosened with cold on a similar occasion. Partially
this fear was owing to their fancy of flitting a hundred years about the
banks of the Styx, to whom NON facilis jacturd scpulchri, but chiefly to that
common error which, investing the dead with the attributes of the living,
made them dread being dashed against rocks, and rent by the fierce talons
of ravenous sea-fowls. This fallacy was well exposed by Diogenes, who
desired to be flung out as dung on the face of the field, and when his
friends objected, " Dogs will devour you," answered smiling, " Put, then,
a stick in my hand to drive them away."

Eccentricities in the disposal of the dead are rare in England, where,
as the bard observes —

Custom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent.

344 ON THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD.

In a museum, however, at Manchester, mentioned by De Quincey, is a lady
mummy, properly labelled and placed in a clock-case, over the glass face
of which a veil of white velvet hangs. Bentham, the celebrated jurist,
ordered his body to be dissected and the skeleton afterwards put together,
clothed, and the whole seated in a diaphanous house on wheels. He is said
to be preserved in this condition, with a stick in his hand, at the present day,
in a back room of University College. Inspired by that sad sight, some
witty fellow produced what he was pleased to call an anagram on the strength
of the change of position of a single letter: " Jeer my bent ham." The
jest is deficient, perhaps, in point and polish, but in other respects it is per-
fect. People have been buried in various positions, with their heads turned
to every quarter of the compass, and a world of words has been written in
defence of each position. The advocates of cremation say that one, and
not the least, of its advantages consists in its rendering all idle dispute
about position unnecessary. Many have been buried standing, sitting, and
lying — lying supine or prone — as Diogenes wished to lie in this world turned
upside-down, that at the time of the generaf resurrection and restoration
he might be found as flat on his back as a flounder or old Bill Bowling.
Some have desired to be buried without coffins, and it seems probable, from
the absence of the name of this contrivance in the Burial Service, that
at the time of the compilation of that formula it was not in common
use. The officiating priest, it will be remembered, speaks invariably of the
corpse or body. Others buried in coffins or vaults have desired that the
lids should not be soldered down, and that the door of the vault should
have the key inside, as if they dreaded the absence, after their long inter-
lude of sleep, of some angel to roll away the stone from the mouth of
their sepulchre.

345

THE sublime picture drawn by the Greek dramatist, of a great and beroic
being struggling against adversity and tbe gods, seems almost to find its
modern counterpart in Sbelley battling with tbe inequalities and miseries
of tbe world. Tbat a super- sensitive poet, and one in wbom tbe imagina-
tion beld dominant sway, sbould also exbibit tbe keenest desire to benefit
bis fellow-men in numberless practical modes, is one of tbe most singular
episodes in literature. Yet tbe intensity of Shelley's devotion to tbeso
objects was sucb tbat if bis intellectual powers bad been less strong and
comprebensive, we sbould bave been forced to tbe conclusion that be was
a mere enthusiast and fanatic. A study of the method of his life, how-
ever, on its practical side, will lead to the opposite result, and convince us
that bis schemes for the amelioration of mankind sprang from a strong
heart and not from an ill-balanced mind ; that he was in reality far in
advance of the age in which he lived — it is to be feared even in advance
of many ages yet to come. Had it not been that from the religious point
of view " that atheist Shelley" was a bugbear to society, we should have
beard more of some aspects of bis character which I consider might
justly make his name illustrious. Nevertheless, after a dispassionate
examination and sifting of his various projects and panaceas, and in spite
of his own firm belief that he was fitted to cope with the practical
government of men, I incline to tbe opinion that he was better adapted
to be the purifier of existing systems than the originator of others.
Binding up the wounds of humanity, and pouring in the oil and wine
as the good Samaritan, gave a natural outflow to that all-pervading
sympathy which seemed to throw a halo over his other characteristics.
His impetuosity and the wonderful force and directness of his moral sense
interfered, probably, with that just attitude of the judgment which should
primarily distinguish the reformer who moves by gradual stages — one
who does not proceed to legislative action until he has carefully weighed
all objections and obtained a satisfactory basis which permits of no
injustice to one man while a benefit is being secured for his brother.
Impatience is fatal to organic changes in society, and however beautiful
may be the enthusiasm which glows in the earnest reformer, if it be not
supported by other convincing and concrete qualities, it is apt to be
evanescent and to fail in accomplishing its end. Now Shelley was rather
a destroyer than a builder ; his eye was intently fixed upon one object ;
be desired to break up utterly the wrong and corruption of the world.
As to the processes by which this grand result was to be achieved, be

17—5

346 SHELLEY : POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.

was not always clear ; albeit, he never wavered in carrying on the war
against error and superstition. His enthusiasm was as noble and disin-
terested as that of any other man whose history has been bequeathed to us ;
and it extorted even from Byron the remark that Shelley was the best as
well as the ablest man he had ever known. It was in consequence of the
persecution which the author of Queen Mab suffered that his lordship
also affirmed his belief if the Christ people professed to worship
reappeared in the flesh they would again crucify him. So that we have
not to deal with a man who found a reciprocating sympathy in others,
but with one who, in spite of the great excellence of his personal
character and his benevolent purposes towards mankind, was hated with
a malignity which was as singular and wicked as it was profoundly
mysterious.

That was a drastic political programme with which Shelley, who had
only just passed his nineteenth year, crossed the Channel, proceeding
forthwith to expound it before the. Irish people. Catholic Emancipation
and a Repeal of the Union were the two chief points of his charter, and,
although at the time of his brief Irish campaign these points must to
many persons have seemed the height of absurdity, Catholic Emancipation
became an absolute fact a few years after the poet's death. Here, at any
rate, is evidence that, to some extent, the youthful reformer read the
needs of oppressed Ireland aright. Godwin overwhelmed Shelley with the
most lugubrious vaticinations respecting his visit to Ireland, and said he
felt it poignantly that the poet should probably have been led to take the
step through reading his Political Justice. The philosopher added —
" Shelley, you are preparing a scene of blood ! If your Associations take
effect to any extensive degree, tremendous consequences will follow, and
hundreds, by their calamities and premature fate, will expiate your error.
And then what will it avail you to say, « I warned them against this ; when
I put the seed into the ground I laid my solemn injunctions upon it, that
it should not germinate ? ' ' Godwin appears to have had almost a
morbid horror of associations, and his hostility to them is scarcely com-
patible with the exercise of that reason which peculiarly characterized
him. If associations and institutions have in numbers of cases worked
unmitigated evil, and do now, on the other hand, without their aid much
good must remain unsecured. The perfecting and not the abolition of asso-
ciations is what will ultimately prove of service to humanity. Shelley had
the courage to pursue his own course, and though his visit to Ireland was
abortive in one respect, yet the fact remains, as a writer has well pointed
out, that " an association, the mere probability of which Godwin looked
upon with terror as inevitably leading to bloodshed, anarchy, and defeat,
carried its point successfully, without violence, and without even a word
of insulting exultation over those who opposed it." * Yet in many minor
details I have no doubt whatever, as hinted in a previous paper, that the

1

* Shelley's Early Life. By Denis Florence MacCarthy.

SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 347

philosopher's clearer general wisdom was useful in curbing the exuberance
of the poet, and instrumental in controlling the fiery element of his
character, which might have proved disastrous to him had it remained
altogether unchecked.

Shelley was no more mistaken with regard to Ireland than have been
many eminent statesmen who, for the last fifty years, have found it a prob-
lem whose full solution is not even perceived yet. Experienced politicians
would, of course, regard with derision any attempt by a mere youth to
deal with a problem -which had overtaxed their own energies ; and the
apparently chimerical nature of Shelley's project doubtless lent force to
the absurd charge that the poet was afflicted with frenzy or madness. The
enthusiast always has to encounter this charge from the critic, for the latter
would not move in the elevation of the species unless the means he used
were such as to free him from adverse comment. The enthusiast, on the
contrary, goes if necessary with his life in his hand, as well as cherishing a
very decided and wholesome contempt for obloquy. Shelley was positively
in physical danger during his stay in Ireland, for at that time there existed
in England one of the most miserable of all modern Governments, and his
Majesty's councils were, in Irish matters, very largely swayed by an
infamous man whose despicable character differentiated him from all other
statesmen who ever wielded political power in this country. The treat-
ment which the Government meted out to many of the best patriots both
of this and the sister isle, was such as to make the very nation blush
for its boasted progress. The black croaking bird of Treachery was flying
hither and thither, betraying good men and true, and Shelley knew not but
that his turn to be betrayed might speedily arrive. Then, also/he had
all his private friends endeavouring to dissuade him from his task of
recommending pacificatory measures ; while Southey, for whom he had
hitherto had a profound respect, had completely changed his views on the
subject of Ireland and the Irish. This was a bitter blow to Shelley, and
I am not surprised to find that his admiration for his friend, in consequence
of his apparent tergiversation, was speedily on the wane. I have, with
others, a strong feeling of delight in the works of the author of Thalaba,
but it is impossible to deny that he laid himself open to the rhyming
strictures of Byron in the dedication of Don Juan, when he closes his
apostrophe thus : —

My politics as yet are all to educate :
Apostasy's so fashionable, too,

To keep one creed 's a task grown quite Herculean ; \

Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian ?

Certainly, Southey was far from a model of constancy in his views upon
any subject ; his political creed especially resembled that of the American
candidate who was dubious whether it coincided with that of his auditors,
and considerately and conveniently remarked, " Such are my views,
gentlemen ; but if they don't suit, they can be altered." At one time
Southey liked the Irish, giving them credit for the possession of genius ;

318 SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.

but in 1811 Shelley writes in a letter — " Southey hates the Irish; he
speaks against Catholic Emancipation. In all these things we differ."
But neither Southey nor any other person could proselytize Shelley from his
beliefs, and the latter exhibited a singular tenacity of judgment as well as
strength of conviction. It is worth while to examine briefly his Address
to the Irish People, of which some hundreds of copies were speedily put
into circulation. Shelley and his wife themselves distributed a great
number of copies of the pamphlet from the balcony of a house in Lower
Sackville Street. The appearance of the young English poet on such a
mission in Ireland naturally created considerable excitement in the popu-
lation. With regard to the pamphlet, it is very eloquent in parts, and in
some other respects has scarcely been done justice to by those who have
examined it, Godwin amongst the number, for instance. The latter com-
plained that Shelley, together with all too fervent and impetuous re-
formers, lacked the power of perceiving that almost every institution or
form of society was good in its place, and in the period of time to which
it belonged. "How many beautiful and admirable effects," says the
philosopher, " grew out of Popery and the monastic institution, in the
period when they were in their genuine health and vigour ! To them we
owe almost all our logic and our literature." But surely Shelley was not
ignorant of these facts? and I cannot but think Godwin did him a little
injustice in this matter. Because in the heat of argument, and for the
purposes of polemics, Shelley made no reference to these things in his
Address, it by no means follows that he either wilfully ignored, or was
ignorant of their probability. He had one object in view, and bent his
mind to the accomplishment of it, and for the time being that was all his
excitable temperament allowed him to do under the circumstances. The
pamphlet was not so much intended to convince by the coldness of its
logic as to rouse by the breadth of its sentiment, and for the attainment
of this object it was excellently devised. The author himself said in the
advertisement of his pamphlet, " The lowest possible price is set on this
publication, because it is the intention of the author to awaken in the
minds of the Irish poor a knowledge of their real state, summarily pointing
out the evils of that state, and suggesting rational means of remedy."
The Address opens by enforcing the necessity of toleration on the part of
all religionists, and it is not sparing in its rebukes of the Roman Catholics
(the very people whom the writer addressed) for the persecutions of
which they had been guilty in past times ; certainly a bold proceeding
on the part of one wishing to convert his hearers to his own views, but
one fully showing the ingenuous nature of Shelley's mind. The noble
liberality of his sentiments is apparent in the following passage — "Do not
inquire if a man be a heretic, if 'he be a Quaker, a Jew, or a Heathen ;
but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if he wish the
happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much a believer
and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a rascal, and a
knave. Despise and hate him as ye despise a tyrant and a villain. Ob,

SHELLEY : POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 349

Ireland ! thou emerald of the ocean, whose sons are generous and brave,
whose daughters are honourable, and frank and fair, thou art the isle on
whose green shores I have desired to see the standard of liberty erected —
a flag of fire — a beacon at which the world shall light the torch of Free-
dom ! " This may have been unpleasant writing to my Lord Castlereagh,
but it is not very inflammable stuff in itself. Shelley next deals with the
Protestants, and after proving that they also have been wickedly intolerant,
he proceeds to demonstrate the folly of persecuting men for their religion.
He then exhorts the Irish to disclaim violence in seeking their ends, and
to trust their cause solely to its truth. In prophetic words, he foretells
the triumph of Catholic Emancipation, adding, "I do not see that any-
thing but violence and intolerance amongst yourselves can leave an excuse
to your enemies for continuing your slavery." Other reforms and blessings
to humanity are to follow as men are purified and raised from their
debasement by virtue and knowledge. Passing on to another subject he
remarks that " the liberty of the press is placed as a sentinel to alarm
us when any attempt is made on our liberties. It is this sentinel, oh,
Irishmen, whom I now awaken ! I create to myself a freedom which
exists not. There is no liberty of the press for the subjects of British
Government." Mr. Finnerty, an Irishman, at that moment languished
in an English gaol for a press libel, and Shelley had taken up his cause
warmly, writing and speaking on his behalf. The Address is really a fine
rhetorical effort, but to show that Shelley did not depend upon it as a
final means for the accomplishment of his design, he appended a post-
script in which he said — " For the purpose of obtaining the emancipation
of the Catholics from the penal laws that aggrieve them, and a repeal of
the Legislative Union Act, and grounding upon the remission of the
church- craft and oppression, which caused these grievances, a plan of
amendment and regeneration in the moral and political state of society on
a comprehensive and systematic philanthropy which shall be sure though
slow in its projects ; and as it is without the danger and rapidity of revo-
lution, so will it be devoid of the time-servingness of temporising reform —
which in its deliberate capacity, having investigated the state of the
Government of England, shall oppose those parts of it, by intellectual
force, which will not bear the touchstone of reason. ... I conclude with
the words of Lafayette, a name endeared by its peerless bearer to every
lover of the human race, * For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that
she knows it ; to be free it is sufficient that she wills it.' " A few days
after this Address appeared, Shelley addressed a great meeting in Fish-
amble Street Theatre, Dublin. It seems by the reports in the Irish papers
to have been an excitable discourse, and though in one part of it, when
Shelley spoke of religion, he elicited signs of disapprobation, he suc-
ceeded in favourably impressing his audience. One speaker referred
to the generous eloquence of the young Protestant from England. The
weight of evidence certainly goes to prove that on the whole Shelley was
very favourably received, though as in all public meetings of this kind

350 SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.

there are sure to be a few turbulent spirits determined on breaking the
peace. An Englishman who heard Shelley on this memorable occasion,
and who hated him for the views he expressed, nevertheless testified to the
power of his oratory, and the ecstasy of the audience, in a letter to the
Dublin Journal. These tributes to Shelley have only been recovered
recently by the research of Mr. MacCarthy, and this would probably
account for the fact that an opposite view had hitherto been entertained
of Shelley's visit to Ireland, a'view which was also to some extent adopted
by Lady Shelley.

One is astounded at the intellectual force r.nd fertility which could
alternate at nineteen the production of such poems as Queen Mab and
those which immediately succeeded it, with the drawing up of formal
Proposals for an Association " which shall have for its immediate objects
Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Act of Union between
Great Britain and Ireland ; and grounding on the removal of these
grievances an annihilation or palliation of whatever moral or political evil
it may be within the compass of human power to assuage or eradicate."
There are frequent sentences in these " Proposals " which are sententious,
eloquent, and imbued with the spirit of a strong and true philosophy. As
a whole, they lack reasonableness, and to that extent Godwin's criticism of
them was accurate ; but they were unreasonable simply because they
pre-supposed that all to whom they were addressed would at once
apprehend their spirit and forthwith endeavour to carry them into effect.
Man is a reasonable animal, it is true, but not in the bulk ; it is the
individual who does duty for the community; for in all conscience the
fools in every age are in a majority. Shelley, therefore, lost sight of
this fact, and addressed men everywhere, and under all circumstances, as
being amenable to reason ; an error to which his eyes were afterwards
partially opened, begetting in him thereby no small measure of disgust.
It would be curious to know what the Government of the time thought of
the poet's proposals for a monster Association ; but I am bound to
say that the proposals • themselves are drawn up with calmness and
dignity. The rhetoric is tempered, and the logic placed in the fore-
front. The writer proceeds to remark that his association would
question established principles, and though a philanthropic association
has nothing to fear from the English Constitution, which is always
capable of widening and strengthening its basis, it may expect dangers
from its government ; but that fact only proved the necessity for such
an institution. And to justify himself for thus appealing for help
towards gaining the grand end he contemplates, the author reminds
the people of Ireland that " though the Parliament of England
were to pass a thousand bills, to inflict upon those who determined to
utter their thoughts a thousand penalties, it could not render that
criminal which was in its nature innocent before the passing of such
bills." In these pages there is a vigorous onslaught upon the principles
of Mr. Malthus, and Shelley also endeavours to show that the French

SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHKOPIST. 351

philosophers, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, and Condorcet, were only
partial reformers of society, and consequently failed in their work of
renovation. But what of the practical effect of these eloquent proposals
for a gigantic philanthropic Association ? Alas ! in searching for the
answer we must turn to the disappointed Shelley, in his lodgings in Dublin,
after he had cast them forth upon the world, waiting for converts to his
principles, when no man came unto him ! The revulsion of feeling must
have been great when hope was destroyed in the bosom of this youth, who
had not yet attained his twentieth year. Kings, Parliaments, and society
had never yet accomplished what he saw foreshadowed to a surety in his
proposals, and his joy was turned into bitterness. Shall we laugh at the
sanguine soul which had thus gone out of itself, and prophesied blessed-
ness for the whole of the human race ? or shall we yield to him the
sentiment of affection for the manifestation of his noble and absorbing
desires ? The latter is demanded from us, even though mental conviction
of the futile character of his schemes goes side by side with the sentiment.
Doubtless Shelley moved, or desired to move, too fast ; and Godwin
truly pricked the bubble when he told Shelley that he exhorted persons
whom he had himself described as "of scarcely greater elevation in the
scale of intellectual being than the oyster — thousands huddled together,
one mass of animated filth," to take the redress of grievances into their
own hands. The poet began building the perfect edifice of humanity by
laying its topmost stone before the foundations. Although, as we have
seen, he exhibited greater political insight than the philosopher, the
latter was able ruthlessly to shatter the various stages by which he hoped
to arrive at his end. Godwin argumentatively pleads with his young
admirer in these terms : " You say, ' What has been done within the last
twenty years ? ' Oh, that I could place you on the pinnacle of ages,
from which these twenty years would shrink to an invisible point ! It is
not after this fashion that moral causes work in the eye of Him who looks
profoundly through the vast, and allow me to add, venerable machine of
human society. But so reasoned the French revolutionists. Auspicious
and admirable materials were working in the general mind of France ;
but these men said, as you say, 'When we look on the last twenty
years, we are seized with a sort of moral scepticism — we must own we
are eager that something should be done.' And see what has been
the result of their doings ! He that would benefit mankind on a com-
prehensive scale, by changing the principles and elements of society,
must learn the hard lesson — to put off self and to contribute by a
quiet but incessant activity, like a rill of water, to irrigate and fertilise
the intellectual soil." Sound but cruel advice to one who would change
the face of society in a day. There is no disputing the accuracy of the
philosopher's position. Eighteen hundred years ago England was in-
habited by savages, and even at this day we have not completely exorcised
the order, for statistics demonstrate that there is a goodly per-centage of
the population of this Christian country who annually kick their wives to

852 SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHKOPIST.

death. Exasperating as the slow growth of benevolence and virtue may
be, we cannot hasten the process, and a strictly political basis of operation
will never ensure the happiness of the entire race, or bathe the universe
in " sweetness and light."

Knowing what is at length proved concerning Shelley's great interest
in political matters, and his solicitude for the welfare of the people of the
United Kingdom, we experience no difficulty in utterly discrediting the
random statement of one of his biographers that he hated newspapers,
and that none ever reached him while at the University. On the face of
it, it is an incredible statement, and the poet's own verified correspon-
dence places its complete inaccuracy beyond a doubt. Even while at
Oxford, it is clearly shown that Shelley was " alive to the passing political
events of the day, writing to the editors of newspapers, identifying
himself with their opinions, congratulating them on their triumphs, indig-
nant at their persecution, and, stranger than all, publishing a poem for the
sustainment in prison of one of them who was considered by the leading
Liberals of the day, as well as by Shelley, a martyr for the liberty of the
Press." More than one of his biographers assert that they never saw
Shelley reading a newspaper, and yet at the time of his acquaintance with
them he was taking a keen interest in newspaper warfare, and writing to
several journals. Even a Boswell is sometimes caught napping, but this
is not surprising when we remember that aliquando bonus Homerus
dormitat. Mr. Peacock's papers in Fraser show that Shelley read with
great avidity the writings of Cobbett, Leigh Hunt, and others, in the
political journals ; and whatever may be believed as to his fitness to cope
with political problems, it is an unquestionable fact that at one time they
occupied a considerable portion of his thoughts. In one letter, written in
September 1819, Shelley says, " Pray let me have the earliest political
news which you consider important at this crisis;" and in another he
says, writing from Leghorn, " Many thanks for your attention in sending
the papers which contain the terrible and important news of Manchester."
At the very time, in truth, during which Shelley was said to have displayed
an incurable aversion to newspapers, he was considering the project of
floating one himself, of which he purposed to retain the supreme direction.

Further, as a follower of Milton in declaring for the free and unfettered
liberty of the press, Shelley wrote a letter to Lord Ellenborough which in
some passages is unsurpassed in eloquence by any prose writer since the
time of the blind and sublime poet who penned the Areopagitica : A Speech
for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Macaulay well described Milton's
prose as " a perfect field of cloth of gold, rich with gorgeous embroidery ; "
and, although the prose eloquence of Shelley is not so massive and stately, it
is in parts more fervid and impassioned. A severe sentence was passed
on a London bookseller, named Eaton, for publishing the third part of
Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, and this called forth the letter of Shelley
referred to, which stands almost unique, considering that the writer of it
was only nineteen years of age. In one passage the writer remarks : —

SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 353

" The crime of inquiry is one which religion has never forgiven. Implicit
faith and fearless inquiry have in all ages been irreconcileable enemies.
Unrestrained philosophy has in every age opposed itself to the reveries of
credulity and fanaticism. The truths of astronomy demonstrated by
Newton have superseded astrology ; since the modern discoveries of che-
mistry, the philosopher's stone has no longer been deemed attainable.
That which is false will ultimately be controverted by its own falsehood."
Then, after a closely-reasoned argument, in which he shows that Lord
Ellenborough might well fear for the truth of his own opinions, seeing
they require such extreme measures to support them, Shelley asks :
" Whence is any right derived, but that which power confers, for perse-
cution ? Do you think to convert Mr. Eaton to your religion by em-
bittering his existence ? You might force him by torture to profess your
tenets, but he could not believe them, except you should make them
credible, which perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please
the God you worship by this exhibition of your zeal ? If so, the demon
to whom some nations ofler human hecatombs is less barbarous than the
Deity of civilised society. ... If the law de haretico comburendo has not
been formally repealed, I conceive that, from the promise held out by your
lordship's zeal, we need not despair of beholding the flames of persecution
rekindled in Smithfield. Even now the lash that drove Descartes and
Voltaire from their native country, the chains which bound Galileo, the
flames which burned Vanini, again resound. . . . Does the Christian
God, whom his followers eulogize as the Deity of humility and peace — he,
the regenerator of the world, the meek reformer — authorise one man to
rise against another, and, because lictors are at his beck, to chain and
torture him as an infidel ? When the Apostles went abroad to convert
the nations, were they enjoined to stab and poison all who disbelieved the
divinity of Christ's mission ? Assuredly, they would have been no more
justifiable in this case than he is at present who puts into execution the
law which inflicts pillory and imprisonment on the Deist." It is impos-
sible for me to dwell longer on the strength and fulness of the invective
to be found in this remarkable pamphlet, or upon the evidences of great
learning it displayed on the part of its youthful writer ; but towards the
close there is the expression of one sentiment which should find an echo
in the present generation, if it did not in Shelley's. " The time," he
says, "is rapidly approaching — I hope that you, my Lord, may live to
behold its arrival — when the Mahometan, the Jew, the Christian, the
Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally sharing
the benefits which arise from its association, and united in the bonds of
charity and brotherly love." In this aspiration breathes the catholic
sp.irit of one to whom the very name of oppression was hateful, and who
only needed to hear of injustice to loathe it in his very soul.

We perceive, therefore, from what has been already adduced, that, so
far from Shelley declining the strife of politics, he eagerly rushed into the
fray. If further proofs still were needed, it is only necessary to refer to his

354 SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHKOPIST.

letters to the editors of the Statesman and the Examiner, and his espousal
of the cause of Mr. Peter Finnerty, the Irish patriot, to whom some slight
reference has already been made. With regard to the Examiner, most
readers will be cognizant of the now historical fact that a conviction was
procured against its conductors, John and Leigh Hunt, for speaking
somewhat too freely on political topics. Leigh Hunt had referred to the
Prince Regent as " this Adonis in loveliness, a corpulent gentleman of
fifty ; " and if there was one affront more than another which his Royal
Highness was likely to resent, it was a reflection upon his august person.
There were stronger passages in the libellous article than this description,
but none so calculated to bring the Prince into ridicule ; and it has always
been understood that the real affront consisted in the use of this parti-
cular expression ; at least, it was believed by many at the time that the
article might have been passed over but for these words. Undoubtedly
the Prince had been handsome, but his beauty, with all that is lovely, was
" fading away," and accordingly the sting of Hunt's remark lay in its
plain and unvarnished truth. For the luxury of speaking ironically of the
aesthetic appearance of the Regent, the Hunts were sentenced to two
years' imprisonment, and condemned to pay a fine of 1,OOOZ. One can
well understand the kind of feeling this sentence would rouse in Shelley ;
and it was fully given utterance to in a letter to Mr. Hookham, in which
he observes : — " I am boiling with indignation at the horrible injustice
and tyranny of the sentence pronounced on Hunt and his brother ; and it
is on this subject that I write to you. Surely the seal of abjectness and
slavery is indelibly stamped upon the character of England, Although I
do not retract in the slightest degree my wish for .a subscription for the
widows and children of those poor men hung at York, yet this 1,0001.
which the Hunts are sentenced to pay is an affair of more consequence.
Hunt is a brave, a good, and an enlightened man. Surely the public, for
whom Hunt has done so much, will repay in part the great debt of obli-
gation which they owe the champion of their liberties and virtues ;
or are they dead, cold, stone-hearted, and insensible — brutalized by cen-
turies of unremitting bondage ? However that may be, they surely may
be excited into some slight acknowledgment of his merits. Whilst hun-
dreds of thousands are sent to the tyrants of Russia, he pines in a
dungeon, far from all that can make life desired." Shelley encloses a
cheque, and exclaims, " Oh, that I might wallow for one night in the
Bank of England ! " Whatever may be said of the visionary character of
Shelley's projects, his sympathy and earnestness in political reforms and
causes was anything but visionary.

In regarding Shelley as a politician, we cannot but take cognizance
of a pamphlet which he issued on the subject of Parliamentary Reform,
under the signature of the " Hermit of Marlow." This was neither more
nor less than a proposal for putting reform to the vote throughout the
kingdom. The writer's views are expressed in very moderate language,
and though personally he was an extreme Radical, there evidently dwelt

SHELLEY : POLITICIAN, ATHEIST,, PHILANTHROPIST. 355

*

in his mind at the time he wrote the pamphlet an idea that he could not
expect to gain for the world immediately all the freedom which he might
desire. The work is consequently careful and statesmanlike in its arrange-
ment. The gist of the proposals was that committees should be formed
with a view to polling the entire people on the subject which was then
agitating all circles, as it has done at set periods during the whole of this
century. Shelley did not think it just and equitable that the people
should be governed by laws and impoverished by taxes originating in the
edicts of an assembly which represented somewhat less than a thousandth
part of Jhe entire community. He therefore drew up six Kesolutions to be
submitted to a national meeting of the friends of reform. These reso-
lutions set forth that those people who were of opinion that reform was
necessary in parliamentary representation should assemble themselves
together for the purpose of collecting evidence as to how far it was the
will of the majority of the nation to move in the exercise of their rights ;
that the whole population should be canvassed in favour of a declaration
that the House of Commons does not represent the will of the nation ;
that meetings should be held day after day for the reception of evidence
bearing upon the subject ; that the reformers disclaimed any design of
lending their sanction to revolutionary and disorganizing schemes ; and
that a subscription be set on foot to defray the expenses of the plan.
Shelley then proceeds to state in detail the reforms which he considers
necessary, and foremost amongst these is a recommendation on behalf of
annual parliaments. The pamphlet closes with this very remarkable
passage : — " With respect to universal suffrage, I confess I consider its
adoption, in the present unprepared state of public feeling and knowledge,
a measure fraught with peril. I think that none but those who register their
names as paying a certain small sum in direct taxes ought at present to send
members to Parliament. The consequence of the immediate extension of
the elective franchise to every male adult would be to place power in the
hands of men who have been rendered brutal and torpid and ferocious by
ages of slavery. It is to suppose that the qualities belonging to a dema-
gogue are such as are sufficient to endow a legislator. I allow Major
Cartwright's arguments to be unanswerable ; abstractedly, it is the right
of every human being to have a share in the Government. But Mr.
Paine's arguments are also unanswerable ; a pure republic may be shown,
by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social
order the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine
eminence of man. Yet nothing less consists with reason, or affords smaller
hopes of beneficial issue, than the plan which should abolish the regal and
the aristocratical branches of our Constitution before the public mind,
through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived at the
maturity which can disregard these symbols of its childhood." I appre-
hend that this extract effectually disposes of the ignorant assumption that
Shelley knew nothing whatever of politics ; on the contrary, there were
few living in his own day who could have put in fewer words a better idea

356 SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.

•

*

of the ideal state of government and the obstacles which intervene to pre-
vent its realisation. The basis of representation indicated in the sentence
in italics was long afterwards almost the very groundwork of the Parlia-
mentary Reform Bill carried by Mr. Disraeli in 1867, as Mr. Rossettialso
has observed in his Memoir of the poet. Not only must Shelley have
studied politics, but, pace Mr. Hogg, he must have studied them with
something more than a superficial observation for the purpose of enlarging
glibly upon them. His writing on political subjects seems to me more
far-seeing than anything he has left behind him, with the exception of
several of his poems, and in them of course we naturally expect to find the
prophet of the race.

Another evidence of Shelley's devotion to political problems, and of his
thorough delight in grappling with them, is seen in his ' * Declaration of
Rights," which Mr. Rossetti points out resembles " the two most famous
of similar documents in the history of the great French Revolution — the
one adopted by the Constituent Assembly in August 1789, and the other
proposed in April 1793 by Robespierre." In Shelley's " Declaration,"
which seems to have been foreshadowed to a certain extent by his " Pro-
posals for an Association " already remarked upon, we are struck with
the terseness and vigour of the various affirmations. Consider a
few of them for their exhibition of sound judgment and wisdom : —
" Government has no rights ; it is a delegation from several individuals
for the purpose of securing their own. It is, therefore, just only so far as
it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-
being." " As the benefit of the governed is, or ought to be, the origin of
government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly
emanate from their will." "No man has a right to disturb the public
peace by personally resisting the execution of a law, however bad. He
ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason
to promote its repeal." "A man has a right to unrestricted liberty of
discussion. Falsehood is a scorpion that will sting itself to death."
" A man has not only a right to express his thoughts, but it is his duty to
do so." " Expediency is inadmissible in morals. Politics are only sound
when conducted on principles of morality ; they are, in fact, the morals
of nations." " Belief is involuntary ; nothing involuntary is meritorious or
reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his
belief." " A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew have equal rights ;
they are men and brethren." "If a person's religious ideas correspond
not with your own, love him nevertheless. Those who believe that Heaven
is, what earth has been, a monopoly in the hands of a favoured few, would
do well to reconsider their opinion ; if they find that it came from their
priest or their grandmother, they could not do better than reject it."
" The only use of government is to repress the vices of man. If man
were to-day sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to demand that
government and all its evils should cease." By the light of these apotnegms
we come to perceive why Shelley was dreadecj. and detested by many in

SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 357

his own generation. His views, as thus expressed, might have extracted
the admiration of a Plato, but were only calculated to sting the average
English politician of the nineteenth century into indignation. What can
there be in common between the holder of such pure and just views as
those enunciated in these maxims and the man who buys his seat in the
legislature by the most wholesale and unblushing bribery ? Politically,
it may be said that Shelley is summed up by two broad distinguishing
characteristics, viz. a love of freedom, and his conviction in favour of an
enlightened republic. Mrs. Shelley dilates upon his love of the people, and
his ardent admiration of the idea of equality, and observes that " he
looked on political freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of
mankind." His biographer, Medwin, has endeavoured to prove that he
was somewhat of a lukewarm republican, but is not very successful in his
effort ; indeed, he is compelled to admit that " Shelley used to say that a
republic was the best form of government, with disinterestedness, abnega-
tion of self, and a Spartan virtue ; but to produce which required the
black bread and soup of the Lacedaemonians, an equality of fortunes un-
attainable in the present factitious state of society, and only to be brought
about by an agrarian law, and a consequent baptism of blood." In
politics Shelley knew no fear. And so thoroughly conscientious was he
in insisting upon his views, and so ardent a Radical, that I verily believe
he would have abdicated the dignity of a baronet had it ever been his
fortune to succeed to the title. This view is strengthened by the know-
ledge that, in season and out of season, he never refrained from insisting
upon one great cardinal principle or doctrine, viz. that no man had a
right to enjoy benefits, or the goodwill of the world, unless they sprang
from the exercise of virtue and talent. He could not have been a fair-
weather politician, that is, one who croaks republicanism till he gets a
stake in the country, and then becomes that worst of all Conservatives, an
embodiment of selfishness : this is proved from the fact that immediately
he inherited wealth he proceeded to distribute it in a lavish and possibly
injudicious manner. Speaking generally, of course, it may be said that
Shelley's political views were such as had been formulated in the systems
of Paine and Godwin ; but Shelley was Paine and Godwin with a large -
heart added ; and certainly while he was strengthened by their counten-
ance I believe his own political conceptions were self- derived, and a
necessity, partly by reason of his mental constitution, and partly as the
result of his personal experience. Shelley's politics grew with his growth ;
he had an innate sense of political justice and a burning desire for
equality ; and those would do his spirit wrong who could imagine that any
circumstances of possible worldly success, or the dazzling possession of
rank, could ever cause him to apostatize from the grand simplicity of his
political faith.

Was Shelley an atheist ? Such is the momentous question which next
arises. The affirmative has so frequently been stated that it has come to
be almost universally accepted. I, too, believe that he had not quite

358 SHELLEY : POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST .

dived into the depth of all mystery ; that he had not fully understood
himself, the world, and the Great Unknown ; that he had not quite re-
conciled all the inconsistencies of this jarring instrument, human life, nor
solved the problem why evil should be permitted to exist side by side
with virtue, and too frequently prove the victor. But then he never pro-
fessed to be anything but a student upon the threshold of existence, per-
meated by a desire for knowledge. Yet assuming for a moment that at one
time Shelley was numbered with the unbelievers, there was an earnestness
in his purposes, and a craving for light, which were noble in comparison with
the cold Mephistophelean disbelief in virtue so characteristic of Byron.
The author of Queen Mab was a man of faith compared with the author
of Don Juan. Out of the spirit of inquiry which pervaded the for-
mer it was possible there might arise a sympathy with and a thirsting after
the Divine ; out of the spirit of moral infidelity which distinguished the
latter it was impossible for anything to be generated but a distrust of all
human virtue. So that our words of indignation as regards Shelley's
scepticism should really be more measured than they have hitherto been.
The negations of a philosophical scepticism have in the world's history
very frequently been cast away for a living and vital trust in the fountain
of all happiness and truth. Morality always survived in Shelley ; there-
fore it was possible to become an easy and natural process with him to
pass from the lower and baser to the higher and nobler. Shelleyism is
not infidelity. That is my contention, and if systematic doubt really ever
was a creed with the poet, it had been swept away long before his death.
I seem to behold Shelley stretching out hands of faith after the Divine,
imploring, demanding to be led into his pure light, and to find shelter in
the Fatherhood of his Creator, through brotherhood with One of whom he
nobly sang, and of whose reign he uttered such a glorious burst of triumph
as this :

A Power from the unknown God,

A Promethean conqueror came ;
Like a triumphal path he trod

The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient placet animates with light :
Hell, sin, and slavery came,
Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mahomet
Arose, and it shall set :

While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon,
The Cross leads generations on.

-

The scepticism which Shelley indulged was not one of titter dis-
belief in the future perfection of humanity, but it undoubtedly had its
root in the sadness which he experienced for a world which was ap-
parently without a guiding principle or power, and in the transitoriness of

SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 359

everything human. He looked abroad with great, tear-brimmed, brooding-
eyes, and wept over the absence of that stability in some person or thing
which his soul longed to have revealed. Earth to him was a land of
shadows, and men " as clouds that veil the midnight moon." In one line
he sadly affirms, " Naught may endure but mutability."

A priest at Lausanne once gesticulated on reading Queen Mab,
" Infidel, Jacobin, leveller; nothing can stop this spread of blasphemy
but the stake and the faggot ; the world is retrograding into accursed
heathenism and universal anarchy." It was seeing so much of the spirit
which animated this priest that retarded Shelley's religious development.
But with every respect for the Lausanne clerical — whose bigotry too often
finds its exemplification in the cloth of our own day — another critic of
Shelley's, in humbler life, a simple bookseller, was nearer to the truth
when he remarked that Shelley aimed at regenerating, not levelling man-
kind, as Byron and Moore. The detestation of the name of religion which
he at one time unquestionably displayed arose from the lack of the thing
itself in those who professed it. He looked upon religion, as practised,
"as hostile instead of friendly to the cultivation of those virtues which
would make men brothers." From the poem of Queen Mab it is im-
possible to come to the conclusion that Shelley was an atheist, except as
regards the God of the Christians, whom indeed he rejects with scorn.
But there are glimmerings of a belief in some Power which moulds all
things and runs through all things — in fact a Pantheistic God. To the
God of the theologians he exhibited an unswerving animosity ; but the
pamphlet he wrote at Oxford was much more atheistical than the poem.
There is abundant evidence, however, that in after life he abjured both
the pamphlet and the poem. By far the most terrible things, doubtless,
Shelley ever wrote are to be found in the notes to Queen Mabt but here,
appended to the quotation from the poem, " There is no God ! " we find
him saying, " This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative
Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading spirit, co-eternal with the Uni-
verse, remains unshaken." This is an admission which no man who was
an atheist in the strict sense of the term would make. But as one fact
is worth many arguments, it may be as well to remind the reader that in
a letter to the Editor of the Examiner on the subject of Queen Mab,
Shelley said the poem was never intended for publication, and that in
regard to the subtle discriminations of metaphysical and religious doc-
trine, it was very crude and immature. It was written at a period when
the poet was disgusted with the constitution of things, and when he
was desirous of hurling from his throne the Deity which Christians held
up for reverence. He repudiated the notion that this Being described
to him could be the active Governor of the universe. At the same time
he did believe distinctly in some Spirit that was progressively working for
perfection. My views are corroborated by Shelley's reply to Trelawny,
when the latter asked, " Why do you call yourself an atheist ? " and he
answered, "I used it (the name atheist) to express my abhorrence of

360 SHELLEt: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHKOPIST.

superstition : I took up the word, as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defi-
ance of injustice." This is a clear indication of the character of Shelley's
atheism ; it was, as I have maintained, not a universal negative. The
very spirituality of his nature would have prevented him from embracing
the everlasting " No ! "

Coleridge took this view also of the poet, for in one of his letters he
observes, " His (Shelley's) discussions — tending towards atheism of a cer-
tain sort — would not have scared me ; for me it would have been a semi-
transparent larva, soon to be glorified, and through which I should have
seen the true image, — the final metamorphosis. Besides, I have ever
thought that sort of atheism the next best religion to Christianity ; nor
does the better faith I have learnt from Paul and John interfere with the
cordial reverence I feel for Benedict Spinoza." I find, also, this remark-
able passage in a letter written by Shelley himself, in 1811 : — " I here take
God (God exists) to witness that I wish torments, which beggar the
futile description of a fancied hell, would fall upon me, provided I could
obtain thereby that happiness for what I love, which, I fear, can never be !
The question is, What do I love ? It is almost unnecessary to answer.
Do I love the person, the embodied identity, if I may be allowed the ex-
pression ? No 1 I love what is superior, what is excellent, or what I
conceive to be so ; and I wish, ardently wish, to be profoundly convinced
of the existence of a Deity, that so superior a spirit might receive some
degree of happiness from my feeble exertions ; for love is heaven, and
heaven is love. You think so tot), and you disbelieve not the existence of
an eternal, omnipresent Spirit." Then, in an argument against the Mate-
rialists, the writer proceeds further to say, " I think I can prove the exist-
ence of a Deity — a First Cause. I will ask a Materialist how came this
universe at first ? He will answer, By chance. What chance ? I will
answer in the words of Spinoza : ' An infinite number of atoms had been
floating from all eternity in space, till at last one of them fortuitously
diverged from its track, which, dragging with it another, formed the
principle of gravitation, and, in consequence, the universe ! What cause
produced this change, this chance ? For where do we know that causes
arise without their correspondent effects ; at least we must here, on so ab-
stract a subject, reason analogically. Was not this, then, a cause, was it
not & first cause? Was not this first cause a Deity ? Now, nothing re-
mains but to prove that this Deity has a care, or rather that its only em-
ployment consists in regulating the present and future happiness of its
creation. Our ideas of infinite space, &c., are scarcely to be called ideas,
for we cannot either comprehend or explain them ; therefore the Deity
must be judged by us from attributes analogical to our situation.' Oh,
that this Deity were the Soul of the universe, the spirit of universal, im-
perishable love ! Indeed, it is." This is certainly language never held
by an atheist ; it was the expression of a man in doubt about the truths
of Christianity, but not of an unbeliever. Phrases occur in several poems
by Shelley, which touch upon the same thoughts given in the prose extract

SHELLEt: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 36l

juit cited. On one occasion, it is true, he said, " I had rather be damned
with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to heaven with Paley and Malthus ; "
but this was only to indicate his abhorrence of creeds and formulated
religions. And yet he held the view which is common to almost all Chris-
tians, viz. that evil is not inherent in the system of creation, but an acci-
dent that might be repelled. It has always struck me that Shelley had a
deeply religious spirit, that spirit of reverence which inevitably distin-
guishes the great poet ; for would it not be impossible to conceive of a
great poet who was at the same time an atheist ? He would at once lose
that spiritual elevation which refines and glorifies genius. The best de-
scription of the piety of Shelley has been given by one who knew him most
intimately, and as I greatly prefer his language to my own, in enforcing
the point with which I am now concerned, his words shall be reproduced.

'• The leading feature of Shelley's character," says Leigh Hunt, who
may be credited with having understood more than others the thoughts of
his later life, " may be said to have been a natural piety. He did himself
injustice with the public, in using the. popular name of the Supreme
Being inconsiderately. He identified it solely with the most vulgar and
tyrannical notions of a God made after the worst human fashion ; and did
not sufficiently reflect that it was often used by a juster devotion to
express a sense of the Great Mover of the universe. An impatience in
contradicting worldly and pernicious notions of a supernatural power led
his own aspirations to be misunderstood ; for, though in the severity of
his dialectics, and particularly in moments of despondency, he sometimes
appeared to be hopeless of what he most desired — and though he justly
thought that a Divine Being would prefer the increase of benevolence and
good before any praise, or even recognition of himself (a reflection worth
thinking of by the intolerant), yet in reality there was no belief to which
he clung with more fondness than that of some great pervading ' Spirit of
Intellectual Beauty ; ' as may be seen in his aspirations on that subject.
He assented warmly to an opinion which I expressed in the Cathedral at
Pisa, while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet
be established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of
faith." But in discussing this subject it is necessary to take into account
Shelley's E**ay on Christianity, in which I find him distinctly asserting
that " we are not the creators of our own origin and existence. We are
not the arbiters of every motion of our own complicated nature ; we are
not the masters of our own imaginations and moods of mental being.
There is a Power by which we are surrounded, like the atmosphere in
which some motionless lyre is suspended, which visits with its breath our
silent chords at will." In this same essay there is a nobler tribute to
Jesus Christ than many of the cold believers in Christianity, dead with an
infidelity of heart, would be willing to pay. The whole spirit of the essay
forbids for a moment the assumption that Shelley was an atheist, and most
of the composition might be read with great profitableness from any
orthodox pulpit. On other collateral religious questions, such as the

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 188. 18.

862 SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST.

doctrine of the immortality of the soul, much is not said by Shelley.
Immortality is a topic rarely discussed with himself by any man, and when
he becomes agitated therewith it is only to end in a condition of vague-
ness. Yet the expectation of something after death was very strong in
Shelley. Adonais, if it stood alone as regards the poet's utterances on
immortality, might be conclusive of his belief in the doctrine in its
fullest sense ; in speaking of Keats in one instance he says that " he hath
awakened from the dream of life," and " is made one with Nature."
Further, that his spirit " beams from the abode where the Eternal are."
Other prose expressions of Shelley's would appear to contradict this, but
never, I believe, does he hint for a moment at such a thing as annihila-
tion. He could not conceive that his own spirit, after the experience of which
he was conscious, could ever be thrown into the void, useless and dead,
though he had no definite ideas as to what would become of himself after
he " had shuffled off this mortal coil." By this time, I doubt not, he has
discovered more fully that Divine Love for whom his spirit yearned. Had
ten more years of human life been allotted to him, he would have emerged
from that dark valley of doubt in which his noble spirit was searching for
the Infinite. The light, however, came more suddenly ; the veil of hu-
manity was violently rent asunder, and Shelley was face to face with the
solution of the Great Mystery.

The benefactor of humanity has invariably to sustain much comment
and scepticism regarding his motives, and Shelley was no exception to
the rule in his role of philanthropist. He gave both of his labour and
substance with an unbounded generosity, and too frequently had the
bitterness to perceive that his intentions were misunderstood, and he himself
regarded with suspicion. Man is a reasoning animal, as I have already had
occasion to observe, but man is above all a selfish animal. The species
seems much more prolific and ingenious in acts of self-preservation than
it does in argument. Man is, in fact, so selfish that an undoubtedly
benevolent act — an act, that is, which is open to no other construction —
surprises him by its folly. He furthermore does not like the rebuke
which the act itself necessarily conveys, and consequently becomes angry
and slanders his benefactor. This has ever been so. In the realms of
thought and science, as well as in personal action, the exercise of
benevolence has met with strenuous opposition. The perfect Man, whose
soul was spotless and yearned with a magnificent philanthropy for the whole
race, was crucified on a tree. The world has to be approached gradually
by the philanthropist, or he will be assailed by the offensive missiles of
an adverse criticism. And when he has done all the good that is possible,
and laid down his life for his brother, he will gain but a grudging
remembrance from posterity. It is, however, the mark of the true
philanthropist that he pursues his ends regardless of the consequences.
No threat, no withholding of his just reward, can ever deter him, for he is
armed not by the principle which expects a return for its expended
benevolence, but by the sublime idea that the condition of the person he

SHELLEY : POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 363

means to help can be ameliorated and exalted by his aid. And in the
eyes of the philanthropist the salvation of the species is the grandest work
to which a man can devote himself. Salvation from vice, from misery,
from poverty, from the horrors of his own -conscience, is to the human
the lifting up of the Divine ideal. Of Shelley it may be affirmed that he
laboured conspicuously for this end. The record of his life is one
of generous impulse and action from its commencement to its close. A
benignity that is worthy of all praise and reverence animated him in his
relations to man, and the humbler creation ; to breathe, to him, was to
aspire to do good, irrespective of recognition or reward. His own
appetites were conquered and held in subjection, so that he could be of
some use to humanity. The plainest food sufficed for his daily needs,
and he would never use the produce of the cane so long as it was
obtained by slave labour. " Fragile in health and frame ; of the purest
habits in morals ; full of devoted generosity and universal kindness ; glow-
ing with ardour to obtain wisdom ; resolved, at every personal sacrifice, to
do right ; burning with a desire for affection and sympathy, he was treated
as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal." Lest this eulogy, however,
which was dictated by the spirit of an ardent love and admiration for
Shelley, should seem tinged with the extravagance of personal regard, let
us quote from Lady Blessington what Lord Byron said of his friend.
After Shelley's death he wrote — " You should have known Shelley to
feel how much I must regret him. He was the most gentle, the most
amiable, the least worldly-minded person I ever met ; full of delicacy,
disinterested beyond all other men, and possessing a degree of genius
joined to a simplicity as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself
a beau ideal of all that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to
this ideal even to the very letter. He had a most brilliant imagination,
but a total want of worldly wisdom. I have seen nothing like him,
and never shall again, I am certain." To extract such a tribute from
such a quarter would of itself be sufficient proof to me that all I have
alleged with respect to the natural generosity of Shelley's character was
strictly accurate.

A munificent instance of this trait in the poet's disposition was afforded
during his stay in North Wales. He had hired a cottage from a gentle-
man named Maddox, at Tanyrallt, Carnarvonshire. Mr. Maddox, Lady
Shelley informs us, had reclaimed several thousand acres of land from the
sea ; but the embankment proved insufficient during an unusually high
tide. The sea made such serious breaches in the earthworks that the
poor cottagers became terribly alarmed. At this juncture Shelley stepped
forward, took the matter up warmly, and personally solicited subscriptions
from the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Though possessing very
limited means of subsistence himself, he headed the list with the extra-
ordinary donation of 5002. Nor was his enthusiasm checked here, for
he came up to London still interested in the same business, and had at
length the satisfaction of seeing his efforts crowned with success. The

18—2

864 SHEtLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHKOPIST.

embankment was repaired and strengthened, and the inhabitants were
protected from future risk.

Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, tells a story of another kind, but
in excellent illustration of the same tenderness of heart. On returning
home to Hampstead one night after the opera, Hunt heard strange and
alarming shrieks mixed with the voice of a man. It appears that it was
a fierce winter night, and Shelley had found a woman lying near the top
of the hill, in fits. He tried in vain to get the nearest householders to
receive her, assuring them that she was no impostor : doors were shut
upon him. Time was flying, and the poor creature was in convulsions,
with her son lamenting over her. Seeing a carriage drive up to a door
and a gentleman with his family step out of it, Shelley implored them to
have mercy on the woman. In response to his request that the gentleman
would go and see her, the latter said, " No, sir ; there's no necessity for
that sort of thing, depend on it. Impostors swarm everywhere; the
thing cannot be done; sir, your conduct is extraordinary." " Sir,"
cried Shelley, " I am sorry to say that your conduct is not extraordinary ;
and if my own seem's to amaze you, I will tell you something which may
amaze you a little more, and I hope will frighten you. It is such men
as you who madden the spirits and the patience of the poor and the
wretched ; and if ever a convulsion comes in this country (which is very
probable) recollect what I tell you : you will have your house, that you
refuse to put the miserable woman into, burnt over your head." Then,
as Dr. Johnson did on a similar memorable occasion, the poet, as best he
was able, conveyed the wretched woman to a haven of rest. Thus
this man lived, who was so subject to violent bodily pains that he was
sometimes compelled to lie on the ground during his period of suffering ;
yet preserving always the language of kindness and consideration for those
about him. To multiply the record of his generous deeds would be to
follow the diary of his whole existence. So strongly imbued was he with
the desire to do good, that any recreation or occupation he compelled to
give way when there was opened before him an avenue for benevolence.
After pecuniary circumstances became a little easier with him than they had
been Shelley went to reside at Great Marlow. Mrs. Shelley in a few lines
has detailed how he spent his life there. It appears that, though Marlow
was surrounded by every natural beauty, it boasted of a very poor popula-
tion. "The women," says Mrs. Shelley, "were lacemakers, and lost
their health by sedentary labour, for which they were very ill paid. The
poor-laws ground to the dust, not only the paupers, but those who had
risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The
changes produced by peace following a long war and a bad harvest
brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley
afforded what alleviation he could. In the winter, while bringing out his
poem (The Revolt of Islam) he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught
while visiting the poor cottagers." And there was no calling out for strangers
to come and see the good deeds which he wrought. All sprang from the

SHELLEY: POLITICIAN, ATHEIST, PHILANTHROPIST. 865

purest motives, and he shrank from having his actions blazoned abroad.
Occasionally, nevertheless, he assisted friends in the pursuit of schemes
which were chimerical, and would have been best left alone ; but when the
friend was invoked in time of need, he was only too ready to respond to the
call, whatever it might be. I have made a passing reference to his sympathy
for the brute creation, which was such that any instance of cruelty put him
into transports of passion. One such case is recorded in his Memoirs, and,
doubtless, it is but typical. Of the broader kind of philanthropy which
seeks to benefit the race, and not specially the individual, Shelley also
gave many demonstrations ; but one fact must suffice me to state here,
and that is, that long before the abolition of the punishment of death had
become a moot question, Shelley had firmly cherished the idea. He
advocated it upon the same grounds as Dickens many years subsequently,
viz., that it served no purpose to society, and was contrary to the spirit
of human progress.

I have thus completed another stage in the consideration of this
illustrious friend of humanity. To have expressed my own unwavering
admiration of the various aspects of his character is much, but the triple
view of him now presented may assist, possibly, in elucidating to others
a career which is at once romantic, beautiful, and tragic. That career
forcibly rebukes the idea that enthusiasm and personal sacrifice are neces-
sarily divorced from the selfish and materially progressive age in which
we live. The theologian may well merge his wrath in the halo of practical
Christianity which encircled this life ; the adamantine creed is worthless
and dead before his sleepless and laborious devotion. In His hands let
us leave him, resenting the bigotry and the presumption which would
pass judgment upon him here. If that soul which possessed so much
purity, grace, disinterestedness, and truth could be ultimately lost, -the
foundations of our faith might well be in danger of being broken up.
But the speculation is at once impossible and impious : the Deity himself
is pledged to the imperishable nature of goodness and virtue.

366

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PERILOUS TRUCE.

HE very stars in their
courses seemed to fight
for this young man.

No sooner had Wenna
Rosewarne fled to her
own room, there to think
over in a wild and be-
wildered way all that had
just happened, than her
heart smote her sorely.
She had not acted pru-
dently. She had for-
gotten her self-respect.
She ought to have for-
bidden him to come near
her again — at least, until
such time as this foolish
fancy of his should have
passed away and been
forgotten.

How could she have
parted with him so calmly,

and led him to suppose that their former relations were unaltered ? She
looked back on the forced quietude of her manner, and was herself
astonished. Now her heart was beating rapidly ; her trembling fingers
were unconsciously twisting and untwisting a bit of ribbon ; her head
seemed giddy with the recollection of that brief and strange interview. Then,
somehow, she thought of the look on his face when she told him that
henceforth they must be strangers to each other. It seemed hard that he
should be badly used for what was, perhaps, no intentional fault. If any-
body ^had been in. fault, it was herself, in being blind to a possibility to
which even her own sister had drawn her attention ; and so the punish-
ment ought to fall on her.

She would humble herself before Mr. Roscorla. She would force
herself to be affectionate towards him in her letters. She would even

SHE WENT FORWARD AND OFFERED HIM HER HAND.

THBEE FEATHERS. 367

write to Mabyn, and beg of her to take no notice of that angry remon-
strance.

Then Wenna thought of her mother, and how she ought to tell her of
all these things. But how could she ? During the past day or two Mrs.
Eosewarne had been at times singularly fretful and anxious. No letter
had come from her husband. In vain did Wenna remind her that men
were more careless of such small matters than women, and that it was too
soon to expect her father to sit down and write. Mrs. Kosewarne sat
brooding over her husband's silence ; then she would get up in an excited
fashion and declare her intention of going straight back to Eglosilyan ; and
these fitful moods preyed on the health of the invalid. Ought Wenna to
risk increasing her anxiety by telling her this strange tale ? She would
doubtless misunderstand it. She might be angry with Harry Trelyon.
She would certainly be surprised that Wenna had given him permission to
see her again — not knowing that the girl, in her forced composure, had
been talking to him as if this avowal of his were of no great moment.

All the same Wenna had a secret fear that she had been imprudent in
giving him this permission ; and the most she could do now was to make
his visits as few, short, and ceremonious as possible. She would avoid
him by every means in her power ; and the first thing was to make sure
that he should not call on them again while they remained in Penzance.

So she went down to the small parlour in a much more equable frame
of mind, though her heart was still throbbing in an unusual way. The
moment she entered the room she saw that something had occurred to
disturb her mother. Mrs. Kosewarne turned from the window, and there
was an excited look in her eyes.

. " Wenna," she said, hurriedly, " did you see that carriage ? Did
you see that woman ? Who was with her ? Did you see who was with
her ? I know it was she — not if I live a hundred years could I forget
that — that devil in human shape ! "

" Mother, I don't know what you mean," Wenna said, wholly aghast.

Her mother had gone to the window again, and she was saying to
herself, hurriedly, and in a low voice —

" No, you don't know ; you don't know — why should you know ?
That shameless creature ! And to drive by here — she must have known
I was here. Oh, the shamelessness of the woman ! "

She turned to Wenna again.

" Wenna, I thought Mr. Trelyon was here. How long has he gone ?
I want to see him most particularly — most particularly, and only for a
moment. He is sure to know all the strangers at his hotel, is he not ?
I want to ask him some questions — Wenna, will you go at once and bid
him come to see me for a moment ? "

" Mother ! " Wenna said — how could she go to the hotel with such a
message ?

" Well, send a note to him, Wenna— send a note by the girl down-
stairs. What harm is there in that ? "

868 THREE FEATHERS.

" Lie down then, mother," said the girl, calmly, " and I will send
a message to Mr. Trelyon."

She drew her chair to the table, and her cheeks crimsoned to think of
what he might imagine this letter to mean when he got the envelope in
his hands. Her fingers trembled as she wrote the date at the head of the
note. Then she came to the word " Dear," and it seemed to her that if
shame were a punishment, she was doing sufficient penance for her indis-
cretion of that morning. Yet the note was not a compromising one. It
merely said, " Dear Mr. Trelyon, — If you have a moment to spare, my
mother would be most obliged to you if you would call on her. I hope
you will forgive the trouble. — Yours sincerely, Wenna Bosewarne."

When the young man got that note — he was just entering the hotel
when the servant arrived — he stared with surprise. He told the girl he
would call on Mrs. Rosewarne directly. Then he followed her.

He never for a moment doubted that this note had reference to his
own affairs. Wenna had told her mother what had happened. The
mother wished to see him to ask him to cease visiting them. Well, he
was prepared for that. He would ask Wenna to leave the room. He
would attack the mother boldly, and tell her what he thought of Mr.
Roscorla. He would appeal to her to save her daughter from the im-
pending marriage. He would win her over to be his secret ally and
friend ; and while nothing should be done precipitately to alarm Wenna
or arouse her suspicions, might not these two carry the citadel of her
heart in time, and hand over the keys to the rightful lord ? It was a
pleasant speculation ; it was at least marked by that audacity that never
wholly forsook Master Harry Trelyon. Of course, he was the rightful
lord ; ready to bid all false claimants, rivals, and pretenders beware.

And yet, as he walked up to the house, some little tremor of anxiety
crept into his heart. It was no mere game of brag in which he was
engaged. As he went into the parlour, Wenna stepped quietly by him,
her eyes downcast ; and he knew that all he cared to look forward to in
the world depended on the decision of that quiet little person with the
sensitive mouth and the earnest eyes. Fighting was not of much use
there.

" Well, Mrs. Rosewarne," said he, rather shamefacedly, " I suppose
you mean to scold me ? "

Her answer surprised him. She took no heed of his remark, but
in a vehement, excited way began to ask him questions about a woman
whom she described. He stared at her.

" I hope you don't know anything about that elegant creature ? " he
said.

She did not wholly tell him the story, but left him to guess at some
portions of it ; and then she demanded to know all about the woman and
her companion, and how long they had been in Penzance, and where they
were going ? Master Harry was by chance able to reply to certain of her
questions. The answers comforted her greatly. Was he quite sure that

THBEE FEATHERS. 369

she was married ? What was her husband's name ? Sh« was no longer
Mrs. Shirley ? Would he find out all he could ? Would he forgive her
asking him to take all this trouble ; and would he promise to say no
word about it to Wenna ?

When all this had been said and done, the young man felt himself
considerably embarrassed. Was there to be no mention of his own
affairs ? So far from remonstrating with him, and forbidding him
the house, Mrs. Bosewarne was almost effusively grateful to him, and
could only beg him a thousand times not to mention the subject to her
daughter.

"Oh, of course not," said he, rather bewildered. "But — but I
thought from the way in which she left the room that — that perhaps I
had offended her."

" Oh no, I am sure that is not the case," said Mrs. Rosewarne, and
she immediately went and called Wenna, who came into the room with
rather an anxious look on her face. She immediately perceived the
change in her mother's mood. The demon of suspicion and jealousy
had been as suddenly exorcised as it had been summoned. Mrs. Rose-
warne's fine eyes were lit by quite a new brightness and gaiety of spirits.
She bade Wenna declare what fearful cause of offence Mr. Trelyon had
given ; and laughed when the young man, blushing .somewhat, hastily
assured both of them that it was all a stupid mistake of his own.

" Oh, yes," Wenna said, rather nervously, " it is a mistake. I am
sure you have given me no offence at all, Mr. Trelyon."

It was an embarrassing moment for two, at least, out of these three
persons ; and Mrs. Rosewarne, in her abundant goodnature, could not
understand their awkward silence. Wenna was apparently looking out
of window, at the bright blue bay and the boats ; and yet the girl was
not ordinarily so occupied when Mr. Trelyon was present. As for him,
he had got his hat in his hands ; he seemed to be much concerned about
it, or about his boots ; one did not often find Master Harry actually
showing shyness.

At last he said, desperately —

" Mrs. Rosewarne, perhaps you would go out for a sail in the after-
noon ? I could get you a nice little yacht, and some rods and Knee.
Won't you?"

Mrs. Rosewarne was in a kindly humour. She said she would be
very glad to go, for Wenna was growing tired of always sitting by the
window. This would be some little variety for her.

" I hope you won't consider me, mother," said the young lady,
quickly, and with some asperity. "I am quite pleased to sit by the
window — I could do so always. And it is very wrong of us to take up
so much of Mr. Trelyon's time."

" Because Mr. Trelyon's tima is of so much use to him," said that
young man, with a laugh ; and then he told them when to expect him in
the afternoon, and went his way,

18—5

370 THEEE FEATHERS.

He was in much better spirits when he went out. He whistled as he
went. The plash of the blue sea all along the shingle seemed to have a
sort of laugh in it ; he was in love with Penzance and all its beautiful
neighbourhood. Once again, he was saying to himself, he would spend
a quiet and delightful afternoon with Wenna Rosewarne, even if that were
to be the last. He would surrender himself to the gentle intoxication of
her presence. He would get a glimpse, from time to time, of her dark
eyes when she was looking wistfully and absently over the sea. It was
no breach of the implied contract with her that he should have seized this
occasion. He had been sent for. And if it was necessary that he
should abstain from seeing her for any great length of time, why this
single afternoon would not make much difference. Afterwards, he would
obey her wishes in any manner she pleased.

He walked into the hotel. There was a gentleman standing in the
hall, whose acquaintance Master Harry had condescended to make. He
was a person of much money, uncertain grammar, and oppressive gene-
rosity ; he wore a frilled shirt and diamond studs, and he had such a vast
admiration for this handsome, careless, and somewhat rude young man,
that he would have been very glad had Mr. Trelyon dined with him every
evening, and taken the trouble to win any reasonable amount of money of
him at billiards afterwards. Mr. Trelyon had not as yet graced his table.

" Oh, Grainger," said the young man, " I want to speak to you. Will
you dine with me to-night at eight ? "

" No, no, no," said Mr. Grainger, shaking his head in humble protest,
" that isn't fair. You dine with me. It ain't the first or the second
time of asking either."

" But look here," said Trelyon, " I've got lots more to ask of you.
I want you to lend me that little cutter of yours for the afternoon ; will
you ? You send your man on board to see she's all right, and I'll pull
out to her in about half-an-hour's time. You'll do that, won't you, like a
good fellow ? "

Mr. Grainger was not only willing to lend the yacht, but also his own
services, to see that she properly received so distinguished a guest;
whereupon Trelyom had to explain that he wanted the small craft merely
to give a couple of ladies a sail for an hour or so. Then Mr. Grainger
would have his man instructed to let the ladies have some tea on board ;
and he would give Master Harry the key of certain receptacles, in which
he would find cans of preserved meat, fancy biscuits, jam, and even a
few bottles of dry Sillery ; finally he would immediately hurry off to see
about fishing-rods. Trelyon had to acknowledge to himself that this
worthy person deserved the best dinner that the hotel could produce.

In the afternoon he walked along to fetch Mrs. Rosewarne and her
daughter, his face bright with expectation. Mrs. Rosewarne was dressed
and ready when he went in ; but she said —

" I am afraid I can't go, Mr. Trelyon. Wenna says she is a little
tired, and would rather stay at home,"

THKEE FEATHEKS. 871

" Wenna, that isn't fair," he said, obviously hurt. " You ought to
make some little effort when you know it will do your mother good. And
it will do you good too, if only you make up your mind to go."

She hesitated for a moment ; she saw that her mother was disap-
pointed. Then, without a word, she went and put on her hat and shawl.

" Well," he said, approvingly, " you are very reasonable, and very
obedient. But we can't have you go with us with such a face as that.
People would say we were going to a funeral."

A shy smile came over the gentle features, and she turned aside.

* ' And we can't have you pretend that we forced you to go. If we
go at all, you must lead the way."

" You would tease the life out of a saint ! " she said, with a vexed
and embarrassed laugh, and then she marched out before them, very glad
to be able to conceal her heightened colour.

But much of her reserve vanished when they had set sail, and when
the small cutter was beginning to make way through the light and plash-
ing waves. Wenna's face brightened. She no longer let her two com-
panions talk exclusively to each other. She began to show a great
curiosity about the little yacht ; she grew anxious to have the lines flung
out ; no words of hers could express her admiration for the beauty of the
afternoon and of the scene around her.

" Now, are you glad you came out ? " he said to her.

" Yes," she answered, shyly.

" And you'll take my advice another time ? "

" Do you ever take any one's advice ?" she said, venturing to look
up.

" Yes, certainly," he answered, " when it agrees with my own
inclination. Who ever does any more than that ? "

They had now got a good bit away from land.

11 Skipper," said Trelyon to Mr. Grainger's man, "we'll put her
about now, and let her drift. Here is a cigar for you ; you can take it
up to the bow and smoke it, and keep a good look-out for the sea-serpent."

By this arrangement they obtained, as they sat and idly talked, an
excellent view of all the land around the bay, and of the pale, clear
sunset shining in the western skies. They lay almost motionless in the
lapping water ; the light breeze scarcely stirred the loose canvas. From
time to time they could hear a sound of calling or laughing from the
distant fishing-boats ; and that only seemed to increase the silence around
them.

It was an evening that invited to repose and reverie ; there were not
even the usual fiery colours of the sunset to arouse and fix attention by
their rapidly changing and glowing hues. The town itself, lying darkly
all around the sweep of the bay, was dusky and distant ; elsewhere all
the world seemed to be flooded with the silver light coming over from
behind the western hills. The sky was of the palest blue ; the long
mackerel clouds that stretched across were of the faintest yellow and

372 THREE FEATHEBS.

lightest grey ; and into that shining grey rose the black stems of the
trees that were just over the outline of these low heights. St. Michael's
Mount had its summit touched by the pale glow ; the rest of the giant
rock and the far stretches of sea around it were grey with mist. But
close by the boat there was a sharper light on the lapping waves and on
the tall spars ; while it was warm enough to heighten the colour on
Wenna' s face as she .sat and looked silently at the great and open world
around her.

They were drifting in more ways than one. Wenna almost forgot
what had occurred in the 'morning. She was so pleased to see her
mother pleased that she talked quite unreservedly to the young man who
had wrought the change, and was ready to believe all that Mrs. Rose-
warne said in private about his being so delightful and cheerful a com-
panion. As for him, he was determined to profit by this last opportunity.
If the strict rules of honour demanded that Mr. Roscorla should have fair
play — or if Wenna wished him to absent himself, which was of more
consequence than Mr. Roscorla' s interests — he would make his visits few
and formal ; but in the meantime, at least, they would have this one
pleasant afternoon together. Sometimes, it is true, he rebelled against
the uncertain pledge he had given her. Why should he not seek to win
her ? What had the strict rules of honour to do with the prospect of a
yoUng girl allowing herself to be sacrificed, while here he was able and
willing to snatch her away from her fate ?

" How fond you are of the sea and of boats ! " he said to her. " Some-
times I think I shall have a big schooner yacht built for myself and take
her to the Mediterranean, going from place to place just as one took the
fancy. But it would be very dull by yourself, wouldn't it, even if you
had a dozen men on board ? What you want is to have a small party all
very friendly with each other, and at night you would sit up on deck and
sing songs. And I think you would like those old-fashioned songs that
you sing, Miss Wenna, all the better for hearing them so far away from
home — at least, I should ; but then I'm an outer barbarian. I think
you, now, would be delighted with the grand music abroad — with the
operas, you know, and all that. I've had to knock about these places
with people ; but I don't care about it. I would rather hear ' Norah,
the Pride of Kildare,' or « The Maid of Llangollen ' — because, I suppose,
these young women are more in my line. You see, I shouldn't care to
make the acquaintance of a gorgeous creature with black hair and a train
of yellow satin half a mile long, who tosses up a gilt goblet when she
sings a drinking-song, and then gets into a fiightful passion about what
you don't understand. Wouldn't you rather meet the ' Maid of Llan-
gollen ' coming along a country road — coming in by Marazion over there,
for example, with a bright print dress all smelling of lavender, and a
basket of fresh eggs over her arm ? Well — what was I saying ? Oh,
yes ! don't you think if you were away in the Adriatic, and sitting up on
deck at night, you would make the people have a quiet cry when you

THREE FEATHERS. 373

sang ' Home, Sweet Home ? ' The words are rather silly, aren't they ?
But they make you think of such a lot if you hear them abroad."

" And when are you going away ; this year, Mr. Trelyon ? " Wenna
said, looking down.

" Oh, I don't know," he said, cheerfully ; he would have no question
of his going away interfere with the happiness of the present moment.

At length, however, they had to bethink themselves of getting back,
for the western skies were deepening in colour, and the evening air was
growing chill. They ran the small cutter back to her moorings ; then
they put off in the small boat for the shore. It was a beautiful, quiet
evening. Wenna, who had taken off her glove and was allowing her bare
hand to drag through the rippling water, seemed to be lost in distant and
idle fancies not altogether of a melancholy nature.

"Wenna," her mother said, "you will get your hand perfectly
chilled."

The girl drew back her hand, and shook the water off her dripping
fingers. Then she uttered a slight cry.

" My ring ! " she said, looking with absolute fright at her hand and
then at the sea.

Of course, they stopped the boat instantly ; but all they could do was
to stare at the clear dark water. The distress of the girl was beyond
expression. This was no ordinary trinket that had been lost ; it was a
gage of plighted affection given her by one now far away, and in his
absence she had carelessly flung it into the sea. She had no fear of
omens, as her sister had ; but surely, of all things in the world, she ought
to have treasured up this ring. In spite of herself, tears sprang to her
eyes. Her mother in vain attempted to make light of the loss. And
then at last Harry Trelyon, driven almost beside himself by seeing the
girl so plunged in grief, hit upon a wild fashion of consoling her.

"Wenna," he said, "don't disturb yourself! Why, we can easily
get you the ring. Look at the rocks there — a long bank of smooth sand
slopes out from them, and your ring is quietly lying on the sand. There
is nothing easier than to get it up with a dredging machine- — I will under-
take to let you have it by to-morrow afternoon."

Mrs. Rosewarne thought he was joking ; but he effectually persuaded
Wenna, at all events, that she should have her ring next day. Then he
discovered that he would be just in time to catch the half-past six train
to Plymouth, where he would get the proper apparatus, and return in the
morning.

" It was a pretty ring," said he. " There were six stones in it,
weren't there ? "

"Five, she said: so much she knew, though it must be confessed
she had not studied that token of Mr. Boscorla's affection with the earnest
solicitude which most young ladies bestow on the first gift of their lover.

Trelyon jumped into a fly, and drove off to the station, where he sent
back an apology to Mr. Grainger. Wenna went home more perturbed

374 THREE FEATHERS.

than she had been for many a day, and that not solely on account of the
lost ring.

Everything seemed to conspire against her, and keep her from carrying
out her honourable resolutions. That sail in the afternoon she could not
well have avoided ; but she had determined to take some opportunity of
begging Mr. Trelyon not to visit them again while they remained in
Penzance. Now, however, he was coming next day ; and, whether or not
he was successful in his quest after the missing ring, would she not have
to show herself abundantly grateful for all his kindness ?

In putting away her gloves, she came upon the letter of Mr. Roscorla,
which she had not yet answered. She shivered slightly ; the handwriting
on the envelope seemed to reproach her. And yet something of a rebel-
lious spirit rose in her against this imaginary accusation ; and she grew
angry that she was called upon to serve this harsh and inconsiderate task-
master, and give him explanations which humiliated her. He had no
right to ask questions about Mr. Trelyon. He ought not to have listened
to idle gossip. He should have had sufficient faith in her promised
word; and if he only knew the torture of doubt and anxiety she was
suffering on his behalf

She did not pursue these speculations further ; but it was well with
Mr. Roscorla that she did not at that moment sit down and answer his
letter.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FURTHER ENTANGLEMENTS.

1 < MOTHER," said Wenna, that night, "what vexed you so this morn-
ing ? Who was the woman who went by ? "

"Don't ask me, Wenna," the mother said, rather uneasily. "It
would do you no good to know. And you must not speak of that woman
— she is too horrid a creature to be mentioned by a young girl ever."

Wenna looked surprised ; and then she said, warmly —

" And if she is so, mother, how could you ask Mr. Trelyon to have
anything to do with her ? Why should you send for him ? Why should
he be spoken to about her ? "

" Mr. Trelyon ! " her mother said, impatiently. " You seem to have
no thought now for anybody but Mr. Trelyon. Surely the young man
can take care of himself."

The reproof was just ; the justice of it was its sting. She was indeed
thinking too much about the young man, and her mother was right in
saying so ; but who was to understand the extreme anxiety that possessed
her to bring these dangerous relations to an end ?

On the following afternoon Wenna, sitting alone at the window, heard
Trelyon enter below. The young person who had charge of such matters

THEEE FEATHEES. 375

allowed him to go up the stairs and announce himself as a matter of
course. He tapped at the door, and came into the room.

" Where's your mother, Wenna ? The girl said she was here. How-
ever, never mind — I've brought you something that will astonish you.
What do you think of that ? "

She scarcely looked at the ring, so great was her embarrassment.
That the present of one lover should be brought back to her by another
was an awkward, almost a humiliating, circumstance. Yet she was glad
as well as ashamed.

" Oh, Mr. Trelyon, how can I thank you ?" she said, in her low,
earnest voice. "All you seem to care for is to make other people
happy — and the trouble you have taken too ! "

She forgot to look at the ring — even when he pointed out how the
washing in the sea had made it bright. She never asked about the
dredging. Indeed, she was evidently disinclined to speak of this matter
in any way, and kept the finger with the ring on it out of sight.

"Mr. Trelyon," she said then, with equal steadiness of voice, "I am
going to ask something more from you; and I am sure you will not
refuse it "

"I know," said he, hastily, " and let me have the first word. I have
been thinking over our position, during this trip to Plymouth and back.
Well, I think I have become a nuisance to you — wait a bit, let me say my
say in my own way — I can see that I only embarrass you when I call on
you, and that the permission you gave me is only leading to awkwardness
and discomfort. Mind, I don't think you are acting fairly to yourself or
to me in forbidding me to mention again what I told you. I know you're
wrong. You should let me show you what sort of a life lies before you —
but there, I promised to keep clear of that. Well, I will do what you
like ; and if you'd rather have me stay away altogether, I will do that. I
don't want to be a nuisance to you. But mind this, Wenna, I do it
because you wish it — I don't do it because I think any man is bound to
respect an engagement which — which — which, in fact, he doesn't
respect "

His eloquence broke down ; but his meaning was clear. He stood
there before her, ready to accept her decision with all meekness and
obedience ; but giving her frankly to understand that he did not any the
more countenance or consider as a binding thing her engagement to Mr.
Koscorla.

" Mind you," he said, " I am not quite as indifferent about all this as
I look. It isn't the way of our family to put their hands in their pockets
and wait for orders. But I can't fight with you. Many a time I wish
there was a man in the case — then he and I might have it out ; but as it
is, I suppose I have got to do what you say, Wenna, and that's the long
and the short of it."

She did not hesitate. She went forward and offered him her hand ;
and with her frank eyes looking him in the face, she said —

876 THBEE FEATHEBS.

" You have said what I wished to say, and I feared I had not the
courage to say it. Now you are acting bravely. Perhaps at some future
time we may become friends again — oh yes, and I do hope that ! — but in
the meantime you will treat me as if I were a stranger to you ! "

" That is quite impossible," said he, decisively. " You ask too much,
Wenna."

" Would not that be the simpler way ? " she said, looking at him
again with the frank and earnest eyes ; and he knew she was right.

" And the length of time ? " he said.

" Until Mr. Boscorla comes home again, at all events," she said.

She had touched an angry chord.

" What has he to do with us ? " the young man said, almost fiercely.
" I refuse to have him come in as arbiter or in any way whatever. Let
him mind his own business ; and I can tell you, when he and I come to
talk over this engagement of yours "

"You promised not to speak of that," she said, quietly, and he in-
stantly ceased.

" Well, Wenna," he said, after a minute or two, " I think you ask
too much ; but you must have it your own way. I won't annoy you and
drive you into a corner — you may depend on that. But to be perfect
strangers for an indefinite time— then you won't speak to me when I see
you passing to church ? "

" Oh yes," she said, looking down ; " I did not mean strangers like
that.

" And I thought," said he, with something more than disappointment
in his face, " that when I proposed to— to relieve you from my visits, you
would at least let us have one more afternoon together — only one — for a
drive, you know. It would be nothing to you — it would be something for
me to remember "

She would not recognize the fact, but for a brief moment his under-
lip quivered ; and somehow she seemed to know it, though she dared not
look up to his face.

" One afternoon — only one, to-morrow — next day, Wenna ? Surely
you cannot refuse me that ? "

Then, looking at her with a great compassion in his eyes, he suddenly
altered his tone.

" I think I ought to be hanged," he said in a vexed way. " You are
the only person in the world I care for, and every time I see you I plunge
you into trouble. Well, this is the last time. Good-by, Wenna ! "

Almost involuntarily she put out her hand ; but it was with the least
perceptible gesture to bid him remain. Then she went past him ; and
there were tears running down her face.

"If — if you will wait a moment," she said, " I will see if mamma
and I can go with you to-morrow afternoon."

She went out and he was left alone. Each word that she had uttered
had pierced his heart ; but which did he feel the more deeply — remorse

THREE FEATHERS. 377

that he should have insisted on this slight and useless concession, or bitter
rage against the circumstances that environed them, and the man who
was altogether responsible for these ? There was now at least one person
in the world who greatly longed for the return of Mr. Roscorla.

CHAPTER XXVIII. .
FAREWELL !

"YES, it is true," the young man said, next morning, to his cousin,
" this is the last time I shall see her for many a day."

He was standing with his back to her, moodily staring out of the
window.

" Well, Harry," his cousin said, gently enough, " you won't be hurt
if I say it is a very good thing ? I am glad to see you have so much
patience and reasonableness. Indeed, I think Miss Rosewarne has very
much improved you in that respect ; and it is very good advice she has
given you now."

" Oh yes, it is all very well to talk ! " he said, impatiently. " Common
sense is precious easy when you are quite indifferent. Of course, she is
quite indifferent, and she says, ' Don't trouble me ! ' What can one do
but go ? But if she was not so indifferent — — "

He turned suddenly.

" Jue, you can't tell what trouble I am in ! Do you know that some-
times I have fancied she was not quite as indifferent — I have had the
cheek to think so from one or two things she said — and then, if that were
so, it is enough to drive one mad to think of leaving her. How could I
leave her, Jue ? If any one cared for you, would you quietly sneak off
in order to consult your own comfort and convenience ? Would you be
patient and reasonable then ? "

" Harry, don't talk in that excited way. Listen. She does not ask
you to go away for your sake, but for hers."

" For her sake ? " he repeated, staring. " If she is indifferent, how
can that matter to her ? Well, I suppose I am a nuisance to her — as
much as I am to myself. There it is. I am an interloper."

" My poor boy," his cousin said, with a kindly smile, " you don't
know your own mind two minutes running. During this past week you
have been blown about by all sorts of contrary winds of opinion and
fancy. Sometimes you thought she cared for you — sometimes no. Some-
times you thought it a shame to interfere with Mr. Roscorla ; then again
you grew indignant and would have slaughtered him. Now you don't
know whether you ought to go away or stop to persecute her. Don't
you think she is the best judge ? "

" No, I don't," he said. "I think she is no judge of what is best

378 THEEE FEATHEBS.

for h«r, because she never thinks of that. She wants somebody by her
to insist on her being properly selfish."

" That would be a pretty lesson."

"A necessary one, anyhow, with some women, I can tell you. But
I suppose I must go, as she says. I couldn't bear meeting her about
Eglosilyan, and be scarcely allowed to speak to her. Then when that
hideous little beast comes back from Jamaica, fancy seeing them walk
about together ! I must cut the whole place. I shall go into the army
— it's the only profession open to a fool like me, and they say it won't
be long open either. When I come back, Jue, I suppose you'll be Mrs.
Tressider."

" I am very sorry," his cousin said, not heeding the reference to her-
self; " I never expected to see you so deep in trouble, Harry. But you
have youth and good spirits on your side : you will get over it."

" I suppose so," he said, not very cheerfully; and then he went off
to see about the carriage which was to take Wenna and himself for their
last drive together.

At the same time that he was talking to his cousin, Wenna was seated
at her writing-desk answering Mr. Roscorla's letter. Her brows were
knit together ; she was evidently labouring at some difficult and disagree-
able task. Her mother, lying on the sofa, was regarding her with an
amused look.

" What is the matter, Wenna ? That letter seems to give you a deal
of trouble."

The girl put down her pen with some trace of vexation in her face.

" Yes, indeed, mother. How is one to explain delicate matters in a
letter ? Every phrase seems capable of misconstruction. And then the
mischief it may cause ! "

" But surely you don't need to write with such care to Mr. Roscorla ? "

Wenna coloured slightly, and hesitated, as she answered —

"Well, mother, it is something peculiar. I did not wish to trouble
you ; but after all I don't think you will vex yourself about so small a
thing. Mr. Roscorla has been told stories about me. He is angry that
Mr. Trelyon should visit us so often. And — and — I am trying to explain.
That is all, mother."

" It is quite enough, Wenna ; but I am not surprised. Of course, if
foolish persons liked to misconstrue Mr. Trelyon's visits, they might make
mischief. I see no harm in them myself. I suppose the young man
found an evening at the inn amusing ; and I can see that he likes you
very well, as many other people do. But you know how you are situated,
Wenna. If Mr. Roscorla objects to your continuing an acquaintance with
Mr. Trelyon, your duty is clear."

" I do not think it is, mother," Wenna said, an indignant flush of
colour appearing in her face. " I should not be justified in throwing over
any friend or acquaintance merely because Mr. Roscorla had heard
rumours. I would not do it. He ought not to listen to such things — he

THREE FEATHERS. 879

ought to have greater faith in me. But at the same time I have asked
Mr. Trelyon not to come here so often — I have done so already — and
after to-day, mother, the gossips will have nothing to report."

«' That is better, Wenna," the mother said ; " I shall be sorry myself
to miss the young man, for I like him ; but it is better you should attend
to Mr. Roscorla's wishes. And don't answer his letter in a vexed or
angry way, Wenna."

She was certainly not doing so. Whatever she might be thinking,
a deliberate and even anxious courtesy was visible in the answer she was
sending him. Her pride would not allow her to apologize for what had
been done, in which she had seen no wrong ; but as to the future she
was earnest in her promises. And yet she could not help saying a good
word for Trelyon.

" You have known him longer than I do," she wrote, " and you know
what his character is. I could see nothing wrong in his coming to see
my family and myself; nor did you say anything against him while you
saw hini with us. I am sure you believe he is straightforward, honest,
and frank ; and if his frankness sometimes verges upon rudeness, he is of
late greatly improved in that respect — as in many others — and he is
most respectful and gentle in his manners. As for his kindness to my
mother ard myself, we could not shut our eyes to it. Here is the latest
instance of it ; although I feel deeply ashamed to tell you the story. We
were returning in a small boat, and I was carelessly letting my hand drag
through the water, when somehow the ring you gave me dropped off.
Of course, we all considered it lost — all except Mr. Trelyon, who took
the trouble to go at once all the way to Plymouth for a dredging-machine,
and the following afternoon I was overjoyed to find him return with the
lost ring, which I had scarcely dared hope to see again. How many
gentlemen would hav6 done so much for a mere acquaintance ? I am
sure if you had been here you wonld have been ashamed of me if I had
not been grateful to him. Now, however, since you appear to attach im-
portance to these idle rumours, I have asked Mr. Trelyon "

So the letter went on. She would not have written so calmly if she
had foreseen the passion which her ingenuous story about the dredging-
machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Boscorla read that simple
narrative, he first stared with astonishment as though she were making
some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however, his rage
and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young man, not
content with hanging about the girl so that neighbours talked, but
actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that engaged
ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at once saw
through the whole affair — the trip to Plymouth, the purchasing of a
gipsy-ring that could have been matched a dozen times over anywhere —
the return to Penzance with a cock-and-bull story about a dredging-
machine. So hot was his anger that it overcame his prudence. He
would start for England at once. He had taken no such resolution when

380 THREE FEATHERS.

he heard from the friendly and communicative Mr. Barnes that Mr.
Trelyon's conduct with regard to Wenna was causing scandal ; but this
making a fool of him in his absence he could not bear. At any cost he
would set out for England ; arrange matters more to his satisfaction by
recalling Wenna to a sense of her position ; then he would return to
Jamaica. His affairs there were already promising so well that he could
afford the trip.

Meanwhile, Wenna had just finished her letter when Mr. Trelyon
drove up with the carriage, and shortly afterwards came into the room.
He seemed rather grave, and yet not at all sentimentally sad. He
addressed himself mostly to Mrs. Rosewarne, and talked to her about
the Port Isaac fishing, the emigration of the miners, and other matters.
Then Wenna slipped away to get ready.

" Mrs. Rosewarne," he said, " you asked me to find out what I could
about that red-faced person, you know. Well, here is an advertisement
which may interest you. I came on it quite accidentally last night in
the smoking-room of the hotel."

It was a marriage advertisement, cut from a paper about a week old.
The name of the lady was " Katherine Ann, widow of the late J. T.
Shirley, Esq., of Barrackpore."

" Yes ! I was sure it was that woman ! " Mrs. Rosewarne said eagerly.
" And so she is married again ? "

"I fancied the gay young things were here on their wedding-trip,"
Trelyon said, carelessly. " They amused me. I like to see turtle-doves
of fifty/ billing and cooing on the promenade, especially when one of
them wears a brown wig, has an Irish accent, and drinks brandy-and-
water at breakfast. But he is a good billiard-player ; yes, he is an un-
commonly good billiard-player. He told me last night he had beaten
the Irish Secretary the other day in the billiard-room of the House
of Commons. I humbly suspect tkat was a lie. At least, I can't
remember anything about a billiard- table in the House of Commons,
and I was two or three times through every bit of it when I was a little
chap, with an uncle of mine, who was a Member then ; but perhaps
they've got a billiard-table now — who knows ? He told me he had stood
for an Irish borough — spent 3,000£. on a population of 284 — and all he
got was a black eye and a broken head. I should say all that was a
fabrication, too ; indeed, I think he rather amuses himself with lies — and
brandy- and- water. But you don't want to know anything more about
him, Mrs. Rosewarne ? "

She did not. All that she cared to know was in that little strip of
printed paper ; and as she left the room to get ready for the drive, she
expressed herself grateful to him in such warm tones that he was rather
astonished. After all, as he said to himself, he had had nothing to do
in bringing about the marriage of that somewhat gorgeous person in whom
Mrs. Rosewarne was so strangely interested.

They were silent as they drove away. There was one happy face

THREE FEATHERS. 381

amongst them, that of Mrs. Kosewarne ; but she was thinking of her own
affairs, in a sort of pleased reverie. Wenna was timid and a trifle sad ;
she said little beyond " Yes, Mr. Trelyon," and " No, Mr. Trelyon," and
even that was said in a low voice. As for him, he spoke to her gravely
and respectfully : it was already as if she were a mere stranger.

Had some of his old friends and acquaintances seen him now, they
would have been something more than astonished. Was this young man,
talking in a gentle and courteous fashion to his companion, and en-
deavouring to interest her in the various things around her, the same
dare-devil lad who used to clatter down the main street of Eglosilyan,
who knew no control other than his own unruly wishes, and who had no
answer but a mocking jest for any remonstrance ?

" And how long do you remain in Penzance, Mr. Trelyon ? " Mrs.
Eosewarne said at length.

" Until to-morrow I expect," he answered.
" To-morrow ? "

" Yes ; I am going back to Eglosilyan. You know my mother means
to give some party or other on my coming of age, and there is so little of
that amusement going on at our house that it needs all possible en-
couragement. After that I mean to leave Eglosilyan for a time."

Wenna said nothing ; but her downcast face grew a little paler : it was
she who was banishing him.

t( By the way," he continued, with a smile, " my mother is very
anxious about Miss Wenna' s return. I fancy she has been trying to go
into that business of the Sewing Club on her own account ; and in that
case she would be sure to get into a mess. I know her first impulse would
be to pay any money to smooth matters over ; but that would be a bad
beginning, wouldn't it ? "

" Yes, it would," Wenna said; but somehow, at this moment, she
was less inclined to be hopeful about the future.

" And as for you, Mrs. Eosewarne," he said, "I suppose you will be
going home soon, now that the change seems to have done you so much
good ? "

" Yes, I hope so," she said ; " but Wenna must go first. My husband
writes to me that he cannot do without her, and offers to send Mabyn
instead. Nobody seems to be able to get on without our Wenna."

" And yet she has the most curious fancy that she is of no account to
anybody. Why, some day I expect to hear of the people in Eglosilyan
holding a public meeting to present her with a service of plate, and an
address written on parchment, with blue and gold letters."

" Perhaps they will do that when she gets married," the mother said,
ignorant of the stab she was dealing.

It was a picturesque and pleasant bit of country through which they
were driving ; yet to two of them at least the afternoon sun seemed to
shine over it with a certain sadness. It was as if they were bidding
good-by to some beautiful scene they could scarcely expect to revisit.

382 THKEE FEATHEES.

For many a day thereafter, indeed, Wenna seemed to recollect that drive
as though it had happened in a dream. She remembered the rough and
lonely road leading up sharp hills and getting down into valleys again ;
the masses of ferns and wild flowers by the stone walls ; the wild and
undulating country, with its stretches of yellow furze, its clumps of
trees, and its huge blocks of grey granite. She remembered their passing
into a curious little valley, densely wooded, the winding path of which was
not well fitted for a broad carriage and a pair of horses. They had to
watch the boughs and branches as they jolted by. The sun was warm
among the foliage ; there was a resinous scent of ferns about. By-and-
by the valley abruptly opened on a wide and beautiful picture. Lamorna
Cove lay before them, and a cold fresh breeze came in from the sea.
Here the world seemed to cease suddenly. All around them were huge
rocks, and wild flowers, and trees ; and far up there on their left rose a
hill of granite, burning red with the sunset ; but down below them the
strange little harbour was in shadow, and the sea beyond, catching
nothing of the glow in the west, was grey, and mystic, and silent. Not a
ship was visible on that pale plain ; no human being could be seen about
the stone quays and the cottages ; it seemed as if they had come to the
end of the world, and were its last inhabitants. All these things Wenna
thought of in after days, until the odd and plain little harbour of Lamorna
and its rocks and bushes and slopes of granite seemed to be some bit
of fairyland, steeped in the rich hues of the sunset, and yet ethereal,
distant, and unrecoverable.

Mrs. Kosewarne did not at all understand the silence of these young
people, and made many attempts to break it up. Was the mere fact of
Mr. Trelyon returning to Eglosilyan next day anything to be sad about ?
He was not a schoolboy going back to school. As for Wenna, she had
got back her engaged ring, and ought to have been grateful and
happy.

" Come now," she said, " if you propose to drive back by the Mouse
Hole, we must waste no more time here. Wenna, have you gone to
sleep ? "

The girl started as if she had really been asleep; then she walked
back to the carriage and got in. They drove away again without say-
ing a word.

"What is the matter with you, Wenna? Why are you so down-
cast ? " her mother said.

" Oh, nothing 1 " the girl said hastily. " But— but one does not care
to talk much on so beautiful an evening."

" Yes, that is quite true," said Mr. Trelyon, quite as eagerly, and
with something of a blush ; " one only cares to sit and look at things."

" Oh, indeed," said Mrs. Kosewarne, with a smile ; she had never
before heard Mr. Trelyon express his views upon scenery.

They drove round by the Mouse Hole, and when they came in sight
of Penzance again, the bay, and the semicircle of houses, and St.

THEEE FEATHERS. 383

Michael's Mount were all of a pale grey in the twilight. As they drove
quietly along, they heard the voices of people from time to time ; the
occupants of the cottages had come out for their evening stroll and chat.
Suddenly, as they were passing certain huge masses of rock that sloped
suddenly down to the sea, they heard another sound — that of two or
three boys calling out for help. The briefest glance showed what was
going on. These boys were standing on the rocks, staring fixedly at
one of their companions who had fallen into the water and was wildly
splashing about, while all they could do to help him was to call for aid at
the pitch of their voices.

" That chap's drowning ! " Trelyon said, jumping out of the carriage.

The next minute he was out on the rocks, hastily pulling off his
coat. What was it he 'heard just as he plunged into the sea — the agonized
voice of a girl calling him back ?

Mrs. Rosewarne was at this moment staring at her daughter with
almost a horror-stricken look on her face. Was it really Wenna Eose-
warne who had been so mean ; and what madness possessed her to make
her so ? The girl had hold of her mother's arm with both her hands, and
held it with the grip of a vice ; while her white face was turned to the
rocks and the sea.

" Oh, mother ! " she cried, "it is only a boy, and he is a man —
and there is not another in all the world like him "

" Wenna, is it you who are speaking ; or a devil ? The boy is drowning ! "

But he was drowning no longer. He was laid hold of by a strong arm,
dragged in to the rocks, and there fished out by his companions. Then
Trelyon got up on the rocks, and calmly looked at his dripping clothes.

" You are a nice little beast, you are ! " he said to the small boy,
who had swallowed a good deal of salt water, but was otherwise quite
unhurt.

" How do you expect I am going home in these trousers ? Perhaps
your mother '11 pay me for a new pair, eh ? And give you a jolly good
thrashing for tumbling in ? Here's half-a- crown for you, you young
ruffian ; and if I catch you on these rocks again, I'll throw you in and
let you swim for it — see if I don't."

He walked up to the carriage, shaking himself, and putting on his
coat as he went, with great difficulty.

" Mrs. Rosewarne, I must walk back — I can't think of "

He uttered a short cry. Wenna was lying as one dead in her mother's
arms, Mrs. Rosewarne vainly endeavouring to revive her. Ho rushed
down the rocks again to a pool, and soaked his handkerchief in the water ;
then he went hurriedly back to the carriage, and put the cold handkerchief
on her temples and on her face.

" Oh, Mr. Trelyon, do go away, or you will get your death of cold ! "
Mrs. Rosewarne said. " Leave Wenna to me; See, there is a gentleman
who will lend you his horse, and you will get to your hotel directly."

He did not even answer her. His own face was about as pale as that

384 THREE

of the girl before him, and hers was that of a corpse. But by-and-by
strange tremors passed through her frame ; her hands tightened their
grip of her mother's arm, and with a sort of shudder she opened her eyes
and fearfully looked around. She caught sight of the young man standing
there ; she scarcely seemed to recognize him for a moment. And then,
with a quick nervous action, she caught at his hand and kissed it twice,
hurriedly and wildly ; then she turned to her mother, hid her face in her
bosom, and burst into a flood of tears. Probably the girl scarcely knew
all that had taken place ; but her two companions, in silence, and with a
great apprehension filling their hearts, saw and recognized the story she
had told.

" Mr. Trelyon," said Mrs. Eosewarne, " you must not remain here."

Mechanically he obeyed her. The gentleman who had been riding
along the road had dismounted, and, fearing some accident had occurred,
had come forward to offer his assistance. When he was told how
matters stood, he at once gave Trelyon his horse to ride in to Penzanee,
and then the carriage was driven off also, at a considerably less rapid pace.

That evening Trelyon, having got into warm clothes and dined, went
along to ask how Wenna was. His heart beat hurriedly as he knocked at
the door. He had intended merely making the inquiry, and coming
away again ; but the servant said that Mrs. Bosewarne wished to see him.

He went upstairs, and found Mrs. Rosewarne alone. These two
looked at each other ; that single glance told everything. They were
both aware of the secret that had been revealed.

For an instant there was dead silence between them ; and then
Mrs. Bosewarne, with a great sadness in her voice, despite its studied
calmness, said —

" Mr. Trelyon, we need say nothing of what has occurred. There
are some things that are best not spoken of. But I can trust to you not
to seek to see Wenna before you leave here. She is quite recovered —
only a little nervous, you know, and frightened. To-morrow she will be
quite well again."

" You will bid her good-by for me," he said.

But for the tight clasp of the hand between these two, it was an
ordinary parting. He put on his hat and went out. Perhaps it was the
cold sea air that had made his face so pale.

A VERY HANDSOME YOUNG LADY WAS COMING SMARTLY ALONG A WOODED LANE.

THE

COENHILL MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1875.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MABYN DREAMS.

ES, mother," said Mabyn,
bursting into the room,
" here I am ; and Jennifer's
downstairs, with my box ;
and I am to stay with you
here for another week or a
fortnight ; and Wenna'g to
go back at onee, for the
whole world is convulsed
because of Mr. Trelyon's
coming of age ; and Mrs.
Trelyon has sent and taken
all our spare rooms; and
father says Wenna must
come back directly, for it's
always ' Wenna, do this,1
and ' Wenna, do that; ' and
if Wenna isn't there, of
course the sky will tumble

down on the earth

Mother, what's the matter,
and where's Wenna ? "

Mabyn was suddenly brought up in the middle of her voluble speech
by the strange expression on her mother's face.

" Oh, Mabyn, something dreadful has happened to our Wenna."

Mabyn turned deadly white.
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 184, 19.

386 THBEE FEATHERS.

" Is she ill ? " she said, almost in a whisper.
" No, not ill ; but a great trouble has fallen on her."
Then the mother, in a low voice, apparently fearful that any one
should overhear, began to tell her younger daughter of all she had learnt
within the past day or two — how young Trelyon had been bold enough to
tell Wenna that he loved her ; how Wenna had dallied with her conscience
and been loth to part with him ; how at length she had as good as revealed
to him that she loved him in return ; and how she was now overwhelmed
and crushed beneath a sense of her own faithlessness and the impossibility
of making reparation to her betrothed.

" Only to think, Mabyn," said the mother, in accents of despair,
" that all this distress should have come about in such a quiet and un-
expected way ! Who could have foreseen it ? Why, of all people in the
world, you would have thought our Wenna was the least likely to have
any misery of this sort ; and many a time, don't you remember, I used to
say it was so wise of her getting engaged to a prudent and elderly man,
who would save her from the plagues and trials that young girls often
suffer at the hands of their lovers ? I thought she was so comfortably
settled. Everything promised her a quiet and gentle life. And now this
sudden shock has come upon her, she seems to think she is not fit to live,

and she goes on in such a wild way "

" Where is she ? " Mabyn said, abruptly.

"No, no, no," the mother said, anxiously. " You must not speak a
word to her, Mabyn. You must not let her know I have told you any-
thing about it. Leave her to herself for a while at least ; if you spoke to
her, she would take it you meant to accuse her ; for she says vou warned
her, and she would pay no heed. Leave her to herself, Mabyn."

"Then where is Mr. Trelyon ? " said Mabyn, with some touch of
indignation in her voice. " What is he doing ? Is he leayipg her to
herself too?"

"I don't know what you mean, Mabyn," her mother said, timidly.
" Why doesn't he come forward like a man, and marry her ? " said
Mabyn, boldly. " Yes, that is what I would do, if I were a man.
She has sent him away ? Yes, of course. That is right and proper.
And Wenna will go on doing what is right and proper, if you allow her, to
the very end, and the end will be a lifetime of misery, that's all. No, my
notion is that she should do something that is not right and is quite
improper, if only it makes her happy ; and you'll see if I don't get her to
do it. Why, mother, haven't you had eyes to see that these two have
been in love for years ? Nobody in the world had ever the least control
over him but her ; he would do anything for Wenna ; and she — why she
always came back singing after she had met and spoken to him. And
then you talk about a prudent and sensible husband ! I don't want
Wenna to marry a watchful, mean, old stocking-darning cripple, who will
creep about the house all day, and peer into cupboards, and give her
fourpence-halfpenny a week to live on. I want her to marry a man, one

THREE FEATHERS. 387

that is strong enough to protect her ; and I tell you, mother — I've said it
before and I say it again — she shall not marry Mr. Koscorla."

"Mabyn," said her mother, " you are getting madder than ever.
Your dislike to Mr. Boscorla is most unreasonable. A cripple ! —
why "

" Oh, mother ! " Mabyn cried, with a bright light on her face, " only
think of our Wenna being married to Mr. Trelyon, and how happy, and
pleased, and pretty she would look as they went walking together ! And
then how- proud he would be to have so nice a wife : and he would joke
about her, and be very impertinent, but he would simply worship her all
the same and do everything he could to please her. And he would take
her away and show her all the beautiful places abroad ; and he would
have a yacht, too ; and he would give her a fine house in London ; and
don't you think our Wenna would fascinate everybody with her mouse-
like ways, and her nice, small steps ? And if they did have any trouble,
wouldn't she be better to have somebody with her, not timid, and anxious,
and pettifogging, but somebody who wouldn't be cast down, but make
her as brave as himself ? "

Miss Mabyn was a shrewd young woman, and she saw that her mother's
quick, imaginative, sympathetic nature was being captivated by this
picture. She determined to have her as an ally.

" And don't you see, mother, how it all lies within her reach ? Harry
Trelyon is in love with her — there was no need for him to say so — I knew
it long before he did. And she — why, she has told him now that she
cares for him ; and if I were he, I know what I'd do in his place. What
is there in the way ? Why, a — a sort of understanding "

"A promise, Mabyn," said the mother.

"Well, a promise," said the girl, desperately, and colouring some-
what. " But it was a promise given in ignorance — she didn't know — how
could she know ? Everybody knows that such promises are constantly
broken. If you are in love with somebody else, what's the good of your
keeping the promise ? Now, mother, won't you argue with her ? See
here. If she keeps her promise, there's three people miserable. If she
breaks it, there's only one — and I doubt whether he's got the capacity to
be miserable. That's two to one, or three to one, is it ? Now will you
argue with her, mother ? "

"Mabyn, Mabyn," the mother said, with a shake of the head, but
evidently pleased with the voice of the tempter, "your fancy has run
away with you. Why, Mr. Trelyon has never proposed to marry her."

" I know he wants to," said Mabyn, confidently.

" How can you know ? "

" I'll ask him and prove it to you."

" Indeed," said the mother, sadly, " it is no thought of marriage that
is in Wenna's head just now. The poor girl is full of remorse and appre-
hension. I think she would like to start at once for Jamaica, and fling
herself at Mr. Roscorla's feet, and confess her fault. I am glad she has

19—2

888 THREE FEATHERS.

to go back to Eglosilyan ; that may distract her mind in a measure ; at
present she is suffering more than she shows."
" Where is she ? "

" In her own room, tired out and fast asleep. I looked in a few
minutes ago."

Mabyn went upstairs, after having seen that Jennifer had properly
bestowed her box, Wenna had just risen from the sofa, and was stand-
ing in the middle of the room. Her younger and taller sister went
blithely forward to her, kissed her as usual, took no notice of the sudden
flush of red that sprang into her face, and proceeded to state, in a busi-
ness-like fashion, all the arrangements that had to be made.

" Have you been enjoying yourself, Wenna ? " Mabyn said, with a fine
air of indifference.

" Oh, yes," Wenna answered ; adding hastily, " don't you think
mother is greatly improved ? "

" Wonderfully. I almost forgot she was an invalid. How lucky you
are to be going back to see all the fine doings at the Hall ; of course they
will ask you up."

" They will do nothing of the kind," Wenna said, with some asperity,
and with her face turned aside.

" Lord and Lady Amersham have already come to the Hall."
" Oh, indeed 1 "

" Yes ; they said some time ago that there was a good chance of Mr.
Trelyon marrying the daughter — the tall girl with yellow hair, you
remember ? "

" And the stooping shoulders ? yes. I should think they would be
glad to get her married to anybody. She's thirty."
" Oh, Wenna 1 "

" Mr. Trelyon told me so," said Wenna, sharply.
" And they are a little surprised," continued Mabyn, in the same
indifferent way, but watching her sister all the while, " that Mr. Trelyon
has remained absent until so near the time. But I suppose he means to
take Miss Penaluna with him. She lives here, doesn't she ? They used
to say there was a chance of a marriage there, too."

"Mabyn, what do you mean?" Wenna said, suddenly and angrily.
" What do I care about Mr. Trelyon's marriage ? What is it you
mean ? "

But the firmness of her lips began to yield ; there was an ominous
trembling about them ; and at the same moment her younger sister
caught her to her bosom, and hid her face there, and hushed her wild
sobbing. She would hear no confession. She knew enough. Nothing
would convince her that Wenna had done anything wrong ; so there was
no use speaking about it.

" Wenna," she said, in a low voice, " have you sent him any
message ? "

" Oh, no, no," the girl said, trembling. " I fear even to think of

9

THREE FEATHERS. 889

him ; and when you mentioned his name, Mabyn, it seemed to choke me.
And now I have to go back to Eglosilyan ; and oh ! if you only knew how
I dread that, Mabyn ! "

Mabyn's conscience was struck. She it was who had done this thing.
She had persuaded her father that her mother needed another week or
fortnight at Penzance ; she had frightened him by telling what bother he
would suffer if Wenna were not back at the inn during the festivities at
Trelyon Hall ; and then she had offered to go and take her sister's post.
George Rosewarne was heartily glad to exchange the one daughter for the
other. Mabyn was too independent. She thwarted him ; sometimes she
insisted on his bestirring himself. Wenna, on the other hand, went about
the place like some invisible spirit of order, making everything comfort-
able for him, without noise or worry. He was easily led to issue the
necessary orders ; and so it was that Mabyn thought she was doing her
sister a friendly turn by sending her back to Eglosilyan in order to join in
congratulating Harry Trelyon on his entrance into man's estate. Now
Mabyn found that she had only plunged her sister into deeper trouble.
What could be done to save her ?

" Wenna," said Mabyn, rather timidly, " do you think he has left
Penzance ? "

Wenna turned to her with a sudden look of entreaty in her face.
" I cannot bear to speak of him, Mabyn. I have no right to — I hope
you will not ask me. Just now I — I am going to write a letter — to
Jamaica. I shall tell the whole truth. It is for him to say what must
happen now. I have done him a great injury. I did not intend it ; I
had no thought of it ; but my own folly and thoughtlessness brought it
about, and I have to bear the penalty. I don't think he need be anxious
about punishing me."

She turned away with a tired look on her face, and began to get out
her writing materials. Mabyn watched her for a moment or two in
silence ; then she left and went to her own room, saying to herself,
" Punishment ? whoever talks of punishment will have to address himself
to me."

When she got to her own room, she wrote these words on a piece of
paper — in her firm, bold, free hand — " A friend would like to see you for
a minute in front of the Post Office in the middle of the town" She put
that in an envelope, and addressed the envelope to Harry Trelyon, Esq.
Still keeping her bonnet on, she went downstairs, and had a little general
conversation with her mother, in the course of which she quite casually
asked the name of the hotel at which Mr. Trelyon had been staying.
Then, just as if she were going out to the parade to have a look at the
sea, she carelessly left the house.

The dusk of the evening was growing to dark. A white mist lay over
the sea. The solitary lamps were being lit along the parade — each golden
star shining sharply in the pale purple twilight ; but a more confused glow of
orange showed where the little town was busy in its narrow thoroughfares.

390 THREE FEATHERS.

She got hold of a small boy, gave him the letter, sixpence, and his
instructions. He was to ask if the gentleman were in the hotel. If not,
had he left Penzance, or would he return that night ? In any case the
boy was not to leave the letter unless Mr. Trelyon were there.

The small boy returned in a couple of minutes. The gentleman was
there, and had taken the letter. So Mabyn at once set out for the centre
of the town, and soon found herself in among a mass of huddled houses,
bright shops, and thoroughfares pretty well filled with strolling sailors,
women getting home from market, and townspeople come out to gossip.
She had accurately judged that she would be less observed in this busy little
place than out on the parade ; and as it was the first appointment she had
ever made to meet a young gentleman alone, she was just a little nervous.

Trelyon was there. He had recognized the handwriting in a moment.
He had no time to ridicule or even to think of Mabyn's school-girl affec-
tation of secrecy ; he had at once rushed off to the place of appointment,
and that by a short cut, of which she had no knowledge.

" Mabyn, what's the matter ? Is Wenna ill ? " he said — forgetting
in his anxiety even to shake hands with her.

" Oh, no, she isn't," said Mabyn, rather coldly and defiantly. If he
was in love with her sister, it was for him to make advances.

" Oh, no, she's pretty well, thank you," continued Mabyn, indifferently.
" But she never could stand much worry. I wanted to see you about
that. She is going back to Eglosilyan to-morrow ; and you must promise
not to have her asked up to the Hall while these grand doings are going
on — you must not try to see her and persuade her — if you could keep out
of her way altogether "

" You know all about it, then, Mabyn ? " he said, suddenly ; and even
in the dusky light of the street, she could see the rapid look of gladness
that filled his face. " And you are not going to be vexed, eh ? You'll
remain friends with me, Mabyn — you will tell me how she is from time to
time. Don't you see I must go away — and, and, by Jove, Mabyn, I've got
such a lot to tell you ! "

She looked round.

" I can't talk to you here. Won't you walk back b^ the other road
behind the town ? " he said.

Yes, she would go willingly with him now. The anxiety of his face,
the almost wild way in which he seemed to beg for her help and friend-
ship, the mere impatience of his manner pleased and satisfied her. This
was as it should be. Here was no sweetheart by line and rule, demon-
strating his affection by argument, and acting at all times with a studiefl
propriety ; but a real, true lover, full of passionate hope and as passionate
fear, ready to do anything, and yet not knowing what to do. Above all
he was " brave and handsome, like a Prince ! " and therefore a fit lover
for her gentle sister.

" Oh, Mr. Trelyon," she said, with a great burst of confidence, "I did
so fear that you might be indifferent ! "

THREE FEATHERS. 391

"Indifferent! " said he, with some bitterness. "Perhaps that is the
best thing that could happen ; only it isn't very likely to happen. Did
you ever see anybody placed as I am placed, Mabyn ? Nothing but stum-
bling-blocks every way I look. Our family have always been hot-headed
and hot-tempered ; if I told my grandmother at this minute how I am
situated, I believe she would say, < Why don't you go like a man, and
run off with the girl ? ' "

" Yes ! " said Mabyn, quite delighted.

"But suppose you've bothered and worried the girl until you feel
ashamed of yourself, and she begs of you to leave her, aren't you bound
in fair manliness to go ? "

" I don't know," said Mabyn, doubtfully.

" Well, I do. It would be very mean to pester her. I'm off as soon
as these people leave the Hall. But then there are other things. There
is your sister engaged to this fellow out in Jamaica "

" Isn't he a horrid wretch ? " said Mabyn, between her teeth.

" Oh, I quite agree with you. If I could have it out with him now

but, after all, what harm has the man done ? Is it any wonder he

wanted to get Wenna for a wife ? "

" Oh, but he cheated her," said Mabyn, warmly. " He persuaded
her, and reasoned with her, and argued her into marrying him. And
what business had he to tell her that love between young people is all
bitterness and trial ; and that a girl is only safe when she marries a pru-
dent and elderly man who will look after her ? Why, it is to look after
him that he wants her. Wenna is going to him as a housekeeper and a
nurse. Only — only, Mr. Trelyon, she hasn't gone to him just yet I "

" Oh, I don't think he did anything unfair," the young man said,
gloomily. " It doesn't matter anyhow. What I was going to say is that
my grandmother's notion of what one of our family ought to do in such a
case can't be carried out : whatever you may think of a man, you can't go
and try to rob him of his sweetheart behind his back. Even supposing
she was willing to break with him, which she is not, you've at least got to
wait to give the fellow a chance."

" There I quite disagree with you, Mr. Trelyon," Mabyn said, warmly.
" Wait to give him a chance to make our Wenna miserable ? Is she to
be made the prize of a sort of fight ? If I were a man, I'd pay less atten-
tion to my own scruples and try what I could do for her. ... Oh, Mr.
Trelyon — I — I beg your pardon."

Mabyn suddenly stopped on the road, overwhelmed with confusion.
She had been so warmly thinking of her sister's welfare that she had
been hurried into something worse than an indiscretion.

" What, then, Mabyn ? " said he, profoundly surprised.

" I beg your pardon. I have been so thoughtless. I had no right to
assume that you wished — that you wished for the — for the oppor-
tunity - — "

" Of marrying Wenna ? " said he, with a great stare. " But what

392 THREE FEATHERS.

else have we been speaking about ? Or rather, I suppose we did assume
it. Well, the more I think of it, Mabyn, the more I am maddened by all
these obstacles, and by the notion of all the things that may happen.
That's the bad part of my going away. How can I tell what may
happen ? He might come back, and insist on her marrying him right
off."

" Mr. Trelyon," said Mabyn, speaking very clearly, " there's one
thing you may be sure of. If you let me know where you are, nothing
will happen to Wenna that you don't hear of."

He took her hand, and pressed it in mute thankfulness. He was not
insensible to the value of having so warm an advocate, so faithful an ally,
always at Wenna's side.

" How long do letters take in going to Jamaica ? " Mabyn asked.
" I don't know."

"I could fetch him back for you directly," said she, "if you would
like that."
"How?"

" By writing and telling him that you and Wenna were going to get
married. Wouldn't that fetch him back pretty quickly ? "

" I doubt it. He wouldn't believe it of Wenna. Then he is a sensible
sort of fellow, and would say to himself that, if the news was true, he
would have his journey for nothing. Besides, Barnes says that things
are looking well with him in Jamaica — better than anybody expected. He
might not be anxious to leave."

They had now got back to the parade, and Mabyn stopped.

" I must leave you now, Mr. Trelyon. Mind not to go near Wenna

when you get to Eglosilyan "

" She shan't even see me. I shill be there only a couple of days or
so ; then I am going to London. I am going to have a try at the Civil
Service examinations — for first commissions, you know. I shall only come
back to Eglosilyan for a day now and aga'n at long intervals. You have
promised to write to me, Mabyn — well, I'll send you my address."
She looked at him keenly as she offered him her hand.
" I wouldn't be downhearted if I were you," she said. " Very odd
things sometimes happen."

" Oh, I shan't be very downhearted," said he, " so long as I hear that
she is all right, and not vexing herself about anything."

" Good-by, Mr. Trelyon. I am sorry I can't take any message for you."
" To her ? No, that is impossible. Good-by, Mabyn ; I think you
are the best friend I have in the world."

" We'll see about that," she said, as she walked rapidly off.
Her mother had been sufficiently astonished by her long absence ; she
was now equally surprised by the excitement and pleasure visible in her
face.

" Oh, mammy, do you know whom I've seen ? Mr. Trelyon ! "
" Mabyn 1 "

THREE FEATHERS. 393

" Yes. We've walked right round Penzance — all by ourselves. And
it's all settled, mother."

" What is all settled ? "

"The understanding between him and me. An offensive and de-
fensive alliance. Let tyrants beware ! "

She took off her bonnet, and came and sat down on the floor by the
side of the sofa.

" Oh, mammy, I see such beautiful things in the future — you
wouldn't believe it if I told you all I see ! Everybody else seems deter-
mined to forecast such gloomy events — there's Wenna crying and writing
letters of contrition, and expecting all sorts of anger and scolding ; there's
Mr. Trelyon, haunted by the notion that Mr. Roscorla will suddenly come
home and marry Wenna right off; and as for him out there in Jamaica, I
expect he'll be in a nice state when he hears of all this. But far on
ahead of all that I see such a beautiful picture "

" It is a dream of yours, Mabyn," her mother said ; but there was an
imaginative light in her fine eyes, too.

" No, it is not a dream, mother ; for there are so many people all
wishing now that it should come about, in spite of these gloomy fancies.
What is there to prevent it, when we are all agreed ? Mr. Trelyon and I
heading the list with our important alliance ; and you, mother, would be
so proud to see Wenna happy ; and Mrs. Trelyon pets her as if she
were a daughter already, and everybody — every man, woman, and child
in Eglosilyan — would rather see that come about than get a guinea apiece.
Oh, mother, if you could see the picture that I see just now "

"It is a pretty picture, Mabyn," her mother said, shaking her head.
" But when you think of everybody being agreed, you forget one, and that
is Wenna herself. Whatever she thinks fit and right to do, that she is
certain to do ; and all your alliances and friendly wishes won't alter her
decision, even if it should break her heart. And, indeed, I hope the poor
child won't sink under the terrible strain that is on her : what do you
think of her looks, Mabyn ? "

" They want mending ; yes, they want mending," Mabyn admitted,
apparently with some compunction; but then she added, boldly, "and
you know as well as I do, mother, that there is but the one way of mend-
ing them ! "

CHAPTER XXX.

FERN IN DIE WELT.

IF this story were not tied by its title to the Duchy of Cornwall, it might
be interesting enough to follow Mr. Roscorla into the new world that had
opened all around him, and say something of the sudden shock his old
habits had thus received, and of the quite altered views of his own life he
had been led to form. As matters stand, we can only pay him a flying
visit.

19—5

394 THEEE FEATHERS.

He is seated in a verandah, fronting a garden, in which pomegranates
and oranges form the principal fruit. Down below him some blacks are
bringing provisions up to Yacca Farm, along the cactus avenue leading to
the gate. Far away on his right, the last rays of the sun are shining on
the summit of Blue Mountain Peak ; and along the horizon the reflected
glow of the sky shines on the calm sea. It is a fine, still evening ; his
cigar smells sweet in the air ; it is a time for indolent dreaming and for
memories of home.

But Mr. Roscorla is not so much enraptured by thoughts of home as
he might be.

" Why," he is saying to himself, " my life in Basset Cottage was no
life at all, but only a waiting for death. Day after day passed in that
monotonous fashion ; what had one to look forward to but old age, sick-
ness, and then the quiet of a coffin ? It was nothing but an hourly pro-
cession to the grave, varied by rabbit- shooting. This bold breaking
away from the narrow life of such a place has given me a new lease of
existence. Now I can look back with surprise on the dulness of that
Cornish village, and on the regularity of habits which I did not know
were habits. For is not that always the ease ? You don't know that you
are forming a habit ; you take each act to be an individual act, which you
may perform or not at will ; but all the same the succession of them is
getting you into its power, custom gets a grip of your ways of thinking as
well as your ways of living ; the habit is formed, and it does not cease its
hold until it conducts you to the grave. Try Jamaica for a cure. Fling
a sleeping man into the sea, and watch if he does not wake. Why, when
I look back to the slow, methodical, commonplace life I led at Eglo-
silyan, can I wonder that I was sometimes afraid of Wenna Rosewarne
regarding me as a somewhat staid and venerable person, on whose infir-
mities she ought to take pity ? "

He rose and began to walk up and down the verandah, putting his
foot down firmly. His loose linen suit was smart enough ; his com-
plexion had been improved by the sun. The consciousness that his
business affairs were promising well did not lessen his sense of self-
importance.

" Wenna must be prepared to move about a bit when I go back,"
he was saying to himself. " She must give up that daily attendance on
cottagers' children. If all turns out well, I don't see why we should not
live in London ; for who will know there who her father was ? That con-
sideration was of no consequence so long as I looked forward to living the
rest of my life in Basset Cottage ; now there are other things to be
thought of when there is a chance of my going among my old friends
again."

By this time, it must be observed, Mr. Roscorla had abandoned his
hasty intention of returning to England to upbraid Wenna with having
received a ring from Harry Trelyon. After all, he reasoned with himself,
the mere fact that she should talk thus simply and frankly about young

THREE FEATHEBS. 395

Trelyon showed that, so far as she was concerned, her loyalty to her
absent lover was unbroken. As for the young gentleman himself, he was,
Mr. Eoscorla knew, fond of joking. He had doubtless thought it a fine
thing to make a fool of two or three women by imposing on them this
cock-and-bull story of finding a ring by dredging. He was a little angry
that Wenna should have been deceived ; but then, he reflected, these
gipsy-rings are so much like one another that the young man had pro-
bably got a pretty fair duplicate. For the rest, he did not want to
quarrel with Harry Trelyon at present.

But as he was walking up and down this verandah, looking a much
younger and brisker man than the Mr. Roscorla who had left Eglosilyan,
a servant came through the house and brought him a couple of letters.
He saw they were respectively from Mr. Barnes and from Wenna ; and,
curiously enough, he opened the reverend gentleman's first — perhaps as
schoolboys like to leave the best bit of a tart to the last.

He read the letter over carefully ; he sat down and read it again ;
then he put it before him on the table. He was evidently puzzled
by it.

j- . "What does this man mean by writing these letters to me?" — so
Mr. Roscorla, who was a cautious and reflective person, communed with
himself. " He is no particular friend of mine. He must be driving at
something. Now he says that I am to be of good cheer. I must not
think anything of what he formerly wrote. Mr. Trelyon is leaving Eglo-
silyan for good, and his mother will at last have some peace of mind.
What a pity it is that this sensitive creature should be at the mercy of the
rude passions of this son of hers — that she should have no protector—*-
that she should be allowed to mope herself to death in a melancholy
seclusion."

An odd fancy occurred to Mr. Roscorla at this moment, and he
smiled.

" I think I have got a clue to Mr. Barnes's disinterested anxiety about
my affairs. The widower would like to protect the solitary and un^
friended widow ; but the young man is in the way. The young man
would be very much in the way if he married Wenna Rosewarne ; the
widower's fears drive him into suspicion, then into certainty ; nothing
will do but that I should return to England at once, and spoil this little
arrangement. But as soon as Harry Trelyon declares his intention of
leaving Eglosilyan for good, then my affairs may go anyhow. Mr. Barnes
finds the coast clear ; I am bidden to stay where I am. WelL, that is
what I mean to do ; but now I fancy I understand Mr. Barnes's generous
friendship for me and his affectionate correspondence."

He turned to Wenna' s letter with much compunction. He owed her
some atonement for having listened to the disingenuous reports of this
scheming clergyman. How could he have so far forgotten the firm,
uncompromising rectitude of the girl's character, her sensitive notions of
honour, the promises she had given ?

896 THREE FEATHEJRS.

He read her letter, and as he read his eyes seemed to grow hot with
rage. He paid no heed to the passionate contrition of the trembling lines ;
to the obvious pain that she had endured in telling the story, without
concealment, against herself ; to the utter and abject wretchedness with
which she awaited his decision. It was thus that she had kept faith with
him the moment his back was turned. Such were the safeguards afforded
by a woman's sense of honour. What a fool he had been, to imagine that
any woman could remain true to her promise, so soon as some other
object of flirtation and incipient love-making came in her way !

He looked at the letter again : he could scarcely believe it to be in her
handwriting. This the quiet, reasonable, gentle, and timid Wenna Rose-
warne, whose virtues were almost a trifle too severe ? The despair and
remorse of the letter did not touch him — he was too angry and indignant
over the insult to himself — but it astonished him. The passionate emo-
tion of those closely-written pages he could scarcely connect with the
shy, frank, kindly little girl he remembered ; it was a cry of agony from a
tortured woman, and he knew at least that for her the old, quiet time was
over.

He knew not what to do. All this that had happened was new to him ; it
was old and gone by in England, and who could tell what further compli-
cations might have arisen ? But his anger required some vent ; he went
in-doors, called for a lamp, and sat down and wrote, with a hard and
resolute look on his face : —

" I have received your letter. I am not surprised. You are a
woman ; and I ought to have known that a woman's promise is of value
so long as you are by her side to see that she keeps it. You ask what
reparation you can make ; I ask if there is any that you can suggest. No ;
you have done what cannot be undone. Do you think a man would
marry a woman who is in love with, or has been in love with another
man, even if he could overlook her breach of faith and the shameless
thoughtlessness of her conduct? My course is clear, at all events. I
give you back the promise that you did not know how to keep ; and now
you can go and ask the young man who has been making a holiday toy
of you whether he will be pleased to marry you.

" RICHARD ROSCORLA."

He sealed and addressed this letter, still with the firm, hard look
about his face ; then he summoned a servant — a tall, red-haired Irish-
man. He did not hesitate for a moment.

" Look here, Sullivan, the English mails go out to-morrow morning —
you must ride down to the Post Office, as hard as you can go ; and if
you're a few minutes late, see Mr. Keith, and give him my compliments,
and ask him if he can possibly take this letter if the mails are not made
up. It is of great importance. Quick now ! "

He watched the man go clattering down the cactus avenue until he
was out of sight. Then he turned, put the letters in his pocket, went

THREE FEATHERS. 397

in- doors, and again struck a small gong that did duty for a bell. He
wanted his horse brought round at once. He was going over to Pleasant
Farm ; probably he would not return that night. He lit another cigar
and paced up and down the gravel in front of the house until the horse
was brought round.

When he reached Pleasant Farm, the stars were shining overhead,
and the odours of the night-flowers came floating out of the forest ; but
inside the house there were brilliant lights and the voices of men talking.
A bachelor supper-party was going forward. Mr. Roscorla entered, and
presently was seated at the hospitable board.

They had never seen him so gay ; and they had certainly never seen
him so generously inclined, for Mr. Roscorla was economical in his habits.
He would have them all to dinner the next evening, and promised them
such champagne as had never been sent to Kingston before. He passed
round his best cigars ; he hinted something about unlimited loo ; he
drank pretty freely ; and was altogether in a jovial humour.

" England ? " he said, when some one mentioned the mother- country.
" Of one thing I am pretty certain — England will never see me again.
No — a man lives here ; in England he waits for his death. What life I
have got before me I shall live in Jamaica — that is my view of the
question."

" Then she is coming out to you ? " said his host, with a grin.

Roscorla's face flushed with anger.

" There is no she in the matter," he said, abruptly, almost fiercely.
" I thank God I am not tied to any woman."

" Oh, I beg your pardon," said his host, good-naturedly, who did not
care to recall the occasions on which Mr. Roscorla had been rather pleased
to admit that certain tender ties bound him to his native land.

11 No, there is not ! " he said. " What fool would have his comfort
and peace of mind depend on the caprice of a woman ? I like your plan
better, Rogers : when they're dependent on you, you can do as you like ;
but when they've got to be treated as equals, they're the devil. No, my
boys, you don't find me going in for the angel in the house — she's too
exacting. Is it to be unlimited ? "

Now to play unlimited loo in a reckless fashion is about the easiest
way of getting rid of money that the ingenuity of man has devised. The
other players were much better qualified to run such risks than Mr.
Roscorla ; but none played half so wildly as he. I.O.U's went freely
about. At one point in the evening the floating paper bearing the signa-
ture of Mr. Roscorla represented a sum of about 800?. ; and yet his losses
did not weigh heavily on him. At length every one got tired, and it was
resolved to stop short at a certain hour. But from this point the luck
changed ; nothing could stand against his cards ; one by one his I.O.U.'s
were recalled ; and when they all rose from the table, he had won about
48Z. He was not elated.

He went to his room, and sat down in an easy-chair; and then it

398 THREE FEATHERS.

seemed to him that he saw Eglosilyan once more, and the far coasts
of Cornwall, and the broad uplands lying under a blue English sky.
That was his home, and he had cut himself away from it, and from the
little glimmer of romance that had recently brightened it for him. Every
bit of the place, too, was associated somehow with Wenna Rosewarne. He
could see the seat, fronting the Atlantic, on which she used to sit and sew
on the fine summer forenoons. He could see the rough road, leading
over the downs, on which he met her one wintry morning, she wrapped up
and driving her father's dog-cart, while the red sun in the sky seemed to
brighten the pink colour the cold wind had brought into her cheeks. He
thought of her walking sedately up to church ; of her wild scramblings
among the rocks with Mabyn ; of her enjoyment of a fierce wind when it
came laden with the spray of the great rollers breaking on the cliff out-
side. What was the song she used to sing to herself as she went alori*g
the quiet woodland ways ? —

Your Polly has never been false, she declares,
Since last time we parted at Wapping Old Stairs.

He could not let her go. All the anger of wounded vanity had left his
heart ; he thought now only of the chance he was throwing away. Where
else could he hope to find for himself so pleasant a companion and friend,
who would cheer up his dull daily life with her warm sympathies, her
quick humour, her winning womanly ways ?

He thought of that letter he had sent away, and cursed his own folly.
So long as she was bound by her promise, he knew he could marry her
when he pleased ; but now he had voluntarily released her. In a couple
of weeks she would hold her manumission in her hands ; the past would
no longer have any power over her ; if ever they met, they would meet as
mere acquaintances. Every moment the prize slipping out of his grasp
seemed to grow more valuable ; his vexation with himself grew intole-
rable ; he suddenly resolved that he would make ft wild effort to get back
that fatal letter.

He had sat communing with himself for over an hour ; all the house-
hold was fast asleep. He would not wake any one, for fear of being com-
pelled to give explanations; so he noiselessly crept along the dark
passages until he got to the door, which he carefully opened and let him-
self out. The night was wonderfully clear ; the constellations throbbing
and glittering overhead ; the trees were black against the pale sky.

He made his way round to the stables, and had some sort of notion
that he would try to get at his horse, until it occurred to him that some
suddenly awakened servant or master would probably send a bullet whiz-
zing at him. So he abandoned that enterprise, and set off to walk, as
quickly as he could, down the slopes of the mountain, with the stars still
shining over his head, the air sweet with powerful scents, the leaves of the
bushes hanging silently in the semi-darkness.

How long he walked he did not know ; he was not aware that, when
he reached the sleeping town, a pale grey was lightening the eastern skies.

THREE FEATHERS. 899

He went to the house of the postmaster and hurriedly aroused him. Mr.
Keith began to think that the ordinarily sedate Mr. Roscorla had gone
mad.

"But I must have the letter," he said. " Come now, Keith, you can
give it me back if you like. Of course, I know it is very wrong ; but
you'll do it to oblige a friend "

" My dear sir," said the postmaster, who could not get time for
explanation, " the mails were made up last night "

" Yes, yes ; but you can open the English bag."

" They were sent on board last night."

" Then the packet is still in the harbour ; you might come down with
me "

" She sails at daybreak "

" It is not daybreak yet," said Mr. Roscorla, looking up.

Then he saw how the grey dawn had come over the skies, banishing
the stars, and he became aware of the wan light shining around him.
With the new day his life was altered ; he would no more be as he had
been ; the chief aim and purpose of his existence had been changed.

Walking heedlessly back, he came to a point from which he had
a distant view of the harbour and the sea beyond. Far away out on the
dull grey plain was a steamer slowly making her way towards the east.
Was that the packet bound for England, carrying to Wenna Rosewarne the
message that she was free ?

I!'--* -wUim't.oxil
CHAPTER XXXI.

" BLUE is THE SWEETEST."

THE following correspondence may now, without any great breach of
confidence, be published : — »

" Eglosilyan, Monday morning.
"DBAS MR. TRELYON,

" Do you know what Mr. Roscorla says in the letter Wenna has just
received ? Why, that you could not get up that ring by dredging, but
that you must have bought the ring at Plymouth. Just think of the
wicked old wretch fancying such things ; as if you would give a ring of
emeralds to any one / Tell me that this is a story, that I may bid Wenna
contradict him at once. I have got no patience with a man who is given
over to such mean suspicions.

" Yours faithfully,

" MABYN ROSEWARNE."

" London, Tuesday night.
"DEAR MABYN,

" I AM sorry to say Mr. Roscorla is right. It was a foolish trick
— I did not think it would be successful, for my hitting the size of her
jinger was rather a stroke of luck ; but I thought it would amuse her if

400 THREE FEATHERS.

she did find it out after an hour or two. I was afraid to tell her after-
wards, for she would think it impertinent. What's to be done ? Is she
angry about it ?

"Yours sincerely,

" HARRY TRELYON."

" Eglosilyan.
" DEAR MR. TRELYON,

" How could you do such a thing ! Why, to give Wenna, of all
people in the world, an emerald ring, just after I had got Mr. Eoscorla to
give her one, for bad luck to himself ! Why, how could you do it ! I
don't know what to say about it — unless you demand it back, and send
her one with sapphires in it at once.

" Yours,
" P.S. — As quick as ever you can." " M. R.

" London, Friday morning.
" DEAR MABYN,

" WHY, you know she wouldn't take a sapphire ring or any other
from me.

" Yours faithfully,

"H. TRELYON."

"DEAR MR. TRELYON,

"PRAY do not lose any time in writing; but send me at once
a sapphire ring for Wenna. You have hit the size once, and you can do it
again ; but in any case, I have marked the size on this bit of thread, and
the jeweller will understand. And please, dear Mr. Trelyon, don't get a
very expensive one, but a plain, good one, just like what a poor person
like me would buy for a present, if I wanted to. And post it at once,
please — this -is very important.

" Yours most sincerely,

" MABYN ROSEWARNE."

In consequence of this correspondence, Mabyn, one morning, proceeded
to seek out her sister, whom she found busy with the accounts of the
Sewing Club, which was now in a flourishing condition. Mabyn seemed
a little shy.

" Oh, Wenna," she said, "I have something to tell you. You know
I wrote to ask Mr. Trelyon about the ring. Well, he's very, very sorry
— oh, you don't know how sorry he is, Wenna ! — but it's quite true. He
thought he would please you by getting the ring, and that you would
make a joke of it when you found it out ; and then he was afraid to .speak
of it afterwards -

Wenna had quietly slipped the ring off her finger. She betrayed no
emotion at the mention of Mr. Trelyon's name. Her face was a trifle
red, that was all.

" It was a stupid thing to do," she said, " but I suppose ho meant no
harm. Will you send him back the ring ? "

" Yes," she said, eagerly. " Give me the ring, Wenna."

THREE FEATHERS. 401

She carefully wrapped it up in a piece of paper, and put it in her
pocket. Any one who knew her would have seen by her face that she
meant to give that ring short shrift. Then she said, timidly —

" You are not very angry, Wenna ? "

" No. I am sorry I should have vexed Mr. Roscorla by my care-
lessness."

" Wenna," the younger sister continued, even more timidly, " do you
know what I've heard about riogs — that when you've worn one for some
time on a finger, you ought never to leave it off altogether ; I think it
affects the circulation — or something of that kind. Now if Mr. Trelyon
were to send you another ring, just to — to keep the place of that one
until Mr. Roscorla came back "

" Mabyn, you must be mad to think of such a thing," said her sister,
looking down.

" Oh, yes," Mabyn said, meekly, " I thought you wouldn't like the
notion of Mr. Trelyon giving you a ring. And so, dear Wenna, I've —
I've got a ring for you — you won't mind taking it from me ; and if you do
wear it on the engaged finger, why, that doesn't matter, don't you
Bee? "

She produced the ring of dark blue stones, and herself put it on
Wenna's finger.

" Oh, Mabyn," Wenna said, " how could you be so extravagant !
And just after you gave me that ten shillings for the Leans."

" You be quiet," said Mabyn, briskly, going off with a light look on
her face.

And yet there was some determination about her mouth. She hastily
put on her hat, and went out. She took the path by the hillside over the
little harbour ; and eventually she reached the face of the black cliff, at
the foot of which a grey-green sea was dashing in white masses of foam ;
there was no living thing around her but the choughs and daws, and the
white seagulls sailing overhead.

She took out a large sheet of brown paper and placed it on the
ground. Then she sought out a bit of rock, weighing about two pounds.
Then she took out the little parcel which contained the emerald ring, tied
it up carefully along with the stone in the sheet of brown paper ; finally,
she rose up to her full height and heaved the whole into the sea. A
splash down there, and that was all.

She clapped her hands with joy.

"And now my precious emerald ring, that's the last of you, I
imagine ! And there isn't much chance of a fish bringing you back, to
make mischief with your ugly green stones ! "

Then she went home, and wrote this note : —

" Eglosilyan, Monday.
" DEAR MR. TRELYON,

"I HAVE just thrown the emerald ring you gave Wenna into the
sea, and she wears the other one now on her engaged finger, but she

402 THEEE FEATHERS.

thinks I bought it. Did you ever hear of an old-fashioned rhyme such
as this ? —

Oh, green is forsaken,

And yellow's forsworn,

And blue is the sweetest

Colour that's worn !

You can't tell what mischief that emerald ring might not have done. But
the sapphires that Wenna is wearing now are perfectly beautiful ; and
Wenna is not so heart-broken that she isn't very proud of them. I never
saw such a beautiful ring.

" Yours sincerely,

" MABYN EOSEWAENE.

" P.S. — Are you never coming back to Eglosilyan any more ? "

So the days went by, and Mabyn waited, with a secret hope, to see
what answer Mr. Roscorla would send to that letter of confession and
contrition Wenna had written to him at Penzance. The letter had been
written as an act of duty, and posted too; but there was no mail going,
out for ten days thereafter, so that a considerable time had to elapse
before the answer came.

During that time Wenna went about her ordinary duties, just as if
there was no hidden fire of pain consuming her heart ; there was no word
spoken by her or to her of all that had recently occurred ; her mother
and sister were glad to see her so continuously busy. At first she shrank
from going up to Trelyon Hall, and would rather have corresponded with
Mrs. Trelyon about their joint work of charity, but she conquered the
feeling, and went and saw the gentle lady, who perceived nothing altered
or strange in her demeanour. At last the letter from Jamaica came ;
and Mabyn, having sent it up to her sister's room, waited for a few
minutes, and then followed it. She was a little afraid, despite her belief in
the virtues of the sapphire ring.

When she entered the room, she uttered a slight cry of alarm and ran
forward to her sister. Wenna was seated on a chair by the side of the
bed, but she had thrown her arms out on the bed, her head was between
them, and she was sobbing as if her heart would break.

" Wenna, what is the matter ? what has he said to you ?"

Mabyn' s eyes were all afire now. Wenna would not answer. She
would not even raise her head.

" Wenna, I want to see that letter."

" Oh, no, no," the girl moaned. " I deserve it ; he says what is true ;
I want you to leave me alone, Mabyn — you — you can't do anything to help
this "

But Mabyn had by this time perceived that her sister held in her
hand, crumpled up, the letter which was the cause of this wild outburst of
grief. She went forward and firmly took it out of the yielding fingers ;
then she turned to the light and read it.

" Oh, if I were a man ! " she said ; and then the very passion of her

THREE FEATHERS. 403

indignation, finding no other vent, filled her eyes with proud and angry
tears. She forgot to rejoice that her sister was now free. She only saw
the cruel insult of those lines, and the fashion in which it had struck
down its victim.

" Wenna," she said, hotly, " you ought to have more spirit! You
don't mean to say you care for the opinion of a man who would write
to any girl like that! You ought to be precious glad that he has
shown himself in his true colours. Why, he never cared a bit for you —
never! — or he would never turn at a moment's notice^ and insult
you "

" I have deserved it all ; it is every word of it true ; he could not have
written otherwise" — that was all that Wenna would say between her

" Well," retorted Mabyn, " after all I am glad he was angry. I did
not think he had so much spirit. And if this is his opinion of you, I don't
think it is worth heeding, only I hope he'll keep to it. Yes, I do ! I hope
he'll continue to think you everything that is wicked, and remain out in
Jamaica. Wenna, you must not lie and cry like that. Come, get up,
and look at the strawberries that Mr. Trewhella has sent you."

" Please, Mabyn, leave me alone, there's a good girl."

" I shall be up again in a few minutes, then ; I want you to drive me
over to St. Gwennis. Wenna, I must go over to St. Gwennis before lunch ;
and father won't let me have anybody to drive ; do you hear, Wenna ? "

Then she went out and down into the kitchen, where she bothered
Jennifer for a few minutes until she had got an iron heated at the fire.
With this implement she carefully smoothed out the crumpled letter, and
then she as carefully folded it, took it upstairs, and put it safely away in
her own desk. She had just time to write a few lines : —

" DEAR ME. TRELYON,

" Do you know what news I have got to tell you ? Can you
guess ? The engagement between Mr. Koscorla and Wenna is broken off;
and I have got in my possession the letter in which he sets her free. If
you knew how glad I am ! — I should like to cry * Hurrah ! hurrah ! ' all
through the streets of Eglosilyan, and I think every one else would do the
same if only they knew. Of course, she is very much grieved, for he has
been most insulting. I cannot tell you the things he has said ; you would
kill him if you heard them. But she will come round very soon, I know ;
and then she will have her freedom again, and no more emerald rings, and
letters all filled with arguments. Would you like to see her, Mr. Trelyon ?
But don't come yet — not for a long time — she would only get angry and
obstinate. I'll tell you when to come ; and in the meantime, you know,
she is still wearing your ring, so that you need not be afraid. How glad
I shall be to see you again !

" Yours most faithfully,

" MABYN ROSEWARNE."

404 THKEE FEATHERS.

She went downstairs quickly, and put this letter in the letter-box.
There was an air of triumph on her face. She had worked for this
result — aided by the mysterious powers of fate, whom she had conjured
to serve her — and now the welcome end of her labours had arrived. She
bade the ostler get out the dog- cart, as if she were the Queen of Sheba
going to visit Solomon. She went marching up to her sister's room,
announcing her approach with a more than ordinarily accurate rendering
of " Oh, the men of merry, merry England ! " so that a stranger might
have fancied that he heard the very voice of Harry Trelyon, with all its
unmelodious vigour, ringing along the passage.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE EXILE'S RETURN.

PERHAPS you have been away in distant parts of the earth, each day
crowded with new experiences and slowly obscuring the clear pictures of
England with which you left ; perhaps you have only been hidden away
in London, amid its ceaseless noise, its stranger faces, its monotonous
recurrence of duties ; let us say, in any case, that you are returning home
for a space to the quiet of northern Cornwall.

You look out of the high window of a Plymouth hotel early in the
morning ; there is promise of a beautiful autumn day. A ring of pink
mist lies around the horizon ; overhead the sky is clear and blue ; the
white sickle of the moon still lingers visible. The new warmth of the day
begins to melt the hoar frost in the meadows, and you know that out
beyond the town the sun is shining brilliantly on the wet grass, with the
brown cattle gleaming red in the light.

You leave the great world behind, with all its bustle, crowds, and
express engines, when you get into the quiet little train that takes you
leisurely up to Launceston, through woods, by the sides of rivers, over
great valleys. There is a sense of repose about this railway journey.
The train stops at any number of small stations — apparently to let tlje
guard have a chat with the station-master — and then jogs on in a quiet,
contented fashion. And on such an autumn day as this, that is a beautiful,
still, rich- coloured, and English-looking country through which it passes.
Here is a deep valley, all glittering with the dew and the sunlight. Down
in the hollow a farm-yard is half hidden behind the yellowing elms ; a
boy is driving a flock of white geese along the twisting road ; the hedges
are red with the withering briers. Up here, along the hill-sides, the
woods of scrub oak are glowing with every imaginable hue of gold, crim-
son, and bronze, except where a few dark firs appear, or where a tuft of
broom, pure and bright in its green, stands out among the faded breckans.
The gorse is profusely in bloom — it always is in Cornwall. Still further
over there are sheep visible on the uplands; beyond these again the

THREE FEATHERS. 405

bleak brown moors rise into peaks of hills ; overhead the silent blue, and
all around the sweet, fresh country air.

With a sharp whistle the small train darts into an opening in the hills ;
here we are in the twilight of a great wood. The tall trees are becoming
bare ; the ground is red with the fallen leaves ; through the branches the
blue- winged jay flies, screaming harshly; you can smell the damp and re-
sinous odours of the ferns. Out again we get into the sunlight ; and lo !
a rushing, brawling, narrow stream, its. clear flood swaying this way and
that by the big stones ; a wall of rock overhead crowned by glowing furze ;
a herd of red cattle sent scampering through the bright-green grass. Now
we get slowly into a small white station, and catch a glimpse of a tiny
town over in the valley ; again we go on by wood and valley, by rocks,
and streams, and farms. It is a pleasant drive on such a morning.

In one of the carriages in this train Master Harry Trelyon and his
grandmother were seated. How he had ever persuaded her to go with
him to Cornwall by train was mysterious enough ; for the old lady
thoroughly hated all such modern devices. It was her custom to go
travelling all over the country with a big, old-fashioned phaeton and a
pair of horses ; and her chief amusement during these long excursions
was driving up to any big house she took a fancy to, in order to see if
there was a chance of its being let to her. The faithful old servant who
attended her, and who was about as old as the coachman, had a great
respect for his mistress ; but sometimes he swore — inaudibly — when she
ordered him to make the usual inquiry at the front-door of some noble
lord's country residence, which he would as soon have thought of letting
as of forfeiting his seat in the House of Peers or his hopes of heaven.
But the carriage and horses were coming down all the same to Eglosilyan,
to take her back again.

" Harry," she was saying at this moment, " the longer I look at you,
the more positive I am that you are ill. I don't like your colour ; you
are thin, and careworn, and anxious. What is the matter with you ? "

" Going to school again at twenty-one is hard work, grandmother," he
said. " Don't you try it. But I don't think I'm particularly ill; few
folks can keep a complexion like yours, grandmother."

" Yes," said the old lady, rather pleased, " many's the time they said
that about me, that there wasn't much to complain of in my looks ; and
that's what a girl thinks of then, and sweethearts, and balls, and all the
other men looking savage when she's dancing with any one of them. Well,
well, Harry ; and what is all this about you and the young lady your
mother has made such a pet of? Oh, yes, I have my suspicions; and
she's engaged to another man, isn't she ? Your grandfather would have
fought him, I'll be bound ; but we live in a peaceable way now — well,
well, no matter; but hasn't that got something to do with your gluin
looks, Harry?"

" I tell you, grandmother, I have been hard at work in London. You
can't look very brilliant after a few months in London."

406 THREE FEATHERS.

" And what keeps you in London at this time of the year ? " said this
plain-spoken old lady. " Your fancy about getting into the army ? Non-
sense, man ; don't tell me such a tale as that. There's a woman in the
case ; a Trelyon never put himself so much about from any other cause.
To stop in town at this time of the year ! Why, your grandfather and
your father, too, would have laughed to hear of it. I haven't had a brace
of birds or a pheasant sent me since last autumn — not one. Come, sir,
be frank with me. I'm an old woman, but I can hold my tongue."

" There's nothing to tell, grandmother," he said. " You just about
hit it in that guess of yours — I suppose Juliott told you. Well, the girl
is engaged to another man ; and what more is to be said ? "

" The man's in Jamaica ? "

" Yes."

" Why are you going down to-day ? "

" Only for a brief visit : I've been a long time away."

The old lady sat silent for some time. She had heard of the whole
affair before ; but she wished to have the rumour confirmed. And at first
she was sorely troubled that her grandson should contemplate marrying
the daughter of an innkeeper, however intelligent, amiable, and well-
educated the young lady might be ; but she knew the Trelyons pretty
well, and knew that, if he had made up his mind to it, argument and
remonstrance would be useless. Moreover, she had a great affection for
this young man, and was strongly disposed to sympathise with any wish
of his. She grew in time to have a great interest in Miss Wenna Rose-
warne ; at this moment the chief object of her visit was to make her
acquaintance. She grew to pity young Trelyon in his disappointment, and
was inclined to believe that the person in Jamaica was something of a public
enemy. The fact was, her mere sympathy for her grandson would have
converted her to a sympathy with the wildest project he could have
formed.

"Dear, dear," she said, "what awkward things engagements are
when they stand in your way. Shall I tell you the truth ? I was just
about as good as engaged to John Cholmondeley when I gave myself up to
your grandfather — but there, when a girl's heart pulls her one way, and
her promise pulls her another way, she needs to be a very firm-minded
young woman, if she means to hold fast. John Cholmondeley was as
good-hearted a young fellow as ever lived — yes, I will say that for him ;
and I was mightily sorry for him ; but — but you see, that's how things
come about. Dear, dear, that evening at Bath — I remember it as well as
if it was yesterday — and it was only two months after I had run away with
your grandfather. Yes, there was- a ball that night ; and we had kept
very quiet, you know, after coming back ; but this time your grandfather
had set his heart on taking me out before everybody, and, you know, he
had to have his way. As sure as I live, Harry, the first man I saw was
John Cholmondeley, just as white as a ghost — they said he had been
drinking hard and gambling pretty nearly the whole of these two months.

THREE FEATHERS. 407

He wouldn't come near me. He wouldn't take the least notice of me.
The whole night he pretended to be vastly gay and merry ; he danced
with everybody ; but his eyes never came near me. Well, you know what
a girl is — that vexed me a little bit ; for there never was a man such
a slave to a woman as he was to me — dear, dear, the way my father used
to laugh at him, until he got wild with anger. Well, T went up to him at
last, when he was by himself, and I said to him, just in a careless way,
you know, * John, aren't you going to dance with me to-night ? ' Well,
do you know, his face got quite white again ? and he said — I remember
the very words, all as cold as ice — ' Madam,' says he, ' I am glad to find
that your hurried trip to Scotland has impaired neither your good looks
nor your self-command.' Wasn't it cruel of him ? — but then, poor fellow,
he had been badly used, I admit that. Poor young fellow, he never did
marry ; and I don't believe he ever forgot me to his dying day. Many
a time I'd like to have told him all about it ; and how there was no use in
my marrying him if I liked another man better ; but though we met some-
times, especially when he came down about the Reform Bill time — and I
do believe I made a red-hot Radical of him — he was always very proud,
and I hadn't the heart to go back on the old story. But I'll tell you
what your grandfather did for him — he got him returned at the very
next election, and he on the other side too; and after a bit a man begins
to think more about getting a seat in Parliament than about courting an
empty-headed girl. I have met this Mr. Roscorla, haven't I ? "

" Of course you have."

" A good-looking man rather, with a fresh complexion and -grey
hair?"

" I don't know what you mean by good looks," said Trelyon, shortly.
" I shouldn't think people would call him an Adonis. But there's no
accounting for tastes."

" Perhaps I may have been mistaken," the old lady said ; " but there
was a gentleman at Plymouth Station who seemed to be something like
what I can recall of Mr. Roscorla — you didn't see him, I suppose."

"At Plymouth Station, grandmother?" the young man said, be-
coming rather uneasy.

" Yes. He got into the train just as we came up. A neatly- dressed
man, grey hair, and a healthy-looking face — I must have seen him some-
where about here before."

" Roscorla is in Jamaica," said Trelyon, positively.

Just at this moment the train slowed into Launceston Station, and
the people began to get out on the platform.

" That is the man I mean," said the old lady.

Trelyon turned and stared. There, sure enough, was Mr. Roscorla,
looking not one whit different from the precise, elderly, fresh- coloured
gentleman who had left Cornwall some seven months before.

" Good Lord, Harry," said the old lady, nervously looking at her
grandson's face, " don't have a fight here ! "

408 (THREE FEATHEKS.

The next second Mr. Roscorla wheeled round, anxious about sonle
luggage, and now it was his turn to stare in astonishment and anger —
anger, because he had been told that Harry Trelyon never came near
Cornwall, and his first sudden suspicion was that he had been deceived.
All this had happened in a minute. Trelyon was the first to regain his self-
command. He walked deliberately forward, held out his hand, and said —

" Hillo, Roscorla ; back in England again ? I didn't know you were
coming."

" No," said Mr. Roscorla, with his face grown just a trifle greyer,
" no, I suppose not."

In point of fact he had not informed any one of his coming. He had
prepared a little surprise. The chief motive of his return was to get
Wenna to cancel for ever that unlucky letter of release he had sent her,
which he had done more or less successfully in subsequent correspond-
ence ; but he had also hoped to introduce a little romanticism into his
meeting with her. He would enter Eglosilyan on foot. He would
wander down to the rocks at the mouth of the harbour, on the chance of
finding Wenna there. Might he not hear her humming to herself, as she
sat and sewed, some snatch of "Your Polly has never been false, she
declares " — or was that the very last ballad in the world she would now
think of singing ? Then the delight of regarding again the placid, bright
face and earnest eyes, of securing once more a perfect understanding
between them, and their glad return to the inn.

All this had been spoiled by the appearance of this young man : he
loved him none the more for that.

" I suppose you haven't got a trap waiting for you?" said Trelyon,
with cold politeness. " I can drive you over, if you like."

He could do no less than make the offer ; the other had no alternative
but to accept. Old Mrs. Trelyon heard this compact made with consider-
able dread.

Indeed, it was a dismal drive over to Eglosilyan, bright as the fore-
noon was. The old lady did her best to be courteous to Mr. Roscorla
and cheerful with her grandson ; but she was oppressed by the belief that
it was only her presence that had so far restrained the two men from
giving vent to the rage and jealousy that filled their hearts. The conver-
sation kept up was singular.

" Are you going to remain in England long, Eoscorla ? " said the
younger of the two men, making an unnecessary cut at one of the two
horses he was driving.

" Don't know yet. Perhaps I may."

" Because," said Trelyon, with acgry impertinence, " I suppose if you
do you'll have to look round for a housekeeper."

The insinuation was felt; and Roscorla's eyes looked anything but
pleasant as he answered —

" You forget I've got Mrs. Cornish to look after my house."

" Oh, Mrs. Cornish is not much of a companion for you."

THREE FEATHERS. 409

" Men seldom want to make companions of their housekeepers," was
the retort, uttered rather hotly.

"But sometimes they wish to have the two offices combined, for
economy's sake."

At this juncture Mrs. Trelyon struck in, somewhat wildly, with a remark
about an old ruined house, which seemed to have had at one time a private
still inside : the danger was staved off for the moment.

" Harry," she said, " mind what you are about ; the horses seem very
fresh."

" Yes, they like a good run ; I suspect they've had precious little to
do since I left Cornwall."

Did she fear that the young man was determined to throw them into a
ditch or down a precipice, with the wild desire of killing his rival at any
cost ? If she had known the whole state of affairs between them — the
story of the emerald ring, for example — she would have understood at
least the difficulty experienced by these two men in remaining decently
civil towards each other.

So they passed over the high and wide moors, until far ahead they
caught a glimpse of the blue plain of the sea. Mr. Roscorla relapsed into
silence ; he was becoming a trifle nervous. He was probably so occupied
with anticipations of his meeting with Wenna that he failed to notice the
objects around him — and one of these, now become visible, was a very
handsome young lady, who was coming smartty along a wooded lane, car-
rying a basket of bright- coloured flowers.

" Why, here's Mabyn Kosewarne. I must wait for her."

Mabyn had seen at a distance Mrs. Trelyon's grey horses ; she guessed
that the young master had come back, and that he had brought some
strangers with him. She did not like to be stared at by strangers. She
came along the path, with her eyes fixed on the ground ; she thought it
impertinent of Harry Trelyon to wait to speak to her.

" Oh, Mabyn," he cried, "you must let me drive you home! And
let me introduce you to my grandmother. There is some one else whom
you know."

The young lady bowed to Mrs. Trelyon ; then she stared, and changed
colour somewhat, when she saw Mr. Boscorla ; then she was helped up
into a seat.

" How do you do, Mr. Trelyon ? " she said. " I am very glad to see
you have come back. How do you do, Mr. Roscorla ? '

She shook hands with them both, but not quite in the same fashion.

"And you have sent no message that you were coming ? " she said,
looking her companion straight in the face.

" No — no, I did not," he said, angry and embarrassed by the open
enmity of the girl. " I thought I should surprise you all "

" You have surprised me, any way," said Mabyn, " for how can you
be so thoughtless ? Wenna has been very ill — I tell you, she has been
very ill indeed, though she has said little about it, and the least thing

VOL. xxxi.~ NO. 184. 20.

410 THBEE FEATHEBS.

upsets her. How can you think of frightening her so ? Bo you know
what you are doing ? I wish you would go away back to Launceston, or
London, and write her a note there, if you are coming, instead of trying to
frighten her ! "

This was the language, it appeared to Mr. Roscorla, of a virago ; only
viragoes do not ordinarily have tears in their eyes, as was the case with
Mabyn, when she finished her indignant appeal.

" Mr. Trelyon, do you think it is fair to go and frighten Wenna so ? "
she demanded.

" It is none of my business," Trelyon answered, with an air as if he
had said to his rival, " Yes, go and kill the girl ! You are a nice sort of
gentleman, to come down from London to kill the girl I "

" This is absurd," said Mr. Koscorla, contemptuously, for he was
stung into reprisal by the persecution of these two ; " a girl isn't so easily
frightened out of her wits. Why, she must have known that my coming
home was at any time probable."

" I have no doubt she feared that it was," said Mabyn, partly to her-
self : for once she was afraid of speaking out.

Presently, however, a brighter light came over the girl's face.

"Why, I quite forgot," she said, addressing Harry Trelyon; "I
quite forgot that Wenna was just going up to Trelyon Hall when I left.
Of course, she will be up there. You will be able to tell her that Mr.
Eoscorla has arrived, won't you ? "

The malice of this suggestion was so apparent that the young gentle-
man in front could not help grinning at it ; fortunately, his face could not
be seen by his rival. What lie thought of the whole arrangement can
only be imagined.

And so, as it happened, Mr. Roscorla and his friend Mabyn were
dropped at the inn ; while Harry Trelyon drove his grandmother up and
on to the Hall.

" Well, Harry," the old lady said, "I am glad to be able to breathe
at last ; I thought you two were going to kill each other."

" There is no fear of that," the young man said ; " that is not the
way in which this affair has to be settled. It is entirely a matter for her
decision — and look how everything is in his favour. I am not even
allowed to say a word to her ; and even if I could, he is a deal cleverer
than me in argument. He would argue my head off in half-an-hour."

" But you don't turn a girl's heart round by argument, Harry. When
a girl has to choose between a young lover and an elderly one, it isn't
always good sense that directs her choice. Is Miss Wenna Eosewarne at
all like her sister ?"

" She's not such a tomboy," he said; " but she is quite as straight-
forward, and proud, and quick to tell you what is the right thing to do.
There's no sort of shamming tolerated by these two girls. But then
Wenna is gentler, and quieter, and more soft and loveable than Mabyn —
in my fancy, you know ; and she is more humorous and clever, so that

THREE FEATHERS. 411

she never gets into those school-girl rages. But it is really a shame to
compare them like that ; and, indeed, if any one said the least thing
against one of these girls, the other would precious soon make him regret
the day he was born. You don't catch me doing that with either of them ;
I've had a warning already, when I hinted that Mabyn might probably
manage to keep her husband in good order. And so she would, I believe,
if the husband were not of the right sort ; but when she is really fond of
anybody, she becomes their slave out-and-out. There is nothing she
wouldn't do for her sister ; and her sister thinks there's nobody in the
world like Mabyn. So you see "

He stopped in the middle of this sentence.

" Grandmother," he said, almost in a whisper, " here she is coming
along the road."

" Miss Eosewarne ? "

"Yes: shall I introduce* you?"

"If you like."

Wenna was coming down the steep road, between the high hedges,
with a small girl on each side of her, whom she was leading by the hand.
She was gaily talking to them ; you could hear the children laughing at
what she said. Old Mrs. Trelyon came to the conclusion that this merry
young lady, with the light and free step, the careless talk, and fresh
colour in her face, was certainly not dying of any love-affair.

" Take the reins, grandmother, for a minute."

He had leapt down into the road, and was standing before her, almost
ere she had time to recognize him. For a moment a quick gleam of glad-
ness shone on her face ; then, almost instinctively, she seemed to shrink
from him, and she was reserved, distant, and formal.

He introduced her to the old lady, who said something nice to her
about her sister. The young man was looking wistfully at her, troubled
at heart that she treated him so coldly.

" I have got to break some news to you," he said ; " perhaps you
will consider it good news."

She looked up quickly.

"Nothing has happened to anybody — only some one has arrived.
Mr. Boscorla is at the inn."

She did not flinch. He was vexed with her that she showed no sign
of fear or dislike. On the contrary, she quickly said that she must then
go down to the inn ; and she bade them both good-by, in a placid and
ordinary way ; while he drove off, with dark thoughts crowding into his
imagination of what might happen down at the inn during the next few
days. He was angry with her, he scarcely knew why.

Meanwhile Wenna, apparently quite calm, went on down the road ;
but there was no more laughing in her voice, no more light in her face.

" Miss Wenna," said the smaller of the two children, who could not
understand this change, and who looked up with big, wondering eyes,
" why does oo tremble so ? "

20—5

412

€ant of fibmg.

COMPLAINTS about the increase in the cost of living have of late been rife
in every quarter. In these complaints themselves, and in the various
suggestions and appeals for relief which have been founded upon them,
the fact of such a rise has been so generally assumed that any attempt to
explain that it is in great part imaginary will seem to most persons simply
paradoxical. Does not every mistress of a household, it will be urged,
have, in details, the evidence of the fact brought to her mind in her
morning interviews with her cook or housekeeper ? And does not every
master have the same evidence, in the aggregate, when the time comes to
add up and discharge his Christmas bills ? And where else is the expla-
nation and justification to be sought for the Civil Service Stores, and their
rapid and startling success ? The matter is worth inquiring into. We
are convinced that here, as in so many other cases, the popular mind has
got hold of a few unquestionable facts, but has been rather too apt to
turn aside from equally important groups of counterbalancing facts.

Discussions upon the subject have not as a rule, we apprehend, taken
the most convenient and conclusive form. They have depended too much
upon vague individual recollection of details, or hearsay, on the one
hand, or upon appeals to statistical columns on the other hand. We are
convinced, however, that the examination of concrete instances offers
practically the only available plan. It is certainly the most interesting,
and we hope to give sufficient reasons for establishing that it is the most
trustworthy plan. Long lists of figures, containing the statistics of the
rise and fall of various commodities are at best the mere elements of an
inquiry, and need a considerable amount of dressing up before they can
be of any service to us. The price alone is clearly not sufficient. We
must also know the relative amount of each of the commodities which may
happen to be consumed, so as to understand how far a saving in the one
direction will neutralize a loss in another. But the moment this is done
the inquiry really becomes a concrete and relative one, for the compara-
tive amount of the various articles demanded for different households varies
widely according to tastes and circumstances. In one family bread and
meat will be the important items ; in another, ' amusements, travel, and
literature will be the main outlets of the income. Tastes and circum-
stances being various, expenses must be so likewise. Hence it seems to
follow that if we wish to get at the facts in a simple and intelligible
manner, we have really only two courses before us. One of these is to
endeavour to construct a sort of fictitious person who shall represent the

THE COST OF LIVING. 413

average expenses of any given rank or position. We may assign him an
average number of children, of average health and appetite, and credit
the parents with a sort of average disposition and line of expenditure.
As regards the simple wants and tastes of the agricultural labouring-
classes, such a plan as this might answer. It has in fact been repeatedly
adopted in their case with the result of establishing, conclusively we think,
that even in spite of a rise of money wages their position is on the whole
worse in some parts of the country than it was a generation ago. When,
however, we attempt to apply the same method to the middle and upper
classes, with their widely varying tastes and circumstances, it loses most
of its interest and value. No one would feel his own case sufficiently
nearly coincident with that of the fictitious individual to find much interest
in carrying out the comparison.

A far better plan, therefore, seems to be to find some actual concrete
case, that is, to take an instance of a family (if such can be found) which
we happened to know occupied about the same social position, and
possessed approximately similar tastes and means in two successive gener-
ations. What we may thus seem to lose in scientific accuracy will be
more than made up in other ways. What we want to know is not the
cost or wholesale price of things, which is what the statisticians are
mostly concerned with, but the actual price which had to be paid by
ordinary householders of common sagacity and opportunity. Moreover, by
thus taking actual concrete instances, we are saved from much uncertainty
and conjecture in the assignment of the supposed proportions in various
directions which the outlay of our fictitious householder would assume.

We may remark that it was the accident of such an opportunity as
this coming into our way that put us upon the present line of inquiry.
We recently fell in with some tolerably full and accurate household books
of from forty to fifty years ago, having the best possible grounds for
knowing what was the cost of living for a similar family a generation
further on. We will call the householders respectively father and son.
They occupied the same social position in the upper, or upper middle
class, whichever people may please to call it. Their incomes were not
very different, say about 1,0002. a year. Their tastes also were somewhat
similar. Both had decided literary sympathies, were fond of hospitality
in a quiet way, and of travel, and were both fairly good domestic managers.
As far as we can judge, therefore, each would want similar classes of
articles and of about the same quality, and would be likely to get it at
much about the same relative cost. The cases are also analogous in that
neither of them lived either in London or in the heart of the country, but
for the most part in country towns ; so that that source of uncertainty is
avoided which arises from the fact that formerly the difficulties of transit
produced much greater differences than now exist between the price of
some things in the metropolis and in the country.

Before giving some of our results in detail, there are one or two pre-
valent sources of [confusion which require to be cleared up. Perhaps the

414 THE COST OF LIVING.

oddest, one might rather say the coolest assumption often made in discus-
sions upon this subject, is one which really amounts to a claim that all loss
arising from increase of cost is to be regarded as a privation, and therefore
a ground for complaint, whereas all saving arising from diminution of cost
in other directions may fairly be regarded as being swallowed up by the
greater " demands " of the present age. Beef and butter are dearer, there-
fore here is a privation ; but when it is urged on the other hand that
travelling is vastly cheaper, the answer will very likely be, * Oh 1 but people
are obliged to travel so much more now than they used to do ; every one
does so now, even those who formerly never thought of such a thing, and
therefore we, like others, are forced to do the same.' Still more is the same
answer resorted to in the case of every sort of social display. It need
hardly be remarked that every plea of this sort must be peremptorily
rejected. All that we are concerned with is the simple question, Can I or
can I not procure a larger supply than a man of my own means could, a
generation or two ago, of the common necessaries and luxuries of life ?
To turn aside to examine whether we get more or less pleasure out of
these sources than people would formerly have done, is to enter upon
a totally different question. If our physical frames actually required more
sustenance now, that would be a fair set-off to any cheaper price in the ma-
terials ; but if a man can adorn his walls with double the number of
engravings or pictures that could have been procured for the same money
fifty years ago, this is an unquestionable gain. For him to turn round and
say that after all it comes to nothing, because society " demands " a greater
show, is to miss the whole point in dispute. Of course the stomach must
be fairly filled before our walls are decorated, but we are not discussing
the case of the very poor, all whose earnings go to necessaries, with the
smallest margin left for luxuries. We are concerned with the case of the
middle and upper classes, of whose expenditure, whether we choose to
give it the name of luxury or not, a very large portion is spent on what
are not necessaries. "Life " with them is not a struggle for the means
of existence, but a choice amongst many forms of amusement and
relaxation. Unless therefore we take an absurdly narrow view of the
matter, we must include under the term "cost of living," for any class,
all that makes life enjoyable, as well as what makes it possible for them.

The fact is, that to put up such a plea as the above is to concede
almost all that is needed. Society has no fixed claims whatever; it
claims just as much as it can get. Men on an average live pretty nearly
up to their income, or at any rate spend about the same proportion of it
in one age and another. If then they are found to buy more of some
article of enjoyment than they used to, it is a sign almost certainly of an
increased income, but also not improbably of some fall in the price of the
article in question. After a time they get accustomed to the enjoyment
of it, regard it as essential to their rank or position, and grumble if they
cannot have it, and the margin by which it was originally procured, as well.
Every increase therefore in the demands of society often marks a decrease,

THE COST OP LIVING. 415

recent or of long standing, in the cost of living. It may of course have
been attained by an increase of the average income, but it may also be
due to a fall in the price of the article. People say, for instance, that
dinner-giving is more expensive now, because every one expects champagne.
But why do they expect it now ? Our fathers liked the taste of it as much
as we do, and would have been just as glad to drink it ; but they could
not afford it. This means that the son's income is on an average larger
than the father's ; but the claims and expectations of society are simply a
consequence and sign of this gradual enrichment : they are not a product
which goes on growing of its own accord. We shall therefore neglect all
such considerations, and confine ourselves to the simple question, Will a
given income in the middle and upper classes buy more or less of such
things as they choose to lay it out in ?

Another and rather perplexing question arises out of the fact that
nearly all articles have of late years improved in quality, owing to in-
creased knowledge or mechanical skill in their production. Indeed, in
many cases this improvement has been so great as to have taken the form
of the entire supersession of the old material or instrument by modern
substitutes. In the case of scientific and manufacturing commodities this
is too evident to need more than a passing allusion. Compare, e.g. the
Moderator or Silber lamp with the best oil-lamps in existence forty years
ago. The quality of the light now used in every little drawing-room is
such as hardly a nobleman could then procure. In respect of the lighting
of our streets, halls, and passages, the contrast is of course more striking
still. So in every other direction. Modern linen is finer and whiter,
modern paper smoother, steel pens (to most tastes) infinitely less vexing
than quills.

We are quite aware that a contradictory belief circulates in some
minds. Many people have a conviction that things are now made cheap
and nasty in comparison with the excellence and Solidity of old workman-
ship. It would take up too much space here to give the full grounds of
our own conviction, but we have very little doubt that the fact is that in
the case of almost every article those who really wish for excellence can
get it as good or better than they ever could before ; but that to suit the
democratic taste of the day, and the consequent desire to secure a sort of
outside equality in all ranks, showy articles of inferior durability are
made as well ; in other words, that the cheap and flimsy things, in so
far as they are really more numerous, represent not so much a substitu-
tion for the good as a supplement to them. Hardly any one would deny
that this is the case in jewellery, for instance, and we suspect that the
same explanation is equally valid in almost every other direction. The
common objection which consists in pointing to some stout, and probably
ugly, old chair or cloak, and comparing it favourably with those in use
now, is met by the simple reply that all the weak ones have been broken
up or thrown away, so that none but the few strong ones are left. Of
the generally rickety houses which the builders run up now-a-days about

416 THE COST OF LIVING.

London, who can tell but what a small remnant may be left a century
hence which shall be pointed out as a favourable contrast to their latest
successors ?

This improvement in quality throws a difficulty in the way of our
inquiry, for since we have not got the old articles to compare with the
new, we are apt to forget how much cheaper the latter may often be at
nominally the same price. It is of course impossible to estimate the
value of such a saving as this with any approach to numerical accuracy,
but clearly some account ought to be taken of it, for the object of life is
not merely to get much, but also to get it good.

So again, to refer to a somewhat similar class of cases, there are many
articles which simply were not procurable at all in former days ; for
instance, photographic likenesses. Any labourer can now procure for a
shilling a more perfect likeness of a relative than the richest man could
have purchased a generation ago. When the comparison is made between
past and present cost, what account is to be taken of such things as
these ? It is clearly an advantage to have the power of procuring things
which our fathers would have liked as much as we do, but which they had
not the chance to get, but it is an advantage which cannot well be ex-
pressed numerically. The best we can do is to make a rough comparison
with the superior articles of the class which most nearly took their place
in former days.

So again with the saving which is made, not in money, but in time.
A man can now go from London to York at about one-third the price
which his father would have had to pay. But he can also do it with
comparative comfort and safety, in all weathers and at all times of the
year, in less than five hours, instead of requiring, as formerly, from twenty
to thirty. The former advantage admits of accurate determination, but
how are we to set about estimating the latter ? Such considerations as
these serve to remind us that any comparison between past and present
cost of living must be at best a somewhat rough affair, not so much from
the difficulty of procuring statistics, as from the difficulty, in fact impos-
sibility, of deciding clearly the principles upon which they are to be
applied in a large number of cases.

We will now give a glance at some of the facts. It will be best to
divide the total outlay into four or five principal groups corresponding to
the main classes of wants. The first of these corresponds to what are
often called "household" expenses, viz. food and drink, and the neces-
saries for procuring and dressing these. In their case, the comparison is
for the most part very simple. Nearly every important article which we
consume now was consumed forty years ago, and there has not been much
difference in the quality during that interval. All that we have to do,
therefore, is to make a comparative estimate of their values then and now.
On the whole, there can be no doubt that they have risen, and risen con-
siderably. Butchers' meat is about double what it was, and the same
may be said of its occasional substitutes, such as game, fowls, rabbits, &c.

THE COST OF LIVING. 417

Butter is considerably more than double, and eggs and milk are also
dearer. Bread, of course, fluctuates from year to year, but has shown no
sign of any permanent fall since the repeal of the corn laws. Some
things, no doubt, have fallen ; sugar and coffee to some extent, and tea to
between half and one-third of its former price. The lighter kinds of wine
also have lately become a cheap drink ; the choicer wines, on the other
hand, remaining as they were, or becoming, like all scarce things, dearer.
Of the innumerable remaining things supplied mostly by the grocer we
cannot attempt to offer an estimate ; some have risen, others fallen, but
their aggregate alteration does not amount to very much. Coals are one
of those commodities which vary in price with the locality ; railway com-
munication, however, has produced such an effect that even now, in the
south of England, in spite of the late rise, they are cheaper than they
were forty years ago. The father, in our comparison, had to pay in the
neighbourhood of London in winter thirty-five shillings a ton for his coals ;
they could be delivered there even now for less than that ; and three years
ago could be bought for twenty-seven shillings. When we add up the
gain and loss on all these various items, taking into account not only their
price but their amount, we find, as might be expected, that the scale in
which the butcher and his allies, the poulterer and dairyman, stand,
shows a decided tendency to sink. This is readily understood when it is
observed that the aggregate of these household expenses runs up to more
than a fourth of the total income (in the son's case), and that of this
aggregate, meat costs not much under one-third ; viz. some 75Z. out of
250J. We should not, perhaps, be far from the mark if we were to
reckon the loss in this department at from 30/. to 501. ; that is to say,
the son has to pay that annual sum extra in order to keep his table as
well furnished as his father's.

We will next discuss that group of expenses which may be called
educational. By this we mean, not merely school and college expenses,
but all those which most directly concern mental enjoyment and improve-
ment, such as books, newspapers, lectures, writing materials, and so on.
We are here getting on to ground on which some of the sources of error
already pointed out are especially likely to mislead. People are very apt
merely to think of what they have to pay, and to neglect to consider the
quality of what they get for their money. They complain of school
charges being higher, but they fail to realise how vastly greater in pro-
portion has been the improvement in the instruction given. Formerly,
after a few great old schools had been named (and these with many draw-
backs of antique prejudice and barbarous custom), it was quite a chance
whether, in a small country grammar school, you got any return worth
mentioning for your outlay. You might possibly get a good return, and
you might get a bad one, and there were few opportunities of knowing
beforehand which was the most likely. We strongly suspect that if any
parent were content to put up with an article no better than his father got
be might still procure it at the old cost by simply sending his boys to

20—5

418 THE COST OF LIVING.

cheap and inferior schools. But he chooses instead, very wisely, one of
the now numerous large schools and colleges which in every respect,
except social prestige, stand on the level of the old public schools. Much
the same may he said of University expenses, though here the rise of
price has been but little, great as has been the improvement in the
instruction. The direct charges for teaching are not much more than
they were. The rise in the indirect charges, for living, &c., fall into the
same class as those for other persons ; whilst in regard to the style of
living we have already said all that is needed, and will therefore merely
remark that when people on the whole choose to spend a great deal more
than their fathers did, they are simply showing that their pockets are
fuller, but are throwing no light upon the question whether the cost of
living has increased. In regard to the universal instruments of mental
improvement, books, papers, &c., the saving of cost is so gigantic that no
one who thinks that these things are comparable with beef and mutton
should venture to assert without careful inquiry that the total cost of
living has risen at all. In respect of standard favourites, for instance, we
have every range of cheapened production, from the novel of Walter
Scott, which we procure at one sixty-third of the price which it cost
our fathers, to the old classics, in which much of the improvement
consists rather in the better paper and typography. In the case of
newspapers again, the Times, for instance, has halved its price and
doubled or trebled its size ; whilst in respect of the infinite variety of
other daily, weekly, and monthly journals, no comparison can be made,
simply because one of the elements of such a comparison is entirely
wanting. We now enjoy sources of information which simply could not
be procured by any one, at any cost, forty years ago. Somewhat similar
remarks apply to pictures. The great rise in the price of original works
of art need not be noticed here, since this does not touch one man in ten
thousand ; but the cheapening effected in all kinds of copies by photo-
graphy, chromolithography, and the numerous other substitutes for the
old engraving process, opens sources of enjoyment to every one. The
general expenditure under this head of education is of course very variable,
and depends in amount and direction upon the accident of there being
boys in a family, or of a son being trained for a learned profession. But
we may safely say that the increased payment for schooling is not great,
and is more than made up by the improvement in quality ; whilst, in
regard to literature, &c. we should be well within the mark in saying
that half the old cost is saved, so that any man whose expenditure under
this head is large, might be able to recoup himself here for his butcher's
extortion, if he likes so to call it.

Another drain upon the purse is found in travelling expenses. These
are of course just as much a part of the cost of living as anything else.
It needs no great penetration to see that if one man spends 100L in
entertaining his friends in the course of the year, whilst another spends
the same sum in taking his family to Switzerland, these are both ways of

THE COST OF LIVING. 419

enjoying life, and that, therefore, it would be the flimsiest of conventions to
include one in the cost of living and to exclude the other. If the former
finds that his income, in his own line of outlay, will not go as far by
one-half, and the other finds that his goes further by the same amount,
these are clearly to be regarded, on any broad and rational view of life, as
compensating considerations to be set off the one against the other. The
real difficulty in giving even the roughest numerical estimate here consists
in the fact that so much of the pleasure derived from this source is not a
mere cheapening of what was procurable before, but is the opening out of
new satisfaction which could not possibly be attained formerly. A fort-
night in Switzerland, we assume, is a better article than one in Wales.
A banker's clerk can command the former easily with a three weeks' leave,
whilst his father could scarcely have done more than go there and back
within the time. Hotel expenses have of course increased abroad, but
then the quality of the accommodation has risen too. If people were con-
tent now with such inns as their fathers put up at, and chose to go to those
parts of the Alps where such inns only are to be found, they would dis-
cover that the difference between, say, many parts of the Tyrol now, and
the Oberland or Chamouni then, is by no means great, and dwindles into
insignificance in comparison with the cost of getting to such places. The
only item belonging to this class which has greatly risen is, oddly enough,
just the one which was commonly supposed forty years ago to be about to
suffer a terrible depreciation, viz. horses. As between the families in
question, we find that the father could get a horse to suit him well for
80£., and was quite content with riding and driving horses at 25£., and
even 20Z. The son never had the luck to be offered one of presumably
equal value for less than from 40£. to 6(K. This expense, however, is
one that does not concern many people, nor those more than occasionally,
so that travelling may safely be included amongst those items in the cost
of living which have greatly decreased during a generation and a half.
Those who may wish to make a comparison between the cost of travelling
in England then and now will not be very far wrong in assuming that the
outside places in a coach journey corresponded in price to the present
first-class fares. At least this is almost exactly the proportion in some
cases, and, therefore, is probably not far from the average. Posting, of
course, was vastly more expensive. For occasional trips, a horse and gig
did not cost very much less than it would now, for some reason or other ;
whereas a saddle horse was by comparison a very cheap luxury. It seems
that at Cambridge, for instance, one could be procured for the best part of
a day for three shillings, whereas now from seven to ten shillings would
be the least sum that would be charged for the same.

When we come to house-rent we find, as we need not say, a consider-
able rise, but the amount of it is subject to many uncertainties, arising
from change of fashion, accessibility, and the commercial progress of the
particular neighbourhood. The father, we find, paid SOL a year for his
kouse. The son, for a somewhat larger and more convenient house, with

420 THE COST OF LIVING.

a smaller garden, paid 125/. The former, however, was considered rather
low and the latter rather high for its neighbourhood ; the true difference,
as regards rent alone, would probably have been more like 30/. Bates
and taxes have of course risen ; but then here we get a quid pro quo, for
most of the increase goes to pay for such things as drains, light, and
police, luxuries that our fathers had mostly to do without.

Servants' wages, again, have risen, at least those of indoor servants,
but to what precise amount is not easy to say, owing to variations in
respect of what they are expected to find for themselves. We shall not
be far from the mark, however, if we reckon that the housemaids have
risen from about 10Z. to 15/., and the cooks, perhaps, from Wl. or 121. to
18Z. Outdoor servants have not apparently profited so much; the father
and son each paid his gardener about the same sum, viz., one guinea a
week. On the whole, the total rise in this branch of expenditure
(amounting to about 160Z. a year) cannot be reckoned at more than 35/.
or 40L

The only remaining outlay of a regular and unavoidable kind seems to
be dress. Here, where fashion reigns supreme, at least in the case of the
ladies, we entirely abandon any attempt at figures. That they could dress
cheaper if they pleased we have little doubt, owing to the smaller price of
cotton and some other cheap goods. Moreover, the women in the poorer
classes dress much more showily now, which cannot be more than very
partially accounted for by increased incomes on their part. Men's clothing
does not seem to have varied much. Some things, hats for instance, are
decidedly cheaper. Those who would not now without compunction pay
more than fourteen or sixteen shillings for the modern silk hat, could not
have bought the old-fashioned " beaver " for less than twenty- six shillings ;
and if we may judge by the frequency with which the entry occurs it
would not appear that the latter had much more vitality in its constitution
than the former. Some things, like gloves, are dearer ; but in the most
costly part, viz., cloth garments, we cannot detect any difference worth
taking into account.

We have now taken account of all the principal permanent sources of
expense ; but besides these there is always a margin, and in households
where the circumstances are easy a large margin, of occasional expenses.
One year the house has to be painted or the carpenters have work to do ;
another year a carriage is bought, or the garden altered or added to, or
some kind of machine or implement is being constantly wanted. Most
men have some kind of scientific, mechanical, or artistic hobby, and the
gratification of these, or the procuring of presents for friends, often
amounts in the aggregate to a considerable sum. These are far too vari-
able things for us to try to take them individually into account. All we
can say is that those which depend directly upon human labour, like house-
repairs, have mostly risen considerably, owing to the rise in the workmen's
wages ; whilst those which involve much machinery in their production,
like most kinds of mechanical appliances, have shown a decided tendency

THE COST OF LIVING. 421

to fall. So these two conflicting influences may to some extent be set off
one against another. Amongst the most important of these occasional ex-
penses is furniture. Almost every one has to furnish a house completely at
least once during his life, and a year seldom passes without his having also
either to replace some old articles or buy some new ones. The outlay,
therefore, even if converted into an annual equivalent, will be by no means
inconsiderable. We have made the best comparison we can, and conclude
that there has been on the whole a considerable saving in this direction.
Few things have risen here, and some have fallen very considerably.
Amongst the latter, iron and glass are, as might have been expected,
prominent. We find that 30Z. was paid for a drawing-room mirror, whilst
one as good in every respect could not now, at the outside, cost more
than Wl. Fire-grates and other metal articles seem to have been nearly
double their present value. In ordinary wooden furniture we do not
notice much difference. Carpets are cheaper; a good Brussels carpet
costing five-and-threepence a yard against the present four-and-sixpence
or thereabouts.

On a general review of the whole case, we may say that the three
main classes of universal necessaries, viz. food, house accommodation,
and servants' wages, have all risen considerably ; whilst the fourth, viz.
clothes, may be regarded as but little altered. These comprise, of course,
a large proportion of every one's income (we find, by a rough estimate, that
in one of the cases under discussion, they amounted to about two-thirds
of the total income), and the total loss upon them is not inconsiderable ;
according to the conjectures we have hazarded, this loss might, perhaps,
come altogether to from 50/. to 80Z., or even 10(K. On the other hand,
of the three occasional and less necessary expenses, viz. culture, travel,
and what we have left under the head of miscellaneous, the first two show
a vast diminution of cost.

Whether the saving under this head will suffice to make up for the loss
under the other depends of course upon the circumstances of the indi-
vidual case. It is easy to see what these circumstances are. Those
whose incomes are but moderate, or who have large families, for instance
struggling professional men, will find, of course, that the necessary ex-
penses make up a very large proportion of the whole. They will, therefore,
suffer by the rise of prices in these things, that is to say, they will not find
that a given annual income will procure them as many and as good things
as it would procure their fathers. On the other hand, men with large
incomes, and small families, will find that in such things as travelling and
the various forms of mental gratification, they have a large and in some
cases more than ample opportunity of indemnifying themselves. The
person who is best off of all is the literary bachelor. His losses are but
very small ; much of what the butcher has put on, the tea-dealer and
tobacconist have probably taken off; whilst in nine out of ten of the
things which he wants to purchase he will find a saving, sometimes
small, often considerable, and in some cases enormous.

422

Carriage 0f

CHAPTER I.
MOIRA SEEKS THE MINISTER.

IT was a grey day ; the skies were clouded over ; the Atlantic was sea-
green and rough ; the rocky islands along the coast looked black in the
driving sea. A young girl, with her shawl wrapped round her head and
shoulders, had come all the way across the island of Darroch to the Free
Church Manse on the western side, and now she timidly tapped at the
door. She was a quiet little Highland girl, not very pretty, perhaps ; she
was fair, freckled, and wistful of face ; but she had a certain innocence and
" strangeness " in her blue eyes that pleased people. Her name was
Moira Fergus — Moireach Fearghus some would have spelt it ; and she was
the eldest of a family of five, who all lived on the eastern shores of Dar-
roch with their father, John Fergus.

She tapped at the door, and a stalwart middle-aged woman answered.

" Ay, iss it you, Moira, that I see here this day ? and what will you be
wanting to say to the minister ? "

The girl seemed frightened ; but at last she managed to say that she
wanted to see the minister alone. The Highland woman regarded her
with some suspicion ; but at length asked her to come in and sit down in
the small parlour while she would go for Mr. MacDonald. The girl went
into the room ; and somewhat nervously sat down on one of the chairs.
For several minutes she remained there alone, looking in an absent way
at the big shells on the mantelpiece, and listening vaguely to the roar of
the sea outside.

Then Mr. MacDonald appeared — a small, thin, red-faced Celt, not very
careful as to dress, and obviously partial to snuff.

" Kott pless me^-and you, too, Moira Fergus," said he. " And it
wass no thought of seeing you that I had this tay. And wass there any-
thing wrong now with your father, that you hef come all the way from
Ardhilleach ? "

" No, Mr. MacDonald, there iss not anything the matter with my
father," said the girl, nervously working with the corner of her shawl.
"There iss not anything the matter with my father, — but — but — you
know, Mr. MacDonald, that it iss not every one that can get a smooth
word from my father."

"A smooth word?" said the minister. "And indeed it iss your
father, Moira, that iss the angriest man in all the islands, and there iss no
sort of holding of his tongue. There are other men — ay, there are other

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 423

men — who will be loose of their tongues on the week-days, and they will
speak of the teffle without much heed of it — and what iss the harm, too,
if you will tarn the teffle when you speak of him ? and it will come to him
all in good time ; but to tarn other people, and on the Sabbath, too, that iss
a ferry tifferent matter. The teffle — well, he is tammed whateffer ; but how
can you know that Mr. Ross of Styornoway, or Mr. Macleod of Harris, iss in
the black books ? But I will say no harm of your father, Moira Fergus."

And, indeed, Mr. MacDonald had some cause to be silent ; for — always
excepting on Sundays, when he proved himself a most earnest and faithful
shepherd — he was himself given to the use of strong language and a little,
strong drink. He was none the less respected by his flock that occasion-
ally he worked himself into a passion and uttered phrases that would have
driven the Free Church Synod into fits. On the Sundays, however, he
always had a clean shirt, would touch no whiskey, and made use of no
vehement language — unless that vehemence appeared in his Gaelic ser-
mons, which were of the best of their kind.

" Oh, Mr. MacDonald," the girl suddenly cried out, with a strange
pleading in her eyes, " you will be a irient to me, and I will tell you why
I hef come all the way from Ardtilleach. It wass Angus M'Eaehran and
me — you know Angus M'Eachran, Mr. MacDonald ? — it wass Angus
McEachran and me — well, we were thinking of getting married — ay, it iss
many a day since he hass talked of that "

" Well, well, Moira, and what more ? Is there any harm in it that
a young man and a young lass should think of getting married ? "

The girl still kept nervously twitching the corner of her shawl.

" And there iss many a time I hef said to him, ' Angus, we will get
married some day ; but what for should we get married now, and the fish-
ing not very good whateffer ? ' And there iss many a time he hass said
to me, * Moira, you hef done enough for your father and your father's
children, and if he will not let you marry, do you think, then, that you
will neffer marry ? ' '

" Your younger sisters must be growing up, Moira," the minister said.

"And the days went by," the girl continued, sadly, " and the weeks went
by, and Angus M'Eachran he wass ferry angry with me many a time, and
many a time I hef said to him, 'Angus, you will be doing petter if you will
go away and get some other young lass to be- your wife, for it will be a bad
tay the tay that I quarrel with my own people to come to you and be
your wife.' And it iss many the night I hef cried about it — from the
night to the morning ; and it wass many a time I will wish that I had
neffer seen him, and that he had neffSr come down from the Lewis, the
year that the herring came round about Darroch and Killeena. And now
— and now— — "

Well, the girl burst into tears at this point ; and the minister, not
knowing very well what to do, brought out a bottle of whiskey, and said —

"Now, Moira, be a good lass, and do not cry ass if you wass without
friends in the world. What iss it now that iss the matter ?"

424 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIBA FEKGUS.

"Well, Mr. MacDonald," the girl said, between her sobs, " it wass five
days or four days ago that Angus came to me, and he said to me, * Moira, it iss
no more any use the trying to get married in Darroch, for your father he iss a
violent man, and he will not hear of it ; and what we hef to do is to go away
from Darroch, you and me together, and when the wedding iss all over,
then you can come back and tell your people.' "

" That wass not well spoken," said the minister. " It iss a bad day
for a young lass when she hass to run away from her own people."

He was beginning to see the cause of the trouble that was visible on
the fair young face.

"And I said to him," continued the girl, struggling to restrain her
tears, "I said to him, 'It iss a hard thing that you ask, Angus
M'Eachran, but it iss many a long day and many a long month you hef
waited for me to marry you, as I said I would marry you ; and if it iss
so that there will be no chance of our getting married in Darroch, I wil
go away with you.' Then he said, * Moira, I will find out about a poat
going up to the Lewis, and if they will put us ashore at Borvabost, or
Barvas,' or Callernish, we will walk across the island to Styornoway,
and there we will get the poat to tek us to Glassgow.' "

" To Glassgow! " cried the minister. " Wass you thinking of going
to Glassgow, Moira Fergus ? "

The girl looked rather abashed.

"And you do not know what an ahfu' place is Glassgow — ay, indeed,
an ahfu' place," said the minister, earnestly. " No, you do not know —
but I hef been more ass three times or two times in Glassgow — and for a
young lass to go there ! You do not know, Moira Fergus, that it iss
filled, every street of it, with wild men that hef no more care for the
Sabbath-day ass if it wass Tuesday, ay, or even Monday — and the sodgers
there — and the Roman Catholics — and no like the Catholics that you will
see, one of them, or two of them, about Lochaber, where they are ferry
like good, plain, other people — but it iss the Roman Catholics, Moira —
it iss the real Roman Catholics, Moira — you will find in Glassgow, and
they are ferry wild men, and if they were to rise against the town in the
night-time, it would be the Lord's own mercy if they did not burn every
person in his bed. Indeed, indeed, Moira Fergus, you must not go to
Glassgow!"

" And I do not want to go to Glassgow! " Moira said, excitedly, " that
iss what I hef come to you about this tay, Mr. MacDonald. I hef a
great fear of going to Glassgow, and I wass saying to myself that it wass
you, Mr. MacDonald, that maybe could help me — and if you wass to see
Angus M'Eachran "

"But if I wass to see your father, Moira Fergus — there iss no man so

mad ass not to know that a young lass will be thinking of getting married."

" That will be of no use whatefler, Mr. MacDonald. It iss a ferry

angry man he is, and if there iss any more word of the marriage I will be

afraid to go back to Ardtilleach."

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 425

" Then the'teffle — and tarn him ! — hass got into hisjiead ! " said the
minister, with a furious blow on the table. " It iss no patience I hef with
a foolish man ! "

Moira was rather frightened, but she said in a low voice—

" Ay, ay, it iss a ferry angry man he is ; and there iss no use going to
him, Mr. MacDonald ; but this iss what I wass thinking, Mr. MacDonald,
if you wass being so kind ass to go to Angus M'Eachran, and tell him
that it iss not a good thing for us to go away to Glassgow. I hef given my
word to him — yes, and I will not draw back from that — but now I hef a
great fear of going to Glassgow "

The minister was during this time shifting rather uneasily from the
table to the window and from the window to the table. He was evidently
much excited : he seemed scarcely to hear what the girl was saying. At
last he suddenly interrupted her.

" Listen to me, Moira Fergus. It iss no business of mine — no, it iss
not any business of mine — as a minister, to interfere in the family affairs of
any one whateffer ; and you had no right to come to the minister and ask
him to go and speak to Angus M'Eachran. No, you had no right ; and
yet I will say this, Moira Fergus, that you had a ferry good right — ay, the
teffle is in it if you had not a ferry good right. For I am a natif of this
island — well, it wass in Harris I wass born, but what iss the use of being
ferry particular ? — and I am a natif of this island as well as a minister, and
I hef known your family for a great many years, and I hef known you
to be a good lass — and — and this iss what I wass going to say to you that,
before I will see you going away to Glassgow, I will marry you and Angus
M'Eachran myself, ay, so that no one shall know of it until it is all ferry
well ofer. And what do you say to that, Moira Fergus ? "

The girl started, flushed, and then looked timidly down.

"It iss a ferry good man you are, Mr. MacDonald," she said, hesi-
tatingly, " and a ferry good friend you hef always been to me — but —
but it iss not for me to say that I hef come to ask you to marry us ; and it
is Angus M'Eachran, Mr. MacDonald, and not me, that hass to say ' yes '
or < no ' to that."

" Ay, ay 1 " said the minister, cheerfully and courageously, " it is no
fault for a young lass to be shy; and it iss right what you hef said,
Moira, that I will speak to Angus M'Eachran. And there iss another I
will speak to apout it, for it iss no trifling matter, Moira, and I will hef to
see that we are sure and safe in what hass to be done ; and you know
that there iss not any one about the islands that hass trafelled so far ass
Mr. Mackenzie, of Borva ; and it iss a great many things he will know,
and I think I will go and say a word to him, Moira."

" It iss a long way the way to Borva, Mr. MacDonald."

" Well, I wass told by Alister Lewis that the men of the Nighean-dubh
were coming up from Taransay about one o'clock or twelve o'clock to-
morrow's morning, and if it iss not ferry pad weather they will go on to
Loch Roag, so I think I will go with the Niyhean-dubh. Now, you will

426 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

go back to Ardtilleach, Moira Fergus, and you will say not a word to any
one until the time wass come I will be speaking myself to Angus
M'Eachran ; and now you will tak a tram, Moira, for it iss a ferry coorse
sort o' day, and a healthy young lass will hef no harm from a trop of good
whiskey."

"You are ferry kind, Mr. MacDonald, but I do not touch the
whiskey."

" No ? Then I will hef a drop myself, to wish you good luck, Moira ;
and when I come back from Borvabost, then I will tell you what Mr.
Mackenzie says, and you will keep up your spirits, Moira, and you will
find no need to go away from your own people to be married in G-lassgow."

When Moira Fergus went outside, a new light seemed to fill the
world. Certainly the sea was green and rough, and there were huge
white breakers heaving over on the black rocks. But it seemed to her
that there was a sort of sunshine in the green of the sea ; and she had a
consciousness of sunshine being behind the grey clouds overhead ; and
the dull brown moorland — mile after mile of it, in low undulation — was less
lonely than when she had crossed it an hour before. And that red-faced
irascible little minister, who lived by himself in the solitary manse out by
the sea, and who was just a trifle too fond of whiskey and fierce language
during six days of the week, was to her as a bright angel come down from
heaven with promises of help, so that the girl, as she thought of the
future, did not know whether to laugh or to cry for joy.

CHAPTER II.

A VISIT TO GREAT PEOPLE.

" THE teffle — and tarn him ! — is in the carelessness of you, Alister-nan-
Each ! " cried the minister, catching up his coat-tails. " What for will you
knock your fish against my coat, and me going up to see Mr. Mackenzie
and his daughter, that iss ass good ass an English lady now ? "

Alister made a humble apology to the minister, and took his own
bonnet to remove any lingering traces of the Nighean-dubh from the
minister's costume, and then Mr. MacDonald got ashore at Borvabost. He
had a word or two to say to some of the people whom he knew ; then he
went up and over the hill to the house of a certain Mr. Mackenzie, who
was called by some folks the " King of Borva."

" And iss Mr. Mackenzie in the house, Mairi ? " said he to the young
girl who came to thg passage — the doors in this part of the world are kept
shut against rain, but never against strangers.

" No," said she, " Mr. MacDonald, he iss not in Borva at all, but away
over at Styornoway, and it is ferry sorry he will be that you hef come to
Borva and him away from his own house. But there iss Miss Sheila, she

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 427

will be down at her own house ; and she will be ferry ill pleased that you
will come to Borva if you will not call at her house."

" Oh, I will call at her house ; and it is ferry glad I am that she hass
not gone away ass yet ; and I am glad to see that you are still with Mr.
Mackenzie, Main."

The old minister, grumbling over his disappointment, set out once
more, and walked away across the moorland and down to a plateau over
a quiet bay, where there was a large stone house built, with a verandah
and a flower-garden in front. He saw there a young lady watering the
tree-fuchsias — a handsome healthily-complexioned young woman, with
dark hair, and deep blue eyes, who was the daughter of Mr. Mackenzie.
She was rather well liked by the islanders, who generally called her " Miss
Sheila," notwithstanding that she was married ; although some of them
had got into a shy, half-comical, half- tender fashion of calling her " Prin-
cess Sheila," merely because her husband had a yacht so named.

" And are you ferry well ? " said she, running forward, with a bright
smile on her face, to the minister. " And hef you come all the way from
Darroch, Mr. MacDonald ? "

" Ay, ay," said the minister, a little embarrassed, and looking down,
" I hef come from Darroch ; and it iss a proud tay this tay that I will

shake hands with you, Miss Mrs. Laffenter ; and it iss ferry glad I

am that I will come to Borva, although your father is not here, for it iss
not effery time in the year that a stranger will see you, Mrs. Laffenter."

" Oh, but you are no stranger, Mr. MacDonald," said this Mrs.
Lavender. " Now come into the house, and I will ask you to stay and
have some dinner with us, Mr. MacDonald, for you cannot leave for
Darroch again to-night. And what did you want to see my father about,
Mr. MacDonald ?"

He followed her into the house, and sat down in a spacious sitting-
room, the like of which, in its wonderful colours and decorations, he had
never seen before. He could compare it only with Stornoway Castle, or
his dreams of the palace in which the Queen lived in London.

Well, he told all the story of Moira Fergus and Angus M'Eachran to
Mrs. Lavender, and said that he had come to ask the advice of her father,
who was a man who had travelled much and amassed knowledge.

" Surely you yourself are the best judge," said the handsome young
wife. " They have lived long enough in the parish, hef they not, Mr.
MacDonald?"

" Oh, that iss not it — that iss not the matter at all, Mrs. Laffenter ! "
said he, emphatically. " I can marry them — oh, yes, I know I can marry
them — in my own house, if I like. But it iss the prudence — it iss the
prudence, Mrs. Laffenter — of it that iss in the question ; and I am not
sure of the prudence of it."

" Then I must ask my husband," said Sheila.

She went to the open window, took a whistle from her pocket, and
blew a note loud and shrill that seemed to go echoing far across Loch

428 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

Boag, away amid the blue and misty solitudes of the great Suainabhal.
She stood there for a minute or two. Far below her there was a schooner
yacht resting quietly in the bay ; she could see a small boat put off, and
land on the shore a man and a very tiny boy. The man was clad in
rough blue homespun ; he set the child of three or so on his shoulder, and
then proceeded to climb the hill. In a few minutes there was the sound
of some one on the gravel outside, and presently a tall young man, some-
what heavily bearded, marched into the drawing-room, and threw the
child into its mother's outstretched arms.

" Mr. MacDonald of Darroch ?" he cried. " Why, of course ! And
haven't you got such a thing as a glass of whiskey in the house, Sheila,
when a visitor comes all the way from Darroch to see you ? And what's
the best of your news, Mr. MacDonald ? "

Sheila — or Mrs. Lavender, as one ought to call her — having deposited
the very young gentleman on the sofa, and given him a mighty piece of
cake to console him for maternal neglect, proceeded to tell her husband of
the causes of Mr. MacDonald's visit. His decision on the point was
quickly taken.

" You'll get yourself into trouble, Mr. Macdonald, if you help them to
a clandestine marriage. I wouldn't touch it, if I were you."

" Yes, I am afraid you will get yourself into trouble," said Sheila,
with an air of wisdom.

" But, Kott pless me ! " said the minister, indignantly, " hef I not
told you they will run away to Glassgow ? — and iss there anything ass bad
ass that — that a young lad and a young lass will go away to Glassgow, and
not one of them married until they get there ?"

" Well, there's something in that," said Mr. Lavender. " What sort
of fellow is this Angus M'Eachran ? "

" Oh, he is a ferry tiligent young man — he hass a share in the poat,
and he hass some money in the pank, and there iss none more cleffer than
he is at the fishing. Ay, ay, he is a cleffer young man, and a good-
looking young man ; but if he wass not so free with his laugh, and his
joke, and his glass — well, I will say nothing against the young man, who
is a ferry respectable young man whateffer, and there iss no reason why
John Fergus should shut the door against him."

" Then can't the father be talked over ? " said Mr. Lavender, pretend-
ing to snatch at the cake which his son was busily eating.

" Oh, couldn't I say something to him ! " Sheila said, with entreaty in
her eyes.

" You, Miss — Mrs. Laffenter ! " said the minister, with surprise.
" You, to go into John Fergus's house ! Yes, indeed, it would be a proud
day the day for him that you went into his house — ay, if he wass fifteen
or a dozen John Ferguses. But you hef no imagination of that man's
temper — and the sweerin of him ! "

" Oh, I should stop that," said Mr. Lavender. " If you like to go
and talk to him, Sheila, I will undertake that he shan't swear much ! "

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 429

" How could you know ? " the girl said, with a laugh. "He would
swear in the Gaelic. But if there is no other means, Mr. MacDonald, I
am sure anything is better than letting them run away to Glasgow."

" Sheila," said the husband, "when do we go to London ? "

" In about a week now we shall be ready, I think," she said.

" Well, look here. You seem interested in that girl — I don't re-
member her having been here at all. However, suppose we put off our
going to London, and see these young folks through their troubles ? "

Of course he saw by her face that that was what she wanted : he had
no sooner suggested such a thing than the happiest light possible sprang
to her eyes.

" Oh, will you ? " she cried.

" And in for a penny, in for a pound," said he. " I suppose you
want witnesses, Mr. MacDonald ? What if my wife and myself went
round in the yacht to Darroch, and helped you at your private wedding ? "

"Hey!" said Mr. MacDonald, with his eyes staring. "You, Sir,
come to the wedding of Moira Fergus ? And Miss Sheila, too ? Why,
there iss no man in all the islands would not gif away his daughter — ay,
twenty daughters — if he wass told you will be coming to the wedding — not
any man but John Fergus ; and there is the anger of the teffle himself in
the nature of John Fergus ; and it iss no man will go near him."

" But I will go near him 1 " said Sheila, proudly, " and he will speak
no rough speech to me."

" Not if I can understand him, and there is a door handy," said her
husband, with a laugh.

" Ay, ay, you will come to the wedding ? " said the minister, almost
to himself, as if this assurance were almost too much for mortal man to
bear. He had made a long and disagreeable voyage from the one island
to the other, in order to seek the advice of a capable man ; but he had
not expected such high and honourable sanction of his secret aims. Now,
indeed, he had no more hesitation. Mr. Mackenzie was a wise man, and
a travelled man, no doubt ; but not even his counsel could have satisfied
the old minister as did. the prompt and somewhat reckless tender of aid
on the part of Mr. Lavender, and the frank and hearty sympathy of the
beautiful "Princess Sheila."

CHAPTER III.
A MEETING OF LOVERS.

A STILL, calm night lay over the scattered islands ; there was no sound
abroad but the occasional calling of the wild-fowl ; in the perfect silence
there was scarcely even a murmur from the smooth sea. Night as it
was, the world was all lit up with a wonderful white glory ; for the
moon down there in the south was almost full ; and here the clear

430 THE MAKBIAGE OF MOIEA FERGUS.

radiance fell on the dark moorland flats, on the bays of white sand
fronting the sea, and on the promontories of black rock that jutted out
into the shining water. Killeena lay cold and silent under the wan
glare ; Darroch showed no signs of life ; the far mountains of the larger
islands seemed visionary and strange. It was a night of wonderful
beauty, but that the unusual silence of the sea had something awful in
it ; one had a sense that the mighty plain of water was perhaps stealthily
rising to cover for ever those bits of rock which, during a few brief
centuries, had afforded foothold to a handful of human beings.

Down in one of the numerous creeks a young man was idly walking
this way and that along the smooth sand — occasionally looking up to
the rocks above him. This was Angus M'Eachran, the lover of Moira
Fergus. There was obviously nothing Celtic about the young man's
outward appearance : he was clearly of the race descended from the
early Norwegian settlers in these islands — a race that, in some parts,
has, notwithstanding intermarriage, preserved very distinct characteris-
tics. He was a tall young fellow, broad-chested, yellow-bearded, good-
looking enough, and grave and deliberate of speech. Moreover, he was a
hard-working, energetic, shrewd-headed youth ; there was no better fisher-
man round these coasts ; he had earned his share in the boat, so that
he was not at the mercy of any of the curers ; he had talked of building
a small stone cottage for himself ; and it -was said that he had a little
money in the bank at Stornoway. But if Angus M'Eachran was outwardly
a Norseman, he had many of the characteristics of the Celtic tempera-
ment. He was quick to imagine and resent affront. His seeming
gravity of demeanour would, under provocation of circumstances, disap-
pear altogether ; and there was no one madder than he in the enjoyment
of a frolic, no one more generous in a fit of enthusiasm, no one more
reckless in the prosecution of a quarrel. They said he sometimes took
a glass too much on shore — led away by the delight of good-fellowship ;
but the bitterest cold night, the most persistent rain, the most exhausting
work, could not tempt him to touch a drop of whiskey when he was out
at the fishing.

A young girl, shawled over, came over the rocks, and made her way
down to the sands.

" You are ferry late, Moira," said he. "I was thinking you wass not
coming at all the night."

" It iss not an easy thing for me to get away, and that no one will
know," said she, timidly.

" Ay, ay, and that iss the worst of it 1 " said he, bitterly. " It is no
ferry good thing that you will hef to come away from the house like
that, as if you wass a thief ; and if it wass any other young lass, she
would not hef suffered that so long ; and now, Moira, this is what I hef
to say to you — that you must do what you hef promised to do, and when
we go to Glassgow "

" Oh, Angus ! " she said ; " it iss not to Glassgow I can go '

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIBA FERGUS. 431

Even in the pale moon light she could see the quick look of surprise,
and anger, and jealousy that leapt to his eyes.

" And you will not go. to Glassgow ? " said he.

"Angus ! " the girl said. "It iss ferry much I hef to say to you,
and you will not be angry with me until I tell you. And it wass yes-
terday I went ofer to Mr. MacDonald, and I wass saying to him that there
wass no more use in trying to speak to my father, and that you and me,
Angus, we were thinking of going away to Glassgow "

"And it iss a foolish lass you are 1 " he said, impetuously, " and now
he will come ofer to Ardtilleach "

" He will not think of coming ofer to Ardtilleach ; it iss a ferry kind
man that Mr. MacDonald is ; and he will say to me, ' Moira, will it not
be petter, and a great deal petter, that I will marry Angus M'Eachran
and you in Darroch, and no one will know until it iss over, and then you
can go and tell your father ? "

" Ay, did he say that ? " exclaimed the young man, with his eyes
wide.

" Indeed he did."

" Ay, ay, and it iss a ferry good man he iss whateffer," said Angus,
with a sudden change of mood. " And you, Moira, what wass it you will
say to hira ? "

"Me?"

" Ay, you."

" Well," said the girl, looking down, but with some pride in her tone ;
" it iss not for a young lass to say yes or to say no about such a thing— it
iss for you, Angus, to go to the minister. But this is what I hef said to
him, that the going to Glassgow wass a great trouble to me — ay, and a
ferry great trouble "

'.' Then I will go and see Mr. MacDonald ! " said Angus, hastily.
" And this iss what I will say to him — that he iss a ferry good man, and
that before three weeks iss over, ay, or two weeks, or four weeks, I will
send to him a gallon of whiskey the like of which he will not find from
the Butt of Lewis down to Barra Head. Ay, Moira, and so you went all
the way across the island yesterday ? It iss a good lass you are ; and you
will be ferry much petter when you are married and in your own house,
and away from your father, that bass no petter words for his own chil-
dren ass if they wass swines. And it iss ferry early the morn's mornin'
that I will go over to Mr. MacDonald "

"But you need not do that, Angus," the girl said, "for Mr.
MacDonald has gone away to Borva, to ask the advice of Mr. Mackenzie.
Yes, it is a great teal that Mr. MacDonald is doing for us."

" It will be the good whiskey he will hef from me ! " muttered Angus
to himself.

" And now, Angus, I will be going back, for my father he thinks I
hef only gone over to get a candle from Mrs. M'Lachlan ; and you
will say nothing about all that I hef told you, only you will go ofer to

432 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIK1 FERGUS

Mr. MacDonald, Angus, on Saturday or Friday, and you will speak to
him. And I will say good-night to you, Angus."

" I will go with you, Moira, along a bit of the road."

"No, Angus," the girl said, anxiously ; "if there wass any one will
see us and will take the story to my father "

She had no need to complete the sentence. Her companion laughed
lightly and courageously as he took her hand.

" Ay, ay, Moira, it iss not always that you will hef to be afrait. And
the story they will hef to take to your father, that will be a ferry goot story,
that will be the ferry best story he will ever hear. Oh yes, he will say
three words or two words to efferypody around him when he hears that
teffle of a story."

If Angus was inclined to make light of the old man's probable rage,
his sweetheart was not. The mere mention of it seemed to increase her
desire to depart; and so he kissed her, and she went on her way
home.

Perhaps he would have grumbled at the shortness of the interview
but that this new project had almost taken his breath away, and now
wholly occupied his mind. He clambered up the rocks, got across to the
road, and slowly walked along in the clear moonlight, in the direction of
the cottages of Ardtilleach. To have a lover's meeting cut short on such
a night would have been grievous under other circumstances ; but that
was forgotten in the suggestion that his marriage of Moira Fergus had
now become possible and near.

Angus M'Eachran had never been to Glasgow, and he had the vague
fear of the place which dwells in the minds of many islanders. The
project of flight thither was a last and desperate resource after all hope
of conciliating John Fergus was abandoned. But the young man had
never felt so confident about it as he pretended to be in speaking to
Moira Fergus. He knew nothing of how the people lived in Glasgow ; of
the possibility of two strangers getting married ; of the cost of the long
journey. Then he might have to leave his fishing for an indefinite period,
and embarrass his comrades in the boat ; he had a suspicion, too, that
old, John Fergus, having been robbed of his daughter, would appeal to
the sheriff, and impound the money which he, Angus M'Eachran, had in
the bank at Stornoway.

It was with great joy, therefore, that he heard of this proposal. It
seemed so much more fitting and proper for a man and a woman to get
married in their own island. There would be no stain on the fair name
of Moira Fergus, if she was married by Mr. MacDonald himself ; whereas
no one knew anything about the character of the Glasgow clergymen, who
might, for all one knew, be secretly Eoman Catholics. And then there was
the remote chance that the wedding would have the august approval
of the far-known Mr. Mackenzie, the King of Borva ; which would silence
the most censorious old hag who ever croaked over a peat-fire.

Angus M'Eachran reached the long and straggling line of hovels and

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIBA FERGUS. 433

cottages known as the fishing hamlet of Ardtilleach. Down there, on the
white shores of the small creek, several of the boats were drawn up, their
hulls black in the moonlight. Up on the rocks above were built the two
long and substantial curing-houses, with plenty of empty barrels lying
round the doors. There was scarcely any one about, though here and
there the smoke from a chimney showed that the peats were being stirred
within to light up the gloomy interior of the hut. He passed the rude
little cottage in which John Fergus and his family lived.

" Ay, ay, Moira," he was thinking to himself, " you will have a better
house to live in by-and-by, and you will have better treatment in the
house, and you will be the mistress of the house. And there will no one
then say a hard word to you, whether he is your father or whether he is
not your father ; and I will make it a bad day for any one that says a
hard word to you, Moira Fergus."

CHAPTER IV.
THE GOOD NEWS.

ANGUS M'EACHRAN hung his head in a sheepish fashion when he stood
before the minister. The stalwart, yellow-bearded young fisherman found
it was not an easy thing to have to speak about marriage ; and the
proposal to give Mr. MacDonald a gallon of the best whiskey had gone
clean out of his head — banished, perhaps, by an instinctive reverence
for spiritual authority. The little red-faced minister regarded him
sternly.

" It wass not well dene of you, Angus M'Eachran," said he, " to
think of running away to Glassgow with John Fergus's daughter."

" And whose fault wass that, Mr. MacDonald ? " said the fisherman.
" It wass the fault of John Fergus himself."

"Ay, ay, but you would hef made bad things worse. Why to
Glassgow ! Do you know what Glassgow is ? No, you do not know; but
you would hef found out what it iss to go to Glassgow ! It wass a ferry
goot thing that Moira Fergus had the goot sense to come ofer to me ;
and now, ass I tell you, we will try to satisfy effery one if you will come
ofer on the Wednesday morning."

" It wass ferry kind of you, Mr. MacDonald, to go all the way ta
Borva to ask apout the marriage ; I will neffer forget that, neffer at all.
And I will tell you this, Mr. MacDonald, that it wass no great wish I effer
had for the going to Glas?gow ; for when a man gets married, it is but
right he should hef his friends apout him, for a dance and a song. And
it wass many a time I hef peeu thinking, when I first became acquent
with Moira Fergus, that we would hef a ferry goot wedding, an! hef a
tance and a tram ; and it wass Alister Lewis the schoolmaster said to m&
the other day, * Angus,' says he, ' do you not think of getting married ? And'

VOL. xxxi. — KO. 184. 21.

434 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

when you are married,' says be, * my wife and me will come and trink a
glass to you and Moira Fergus.' And now, Mr. MacDonald, there will be
no wedding at all — and not a single tance — or a tram — and no one to be
there and be quite sure that we are married."

Angus M'Eachran had become rather excited, and had blundered into
eloquence. It was, indeed, a sore point with the young fisherman that
Moira and he were to be deprived of the great merry-making in the life of a
man or woman. They would be married in a corner, with no joyous
crowd of witnesses, no skire of the pipes, no whiskey, no dancing or
reels under the midnight sky.

" And you will not think, Mr. MacDonald," said he, returning to his
ordinary grave and shy demeanour, "that I hef no thanks for you,
although we will hef no goot wedding. That is not anypotty's fault
but the fault of John Fergus ; and when I will go to tell John Fergus
that his daughter is married "

"You will not go to tell John Fergus that, Angus M'Eachran,"
said the minister. "It is another that will tell' John Fergus. It is
Miss Sheila Mackenzie, that iss Mrs. Laffenter now, that will be coming
to tek the news to John Fergus."

The minister spoke proudly. He was vain of his acquaintance
with great people. He had, indeed, reserved this piece of news until he
saw fit to overwhelm his visitor with it.

The young fisherman uttered an exclamation in the Gaelic ; he could
scarcely believe what he heard.

"Iss it Miss Sheila Mackenzie will be coming all the way from Borva
to the marriage of Moira Fergus ? " he said, with his eyes full of
wonder.

"Ay, and her husband, too ! " said the minister, proudly. " Ay, and
they are coming with their schooner yacht, and eight men aboard of her,
to say nothing of Mrs. Patterson's boy. And you were saying, Angus
M'Eachran, there would be no one at your wedding. Oh no, there will be
no one at your wedding ! It will only be Mr. and Mrs. Laffenter that
will be at your wedding ! "

Angus could not reply to this deadly sarcasm ; he was lost in astonish-
ment. Then he suddenly said, snatching up his cap —

" I am going, Mr. MacDonald, to tek the news to Moira Fergus."

<( Wait a minute, it iss a ferry great hurry you are in, Angus," said
the minister. " You need not be afrait that any one will tek the news
before yoursel'. There iss many things we hef to settle apout first "

" But I will come ofer to-night again," said the fisherman — he was
impatient to carry this wonderful news to Moira.

" Then there iss the teffle in your hurry, Angus M'Eachran ! " said the
minister, angrily. " You will come ofer again to-night ? You will not
come ofer again to-night ! Do you think you can waste the tays and the
nights in running apout Darroch, when it iss to Styornoway you hef to go,
for the ring, and the money, and all that I hef told you ? "

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 435

The fisherman stood abashed ; he put his cap on the table, and was
content to receive his instructions with patience.

But when he went out, and had got a safe distance'from. the house, he
suddenly tossed his cap high in the air.

" Hey ! " he cried, aloud, " here iss the good news for Moira
Fergus ! "

He laughed to himself as he sped rapidly across the moorland. It
was a fine, bright morning ; the sun was warm on the heather and the
white rocks ; now and again he saw before him a young grouse walk coolly
across the dusty road. He took little notice, however, of anything around
him. It was enough that the fresh air and the sunlight seemed to fill his
lungs with a sort of laughing-gas. Never before had he walked so rapidly
across the island.

The consequence was that he reached Ardtilleach about one o'clock.

" Now," said he to himself, " the girls will be at the school ; and old
John Fergus will be up at the curing-house ; and what if Moira Fergus be
all by herself at home ? "

The news he had gave him so much courage that he did not spy about ;
he walked straight up to John Fergus's cottage, and, stooping, passed in.
Sure enough, there was Moira, and alone. She was seated near the fire,
and was cleaning and chopping up some vegetables for the big iron pot
that stood beside her. When she recognized Angus M'Eachran, she
uttered a little cry of surprise, then she hastily jumped to her feet, and
beat the parings out of her lap. "But the young fisherman was not
offended by the untidy scraps of carrot and turnip that clung to her
apron ; he was the rather pleased to see that she was chopping up those
vegetables very neatly — and he knew, for many a time he had had to
make broth for himself.

" And are you not afrait, Angus, to come into this house ? " she
asked, anxiously.

" No, I am not afrait ! " said he. " For I hef the good news for you
— ay, ay, I hef the good news for you this day, Moira "

" Iss it my father ? "

" No, no ! " said he. " It iss nothing of your father. I will not ask
your father for anything, not if he wass to live for sixty years, ay, and
twenty years mirover. But I wass ofer to see Mr. MacDonald this morn-
ing— ay, I set out ferry soon, for I heard last night he wass come back
from Borva — and this morning I wass with him for a ferry long time.
And now it iss all settled, Moira, my lass, and this ferry night I will be
going away to Styornoway to buy the ring, Moira, and get some money
out of the bank, and other things. And Mr. MacDonald, he will say to
me, ' Angus, you will hef to go and ask Moira Fergus to tell you the day
she will be married, for effery young lass hass a right to that ; ' but I hef
said to him, ' Mr. MacDonald, there iss no use for that ; for it wass next
Wednesday in the next week we wass to go away to Glassgow to be mar-
ried ; and that iss the day that iss fixed already ' — and so, Moira, it iss

21—2

436 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

Wednesday of the next week you will be reaty to go ofer — and — and —
and iss there anything wrong with you, Moira Fergus ? "

He offered her his hand to steady her; she was rather pale, and she
trembled. Then she sate down on the wooden stool again, and turned
her eyes to the floor.

" And it iss not ferry glad you are that the wedding iss near ? " said he,
with some disappointment.

" It iss not that, Angus M'Eachran," she said, in a low voice. " li
iss that — I am afrait — and it is a ferry terrible thing to go away and be
married all by yourself— and no friend with you "

" No friend ? " said he, with a sudden joy : if this was all her doubt,
he would soon remove it. " Ay, ay, Moira Fergus, you hef not heard all
the news. There will be no one to come to your wedding ? Do you
know this, Moira, that it iss Miss Sheila Mackenzie and her husband that
iss an Englishman, and they are both coming to your wedding — ay, in
that fine poat that iss the most peautiful poat that wass effer come in to
Styornoway harbour — and who iss it in all this island that hass Mr. and
Mrs. Laffenter come to her wedding — tell me that, Moira Fergus ! "

Well, when Moira heard that Sheila Mackenzie and her husband were
coming all the way from Borva to be present at her wedding, she burst
into a fit of crying, and even the young man beside her understood what
that meant.

" Ay, ay," said he, "it iss a ferry great deal the rich and the grand
people can do for the poor people when it iss in their mind to do it, and it
would be a pad tay for the poor people of Borva the tay that Miss
Sheila would go away altogether to London ; but there iss no fear of that
now ; and she is coming to your wedding, Moira, and it iss not pecause
she is ferry rich and ferry grand that you will be proud of that, but I
hef seen that you wass sore put about that there will be no woman at all
at the wedding, and now here is cne, and one that iss known through all
the islands — and it iss nothing to cry about, Moira Fergus."

"No, it iss nothing to cry about," said the girl, " only — it iss a ferry
great kindness — and I will not know what to say — ay, are you quite sure
they are coming all the way to Darroch, Angus ? "

" Indeed there iss more than that to tell you, Moira ; for it iss Mrs.
Laffenter will te for coming to Ardtilleach to speak to your father as soon
as the wedding is ofer "

"What do you say, Angus M'Eachran?" the girl said, suddenly
rising. " Hef you no sense to let her speak of such a thing ? You will
know what a man fathe r iss when he iss angry ; and it iss you and me
that will hef to tek his anger, not a stranger that hass done us a great
kindness ; and it iss very thoughtless of you, Angus, to hef let Miss

Sheila speak of that "

" Moira, what are you thinking of? " he said. " When wass it that I
hef seen Miss Sheila, and her away at Borva ? It wass the minister,
he wass speaking to both Mr. and Mrs. Laffenter, both of the two of them

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 487

together, and it wass Miss Sheila herself will want to see your father sure
enough and mirover ! "

The girl said nothing in reply, for a sudden fear had fallen over her :
a shadow darkened the doorway. Angus M'EacLran half instinctively
turned round — there was John Fergus, staring at him with an anger
which for the moment could not express itself in words. Moira's father
was almost a dwarf in stature ; but he was broad-chested, bandy-legged,
and obviously of great, physical strength. He had a hard, grey, and
sullen face, piercing black eyes under bushy grey eyebrows, thin lips, and
a square jaw.

" Ay, it iss you, Angus M'Eachran," said he, still blocking up the
doorway as if to prevent escape ; " it wass a true word they will bring me
that you will be for going into my house. And what iss it that will bring
you to my house ? "

" It iss not a ferry friendly man you are, John Fergus," said the tall
young sailor, rather gloomily, " that you will say such things. And what
iss the harm that one man will go into another man's house, and both of
them neighbours together "

" Ay, this iss the harm of it ! " said John Fergus, giving freer vent to
his rage. " You wass thinking that the lasses were at the school ; and
you wass thinking that I wass away ofer at Killeena with the new oars ;
and then you wass coming apout the house — like a thief that will watch
a time to come apout a house — that wass the harm of it, Angus
M'Eachran."

The younger man's face grew rather darker, but he kept his temper
down.

" I am no thief, John Fergus. If it wass any other man than your-
self will say such a thing to me "

" No, you are no thief," said the father, with sarcastic emphasis ; " you
will only come apout the house when there iss effery one away from it but
a young lass, and you will think there iss some whiskey in the house — "

The younger man burst into a bitter laugh.

" Whiskey 1 Iss it whiskey! I hef come after the whiskey! Indeed
and mirover that would be a fine day the day I tasted a glass of your
whiskey ; for there iss no man alife in Darroch or in Killeena too that effer
had a glass of whiskey from you, John Fergus ! "

At this deadly insult the older man, with something of an inarticulate
cry of rage, darted forward, and would have seized his opponent had not
Moira thrown herself between them.

" Father," the trembling girl said, putting her hands on his breast,
" keep back — keep back for a minute, and I will tell you — indeed it wass
not the whiskey that Angus M'Eachran will come for — it wass a message
there wass from Miss Sheila Mackenzie — and he will hear of it from the
minister — and he will come in to the house for a minute — and there wass
no harm in that. It iss your own house, father — you will not harm a man
in your own house "

418 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

He thrust her aside.

" Angus M'Eachran," said he, " this iss what I will say to you — you
wass saying to yourself this many a day back that you will marry this
lass here. I tell you now, by Kott, you will not marry her — not this
year, nor the next year, nor many a year after that. And there iss more
ass I he? to say to you. This house iss no house for you ; and if it iss
any day I will come in to the house and you will be here, it will be a bad
day that day for you, by Kott."

" That iss ferry well said," retorted the younger man, whose eyes were
afire, but who kept himself outwardly calm ; " and this iss what I will say
to you, John Fergus. The day may come to you that you will be ferry
glad for me to come into your house, and you will be ferry sore in your
heart that you wass saying such things to me this day. And I will say
this to you — do you think it iss the fighting will keep me out of the
house ? Wass you thinking I wass afnit of you ? 4By Kott, John
Fergus, two men like you would not mek me afrait ; and that day will
be a bad day for you that you tek to fighting with me."

The girl was once more for interfering with her entreaties.

" No, Moira," said her lover, " stand back — I am for no fighting— if
there iss fighting it iss not in a man's own house that iss the place for
fighting. But this iss what I will say to you, John Fergus, that you
hef no need to fear that I will come to your house. No, not if I wass
living for thirty or twenty years in Ardtilleach will I come into your house
— neffer, as I am a living man."

And that vow he kept.

CHAPTER V.
THE WEDDING.

THE Princess Sheila lay at her moorings in the bay ; and the morning
sunlight shone on her tall and shapely masts and on the gleaming white
decks. It was a lonely part of the coast of Darroch ; there was not
another vessel on the smooth plain of the sea ; far away in the direction
of some rocks a couple of seals were alternately raising their heads above
the water — like the black head of a man — as if in wonder over this in-
vasion of their silent haunts. Beautiful, indeed, was the morning of
Moira Fergus's marriage. The water around the shore was so calm and
so clear that one could distinguish the sand and the white star- fish at an
extraordinary depth. The sea was of a light blue fading into grey at
the horizon. The sky was of a darker blue ; and the almost motionless
clouds dappled the sunlit shoulders of the hills and the wide expanse of
the moorland.

About ten o'clock a pinnace put off from the yacht, and the quiet bay
echoed the sound of the rowlocks as the four sturdy seamen pulled into
the land. They ran her by the side of some loose stones that served for

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FEBGUS. 439

a rude landing-jetty ; and then Mr. and Mrs. Lavender stepped on shore.
The former was certainly not in proper wedding attire, for he had on his
ordinary boating-suit of blue homespun; but the young lady wore a
yachting- costume which had been designed by her husband, and which
was the wonder of all the islands around. The old women who had seen
Miss Sheila, as they mostly called her, but once in this costume, had many
a long story to tell about it over the peat- fire to their neighbours who had
not been so fortunate ; and it was gravely doubted whether the wife of
Sir James, or the wife of the Duke of Argyll, or even the Queen herself
had such a wonderful dress and hat and gloves.

They walked up and over the rough shingle, until they readied a path-
skirting some low sand-hills, and this they followed along the shore until
they reached the manse. The minister was at the door ; he came out
bare-headed to receive them ; there was a great dignity in his speech.

" Well, are the young folks here ? " said Sheila.

" Yes, indeed and mirover," said the minister, " and it will be a proud
day for them that you will sign the marriage-lines, Mrs. Laffenter, and you,
Sir, too. And I hef got the horse for you, Mrs. Laffenter, if you will be
determined* to go to Ardtilleach. And I hef peen told that the English
hef two dinners in the day, which is a strange thing to me, but it iss no
pusiness of mine whateffer ; and you will be so long in England every
year, Mrs. Laffenter, that you will hef gone away from the way you used
to live at home ; but if you wass so kind, now, ass to tek the first dinner
— that iss at one o'clock — in my poor house, it would be a proud day for
me too. And it iss no ferry fine dinner I hef, but some mutton just ass
goot ass you will get it in London ; and I hef some ferry goot whisky —
there iss no petter apout here. And if you wass so kind, Miss — Mrs.
Laffenter "

"Certainly, Mr. MacDonald," said Mr. Lavender, interposing ; "we
will dine with you at one, on condition you dine with us at seven — that
is, if we can get back from Ardtilleach by that time. You must try the
English way of having two dinners — you may call the second one supper,
if you like. Now don't let us keep the young people waiting."

Angus M'Eachran and Moira Fergus were seated in the minister's
parlour, both of them very silent. When Mrs. Lavender entered the
room, the girl rose hastily, as if she would rush forward to thank her ;
then she paused, and seemed to shrink back.

" And are you ferry well, Moira ? " said Mrs. Lavender, advancing and
holding out her hand. " And do you remember the last time I saw you
at Ardtilleach ?"

The girl, trembling a good deal, made a curtsey, and timidly took the
hand that was offered to her.

" It iss no words I hef this tay — to thank you," she said, " that you
will come to the wedding of a poor lass — for Angus M'Eachran he wass
wanting me to tek the money to get the clothes for the wedding, but if I
had got the clothes for the wedding, it wass effery one in Ardtilleach

440 THE HAKRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

would know of it. And — and — that iss why I hef not the clothes for the
wedding.'

It was an apology. Moira was ashamed of her rough clothes, that
were not fit for a wedding to which Miss Sheila Mackenzie of Borva had
come. But Sheila made her sit down, and sate down beside her, and
talked to her of many things, so that there was soon an end to her shame-
facedness.

"Mr. MacDonald," said Angus H'Eachran, rather anxiously — seeing
that the minister was thinking more of his distinguished guests than of
the Business in hand, " if you wass ass kind ass to be quick — for it iss
JVIoira's father if he wass to go back to the house, he might hef some
-thought of it."

"Ay, ay," said the minister, recollecting himself. "Where is
Isabal ? "

He called his housekeeper into the room ; she was smartly dressed,
and she wore a gold chain that her son had sent her from America. The
minister now grew formal in his manner. He ^poke in a solemn and low
voice. He directed Angus M'Eachran and Moira Fergus to stand up to-
gether ; and then, with a closed Bible in his hand, he placed himself
before them, the three witnesses of the ceremony standing on one side.
The light from the small window fell on the young Highland girl's face —
she was now very pale, and she kept her eyes bent on the floor.

He began by offering up a prayer — a strange, rambling series of Bib-
lical quotations, of entreaties, of exhortations addressed to those before
him — which was at once earnest, pathetic, and grotesque. Mr. Mac-
Donald would rather have prayed in the Gaelic ; but the presence of the
strangers led him to speak in English, which was obviously a difficulty to
'him. For into this curious prayer he introduced a sort of history and
Justifi cation of what he had done with regard to the young people.

"Ay," he said, " it wass to Glassgow they were going, and they would
hef peen as sheeps in the den of the lions, and as the young lambs among
the wolves. For it iss written of Babylon the evil city, Lo, I will raise
and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of the great nations
from ta north country, ay, and Chaldea shall be a spoil. Put yourselves
in array against Babylon round apout ; all ye that will pend the pow shoot
.at her, ay, and spare no arrows, for she has sinned against the Lord !
And it wass to Glassgow they were going ; and it wass no man could hear
that and not safe them from going. And we had the great help of frients
from far islands, ay, from the desolate places of the islands, and they came
to us in our trouple, and it wass a great help they would gife to us, and
/the Lord will tek that into account, and reward them for the help they hef
given to the young lad and the young lass that iss before us this tay."

Then he went on to denounce anger and evil passions as the cause of
much of human trouble ; and he closed his prayer with an earnest hope
that Divine influence would soften the heart of John Fergus, and lead him
to live in peace and affection with his daughter and her husband.

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 441

The exhortation following the prayer was shorter than the prayer. It
referred chiefly to the duties of married life ; but even here Mr. Mac-
Donald brought in a good deal of justification of his own conduct in
having assisted a young lad and a young lass to get married.

. " Ay, ay," said he, " it iss written that a man shall leaf his father and
his mother and ko and be joined unto his wife ; and the wife, too, she will
do the same, as it hass peen from the peginning of the worlt, amen. And
why no ? And if there iss any man so foolish ass to say to a young man
or a young lass, ' No, you will hef to wait until I die before you will be
for getting marriet, and until I die you will not be for getting marriet at
all,' I will say to him that he is a foolish man, and a man who has no sense
in his head whateffer. And there iss too much of the young men going
away from the islands apout us, and they will go away to Glassgow,
and to Greenock, and to America, and to other places, and they will marry
wifes there, and who iss to know what kind of wifes they will marry ?
No, it iss petter, ay, and ferry much petter, for a young man to hef seen
a young lass in the years of her young tays, and he will know of her
family, and he will hef seen her going to the church, and he will know
she is a fit lass to be a wife for him and no strange woman that hass lifed
in a great town, where there are wild men, and sodgers, and the Roman
Catholic priasts."

Presently the simple ceremony had to be performed ; and when Angus
M'Eachran was bidden to take the young girl's hand, and when the
minister demanded to know if any one were present who had aught to
say against the marriage of these two there was a silence as if every one
was listening for the sound of a footstep on the gravel outside.

There was no answer to that summons; wherever John Fergus
was, he was certainly not in the neighbourhood of Mr. MacDonald's
manse.

" And so you are a married woman, Moira," said Sheila, when it was
all over.

The girl could not speak, but there were big tears in her eyes, and
she went forward and took Mrs. Lavender's hand and timidly kissed it.
Angus M'Eachran had been standing about, silent and awkward; at
length he, too, went forward, and said in desperation

" Mrs. Lafienter, it iss a ferry goot pair of oars for a small poat I hef
made last week at Ardtilleach. Will I send you the oars to Borva ? "

" Oh, no, Angus," the young lady said; " that is ferry kind of yon,
but we have plenty of oars at Borva. But this is what I will be ferry
glad if you will do — it is a ferry good carpenter they say you are, and
any day you have the time to make a small boat for a boy that he
will be able to pull about with a string, then I will be ferry glad to have
the boat from you."

" Ay," said Angus, with his face brightening, " and will you tek the
poat ? Ay, ay, you will gife me time to mek the poat, and I will be ferry
proud the day that you will tek the poat from me."

442 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

Then he turned to the minister.

" And, Mr. MacDonald," said he, rather shamefacedly, "if you will
not be ferry angry, there iss a gallon of goot whiskey — oh, ay, it iss ferry
goot whiskey, I hef peen told — and I will pring it over this morning when
I wass coming ofer, and I hef left it out in the heather - " •

"

You hef left it out in the heather! " said the minister, angrily;
" and it iss a foolish man you are, Angus M'Eachran, to go and leaf a
gallon of goot whiskey out on the heather ! And where is the heather ?
And maybe you will go now and get it out of the heather ! "

" I wass afrait to say apout it pefore," Angus said. " But I will go
and get you the whiskey, and it iss ferry proud I am that you will tak the
whiskey — and it iss not ferry pad whiskey mirover."

As soon as Angus had gone off to the hiding-place of the jar, they all
went outside into the clear air, which was fresh with the sea breeze and
sweet with the smell of the peats.

" Sheila," said Mr. Lavender, " can you hurry on Mr. MacDonald's
housekeeper ? The great work of the day has to be done yet. And there
will be little time to cross to Ardtilleach."

" Oh, Mrs. Laffenter ! " cried Moira. " You will not go to see my
father!"

"Indeed, I will," said Sheila. "Are you afraid he will eat me,
Moira?"

" I am afraid — I do not know what I am afraid of — except that you
will not go to him, that iss all I ask from you, Mrs. Laffenter -- "

" The teffle -- " exclaimed Mr. MacDonald, fiercely, and then he re-
collected in whose society he was. " What iss it will keep Mrs. Laffenter
from speaking to any one ? Your father iss an angry man, Moira Fergus
— ay, you will be Moira M'Eachran now — he iss a ferry angry man — but
will he use his pad language to Mrs. Laffenter ? It iss not to be thought
of, Moira! "

At this moment the yellow-bearded young fisherman came back with
the jar of whiskey ; and he blushed a little as he handed the little present
to the minister.

" Ay," said Mr. MacDonald, going into the house. " Isabal must be
ferry quick, for it iss a long way the way to Ardtilleach, and the second
tinner of the tay it will be on poard the yacht at eight o'clock or seven
o'clock or petween poth of the two. And Isabal she must go town to
the yacht and tell that tall Duncan of Mr. Mackenzie's to gife her the
sattle for Mrs. Laffenter's horse."

It was with great difficulty that they could persuade Angus and Moira to
come into the house and sit down at the table with the great people from
Borvabost. Mr. MacDonald of himself could never have managed it ;
but Sheila took Moira by the hand and led her into the room, and then
the young husband silently followed.

The minister had been too modest in speaking of the banquet he had had
prepared for his guests. He had promised them but mutton and whiskey ;

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA. FERGUS. 443

and behold there was a bottle of claret- wine on the table, and the very
first dish was the head and shoulders of a magnificent salmon.

" Well, that is a fine fish ! " said Mr. Lavender, regarding its mighty
proportions.

" Oh, ay," said the minister, immensely flattered. " He wass a fine
fish — a grand fish. He wass ass big ass a dog — and more."

It was a great grief to the minister that Mr. Lavender would not
taste of the claret, which had -come all the way from Stornoway, and
was of so excellent a vintage that it was named after the Prime Minister
in Parliament himself. But Sheila had some of it in a tumbler, and
pronounced it very good ; though the minister observed that " there wass
no great strength to go to the head in the French wines," and he "wass
ferry much surprised to see that Mrs. Laffenter would hef water with
the claret- wine."

"And I hear that Angus is going to build a cottage for you, Moira,"
said Mrs. Lavender, " further removed from the village and the curing-
houses. That will be ferry good for you ; and it is not every one that
has a husband who can work at two trades, and be a good fisherman on
the sea, and a good carpenter on shore. And I suppose you will be
going back now to the house that he has at present.

" Ay, that iss the worst of it," said the girl, sadly. "If my father
iss ferry angry, it will be a pad thing that we will hef to lif in Ardtilleach
together ; and all the neighbours will know that he is angry, and he will
hef the long story to tell to each of them."

"But you must not look at it that way," her counsellor said,
cheerfully. " You will soon get over your father's anger ; and the
neighbours — well, the neighbours are likely to take your side of the
story, if there is a story. Now, you must keep up your spirits, Moira ;
it is a bad thing for a young wife to be downhearted, for a man will soon
tire of that, because he may not understand the cause of it. And why
should you be downhearted ? I dare say, now, that when you come over
to Ardtilleach — you will not be long after us, I suppose — you will find
the neighbours ready to hef a dance over the wedding as soon as the
evening comes on."

As there was little time to be lost on the part of those who were
coming back the same evening to the yacht, the small and shaggy animal
that was to carry Mrs. Lavender to Ardtilleach was brought round to the
door. The young bride and bridegroom, with somewhat wistful eyes,
saw their ambassadress set out, her husband walking smartly by her side.

" It iss a great thing they hef undertaken to do," said the minister,
" ay, and if they cannot do it, there iss not any one in all the islands
will be able to do it."

444

" For first of all the sphered signs whereby
Love severs light from darkness, and most high
In the white front of January thers glows
The rose-red sign of Helen like a rose."

Prelude to Tristram and Iseult, lines 91-94.

HELEN OF TROY is one of those ideal creatures of the fancy on which time,
space and circumstance, and moral probability, exert no sway. It would be
impossible to conceive of her except as inviolably beautiful and young, in
spite of all her wanderings and all she suffered at the hands of Aphrodite and
of men. She moves through Greek heroic legend as the desired of all men
and the possessed of many. Theseus bore her away while yet a girl from
Sparta. Her brethren, Castor and Polydeukes, recovered her from Athens
by force, and gave to her yEthra, the mother of Theseus, for bondwoman.
Then all the youths of Hellas wooed her in the young world's prime.
She was at last assigned in wedlock to Menelaus, by whom she conceived
her only earthly child, Hermione. Paris, by aid of Aphrodite, won her
love and fled with her to Egypt and to Troy. In Troy she abode more
than twenty years, and was the mate of Deiphobus after the death of
Paris. When the strife raised for her sake was ended, Menelaus restored
her with honour to his home in Lacedaemon. There she received
Telemachus and saw her daughter mated to Neoptolemus. But even
after death she rested not from the service of love. The great Achilles,
who in life had loved her by hearsay, but had never seen her, clasped her
among the shades upon the island Leuke, and begat Euphorion. Through
all these adventures Helen maintains an ideal freshness, a mysterious
virginity of soul. She is not touched by the passion she inspires, or by
the wreck of empires ruined in her cause. Fate deflowers her not, nor do
years impair the magic of her charm. Like beauty, she belongs alike to
all and none. She is not judged as wives or mothers are, though she is
both ; to her belong soul-wounding blossoms of inexorable love, as well
as pain-healing poppy-heads of oblivion ; all eyes are blinded by the
adorable, incomparable grace which Aphrodite sheds around her form.

Whether Helen was the slave or the beloved of Aphrodite, or whether,
as Herodotus hinted, she was herself a kind of Aphrodite, we are hardly
told. At one time she appears the willing servant of the goddess; at
another she groans beneath her bondage. But always and on all
occasions she owes everything to the Cyprian queen. Her very body-gear
preserved the powerful charm with which she was invested at her birth.

HELEN OF TEOY. 445

When the Phocaeans robbed the Delphian treasure-house, the wife of one
of their captains took and w.ore Helen's necklace, whereupon she doted
on a young Epirot soldier and eloped with him.

Whose daughter was Helen ? The oldest legend calls her the child
of Leda and of Zeus. We have all read the tale of -the Swan who was
her father amid the rushes of Eurotas, the tale which Leonardo and
Buonarroti and Correggio thought worthy of their loveliest illustration.
Another story gives her for the offspring of Oceanus and Tethys, as
though, in fact, she were an Aphrodite risen from the waves. In yet a
third, Zeus is her sire and Nemesis her mother ; and thus the lesson of
the tale of Troy was allegorized in Helen's pedigree. She is always god-
begotten and divinely fair. Was it possible that anything so exquisite
should have endured rough ravishment and borne the travail of the siege
of Troy ? This doubt possessed the later poets of the legendary age.
They spun a myth according to which Helen reached the shore of Egypt
on the ship of Paris ; but Paris had to leave her there in cedar-scented
chambers by tha stream of Nile, when he went forth to plough the
foam, uncomforted save by her phantom. And for a phantom the Greeks
strove with the Trojans on the windy plains of Ilium. For a phantom's
sake brave Hector died, and the leonine swiftness of Achilles was tamed,
and Zeus bewailed Sarpedon, and Priam's towers were levelled with the
ground. Helen, meanwhile — the beautiful, the inviolable — sat all day
long among the palm-groves, twining lotus-flowers for her hair, and
learning how to weave rare Eastern patterns in the loom. This legend
hides a delicate satire upon human strife. For what do men disquiet
themselves in warfare to the death, and tossing on sea-waves ? Even
for a phantom — for the shadow of their desire, the which remains secluded
in some unapproachable far sacred land. A wide application may be
given to Augustine's passionate outcry : " Quo vobis adhuc et adhuc
ambulare vias difficiles et laboriosas ? Non est requies ubi quaeritis earn.
Quserite quod quaeritis ; sed ibi non est ubi quaeritis. Beatam vitam quaaritis
in regione mortis ; non est illic." Those who spake ill of Helen suffered.
Stesichorus had ventured in the 'lAfou ne><m to lay upon her shoulders all
the guilt and suffering of Hellas and of Troy. Whereupon he was smitten
with blindness, nor could he recover his sight till he had written the
palinode which begins —

OVK ecrr' tripos \6yos ovros,
ouS' €j8as eV vaualv €U(reA/tojy,
ouS' 'iKfo ffpyofta Tpot'ay.*

Even Homer, as Plato hints, knew not that blindness had fallen on him
for like reason. To assail Helen with reproach was not less dangerous
than to touch the Ark of the Covenant, for with the Greeks beauty was a
holy thing. How perfectly beautiful she was we know from the legend of
the cups modelled upon her breasts suspended in the shrine of Aphrodite.

* " Not true is that tale ; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, or come to
towers of Troy."

446 HELEN OF TROY.

When Troy was taken, and the hungry soldiers of Odysseus roamed
through the burning palaces of Priam and his sons, their swords fell
beneath the vision of her loveliness. She had wrought all the ruin, yet
Menelaus could not touch her when she sailed forth, swanlike, fluttering
white raiment, with the imperturbable sweet smile of a goddess on her
lips. It remained for a Roman poet to describe her vile and shrinking —

Ilia sibi infestos eversa ob Pergama Teucros,
Et poenas Danaum et deserti conjugis iras
Permetuens, Troise et patrice communis Erinnys,
Abdiderat sese atque aris invisa sedebat.*

The morality of these lines belongs to a later age of reflection upon Greek
romance. In Homer there are no such epigrams. Between the Helen
of the Iliad, reverenced by the elders in the Scsean gate, and the Helen of
the Odyssey, queenlike among her Spartan maidens, there has passed no
agony of fear. The shame which she has truly felt, has been tempered
to a silent sorrow, and she has poured her grief forth beside Andromache,
over the corpse of Hector.

If we -would fain see the ideal beauty of the early Greek imagination
in a form of flesh-and-blood reality, we must follow Helen through the
Homeric poems. She first appears when Iris summons her to watch the
duel of Paris and Menelaus. Husband and lover are to fight beneath
the walls of Troy. She, meanwhile, is weaving a purple peplus with the
deeds of war done and the woes endured for her sake far and wide :—

She in a moment round her shoulders flings

Robe of white lawn, and from the threshold springs,

Yearning and pale, with many a tender tear.

Also two women in her train she brings,

The large-eyed Clymene and JEthra fair,

And at the western gates right speedily they were.f

English eyes know well how Helen looked as she left her chamber and
hastened to the gate ; for has not Leighton painted her with just so much
of far-off sorrow in her gaze as may become a daughter of the gods ? In
the gate sat Priam and his elders, and as they looked at Helen no angry
curses rose to their lips, but reverential admiration filled them, together
with an awful sense of the dread fate attending her : —

These seeing Helen at the tower arrive,
One to another winged words addressed :
" Well may the Trojans and Acbseans strive,
And a long time bear sorrow and unrest,

* " She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate,
Made frantic by their city's fate,
Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,
The vengeance of her injured lord:
She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,
Sat cowering, by the altar screened." — Conington.
f "Worsley's Iliad, iii. 17. The other quotations are from the same version.

HELEN OF TROY. 447

For such a woman, in her cause and quest,
Who like immortal goddesses in face
Appeareth; yet 'twere even thus far best
In ships to send her back to her own place,
Lest a long curse she leave to us and all our race."

It is thus simply, and by no mythological suggestion of Aphrodite's in-
fluence, that Homer describes the spirit of beauty which protected Helen
among the people she had brought to sore straits.

Priam accosts her tenderly : not hers the blame that the gods scourge
him in his old age with war. Then he bids her sit beside him and name
the Greek heroes as they march beneath. She obeys and points out
Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Ajax, describing each, as she knew them of
old. But for her twin brothers she looks in vain ; and the thought of
them touches her with the sorrow of her isolation and her shame. In
the same book, after Paris has been withdrawn, not without dishonour,
from the duel by Aphrodite, Helen is summoned by her liege mistress to
his bed. Helen was standing on the walls, and the goddess, disguised
as an old spinning-woman, took her by the skirt, bidding her hie
back to her lover, whom ehe would find in his bedchamber, not as ore
arrayed for war, but as a fair youth resting haply from the dance. Homer
gives no hint that Aphrodite is here the personified wish of Helen's own
heart going forth to Paris. On the contrary, the Cyprian queen appears
in the interests of the Phrygian youth, whom she would fain see comforted.
It is a good case of the objectivity of the Homeric deities. Under her
disguise Helen recognized Aphrodite, the terrible queen, whose bond-
woman she was forced to be. For a moment she struggled against her
fate. "Art thou come again," she cried, "to bear me to some son of
earth beloved of thee, that I may serve his pleasure to my own shame ?
Nay, rather, put off divinity and be thyself his odalisque-."

With him remain,

Him sit with, and from heaven thy feet refrain ;
Weep, till his wife he make thee, or fond slave.
I go to him no more, to win new stain,
And scorn of Trojan women again outbrave,
Whelmed even now with griei's illimitable wave.

But go she must. Aphrodite is a hard taskmistress, and the mysterious
bond of beauty which chains Helen to her cannot be broken. It is in vain
too that Helen taunts Paris : he reminds her of the first fruition of their
love in the island Cranae ; and at the last she has to lay her down at his
side, not uncomplying, conquered as it were by the reflex of the passion
she herself excites. It is in the chamber of Paris that Hector finds her.
She has vainly striven to send Paris forth to battle ; and the sense of her
own degradation, condemned to love a man love-worthy only for the beauty
of his limbs, overcomes her when she sees the noble Hector clothed in
panoply for war. Her passionate outbreak of self-pity and self-reproach
is perhaps the strongest indication given in the Iliad of a moral estimate

448 HELEN OF TEOY.

of Helen's crime. The most consummate art is shown by the poet in
thus quickening the conscience of Helen by contact with the nobility of
Hector. Like Guinevere, she for a moment seems to say, " Thou art the
highest, and most human too ! " casting from her as worthless the allure-
ments of the base love for whose sake she had left her home. In like
manner it was not without the most exquisite artistic intention that Homer
made the parting scene between Andromache and Hector follow immedi-
ately upon this meeting. For Andromache in the future there remained
only sorrow and servitude. Helen was destined to be tossed from man to
man, always desirable and always delicate, like the sea-foam that floats
upon the crests of waves. Bat there is no woman who reading the Iliad
would not choose to weep with Andromache in Hector's arms rather than
to smile like Helen in the laps of lovers for whom she little cared. Helen
and Andromache meet together before Hector's corpse, and it is here that
we learn to love best what is womanly in Leda's daughter. The mother
and the wife have bewailed him in high thrilling threni. Then Helen
advances to the bier and cries :

Hector, of brethren dearest to my heart,

For I in sooth am Alexander's bride,

Who brought me hither : would I first had died !

For 'tis the twentieth year of doom deferred

Since Troyward from my fatherland I hied ;

Yet never in those years mine ear hath heard

From thy most gracious lips one sharp accusing word;

Nay, if by other I haply were reviled,

Brother, orjsister fair, or brother's bride,

Or mother (for the king was alvvay mild),

Thou with kind words Uie same hast pacified,

With gentle words,'and mien like summer-tide.

Wherefore I "mourn for thee and mine own ill,

Grieving at heart : for in Troy town so wide

Friend have I none nor harbourer of goodwill,

But from my touch all shrink with deadly shuddering chill.

It would have been impossible to enhance more worthily than thus
the spirit of courtesy and knightly kindness which was in Hector ; quali-
ties in truth, which, together with his loyalty to Andromache, endeared
the champion of the Trojans to chivalry, and placed Hector upon the list
of worthies beside King Arthur and Godfrey of Boulogne.

The character of Helen loses much of its charm and becomes more
conventional in the Odyssey. It is difficult to believe that the same poet
who put into her lips the last lines of that threnos could have ven-
tured to display the same woman calm and innocent and queenlike in the
home of Menelaus :

While in his mind he sat revolving this,
Forth from her fragrant bower came Helen fair,
Bright as the golden-spindled Artemis.
Adraste set the couch ; Alcippe there
The fine-spun carpet spread ; and Phylo bare

HELEN OF TROY. 449

The silver basket which Alcandra gave,

Consort of Folybus, who dwelt whilere

In Thebes of Egypt, whose great houses save

Wealth in their walls, large store, and pomp of treasure brave.

Helen shows her prudence and insight by at once declaring the strange
guest to be Telemachus ; busy with housewifely kindness, she prepares
for him a comfortable couch at night ; nor does she shrink from telling
again the tales of Troy, and the craft which helped Odysseus in the Wooden
Horse. The blame of her elopement with Paris she throws on Aphrodite,
who had carried her across the sea :

Leaving my child an orphan far away,

And couch, and husband who had known no peer,

First in all grace of soul and beauty shining clear.

Such words, no doubt, fell with honey-sweet flattery from the lips of
Helen on the ears of Menelaus. Yet how could he forget the grief of his
bereavement, the taunts of Achilles and Thersites, and the ten years' toil
at Troy endured for her ? Perhaps he remembered the promise of
Proteus, who had said, " Thee will the immortals send to the Elysian
plains and furthest verge of earth ; where dwells yellow-haired Khada-
manthus, and where the ways of life are easiest for men ; snow falls not
there, nor storm, nor any rain, but Ocean ever breathes forth delicate
zephyr breezes to gladden men ; since thou hast Helen for thine own, and
art the son-in-law of Zeus." Such future was full recompence for sorrow
in the past. Besides, Helen, as Homer tells, had charms to soothe the
soul and drown the memory of the saddest things. Even at this time,
when thought is troublesome, she mixes Egyptian nepenthe with the
wine — nepenthe " which, whoso drinks thereof when it is mingled in the
bowl, begets for him oblivion of all woe ; through a whole day he drops
no tear adown his cheek, not even should his sire or mother die, nay,
should they slay his brother or dear son before his face, and he behold it
with his eyes. Such virtuous juices had the child of ZBUS, of potent
charm, which Polydamna, wife of Thon, gave to her, the Egyptian woman,
where earth yields many medicines, some of weal and some of bane."
This nepenthe was the secret of Helen's power. In the fifteenth book of
the Odyssey we have yet another glimpse of Helen in the palace of
Menelaus. She interprets an omen in favour of Odysseus, which had
puzded Menelaus, and gives to Telemachus a costly mantle, star-bright,
the weft of her own loom, produced from the very bottom of the chest in
which she stored her treasures. The only shadow cast upon Helen in
the Odyssey is to be found lurking in the dubious name of Megapenthes,
Menelaus' son by a slave-woman, who was destined after his sire's death
to expel her from fair Lacedremon. We may remember that it was on
the occasion of the spousal of this son to Alector's daughter, and of the
sending of Hermione to be the bride of Neoptolemus, that Telemachus
first appeared before the eyes of Helen.

The charm of Helen in the Homeric poems is due in a great measure
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 184. 22.

450 HELEN OF TROY.

to the naivete of the poet's art. The situations in which she appears are
never strained, nor is the ethical feeling, though indicated, suffered to
disturb the calm influence of her beauty. This is not the case with
.ZEschylus. Already, as before hinted, Stesichorus in his lyric interludes
had ventured to assail the character of Helen, applying to her conduct
the moral standard which Homer kept carefully out of sight. JEschylus
goes further. His object was to use Hellenic romance as the subject
matter for a series of dramatic studies which should set forth his con-
ception of the divine government of the world. A genius for tragedy
which has never been surpassed was subordinated by him to a sublime
philosophy of human life. It was no longer possible for Helen to escape
judgment. Her very name supplied the keynote of reproach. Rightly
was she called Helen — lAeVaus, (\av8pos, (\eirToAis — " a hell of ships, hell of
men, hell of cities," she sailed forth to Troy, and the heedless Trojans
sang marriage songs in her praise, which soon were turned to songs of
mourning for her sake. She whom they welcomed as "a spirit of
unruffled calm, a gentle ornament of wealth, a darter of soft glances,
a soul-wounding love-blossom," was found to be no less a source of
mischief than is a young lion nurtured in the palace for the ruin of its
heirs. Soon had the Trojans reason to revile her as a "Fury bringing
woe on wives." The choruses of the Agamemnon are weighted with the
burden of her sin. " 'i« ti» irapdvovs 'E\eVa/' it breaks forth: "thine is the
blood-guilt of those many many souls slain beneath Troy walls ! " She is
incarnate Ate, the soul- seducing, crime-engendering, woe-begetting curse
of two great nations. Zeus, through her sin, wrought ruin for the house
of Priam, wanton in its wealth. In the dark came blinded Paris and
stole her forth, and she went lightly through her husband's doors, and
dared a hateful deed. Menelaus, meanwhile, gazed on the desecrated
marriage-bed, and seemed to see her floating through his halls ; and the
sight of beauteous statues grew distasteful to his eyes, and he yearned for
her across the sea in dreams. Nought was left when morning came but
vain forth- stretchings of eager hands after the shapes that follow on the
paths of sleep. Then war awoke, and Ares, who barters the bodies of
men for gold, kept sending home to Hellas from Troy a little white dust
stored in brazen urns. It is thus that JEsehylus places in the foreground,
not the witchery of Helen and the charms of Aphrodite, but her lightness
and her sin, the woe it wrought for her husband, and the heavy griefs
that through her fell on Troy and Hellas. It would be impossible to
moralise the consequences of the woman's crime with greater sternness.

Unfortunately we have no means of stating how Sophocles dealt with
the romance of Helen. Judging- by analogy, however, we may feel sure
that in this as in other instances he did not abandon the ethical stand-
point of -ZEschylus, while treating the child of Leda, not as an incarnation
of daemonic Ate", but as a woman whose character deserved the most
profound analysis. Euripides, as usual, went a step farther. The bloom
of unconscious innocence had been brushed by ^Eschylus from the flower

HELEN OF TROY. 451

of Greek romance. It was impossible for any subsequent dramatist to
avoid in some way moralising the character of Helen. The way selected
by Euripides was to bring her down to the level of common life. The
scene in the Troades in which Helen stands up to plead for her life
against Hecuba before the angry Menelaus, is one of the most complete
instances of the Euripidean sophistry. The tragic circumstances of Troy
in ruins and of injured -husband face to face with guilty wife are all
forgotten, while Helen develops a very clever defence of her conduct in a
long rhetorical oration. The theatre is turned into a law-court, and
forensic eloquence is substituted for dramatic poetry. Hecuba replies
with an elaborate description of the lewdness, vanity, and guile of
Helen, which we may take to be a fair statement of the poet's own
conception of her character, since in the Electro, and the Orestes he
puts similar charges into the mouth of Agamemnon's daughter. There is
no doubt that Hecuba has the best of the argument. She paints the
beauty of her son Paris and the barbaric pomp which he dis'played at
Sparta. Then turning to Helen —

6 trbs y ISdai1 viv vovs fooi-fiOr} Kvirpis'

ra /j.S>pa ykp iravT* eVrtv 'AffypoSiri] fSporois,

Kal Totfvofj.' opQws ac

Sententious epigrams like this, by which the myths were philo-
sophized to suit the occasions of daily life, exactly suited the temper of
the Athenian audience in the age of Euripides. But Hecuba proceeds :
" You played your husband off against your lover, and your lover against
your husband, hoping always to keep the one or the other by your
artifice ; and when Troy fell, no one found you tying the halter or
sharpening the knife against your own throat, as any decent woman in
your position would have done." At the end of her speech she seems to
have convinced Menelaus, who orders the attendants to carry off Helen to
the ships, that she may be taken to Argos and killed there. Hecuba begs
him not to embark her on the same boat with himself. "Why?" he
asks. (t Is she heavier than she used to be ? " The answer is signi-
ficant :

OVK effr* tyaffrfys SffTis OVK del

"Once a lover, always a lover." And so it turns out; for, at the
opening of the Orestes, Helen arrives in comfort at the side of Menelaus.
He now is afraid lest she should be seized and stoned by the Argives,
whose children had been slain for her sake in Troy. Nor is the fear
vain. Orestes and Pylades lay hold of her, and already the knife is at
her throat, when Phoebus descends and declares that Helen has been
caught up to heaven to reign with her brothers Castor and Polydeukes..
A more immoral termination to her adventures can hardly be imagined ;
for Euripides, following hitherto upon the lines of the Homeric story, has

* " Thy own soul, gazing at him, became Kupris : for Aphrodite, as her name
denotes, is all the folly of mortals."

£2—2

452 HELEN OF TROY.

been at great pains to analyse her legend into a common tale of adultery
and female fascination. He now suddenly shifts his ground and deifies
the woman he had sedulously vilified before. His true feeling about
Helen is expressed in the lines spoken by Electra to Clytemnestra
(Electra, 1062) :

T?) JUCP yo.p eT5o? aivov fa^iof (ftepfi
'EAei'rjJ T6 KOI <rou, 8uo 5' e<£vT6 ffv')y6i'<ai
&/jL(pa> /uarofo* KatrropJs T* OVK a|/co.
•if fjLfv yap aptraaQeio* tieovff* airwAfTO,
av 6* avfip &pi-jrov 'EAAaSos 8ia>A€<ras.

You and your sister are a proper pair, and your beauty has brought
you the credit you deserve : both are light women and unworthy of
Castor ; for Helen allowed herself to be ravished and undone, while you
killed the best man in Greece. Farther illustrations of the Euripidean
conception of Helen as a worthless woman, who had the art to reconquer
a weak husband's affection, might be drawn from the tirade of Peleus
against Menelaus in the Andromache (590, &s.).

This Euripidean reading of the character of Helen was natural to a
sceptical and sophistical age, when the dimly moralised myths of ancient
Hellas had become the raw material for a poet's casuistry. Yet, in the
heart of the Greek people, Homer had still a deeper, firmer place than even
Euripides ; and the thought of Helen, ever beautiful and ever young,
survived the rude analysis of the Athenian drama. Her romance reco-
vered from the prosaic rationalism to which it had been subjected, thanks,
no doubt, to the many sculptors and painters who immortalized her
beauty without suggesting the woes that she had brought upon the world.
Those very woes, perhaps, may have added pathos to her chirm : for
had not she too suffered in the strife of men ? How the artists dealt
with the myth of Helen we only know by scattered hints and fragments.
One bas-relief, engraved by Millingen, reveals her standing calm beneath
the sword of Menelaus. That sword is lifted, but it will not fall. Beauty,
breathed around her like a spell, creates a magic atmosphere through
which no steel can pierce. In another bas-relief, from the Campana
Museum, she is entering Sparta on a chariot, side by side with Menelaus,
not like a captive, but with head erect and haughty mien, and proud
hand placed upon the horse's reins. Philostratus, in his Lives of the
Sophists, describes an exceedingly beautiful young philosopher, whose
mother bore a close resemblance to the picture of Helen by Eumelus.
If the lineaments of the mother were repeated in the youth, the eyes of
Helen in her picture must have been large and voluptuous, her hair curled
in clusters, and her teeth of dazzling whiteness. It is probable that the
later artists, in their illustrations of the romance of Helen, used the
poems of Lesches and Arctinus, now lost, but of which the Posthomerica
of Quintus Smyrnaeus preserve to us a feeble reflection. This poet of
the fourth century after Christ does all in his power to rehabilitate the
character of Helen by huing tae fault of her crime on Paris, and by

HELEN OF TEOY. 453

describing at length the charm which Venus shed around her sacred
person. It was only by thus insisting upon the daemonic influence which
controlled the fate of Helen that the conclusions reached by the rational-
izing process of the dramatists could be avoided. The Cyclic poems thus
preserved the heroic character of Helen and her husband at the expense
of Aphrodite, while Euripides had said plainly : " What you call Aphrodite
is your own lust." Menelaus, in the Posthomerica, finds Helen* hidden in
the palace of Deiphobus ; astonishment takes possession of his soul before
the shining of her beauty, so that he stands immovable, like a dead tree,
which neither north nor south wind shakes. When the Greek heroes leave
Troy town, Agamemnon leads Cassandra captive, Neoptolemus is followed
by Andromache, and Hecuba weeps torrents of tears in the strong grasp of
Odysseus. A crowd of Trojan women fill the air with shrill laments, tearing
their tresses and strewing dust upon their heads. Meanwhile, Helen is
delayed by no desire to wail or weep ; but a comely shame sits on her black
eyes and glowing cheeks. Her heart leaps, and her whole form is as lovely
as Aphrodite was when the gods discovered her with Ares in the net of
Hephaistos. Down to the ships she comes with Menelaus hand in hand ;
and the people, " gazing on the glory and the winning grace of the fault-
less woman, were astonied ; nor could they dare by whispers or aloud
to humble her with insults : but gladly they saw in her a goddess, for
she seemed to all what each desired." This is the apotheosis of Helen ;
and this reading of her romance is far more true to the general current
of Greek feeling than that suggested by Euripides. Theocritus, in his
exquisite marriage song of Helen, has not a word to say by hint or
inuendo that she will bring a curse upon her husband. Like dawn is the
beauty of her face ; like the moon in the heaven of night, or the spring
when winter is ended, or like a cypress in the meadow, so is Helen among
Spartan maids. When Apollonius of Tyana, the most famous medium of
antiquity, evoked the spirit of Achilles by the pillar on his barrow in
the Troad, the great ghost consented to answer five questions. One of
these concerned Helen : Did she really go to Troy ? Achilles indignantly
repudiated the notion. She remained in Egypt ; and this the heroes of
.Achaia soon knew well ; " but we fought for fame and Priam's wealth."

It is curious at the point of transition in the Roman world from
Paganism to Christianity to find the name of Helen prominent.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, was famous with the early
Church as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, where she discovered the true
cross, and destroyed a temple of Venus. For one Helen, East and
West had warred together on the plains of Troy. Following the steps
of another Helen, West and East now disputed the possession of the
Holy Sepulchre. Such historical parallels are, however, little better than
puns. It is far more to the purpose to notice how the romance of Helen
of Troy, after lying dormant during the middle agep, blazed forth again in
the pregnant myth of Faustus. The final achievement of Faust's magic
was to evoke Helen from the dead and hold her as his paramour. To the

454 BELEN OF TEOY.

beauty of Greek art the mediaeval spirit stretched forth with yearning and
begot the modern world. Marlowe, than whom no poet of the North
throbbed more mightily with the passion of the Renaissance, makes his
Faust exclaim :

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul : see, where it flies !

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,

And all is dross that is not Helena.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,

Instead of Troy shall Wertenberg be sacked ;

And I will combat with weak Menelaus,

And wear thy colours on my. plumed crest ;

Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,

And then return to Helen for a kiss.

Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ;

Brighter art thou than the flaming Jupiter

When he appeared to hapless Semele ;

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa's azured arms ;

And none but thou shalt be my paramour.

Marlowe, as was natural, contented himself with an external handling
of the Faust legend. Goethe allegorized the whole, and turned the
episode of Helen into a parable of modern poetry. When Lynkeus, the
warder, is reprimanded for not having duly asked Helen into the feudal
castle, he defends himself thus :

Harrend auf des Morgens Wonne,
Oestlich spiihend ihren Lauf,
Ging auf einmal mir die Sonne
Wunderbar im Siiden auf.

Zog den Blick nach jener Seite,

Start der Schluchten, statt der Hoh'n,

Statt der Erd und Himmelsweite, -»

Sie, die Einzige, zu 8j iihri.*

The new light that rose upon the middle ages came not from the East,
but from the South, no longer from Galilee, but from Greece.

Thus, after living her long life in Hellas as the ideal of beauty, un-
qualified by moral attributes, Helen passed into modem mythology as the
ideal of the beauty of the Pagan world. True to her old character, she
arrives to us across the waters of oblivion with the cestus of the goddess

* " Eastward was my glance directed, Thither was my eye attracted ;

Watching for the sun's first rays ; Vanished bay and mountain height,

In the south — oh ! sight of wonder — Earth and heaven unseen and all things,

Rose the bright orb's sudden blaze. All but that enchanted light."— Anster.

HELEN OF TKOY. 455

round her waist, and the divine smile upon her lips. Age has not impaired
her charm, nor has she learned the lesson of the Fall. Ever virginal and
ever fair, she is still the slave of Aphrodite. In Helen we salute the
indestructible Hellenic spirit.

A legend like that of Helen, which has played a part in the mythology
of two ages, supplies fitting material for the highest artistic presentation.
It would be difficult, for example, to find a better subject for a grand
ballet ; if the ballet could ever become, as seems not quite impossible,
a work of serious art. Perhaps the best prospect for the music of
the future is in the direction of the ballet. Music, after long subor-
dinating itself to words in the Mass, the Oratorio, and the Opera, attained to
freedom in the Symphony as developed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
These masters proved that an orchestra can express the highest poetry of
which the art of tone is capable. Yet there always remains something
wanting to unassisted instrumental music. Powerfully as the instruments
of the Symphony may affect the soul, both composer and audience have
felt the need of external interpretation. What does the Symphony tell ?
The composer has a definite meaning to convoy ; each member of the
audience has a definite impression to receive : yet such is the nature of
musical sound that a vital connection can scarcely be established between
the intention of the artist and the sensibility of the audience without an
explanatory programme of some sort. Such a programme has hitherto
been supplied, almost accidentally, by a name, as in the case of Beethoven's
Pastoral and Heroic Symphonies, or by the subordination of the orches-
tral music to a dramatic idea, as in the case of all overtures. Would it
not be possible to supply a living, moving, elastic programme of pantomime
by restoring Terpsichore to her right place among the Muses ? A legend
like that of Helen is eminently suited to suggest a hundred symphonies
of passion and emotion ; its varied situations bring into play the whole
range of human feelings : love, fear, grief, jealousy, athletic strife, the
anguish of men and nations, the pathos of beauty in distress, the victory
of heroes over death ; of such spiritual stuff is its very substance woven.
At the sanje time it admits of being represented on the stage in a suc-
cession of dances and impressive tableaux. Would it not be possible for
the choreograph and the musician to meet upon this theatre of high
interpretative art ? I, for my part, can imagine nothing more aesthetically
perfect than a drama without words, whereof the poem should be simple
orchestral music, and the corporeal expression be supplied by scenery and
dancing. Music is too emotionally free and evanescent to submit to any
but a forced alliance with language. But it finds a whole rhythm of
interpretative illustration in the movement of the limbs, the poses of the
body, and the expression of the features. When Fedalma, in George
Eliot's poem, descended to the dance, she felt the dignity of her artistic
function : and to what sublime heights of dramatic representation might
not a nature like hers arise, when supported by orchestras throbbing with
the inbreathed passion of the soul of a Mozart ? Preparations for the

456 HELEN OF TROY.

ballet as a work of high art are not wanting. All visitors to Italy know
the importance of the Ballo there ; a great poet, Heine, condesended to
compose a ballet on Goethe's Faust. We only need that a musician of
genius should apply himself to the work, and that the dancing element
should be subordinated to the artistic effects aimed at by the Ton-Dichter.
The myths of Helen and Psyche and Faust, the legend of St. Dorothy
and Don Juan, the tales of Francesca and Juliet and Imogen, are fitted
for this species of art, which would have for its sphere whatever belongs
properly to the province of das Ewiyweibliche.

Such reflections as these form a somewhat lyrical termination to a
cctuserie on Helen, by leading the mind away into a region of thought only
slenderly connected with the main subject. Yet one who has been
long occupied with the memory of her, at once so shadowy and so real,
trembling as it were upon the borderland of things and dreams, and
growing into dazzling radiance from the mists of doubt and darkness, may
seem in his imagination to see her loveliness float forth with wings of
music on the ways of dancing. In other words, he is almost irresistibly
compelled to think of her under the conditions of that art of which the
ballet is the realisation.

J. A. S.

457

" II Cortonese
Luca, tVingegno et spirto pellegrino/'

—GIOVANNI SANTI.

FAME is partial, blowing one name far d?d wide, and never putting trump
to lip for the sake of another little less worthy. She flatters the greatest,
but neglects others all but as great. Those who lead the way she forgets,
those who follow it at their ease she remembers ; mindful of the reapers,
forgetful of the sowers ; kind to those that enter into an inheritance, cold
to those whose labour stored it up. All perfection is acquired by inherit-
ance. Perfection in the fine arts, above all, is but the crown one genera-
tion puts on the efforts of many that have gone before. In the fine arts,
accordingly, the partiality of fame is most conspicuous. She gives all the
glory to the one crowning generation, the fortunate heir of the rest.
Thus the name of Michelangelo is a name of power over all the globe.
The fourth century since his birth is passing away as I write, men acclaim
so great an anniversary, and his memory moves on into ever widening
cycles of renown. That is very just. Bat it is not just that the. name
of his chief forerunner should be familiar only to a handful of students.
The forerunner of Michelangelo, and in part his model, was Luca Signo-
relli. The more you learn of that painter, the more you will recognise
how it was in his hands that the art grew ripe for its astounding and
perilous climax in the Sixtine Chapel. Until you know him, that climax
cannot but seem to you like something sudden, which it was not, and un-
prepared, whereas it had been prepared by many, but in the chief and last
degree by Luca Signorelli. To tell his story here will feel like helping
him, in a humble way, from his place in the dim chambers of curiosity
towards the place which ought to be his in the open mansions of popular
fame.

We saw of Piero della Francesca, a month or two ago, how he was one
of the influential painters of Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century,
and the first through whom the genius and science of Florence took effect
upon the provincial workmen of the Umbrian Apennines. Luca Signorelli
was the most distinguished scholar of Piero della Francesca, and holds
out one hand to him while he holds out the other to Michelangelo. Luca
is called Cortonese, Cortonensis, Coritius, or da Cortona, from his native
city on the confines of the ancient provinces of Umbria andEtruria. Cortona,

458 LUCA SIGNOEELLI.

within the ruined circuit of its mighty mediaeval and mightier Etruscan
walls, occupies the upper ledges of a mountain, which is itself the western
spur of a larger mountain, at the point whewre the Apennines close in upon
the southern extremity of the Yaldichiana. Arezzo, where Piero della
Francesca did his greatest work, is twenty miles off to the north, Perugia
half as much again to the south. The city of Cortona is so old and small,
it seems shrunk up with age. As you climb to it from the plain, you pass
first of all the great outlying church of St. Maria del Calcinaio, built in
Signorelli's own time by an architect from Siena, with the severe pomp
and symmetry of the early Renaissance. A few turns of the zigzag
ascent above this church give you a bird's-eye view down upon its roofs
and dome, and presently bring yeu to the entrance of the town. You climb
the steep streets from point to point, and pause upon the clearings before
one dismantled church after another, until you come to the last church of
all, which belongs to the great convent endowed by the people of Cortona
in honour of St. Margaret, a glory of their city and of the Franciscan
order. But higher yet than the church and convent of St. Margaret of
Cortona, towers the fortress. From the summit of the fortress, the city
is but a reddish grey cascade of crumbling roofs at your feet ; you look
down beyond it upon the fertile level of the Valdichiana, all traced and
netted over with rows of the mulberry and the vine-bearing maple — an
endless geometry, or ending only among the heavings of the horizon hills.
In the western distance, loftier and of lovelier outline than all hills beside,
the peak of Amiata mingles fair and fabulous with the blue. Here and
there^ on plain or ridge you are aware of some hamlet that may have been
a mighty city in days when Rome was an outlaw's refuge. Here and
there a streak of light is a distant lake. Far away among the mountains
on the right, you know that the Tiber and the Arno rise. And beyond
the dark Apennine shoulder that thrusts itself forward on your left, you
look down on one half of Thrasimene, the lake of slaughter, of all lakes
to-day the most fair and peaceful, and casting up to heaven an azure the
purest without flaw.

This old city was not one of those that took a leading part in the
history of Italian politics or culture. Lying in a region of which the sove-
reignty was perpetually disputed between the larger republics, the Church,
or this or that champion of the Church and this or that adventurer
fighting on his own account or as the nominal delegate of the Empire, the
signory of the city passed from one hand to another, until at the beginning
of the fifteenth century the republic of Florence bought it for a sum of
money from Ladislaus, King of Naples. The purchase was a matter of
much rejoicing at Florence, even though it fell between two far more im-
portant territorial acquisitions of the republic, those of Pisa and Leghorn.
It will have been soon after the purchase that a certain pilgrimage took
place which gives Cortona a part it is pleasant to remember in the classical
revival of Italy. At all times rare fragments of antiquity have been apt
to turn up under the plough or spade in the neighbourhood. One of

LUCA SIGNORELLI. 459

these is a Roman sarcophagus with a fine bas-relief of Centaurs and
Lapithge. It was found early in the Middle Age, and built, as such frag-
ments often were built, with care into the inner face of the Cathedral wall.
Full of the legends of Thrasimene, the people have dubbed it the sarco-
phagus of the Consul Flaminius. It happened one day, in the first fever
of the antiquarian passion at Florence, that Donatello told his friend
Brunelleschi how on his way back from Rome he had seen this monument
at Cortona and what a marvel of beauty it was. The next thing that was
seen of Brunelleschi was his producing in company, a few days later, a
fine pen drawing of the monument in question. He had been fired, it
appeared, by Donatello's description, and had gone off " as he was, with-
out saying a word, in his town-going cloak and cap and shoes," and had
made his way to Cortona on foot, sixty hilly miles, and done his drawing
and come back again.

But Cortona was now to win a higher distinction in the history of the
Renaissance. For here lived a citizen named Egidio di Ventura Signo-
relli, who had taken a wife from the neighbouring town of Arezzo. She
was named Elisabetta, and belonged to that family of the Vasari which
was afterwards destined to become famous in the person of Giorgio Yasari
the biographer. Her brother Lazzaro Vasari was a designer and manu-
facturer of pottery in Arezzo, and was the very good friend of Piero della
Francesca. In 1441 Elisabetta bore her husband a son who was chris-
tened Luca. This boy, Luca Signorelli, would be twelve years old or
upwards at the time when Piero della Francesca was busy over his great
work at Arezzo. Through the good offices of his uncle Lazzaro Vasari,
Luca got apprenticed to that master. How long his service lasted we
cannot tell, but long enough to teach the pupil all the master knew, in
anatomy, in perspective, in classical antiquities, and the other sciences in
which Piero was proficient beyond his age. To grapple with and conquer
the real human body as it is, to explore its structure, and delineate its
parts and surfaces with the new power which knowledge of structure
gives, that is the main acquisition with which Luca began his independent
career. For the rest, his taste and his teacher's are different enough.
Piero, as we saw, loved collected strength ; men, maidens, angels stand-
ing upright and unalarmed ; gestures and countenances bold but calm.
The representation of strength in motion, and motion of the superlative
degree, was what Luca was destined to achieve. Piero is one of the
sweetest and most inventive of colourists. In Luca the old Italian delight
in colour has gone dim : at his best, indeed, he will strike chords of
power and solemnity, but is apt to range among heavy olive greens and
reds that are somewhat raw and dull.

The "traces of his early career are scanty. At thirty-three, he was
still painting in the provincial towns near his home. It was probably
about 1475 that he went to Florence. Here the first artists of the time
soon acknowledged him their equal. He made one of the great group
who covered chapel walls and filled palace chambers with their handiwork

460 LUCA SIGNOBELLI.

during the years when Italy was most prodigal of genius, and when the
best genius of Italy gathered itself in the service and friendship of the
ugly merchant, the amorous poet, the sleepless politician, the magnificent
amateur, who was the unofficial hereditary dictator of Florence. Two of
the most interesting of Signorelli's extant works were commissions done
for the villa of Lorenzo de' Medici at Caste llo. I mean, first, a Madonna
which hangs in the corridor of the Uffizj, and next, a precious School of
Pan, which the late direction of the English National Gallery (alas ! alas !)
let slip through its fingers to be picked up by the better advised authorities
of Berlin. In that early Madonna of Signorelli, the spiritual parent of
Michelangelo announces himself already to those who can understand.
There is nothing unusual in the figure of the Virgin in dark red and dark
blue, who as she sits turns half round to hold with both hands the child
standing at her feet. What is unusual is the little group in the background.
For the customary shepherds, there stand four naked figures modelled in
strong light and shade, and showing that this, the unclothed frame
and anatomy of men, is the thing the painter cares for and will have
wherever he can get it. Go now into the Tribune close by, and look at
the Madonna painted by Michelangelo himself for Angelo Doni some thirty
years later ; are not the mysterious naked men who lean about the back-
ground of that celebrated work the direct descendants of these anatomies
of Signorelli ? And again, Signorelli has painted above his Madonna some
imitation stone-work with medallions of Prophets in relief ; do we not
seem to discern in these a germ, if a meagre germ, of those mighty in-
ventions, mock-marble effigies of Prophet and Sibyl and supporter, heroic
nameless shapes of superhuman striving and defiance, that dominate our
astonished spirits from their station aloft amid the vaultings of the Sixtine
chapel ? The second picture I have named, the School of Pan, with
naked nymphs and shepherds about the god, must be the best and most
graceful piece of work ever done by Signorelli in the other vein, in the
classic and mythologic vein, of the Renaissance. I know it not in the
original.*

For the next score of years, no more is to be said of Signorelli than
that he holds his place among the most honoured painters of his genera-

* It was habitual in Signorelli, more than in most artists, to repeat his own com-
positions or parts of them, and often at very wide intervals in his career. Pan
among the Nymphs he repeated at the beginning of the next century, making the
subject one of a series in fresco which he painted together with Pinturicchio for
the house Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena. This version of the Pan subject is destroyed,
but others of the same series have been preserved, and one of them, with a companion
of Pinturicchio, was last year bought for the National Gallery, and is the single ex-
ample of the master there. The Duke of Hamilton's picture presently to be men-
tioned was exhibited at Burlington House in 1873. A genuine but unrecognised
fragment was numbered 177 in the Exhibition of this year. In the gallery of the
Arundel Society are some very careful and excellent water-colour drawings after the
frescoes of the master, two from the series at Monte Oliveto and four from Orvieto-.
And this, so far as I know, is all that accessibly represents him in this country.

LUCA SIGNORELLI. 461

tion, which was the crowning generation but one in Italian art. It is
strange that so little of his work has found its way abroad. Italy, at least
Tuscany with Umbria, is full of it. Besides many more pictures in
Florence, he painted in the famous shrine of Our Lady of Loreto, and in
the chapel, then new, of Pope Sixtus at the Vatican. Sixtus IV. was the
first pope of the house of Delia Rovere, and the cardinal Giuliano, destined
in his old age to be the second pope of that house under the title of
Julius II., had been Signorelli's patron at Loreto before Sixtus called him
to Rome. Signorelli's angels are still to be seen at Loreto, dim with the
smoke of incessant worship. In the Sixtine chapel his great fresco of the
life of Moses stands among the rest painted at the same time by Ghir-
landaio, Botticelli, and Perugino. And there are altar-pieces of his in almost
every town that lay within two days' journey of his home. To know all
the Signorellis of this class is to have travelled — the happiest work in the
world — to every nook and corner of that beloved land, from Florence in
the north to Volterra on the west, to Orvieto on the south, to the Adriatic
on the east, with Perugia, Arezzo, Castel Fiorentino, and the little towns
beside the head waters of the Tiber for an inner circle of your explora-
tions, and Cortona, richest of all in the works of her famous son, for their
centre. Of these altar-pieces I must not speak in detail. Speaking
generally, I think the student will find them a little disappointing. Ne-
cessarily they belong to a traditional class of subject. They are Nativities
or Depositions or Entombments, or else those devotional schemes of
Madonna and Child in glory in mid air, with saints worshipping on the
ground below and angels ministering out of heaven above. If you look
for energy, dignity, a manly temper, vigorous and highly- trained draughts-
manship, figures strongly designed and draperies broadly cast, you will
find them in abundance. But compare Signorelli with those of his con-
temporaries who had the real genius for devotional art. Compare him
with Perugino; and how you will miss the intellectual refinement, the
adoring knees and eyes in bland consent with the grace of softly poised
heads and softly folded hands, and all the rapt serenity of those holy
personages set fairly apart in a holy world, beneath a heaven of ineffable
light and azure gradation, and before a spacious distance of solemn lake
and sleeping promontory. Compare him with Botticelli ; and where is
the fire, the passion of beauty and the passion of melancholy ; where are
the quires that circle midway between the green earth and the golden
concave ? where is the rain of roses, the lovely interchange of rose-colour
and bronze and blue and white and amber in the celestial raiment, the
rhythm of flowing skirts and floating locks, the hands laid lovingly to-
gether, and those white wistful looks of yearning and compassion ? None
of these things are here ; nor yet the lovely colouring of the other two,
each after his choice ; nor their exquisite delicacy and fond precision in
the painting of ornaments and details. What instead ?

The superior mastery and energy of which I have spoken, but which
does not seem altogether at ease in this kind of work. Signorelli's Virgins

462 LUCA SIGNORELLI.

rest heavily, on mats, often, of ugly coloured cherubs' heads; Virgins and
children are both apt to be dull : they want those inspirations of tenderness
which often give a charm to the work of quite simple painters. His com-
positions of saints and angels are unequal, but on the whole apt to be
somewhat heavy, crowded, and angular ; he somehow has not got the
true secret of these things and their combination. This or that bishop
or martyr or doctor will be splendidly designed and painted, but from
want of knowing exactly what to make him do — from want, that is, of re-
ligious imagination and religious motive — it will happen that all this
power looks misplaced or ostentatious. By looking ostentatious, I mean
that a limb, a hand, will be expressed in a difficult attitude, with the
most forcible technical completeness, when it is without any equivalent
force or appropriateness of purpose. The angels are often of splendid
beauty, but of a mien too bold and haughty _for angels, a beauty too war-
like or carnal, and with a build too athletic and a tread too firm to float
on clouds. Or if Signorelli tries, as he constantly does, to add to such
beings the devout graces that come naturally to the Perugian, or to lesser
Umbrians — if he would abase their brows in humility, or clasp their
hands in worship, or droop their heads in contemplation — then his work
ceases to look spontaneous and all of a piece ; you are aware of a native
and of a foreign element side by side, and this is fatal to the spiritual
harmony a picture ought to have. His heart is not in the humilities.
His great successes are in the frames of weather-beaten grey-headed
penitents, an Adam or a Jerome ; in the passion of a mourning John or
the vehement gesture of a wailing Mary beside the cross ; in the strength
and heartiness of a lusty naked Christopher ; in the clerkly gravity of
an Augustine or a Gregory, with their gorgeous gold-embroidered and
figured vestments ; or in the animated little background groups of soldiers
about a Crucifixion. In these things he is never weak or forced. Some-
times, where the object does not call for much sentiment or tenderness,
an altar-piece of his will be nobly complete and dignified throughout, as
in the great Circumcision of the Hamilton Palace collection, formerly at
Volterra, which is one of the finest of its class.

II.

With such works, I say, Luca Signorelli held his place for twenty years
or more. And then, when he was fifty- six, came the opportunity that
first encouraged his true bent. He was summoned to paint part of a sacred
history for the monks of a famous convent near Siena. Now, of all the
republics of Italy, Siena was at the same time the most insanely turbulent
and the most fervently devout. The lives of her citizens were strangely
divided between civil anarchy and religious exaltation. Her annals teem
with histories of saints, men or women upon whom the call came in the
midst of a patriotic, a violent, a dissolute, or a worldly career. One of
these had been Bernardo Tolomei, the most distinguished member of a

LUCA SIGNOKELLI. 463

distinguished house, and a great public teacher of law in the University
of Siena towards the beginning of the fourteenth century. Suddenly his
heart smote him. He put away the worldly and embraced the heavenly
calling. With two friends of birth equal to his own, he went out into the
most desolate part of the desolate chalk hills to the south of the city.
Here the three lived the lives of hermits ; and presently their example con-
verted others. Disciples assembled ; lands and money were bequeathed.
A new order of monks was founded according to the rule of the Benedic-
tines, as reformed for their special observance, and was called, in conse-
quence of a vision vouchsafed to its founder, the order of the Mount of
Olives. This institution of the Olivetine monks in time spread all over
Italy, and even north of the Alps. But the parent house among the chalk-
hills of the Sienese province near Chiusuri remained the central and go-
verning convent of the order, and is called to this day by the name of
Monte Oliveto Maggiore. Within a hundred and fifty years of its founda-
tion, pious bequests had nourished it into an establishment of great mag-
nificence. The vast enclosures and courts and campaniles in red brick
are sequestered amid an artificial oasis in that land of arid heat and
soapy shapeless lumps, not hills. Let me not give my own account of
the place, but copy that of a genial traveller and observer of the fifteenth
century, whose description is as good to-day as when it was written, except
that in the place of the old hospitable throng of pious inmates a poor half-
dozen monks, deprived of their historic dress, are left alone now, with
their lands appropriated by the State, their gardens dismantled and re-
duced. Mue&s Sylvius, the accomplished humanist and diplomatist who
was pope under the title of Pius II. , had occasion to visit the convent.
Approaching it from the south, he complains of the paths cut in the chalky
clay, and only fit to be ridden in the droughts of summer. " A horse's
hoofs sink into the earth, and he can only pull them out again by a great
effort. The rains have channelled deep trenches on this side and on that,
only leaving narrow paths which you keep to with great difficulty ; and if
you tread ever so little on one side, down you roll. Well, we reached the
monastery called Monte Oliveto, which lies not far from the little town of
Chiusuri, where they make a cheese which the people of Tuscany think
excellent. The site of the monastery is like this. You have a high hill
of chalk and tufa about a furlong in length, much less in width, and
shaped like a chestnut-leaf (i.e. a narrow and pointed oval). On all sides
steep rocks hang above ravines into which you may well shudder to look
down. A narrow neck or ridge joins this, hill to the rest of the land, and
at this point is built a brick tower which stops the approach to all but
friends. Midway upon the slope of the hill is built a noble church, and
beside it the chambers, cloisters, and corridors of the monks ; with all
kinds of offices necessary for men of religion ; nothing that is not hand-
some, nothing that is not neatly kept, nothing that you may not look on
with envy." Then he gives an account 01 the origin of the establishment,
and derives its name, not quite accurately, from the number of olives culti-

464 LUCA SIGNORELLI.

there ; adding, " There are also figs and almonds, and many kinds
of pears and apples, and groves of cypresses in which you may take the
air pleasantly in summer. Vineyards too, and walks in the shade of vine-
leavcs ; and vegetable gardens, and pools for washing, and a perennial spring,
and tanks, and wells ; and groves of oak and juniper growing upon the
very rock itself. And a number of walks, wide enough for two abreast,
wind about or cut across the hill, with borders of vines or rose-trees
or rosemary on either side. Pleasaunees delightful for the monks —
more delightful still for those that having seen are free to go elsewhere."
So with a sly touch the busy shepherd of the faithful takes his leave.
Much has he seen and known, cities of men, and manners, climates,
counsels, governments ; much hopes he yet to have before him ; not to his
mind is the quiet of the cloistered life, solitude or inaction or irresponsibility.
It was about five -and -thirty years after this visit of Pius II. that
the fathers of Monte Oliveto determined to have the chief cloister of
their convent adorned with paintings. What subject so fit for them to
contemplate as they paced those deep arcades — what so fall both of enter-
tainment and edification — as the miraculous career of St. Benedict, the
great father of their own order and of western monachism ? Accordingly
the story of St. Benedict, exactly as you read it in the second book of the
Dialogues of Gregory the Great, end as you may fancy some white-robed
superior of the brotherhood dictating it to the artist off a manuscript from
the convent library, stands painted scene by scene round the four walls of
the cloister. Three sides out of the four are the work of the Sienese master
Sodoma, with whom to-day we have nothing to do. The fourth side was
painted by Luca Signorelli in 1497. And this is the place where, in spite of
fading and decay, you may see his genius for the first time seeming quite
happy in its task. There are eight stories in eight compartments, taken
from eight successive chapters of Gregory's Dialogue. In these Gregory
tells how, the old enemy having persuaded an envious brother to poison
Benedict, the saint was saved from the poison by miraculous agency, but
made up his mind nevertheless to leave those brethren and take up his
abode elsewhere ; and as he was starting, the news was brought him how
the wicked priest had fallen from a loggia and been killed ; but not for
that would Benedict change his purpose. Next how, having determined
to found a new convent on the site of a temple of Apollo at Monte Cassino,
he preached to the pagan inhabitants and converted them, and caused his
followers to pull down the idol of the false god. Then, how his followers
could by no means lift a certain stone which he directed them to use for
the building ; whereby it was clear that the old enemy in person must be
sitting upon that stone ; and how Benedict being sent for exorcised the
old enemy, and the stone being lifted up an idol of bronze was found
under it ; and that idol being thrown aside in the kitchen, suddenly in
the eyes of the brethren a phantom fire seemed to be kindled and to
threaten the building with destruction ; but Benedict was aware that
it was no fire but a mischievous device of the old enemy. Fourthly, how

LUCA SlGKOBELLl. 465

the evil one planned a new assault, and cast down a wall the brethren
were building, so that it crushed one of them and killed him, and how
Benedict restored him to life. How two brethren broke the rules of
their order by eating in the house of a woman without the precincts of the
convent, and how Benedict by his miraculous knowledge convicted them.
How by the same miraculous knowledge he was aware of the backsliding
of a pilgrim, the brother of one of his monks, who was wont to come once
each year fasting and see his brother and receive the blessing of the Saint,
but who this year had been tempted by the old enemy, in the guise of a
fellow-pilgrim, to break his fast by the way. Seventhly, how Totila, king
of the Goths, having heard of the spirit of prophecy which was in Bene-
dict, and wishing to try him, bade his chief officer Kiggo put on the royal
apparel and go at the head of the royal guard and present himself before
Benedict in all things as though he were the king ; and how Benedict, as
the false Totila drew near, called out with a loud voice, " Son, put off that
which is not thine." And lastly how Totila, astonished at this miracle,
came himself to the Saint with all his warriors, and fell down before him,
and would hardly be persuaded to rise from his knees.

Here, it is evident, is scope enough for freedom, for vivacity, for the
energetic representation of life and incident. Signorelli revels in it. He
plans the perspective of his landscapes so as to give room, in the rear of
the main subject which fills the foreground of each compartment, for other
animated subjects which serve as preface or sequel to it. Often these
distant episodes are brilliant little compositions in themselves, always
they enter in the liveliest way into the spirit of the story, its simple
thaumaturgy and childish materialism. Brown imps and blue fly away
with the wicked monk's soul. The old enemy sits visibly on the stone
they cannot move, or swaggers fiercely with his crowbar in the act to over-
throw the wall that is to kill the young disciple. Draperies whirl and
bodies slant with speed as monk and cook and scullion run to and
fro with pitchers to extinguish the phantom fire. Where the truant
monks eat out of bounds, a lad keeping watch at the door against an
alarm, the women who are waiting or move up and down a staircase in
the rear, are figures of admirable spirit and reality ; and a little corner is
kept in the distance to show how submissively the truants plump down on
their unlucky knees when they get home and know they are found out.
The pilgrim and his tempter hobnob across a wooden table in a grassy
place with the most animated air. Totila's men in outlandish armour go
to and fro before their tents in the distance, or ride fiercely, driving
before them a troop of bound and cringing captives. So much for the
quality of the background and accessory scenes, where they are not too
much defaced for study — and the earlier pictures of the series are both
slighter and more injured than the later. In the foreground, the Saint and
his companions perpetually group into noble masses of heavy white dra-
pery, for they are represented, not in the black gown proper to the original
order of the Benedictines, but in the white gown which had been assumed by

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 184. 23.

466 LUCA SIGNOBELLI.

this reformed branch of the order. Bald or white-headed, shaven or bearded,
young or old, their heads are individual studies, not of sanctity or austerity
or adoration, but of bronzed and weather-beaten strength ; and as such
are studies wrought out and modelled with extraordinary power. Where the
Saint preaches to the pagan inhabitants of Monte Cassino, we see at last
what the painter cares more about even than groups of bronzed and goodly
monks in their white robes. His pagans are people of splendid apparel
and fair countenances and majestic bearing, in whom he has taken extreme
delight. But if you want to realise to the full how the spirit of the time
worked in Signorelli, how he represents the Eenaissance in its love of
physical energy and life, stop at the last two subjects, which are much better
preserved as well as more characteristic than the rest. Totila in one,
JBiggo his chief captain in the other, leads' the van of a long array of
mounted and dismounted knights and pages and men-at-arms. Here is
occasion for the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of
life. Each retinue is nothing but a company of portraits—portraits of
such beautiful and fiery and reckless human beings as in the cities round
about were wont to make the air at sundown ring with revelry, and before
dawn with the clash of deadly brawl or treason deadlier still. Lithe, tall,
athletic, high-bred, compact of flesh like steel, Signorelli has drawn them
as the frames of men were never drawn before. The close-fitting fashions
of the time, hose and jackets all variegated with flaming and fantastic
patterns in white and blue and scarlet, are no disguise of the supple limbs
and tense sinews, no veil of the bodies so terrible and perfect. Such
apparel only adds to the wearer some blazonry the more of audacity and
defiance. Defiant or merely disdainful with that physical disdain of
strength and untamed blood, the young men stand among their elders
with one hand on sword-hilt or hip, the beautiful head with its careless
looks and rippling gold hair set haughtily on the springy neck, the whole
fierce and radiant animal alert for pleasure or for blood. Now, then, you
understand what features and figures Signorelli took to most naturally.
You see what models he was most familiar with in the young men of the
cities about his home.* Knowing what these lawless young lords were
like in their lives, and seeing here how he felt their beauty and repre-
sented it, you cease to wonder if the angels in his altar-pieces have seemed
to you over-bold and over-strong, and if you have thought gestures of
humbleness and pity out of keeping with those warrior profiles, those
unabashed brows and backward-rolling yellow locks.

S.C.

* Mr. J. A. Symonds has seen and made this point in the chapters on Orvieto and
Perugia (the latter, I think, the more just and spirited of the two) in his interesting
volume of Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece.

(To le continued.)

467

.a u r s ix a r it r IT,

No. X. — WILLIAM HAZLITT.

THERE are few great books or great men that do not sadden us by a sense
of incompleteness. The writer, we feel, is better than his work. His
fall power only reveals itself by flashes. There are blemishes in his design,
due to mere oversight or indolence ; his energy has flagged, or he has
alloyed his pure gold to please the mob ; or some burst of wayward
passion has disturbed the fair proportions of his work. The man him-
self is a half-finished or half-ruined fragment. The rough usage of the
world leaves its mark on the spiritual constitution of even the strongest and
best amongst us ; and perhaps the finest natures suffer more than others
in virtue of their finer sympathies. Hamlet is a pretty good performance,
if we make allowances ; but what would it have been if Shakspere could
have been at his highest level all through, and if every element of strength
in him had been purified from every weakness ? What would it have
been, shall we say, if he could have had the advantage of reading a few
modern lectures on aesthetics ? We may, perhaps, be content with Shak-
speare as circumstances left him ; but in reading our modern poets, the
sentiment of regret is stronger. If Byron had not been driven into his
wild revolt against the world ; if Shelley had been judiciously treated from
his youth ; if Keats had had healthier lungs ; if Wordsworth had not
grown rusty in his solitude ; if Scott had not been tempted into publishers'
speculations ; if Coleridge had never taken to opium ; what great poems
might not have opened the modern era of literature, where now we have
but incomplete designs, and listen to harmonies half- destroyed by internal
discord ? The regret, however, is less when a man has succeeded in
uttering the thought that was in him, though it may never have found
a worthy expression. Wordsworth could have told us little more though
the Excursion had been as complete a work as Paradise Lost ; and if Scott
might have written us more Antiquaries and Old Mortalities, he could hardly
have written better ones. But the works of some other writers suggest
possibilities which never even approached fulfilment. If the opinion
formed by his contemporaries of Coleridge be anywhere near the truth,
we lost in him a potential philosopher of a very high order, as we more
clearly lost a poet of singular fascination. Coleridge naturally suggests
the name of De Quincey, whose works are as often tantalizing as satis-
fying. And to make, it is true, a considerable drop from the greatest of
these names, we often feel when we take up one of Hazlitt's glowing
Essays, that here, too, was a man who might have made a far more

23—2

468 HOU&S IN A LIJ3RA&Y*

enduring mark as a writer of English prose. At their best, his writings
are admirable ; they have the true stamp ; the thought is masculine and
the expression masterly ; phrases engrave themselves on the memory ; and
we catch glimpses of a genuine thinker and no mere manufacturer of
literary commonplace. On a more prolonged study, it is true, we become
conscious of many shortcomings, and the general effect is somehow rather
cloying, though hardly from an excess of sweetness. And yet he deserves
the attention both of the critic and the student of character.

The story of Hazlitt's life has been told by his grandson ; but there
is a rather curious defect of materials for so recent a biography. He
kept, it seems, no letters — a weakness, if it be a weakness, for which one
is rather apt to applaud him in these days ; but, on the other hand,
nobody ever indulged more persistently in the habit of washing his dirty
linen in public. Not even his idol Rousseau could be more demonstrative
of his feelings and recollections. His writings are autobiographical, some-
times even offensively ; and after reading them we are even more familiar
than his contemporaries with many points of his character. He loved to

pour himself out in his Essays

as plain
As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne.

He has laid bare for the most careless reader the main elements of his
singular composition. Like some others of his revolutionary friends,
Godwin, for example, Leigh Hunt, and Tom Paine, he represents the old
dissenting spirit in a new incarnation. The grandfather a stern Calvinist,
the father a Unitarian, the son a freethinker ; those were the gradations
through which more than one family passed during the closing years of
the last century and the opening of this. One generation still clung to
the old Puritan traditions and Jonathan Edwards ; the next followed
Priestley ; and the third joined the little band of radicals who read Cob-
bett, scorned Southey as a deserter, and refused to be frightened by the
French revolution. The outside crust of opinion may be shed with little
change to the inner man. Hazlitt was a dissenter to his backbone. He
was born to be in a minority ; to be a living protest against the dominant
creed and constitution. He recognized and denounced, but he never
shook off, the faults characteristic of small sects. A want of wide intel-
lectual culture, and a certain sourness of temper, cramped his powers and
sometimes marred his writing. But from his dissenting forefathers Hazlitt
inherited something better. Beside the huge tomes of controversial
divinity on his father's shelves, the Patres Poloni, Pripscovius, Crellius,
and Cracovius, Lardner and Doddridge, and Baxter and Bates, and Howe,
were the legends of the Puritan hagiology. The old dissenters, he tells
us, had Neale's History of the Puritans by heart, and made their children
read Calamy's account of the 2,000 ejected ministers along with the stories
of Daniel in the Lion's den and Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.
Sympathy for the persecuted, unbending resistance to the oppressor, was
the creed which had passed into their blood. " This covenant they kept

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 469

as the stars keep their courses ; this principle they stuck by, for want of
knowing better, as it sticks by them to the last. It grew with their
growth, it does not wither in their decay. . . It glimmers with the last
feeble eyesight, smiles in the faded cheek like infancy, and lights a path
before them to the grave. This" — for Hazlitt has a personal applica-
tion for all his moralising — "this is better than the whirligig life of a
court poet" — such, for example, as Robert Southey.

But Hazlitt's descent was not pure. If we could trace back the line
of his ancestry we should expect to find that, by some freak of fortune,
one of the rigid old Puritans had married a descendant of some great
Flemish or Italian painter. Love of graceful forms and bright colouring
and voluptuous sensations had been transmitted to their descendants,
though hitherto repressed by the stern discipline of British noncon-
formity. As the discipline relaxed, the Hazlitts reverted to the ancestral
type. Hazlitt himself, his brother and his sister, were painters by
instinct. The brother became a painter of miniatures by profession ; and
Hazlitt to the end of his days revered Titian almost as much as he
revered his great idol Napoleon. An odd pair of idols, one thinks, for a
youth brought up upon Pripscovius and his brethren ! A keen delight in
all artistic and natural beauty were awkward endowments for a youth
intended for the ministry. Keats was scarcely more out of place in a
surgery than Hazlitt would have been in a Unitarian pulpit of those days,
and yet from that pulpit, oddly enough, came the greatest impulse to his
development. It came from a man who, like Hazlitt himself, though in
a higher degree than Hazlitt, combined the artistic and the philosophic
temperament. Coleridge, as Hazlitt somewhere says, threw a great stone
into the standing pool of contemporary thought ; and it was in January,
1798— one of the many dates in his personal history to which he recurs
with unceasing fondness — that Hazlitt rose before daylight and walked
ten miles in the mud to hear Coleridge preach. He has told, in his
graphic manner, how the voice of the preacher " rose like a stream of
rich distilled perfumes ; " how he launched into his subject, in giving out
the text, " like an eagle dallying with the wind ; " and how his young
hearer seemed to be listening to the music of the spheres, to see the
union of poetry and philosophy and of truth and genius embracing
under the eye of religion. This description of the youthful Coleridge
has a fit pendant in the wonderful description of the full-blown philosopher
in Mr. Carlyle's Life of Stirling ; where, indeed, one or two touches are
taken from Hazlitt's Essays. It is Hazlitt who remarked, even at this
early meeting, that the dreamy poet philosopher could never decide on
which side of the footpath he should walk ; and Hazlitt who struck out the
epigram that Coleridge was an excellent talker if allowed to start from no
premisses and come to no conclusion. The glamour of Coleridge's theo-
sophy never seems to have fascinated Hazlitt's stubborn intellect. At
this time, indeed, Coleridge had not yet been inoculated with German mys-
ticism. In after years, the disciple, according to his qustom, renounced

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bis master and assailed him with half- regretful anger. But the inter-
course and kindly encouragement of so eminent a man seems to have
roused Hazlitt's ambition. His poetical and his speculative intellect were
equally stirred. The youth was already longing to write a philosophical
treatise. The two elements of bis nature thus roused to action led him
along a " strange diagonal." He would be at once a painter and a
metaphysician. Some eight years of artistic labour convinced him that
he could not be a Titian or a Raphael, and he declined to be a mere
Hazlitt junior. His metaphysical studies, on the contrary, convinced
him that he might be a Hume or a Berkeley ; but unluckily they con-
vinced himself alone. The tiny volume which contained their results
was neglected by everybody but the author, who, to the end of his days,
loved it with the love of a mother for a deformed child. It is written, to
say the truth, in a painful and obscure style ; it is the work of a man
who has brooded over his own thoughts in solitude till he cannot appre-
ciate the need of a clear exposition. The narrowness of his reading had
left him in ignorance of the new aspects under which the eternal problems
were presenting themselves to the new generation ; and a metaphysical
discussion in antiquated phraseology is as useless as a lady's dress in the
last year's fashion. Hazlitt, in spite of this double failure, does not seem
to have been much disturbed by impecuniosity ; but the most determined
Bohemian has to live. For some years he strayed about the purlieus of
literature, drudging, translating, and doing other cobbler's work. Two of
his performances, however, were characteristic ; he wrote an attack upon
Malthus and he made an imprudent marriage. Even Malthusians must
admit that imprudent marriages may have some accidental good con-
sequences. When a man has fairly got his back to the wall, he is forced
to fight ; and Hazlitt, at the age of thirty- four, with a wife and a son, at
last discovered the great secret of the literary profession, that a clever
man can write when he has to write or starve. To compose had been
labour and grief to him, so long as he could potter round a thought inde-
finitely ; but with the printer's devil on one side and the demands of a
family on the other, his ink began to flow freely, and during the last
sixteen or seventeen years of his life he became a voluminous though frag-
mentary author. Several volumes of essays, lectures, and criticisms,
besides his more ambitious Life of Napoleon, and a great deal of anony-
mous writing, attest his industry. He died in 1830, at the age of fifty-
two ; leaving enough to show that he could have done more, and a good
deal of rare, if not the highest kind of excellence.

Hazlitt, as I have said, is everywhere autobiographical. Besides that
secret, that a man can write if he must, he had discovered the further
secret, that the easiest of all topics is his own feelings. It is an apparent
paradox, though the explanation is not far to seek, that Hazlitt, though
shy with his friends, was the most unreserved of writers. Indeed he
takes the public into his confidence with a facility which we cannot easily
forgive. Biographers of late have been guilty of flagrant violations of the

WILLIAM HAZLIIT. 471

unwritten code which should protect the privacies of social life from the
intrusions of public curiosity. But the most unscrupulous of biographers
would hardly have dared to tear aside the veil eo audaciously as Hazlitt,
in one conspicuous instance at least, chose to do for himself. His idol
Rousseau had indeed gone further ; but when Rousseau told the story of
his youth, it was at least seen through a long perspective of years, and
his own personality might seem to be scarcely interested. Hazlitt chose,
in the strange book called the New Pygmalion, or Liber Amoris, to invite
the British public at large to look on at a strange tragi-comedy, of which
the last scene was scarcely finished. Hazlitt had long been unhappy in
his family life. His wife appears to have been a masculine woman, with
no talent for domesticity ; completely indifferent to her husband's pur-
suits, and inclined to despise him for so fruitless an employment of his
energies. They had already separated, it seems, when Hazlitt fell despe-
rately in love with Miss Sarah Walker, the daughter of his lodging-house
keeper. The husband and wife agreed to obtain a divorce under the
Scotch law, after which they might follow their own path, and Sarah
Walker become the second Mrs. Hazlitt. Some months had to be spent
by Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt in Edinburgh, with a view to this arrangement.
The lady's journal records her impressions ; which, it would seem,
strongly resembled those of a tradesman getting rid of a rather, flighty and
imprudent partner in business. She is extremely precise as to all pecu-
niary and legal details ; she calls upon her husband now and then, takes
tea with him, makes an off-hand remark or two about some picture-gallery
which he had been visiting, and tells him that he has made a fool of him-
self, with the calmness of a lady dismissing a troublesome servant, or a
schoolmaster parting from an ill-behaved pupil. And meanwhile, in
queer contrast, Hazlitt was pouring out to his friends letters which seem
to be throbbing with unrestrainable passion. He is raving as Romeo at
Mantua might have raved of Juliet. To hear Miss Walker called his wife
will be music to his ears, such as they never heard. But it seems
doubtful whether, after all, his Juliet will have him. He shrieks mere
despair and suicide. Nothing is left in the world to give him a drop of
comfort. The breeze does not cool him nor the blue sky delight him.
He will never lie down at night nor rise up of a morning in peace, nor
even behold his little boy's face with pleasure unless he is restored to her
favour. And Mrs. Hazlitt reports, after acknowledging a receipt of 101. t
that Mr. Hazlitt was so much " enamoured " of one of these letters that
he pulled it out of his pocket twenty times a day, wanted to read it to his
companions, and ranted and gesticulated till people took him for a mad-
man. The Liber Amoris is made out of these letters — more or less altered
and disguised, with some reports of conversations with the lovely Sarah.
"It was an explosion of frenzy," says De Quincey ; his reckless mode of
relieving his bosom of certain perilous stuff, with little care whether it
produced scorn or sympathy. A passion, at least, which urges its victim to
such improprieties should be deep and genuine. One would have liked him

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better if he had not taken his frenzy to market. The Liber Amorls tells
us accordingly that the author, Hazlitt's imaginary double, died abroad,
" of disappointment preying on a sickly frame and morbid state of mind."
The hero, in short, breaks his heart when the lady marries somebody else.
The real Hazlitt's heart was more elastic. Sarah Walker married, and
Hazlitt next year married a widow lady " of some property," whom he met
in a coach, made a tour with her on the Continent, and then — quarrelled
with her also. It is not a pretty story. Hazlitt's biographer informs us, by
way of excuse, that his grandfather was " physically incapable " — whatever
that may mean — " of fixing his affection upon a single object." He "com-
prehended," indeed, "the worth of constancy" and other virtues as well
as most men, and could have written about them better than most men ;
but somehow "a sinister influence or agency," or, in other words, a sensuous
temperament, was perpetually present, which confined his virtues to the
sphere of theory. An apology sometimes is worse than a satire. The
case, however, seems to be sufficiently plain. We need not suspect that
Hazlitt was consciously acting a part and nursing his " frenzy " because
he thought that it would make a startling book. He was an egotist and a
man of impulse. His impressions were for the time overpowering ; but
they were transient. His temper was often stronger than his passions. A
gust of anger would make him quarrel with his oldest friends. Every
emotion justified itself for the time, because it was his. He always did
well, whether it pleased him for the moment to be angry, to be in love, to
be cynical, or to be furiously indignant. The end, therefore, of his life
exhibits a series of short impetuous fits of passionate endeavour, rather
than devotion to a single overruling purpose ; and all his writings are
brief outbursts of eloquent feeling, where neither the separate fragments
nor the works considered as a whole obey any law of logical development.
And yet, in some ways, Hazlitt boasted, and boasted plausibly enough, of
his constancy. He has the same ideas to the end of his life that he had
at fourteen. He would, he remarks, be an excellent man on a jury. He
would say little, but would starve the eleven other obstinate fellows out.
Amongst politicians he was a faithful Abdiel, when all others had deserted
the cause. He loved the books of his boyhood, the fields where he had
walked, the gardens where he had drunk tea, and, to a rather provoking
extent, the old quotations and old stories which he had used from his first
days of authorship. The explanation of the apparent paradox gives the
clue to Hazlitt's singular character.

What I have called Hazlitt's egotism is more euphemistically and
perhaps more accurately described by Talfourd,* "an intense consciousness
of his own individual being." The word egotism in our rough estimates
of character is too easily confounded with selfishness. Hazlitt might
have been the person who assured a friend that he took a deep interest in
his own concerns, or rather in his own emotions. He was, one could say,

* In the excellent Essay prefixed to JJazlitCs Literary Remains,

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 473

decidedly unselfish, if by sefishness is meant a disposition to feather one's
own nest without regard for other people's wants. Still less was he selfish
in the sense of preferring solid bread and butter to the higher needs of
mind and spirit. His sentiments are always generous, and if scorn is too
familiar a mood it is scorn of the base and servile. But his peculiarity
is that these generous feelings are always associated with some special
case. He sees every abstract principle by the concrete instance. He
hates insolence in the abstract, but his hatred flames into passion when it
is insolence to Hazlitt. He resembles that good old lady who wrote on
the margin of her Complete Duty of Man the name of that neighbour
who most conspicuously sinned against the precept of the adjacent text.
Tyranny with Hazlitt is named Pitt, party spite is Gilford, apostasy is
Southey, and fidelity may perhaps be called Cobbett ; though he finds
names for the vices much more easily than for the virtues. And thus, if
he cannot be condemned for selfishness, one must be charitable not to
put down a good many of his offences to its sister jealousy. The per-
sonal and the public sentiments are so invariably blended in his mind that
neither he nor anybody else could have analysed their composition. He
was apt to be the more moody and irritable because his resentments clothe
themselves spontaneously in the language of some nobler emotion. If his
friends are cold, he bewails the fickleness of humanity ; if they are successful
it is not envy that prompts his irritation, but the rare correspondence
between merit and reward. Such a man is more faithful to his dead than
to his living friends. The dead cannot change ; they always come back to
his memory in their old colours ; their names recall the old tender emotion
placed above all change and chance. But who can tell that our dearest
living friend may not come into awkward collision with us before he has
left the room ? It is as well to be on our guard ! It is curious how the
two feelings alternate in Hazlitt's mind in regard to the friends who are at
once dead and living ; how fondly he dwells upon the Coleridge of Wem and
Nether Stowey where he first listened to the enchanter's voice, and with
what bitterness, which is yet but soured affection, he turns upon the
Coleridge who defended war-taxes in the Friend. He hacks and hews at
Southey through several furious Essays and ends with a groan. " We met
him unexpectedly the other day in St. Giles's," he says, "were sorry we had
passed him without speaking to an old friend, turned and looked after him for
some time as to a tale of other days — sighing, as we walked on, alas,
poor Southey 1 " He fancies himself to be in the mood of Brutus mur-
dering Caesar. It is patriotism struggling with old associations of friend-
ship ; if there is any personal element in the hostility, no one is less
conscious of it than the possessor. To the whole Lake school his attitude
is always the same — justice done grudgingly in spite of anger, or satire
tempered by remorse. No one could say nastier things of that very
different egotist, Wordsworth ; nor could any one, outside the sacred clique,
pay him heartier compliments. Nobody, indeed, can dislike egotism like
an egotist. "Wordsworth," says Hazlitt, "sees nothing but himself

23—5

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and the universe ; he hates all greatness and all pretensions to it but his
own. His egotism is in this respect a madness, for he scorns even the
admiration of himself, thinking it a presumption in any one to suppose that
he has taste or sense enough to understand him. He hates all science and
all art : he hates chemistry, he hates conchology, he hates Sir Isaac
Newton, he hates logic, he hates metaphysics," and so on through a long
list of hatreds, ending with the inimitable Napoleon, whom Wordsworth
hates, it seems, "to get rid of the idea of anything greater, or thought
to be greater than himself." Hazlitt might have made out a tolerable list
of his own antipathies ; though, to do him justice, of antipathies balanced
by ardent enthusiasm, especially for the dead or the distant.

Hazlitt, indeed, was incapable of the superlative self-esteem here
attributed to Wordsworth. His egotism is a curious variety of that
Protean passion, compounded as skilfully as the melancholy of Jaques.
It is not the fascinating and humorous egotism of Lamb, who disarms us
beforehand by a smile at his own crotchets. Hazlitt is too serious to be
playful. Nor is it like the amusing egotism of Boswell, combined with a
vanity which evades our contempt, because it asks so frankly for sympathy.
Hazlitt is too proud and too bitter. Neither is it the misanthropic egotism
of Byron, which, through all its affectation, implies a certain aristocratic
contempt of the world and its laws. Hazlitt has not the sweep and con-
tinuity of Byron's passion. His egotism — be it said without offence — is
dashed with something of the feeling common amongst his dissenting
friends. He feels the awkwardness which prevails amongst a clique
branded by a certain social stigma, and despises himself for his awkward-
ness. He resents neglect and scorns to ask for patronage. His egotism
is a touchy and wayward feeling which takes the mask of misanthropy.
He is always meditating upon his own qualities, but not in the spirit of
the conceited man who plumes himself upon his virtues, nor of the ascetic
who broods over his vices. He prefers the apparently self-contradictory
attitude (but human nature is illogical) of meditating with remorse upon
his own virtues. What in others is complacency becomes with him,
ostensibly at least, self-reproach. He affects — but it is hard to say where
the affectation begins — to be annoyed by the contemplation of his own
merits. He is angry with the world for preferring commonplace to genius,
and rewarding stupidity by success ; but in form at least, he mocks at his
own folly for expecting better things. If he is vain at bottom, his vanity
shows itself indirectly by depreciating his neighbours. He is too proud
to dwell upon his own virtues, but he has been convinced by impartial
observation that the world at large is in a conspiracy against merit. Thus he
manages to transform his self- consciousness into the semblance of proud
humility, and extracts a bitter and rather morbid pleasure from dwelling
upon his disappointments and failures. Half-a-dozen of his best Essays
give expression to this mood, which is rather bitter than querulous. He
enlarges cordially on the " disadvantages of intellectual superiority." An
author — Hazlitt, to wit — is not allowed to relax into dulness ; if he is

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 475

brilliant he is not understood, and if he professes an interest in common
things it is assumed that then he must be a fool. And yet in the midst of
these grumblings he is forced to admit a touch of weakness, and tells us
how it pleases him to hear a man ask in the Fives Court, " which is Mr.
Hazlitt ? " He, the most idiosyncratic of men and most proud of it at
bottom, declares how "he hates his. style to be known, as he hates all
idiosyncracy." At the next moment he purrs with complacency at the
recollection of having been forced into an avowal of his authorship of an
article in the Edinburgh Review. Most generally he eschews these naive
lapses into vanity. He dilates on the old text of the "shyness of
scholars." The learned are out of place in competition with the world.
They are not and ought not to fancy themselves fitted for the vulgar
arena. They can never enjoy their old privileges. " Fool that it (learning)
was, ever to foregolts privileges and loosen the strong hold it had on opinion
in bigotry and superstition!" The same tone of disgust pronounces
itself more cynically in an Essay "on the pleasure of hating." Hatred is,
he admits, a poisonous ingredient in all our passions, but it is that which
gives reality to them. Patriotism means hatred of the French, and virtue
is a hatred of other people's faults to atone for our own vices. All things
turn to hatred. " We hate old friends, we hate old books, we hate old
opinions, and at last we come to hate ourselves." Summing up all his
disappointments, the broken friendships, and disappointed ambitions, and
vanished illusions, he asks, in conclusion, whether he has not come to hate
and despise himself? " Indeed, I do," he answers, " and chiefly for not
having hated and despised the world enough."

This is an outbreak of temporary spleen. Nobody loved his old books
and old opinions better. Hazlitt is speaking in the character of Timon,
which indeed fits him rather too easily. But elsewhere the same strain of
cynicism comes out in more natural and less extravagant form. Take, for
example, the Essay on the " Conduct of Life." It is a piece of bond fide
advice addressed to his boy at school, and gives in a sufficiently edifying
form the commonplaces which elders are accustomed to address to their
juniors. Honesty, independence, diligence, and temperance are commended
in good set terms, though with an earnestness which, as is often the case
with Hazlitt, imparts some reality to outworn formula). When, however,
he comes to the question of marriage, the true man breaks out. Don't trust,
he says, to fine sentiments : they will make no more impression on these
delicate creatures than on a piece of marble. Love in women is vanity, in-
terest, or fancy. Women care nothing about talents or virtue — about poets
or philosophers or politicians. They judge by the eye. " No true woman
ever regarded anything but her lover's person and address." The author
has no chance ; for he lives in a dream, he feels nothing spontaneously, his
metaphysical refinements are all thrown away. "Look up, laugh loud,
talk big, keep the colour in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your
person, maintain your health, your beauty, and your animal spirits ; " for if
you once lapse into poetry and philosophy " you will want an eye to shew

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you, a hand to guide you, a bosom to love — and will stagger into your
grave old before your time, unloved and unlovely." " A spider," he adds,
the meanest creature that crawls or lives, has its mate or fellow, but a
scholar has no mate or fellow." Mrs. Hazlitt, Miss Sarah Walker, and
several other ladies thought Hazlitt surly and cared nothing for his treatise
on human nature. Therefore (it is true Hazlittian logic) no woman
cares for sentiment. The sex which despised him must be despicable.
Equally characteristic is his profound belief that his failure in another
line is owing to the malignity of the world at large. In one of his most
characteristic Essays he asks whether genius is conscious of its powers.
He writes what he declares to be a digression about his own experience,
and we may believe as much as we please of his assertion that he does not
quote himself as an example of genius. He has spoken, he declares,
with freedom and power, and will not cease because he is abused for not
being a Government tool. He wrote a charming character of Congreve's
Millamant, but it was unnoticed because he was not a Government tool.
Gifford would not relish his account of Dekker's Orlando Friscobaldo —
because he was not a Government tool. He wrote admirable table-talks — for
once, as they are nearly finished, he will venture to praise himself. He could
swear (were they not his) that the thoughts in them were " founded as the
rock, free as the air, in tone like an Italian picture." But, had the style
been like polished steel, as firm and as bright, it would have availed him
nothing, for he was not a Government tool. The world hated him, we see,
for his merits. It is a bad world, he says ; but don't think that it is my vanity
which has taken offence, for^I am remarkable for modesty, and therefore I
know that my virtues are faults of which I ought to be ashamed. Is this
pride or vanity, or humility or cynicism, or self-reproach for wasted
talents, or an intimate blending of passions for which there is no precise
name ? Who can unravel the masks within masks of a cunning egotism ?
To one virtue, however, that of political constancy, Hazlitt lays claim
in the most emphatic terms. If he quarrels with all his friends — " most
of the friends I have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies, or cold,
uncomfortable acquaintance " — it is, of course, their fault. A thorough-
going egotist must think himself the centre of gravity of the world, and all
change of relations must mean that others have moved away from him.
Politically, too, all who have given up his opinions are deserters, and
generally from the worst of motives. He accuses Burke of turning against
the revolution from — of all motives in the world ! — jealousy of Rousseau ;
a theory still more absurd than Mr. Buckle's hypothesis of madness.
Court favour supplies in most cases a simpler explanation of the general
demoralization. Hazlitt could not give credit to men like Southey and
Coleridge for sincere alarm at the French revolution. Such a sentiment
ttould be too unreasonable, for he had not been alarmed himself. His
constancy, indeed, would be admirable if it did not suggest doubts of his
wisdom. A man, whose opinions at fifty are his opinions at fourteen, has
opinions of very little value. If his intellect had developed properly, or if

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 477

he could have profited by experience, he will modify, though he need not
retract, his early views. To claim to have learnt nothing from 1792 to
1830 is almost to write yourself down as hopelessly impenetrable. The
explanation is, that what Hazlitt called his opinions were really his feel-
ings. He could argue very ingeniously, as appears from his remarks on
Coleridge and Malthus, but his logic was the slave, not the ruler, of his
emotions. His politics were simply the expression, in a generalized form,
of his intense feeling of personality. They are a projection upon the
modern political feeling of that heroic spirit of individual self-respect which
animated his Puritan forefathers. One question, and only one question,
he frequently tells us, is of real importance. All the rest is mere verbiage.
The single dogma worth attacking or defending, is the divine right of
kings. Are men, in the old phrase, born, saddled and bridled, and
other men ready booted and spurred, or are they not ? That is the single
shibboleth which tells true men from false. Others, he says, bowed their
heads to the image of the beast. " I spat upon it, and buffeted it, and
pointed at it, and drew aside the veil that then half concealed it." This
passionate denial of the absolute right of men over their fellows is but
vicarious pride, if you please to call it so, or a generous recognition of the
dignity of human nature translated into political terms. Hazlitt's
character did not change, however much his judgment of individuals might
change ; and therefore the principles which merely reflected his character
remained rooted and unshaken. And yet his politics changed curiously
enough in another sense. The abstract truth, in Hazlitt's mind, must
always have a concrete symbol. He chose to regard Napoleon as the
antithesis to the divine right of kings. That was the vital formula of
Napoleon, his essence, and the true meaning of his policy. The one
question in abstract politics was typified for Hazlitt by the contrast
between Napoleon and the Holy Alliance. To prove that Napoleon could
trample on human rights as roughly as any legitimate sovereign was for
him mere waste of time. Napoleon's tyranny meant a fair war against
the evil principle. Had Hazlitt lived in France, and come into collision
with press laws, it is likely enough that his sentiments would have
changed. But Napoleon was far enough off to serve as a mere poetical
symbol ; his memory had got itself entwined in those youthful associations
on which Hazlitt always dwelt so fondly ; and, moreover, to defend
" Boney " was to quarrel with much of his countrymen, and even of his own
party. What more was wanted to make him one of Hazlitt's supersti-
tions ? No more ardent devotee of the Napoleonic legend ever existed,
and Hazlitt's last years were employed in writing a book which is a
political pamphlet as much as a history. He worships the eldest
Napoleon with the fervour of a corporal of the Old Guard, and denounces
the great conspiracy of kings and nobles with the energy of Cobbett ; but
he had none of the special knowledge which alone could give permanent
value to such a performance. He seems to have consulted only the
French authorities ; and it is refreshing for once to find an Englishman

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telling the story of Waterloo entirely from the French side, and speaking,
for example, of left and right as if he had been — as in imagination he was
— by the side of Napoleon instead of Wellington. Even M. Victor Hugo
can see more merit in the English army and its commander. A radical,
who takes Napoleon for his polar-star, must change some of his theories,
though he disguises the change from himself; but a change of a different
kind came over Hazlitt as he grew older.

The enthusiasm of the Southeys and Wordsworths for the French
revolution changed — whatever their motives — into enthusiasm for the
established order. Hazlitt's enthusiasm remained, but became the en-
thusiasm of regret instead of hope. As one by one the former zealots
dropped off he despised them as renegades, and clasped his old creed
the more firmly to his bosom. But the change did not draw him nearer
to the few who remained faithful. They perversely loved the wrong side
of the right cause, or loved it for the wrong reason. He liked the Whigs
no better than the Tories ; the Edinburgh and the Quarterly were opposi-
tion coaches, making a great dust and spattering each other with mud,
but travelling by the same road to the same end. A Whig, he said, was
a trimmer, who dared neither to be a rogue nor an honest man, but was
" a sort of whiffling, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning
negation of the two." And the true, genuine, radical reformers ? To
them, as represented by the school of Bentham, Hazlitt entertained an
aversion quite as hearty as his aversion for Whigs and Tories. If, he
says, the Whigs are too finical to join heartily with the popular advocates,
the Reformers are too sour. They hate literature, poetry, and romance ;
nothing gives them pleasure that does not give others pain ; utilitarianism
means prosaic, hard-hearted, narrow-minded dogmatism. Indeed, his pet
essay on the principles of human nature was simply an assault on what he
took to be their fundamental position. He fancied that the school of
Bentham regarded man as a purely selfish and calculating animal ; and his
whole philosophy was an attempt to prove the natural disinterestedness of
man, and to indicate for the imagination and the emotions their proper
place beside the calculating faculty. Few were those who did not come
under one or other clause of this sweeping denunciation. He assailed
Shelley, who was neither Whig, Tory, nor Utilitarian, so cuttingly as to
provoke a dispute with Leigh Hunt, and had some of his sharp criticisms
for his friend Godwin. His general moral, indeed, is the old congenial
one. The reformer is as unfit for this world as the scholar. He is the
only wise man, but, as things go, wisdom is the worst of follies. The
reformer, he says, is necessarily » marplot ; he does not know what he
would be at ; if he did, he does not much care for it ; and, moreover, he
is " governed habitually by a spirit of contradiction, and is always wise
beyond what is practicable." Upon this text Hazlitt dilates with immense
spirit, satirizing the crotchety and impracticable race, and contrasting them
with the discipined phalanx of Toryism, brilliantly and bitterly enough to
delight Gifford ; and yet he is writing a preface to a volume of radical

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 479

Essays. He is consoling himself for being in a minority of one by proving
that two virtuous men must always disagree. Hazlitt is no genuine
democrat. He hates " both mobs," or, in other words, the great mass
of the human race. He would sympathise with Coriolanus more easily
than with the Tribunes. He laughs at the perfectibility of the species,
and holds that " all things move, not in progress, but in a ceaseless
round." The glorious dream is fled :

The radiance which was once so bright
Is now for ever taken from our sight ;

and his only consolation is to live over in memory the sanguine times of
his youth, before Napoleon had fallen and the Holy Alliance restored the
divine right of kings ; to cherish eternal regret for the hopes that have
departed, and hatred and scorn equally enduring for those who blasted
them. "Give me back," he exclaims, " one single evening at Boxhill,
after a stroll in the deep empurpled woods, before Bonaparte was yet
beaten, with « wine of Attic taste,' when wit, beauty, friendship presided
at the board." The personal blends with the political regret.

Hazlitt, the politician, was soured. He fed his morbid egotism by
indignantly chewing the cud of disappointment, and scornfully rejecting
comfort. . He quarrelled with his wife and with most of his friends, even
with the gentle Lamb, till Lamb regained his affections by the brief
quarrel with Southey. Certainly, he might call himself, with some
plausibility, " the king of good haters." But, after all, Hazlitt's cynicism
is the souring of a generous nature ; and when we turn from the politician
to the critic and the essayist, our admiration for his powers is lesi
frequently jarred by annoyance at their wayward misuse. His egotism —
for he is still an egotist— here takes a different shape. His criticism is
not of the kind which is now most popular. He lived before the days of
philosophers who talk about the organism and its environment, and of the
connoisseurs who boast of an eclectic taste for all the delicate essences of
art. He never thought of showing that a great writer was only the product
of his time,rrace and climate ; and he had not learnt to use such terms
of art as "(supreme," " gracious," " tender," " bitter," and " subtle,"
in which a good deal of criticism now consists. Lamb, says Hazlitt, tried
old authors " on his palate as epicures taste olives ;" and the delicacy of
discrimination which makes the process enjoyable is perhaps the highest
qualification of a good critic. Hazlitt's point of view was rather different,
and he seldom shows that exquisite appreciation of purely literary charm
which we find in two or three first-rate writers of to-day, and which is
affected by some scores of imitators. Nobody, indeed, loved some authors
more heartily ; indeed, his love is so hearty that he cannot preserve the
true critical attitude. Instead of trying them on his palate, he swallows
them greedily. His judgment of an author seems to depend upon two
circumstances. He is determined in great measure by his private
associations, and in part by his sympathy for the character of the writer.

480 EOUKS IN A LIBKARY.

His interest in this last sense is, one may say, rather psychological than
purely critical. He thinks of an author, not as the exponent of a particular
vein of thought or emotion, nor as an artistic performer on the instru-
ment of language, but as a human being to be loved or hated, or both,
like Napoleon or Gifford or Southey.

Hazlitt's favourite authors were, for the most part, the friends of his
youth. He had pored over their pages till he knew them by heart ;
their phrases were as familiar to his lips as texts of Scripture to preachers
who know but one book; the places where he had read them became
sacred to him, and a glory of his early enthusiasm was still reflected from
the old pages. Rousseau was his beloved above all writers. They had
a natural affinity. What Hazlitt says of Rousseau may be partly applied
to himself. Of Hazlitt it might be said almost as truly as of Rousseau,
that "he had the most intense consciousness of his own existence. No
object that had once made an impression upon him was ever after effaced."
In Rousseau's Confessions and Nouvelle Hch'ise, Hazlitt saw the
reflections of his own passions. He spent, he declares, two whole years
in reading these two books ; and they were the happiest years of his life.
He marks with a white stone the days on which he read particular passages.
It was on April 10, 1798 — as he tells us some twenty years later—-
that he sat down to a volume of the New Heloise, at the inn at
Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. He tells us which
passage he read and what was the view before his bodily eyes. His
first reading of Paul and Virginia is associated with an inn at Bridg-
water ; and at another old-fashioned inn he tells how the rustic fare and
the quaint architecture gave additional piquancy to Congreve's wit. He
remembers, too, the spot at which he first read Mrs. Inchbald's Simp e
Story ; how he walked out to escape from one of the tenderest parts, in
order to return again with double relish. " An old crazy hand- organ,"
he adds, " was playing Robin Adair, a summer shower dropped manna
on my head, and slaked my feverish thirst of happiness." He looks back
to his first familiarity with his favourites as ah old man may think of his
honeymoon. The memories of his own feelings, of his author's poetry,
and of the surrounding scenery, are inextricably fused together. The
sight of an old volume, he says, sometimes shakes twenty years off his
life ; he sees his old friends alive again, the place where he read the book,
the day when he got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky. To these
old favourites he remained faithful, except that he seems to have tired of
the glitter of Junius. Burke's politics gave him some severe twinges.
He says, in one place, that he always tests the sense and candour of
a liberal by his willingness to admit the greatness of Burke. He adds, as
a note to the Essay in which this occurs, that it was written in a " fit of
extravagant candour," when he thought that he could be more than just
to an enemy without betraying a cause. He oscillates between these
views as his humour changes. He is absurdly unjust to Burke the poli-
tician ; but he does not waver in his just recognition of the marvellous

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 481

power of the greatest — I should almost say the only great — political writer
in the language. The first time he read a passage from Burke, he said
this is true eloquence. Johnson immediately became stilted, and Junius
" shrunk up into little antithetic points and well-tuned sentences. But
Burke's style was forked and playful like the lightning, crested like the
serpent." He is never weary of Burke, as he elsewhere says; and, in
fact, he is man enough to recognize genuine power when he meets it.
To another great master he yields with a reluctance which is an involun-
tary compliment. The one author whom he admitted into his Pantheon
after his youthful enthusiasm had cooled was unluckily the most consistent
of Tories. Who is there, he asks, that admires the author of Waverlffy
more than I do ? Who is there that despises Sir Walter Scott more ?
The Scotch novels, as they were then called, fairly overpowered him.
The imaginative force, the geniality and the wealth of picturesque incident
of the greatest of novelists, disarmed his antipathy. It is curious to see
how he struggles with himself. He blesses and curses in a breath. He
applies to Scott Pope's description of Bacon, "the greatest, wisest,
meanest of mankind," and asks —

Who would not laugh if such a man there be ?

Who would not weep if " Waverley " were he ?

He crowns a torrent of abuse by declaring that Scott has encouraged
the lowest panders of a venal press, " deluging and nauseating the public
mind with the offal and garbage of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar slang ; "
and presently he calls Scott — by way, it is true, of lowering Byron — " one
of the greatest teachers of morality that ever lived." He invents a
theory, to which he returns more than once, to justify the contrast.
Scott, he says, is much such a writer as the Duke of Wellington (the
hated antithesis of Napoleon, whose " foolish face " he specially detests)
is a general. The one gets 100,000 men together, and " leaves it to them
to fight out the battle, for if he meddled with it he might spoil sport ; the
other gets an innumerable quantity of facts together, and lets them
tell their story as they may. The facts are stubborn in the last instance
as the men are in the first, and in neither case is the broth spoiled by
the cook." They show modesty and self-knowledge, but " little boldness
or inventiveness of genius." On the strength of this doctrine he even
compares Scott disadvantageously with Godwin and Mrs. Inchbald, who
had, it seems, more invention though fewer facts. Hazlitt was not
bound to understand strategy, and devoutly held that Wellington's
armies succeeded because their general only looked on. But he should
have understood his own trade a little better. Patting aside this
grotesque theory, he feels Scott's greatness truly, and admits it generously.
He enjoys the broth, to use his own phrase, though he is determined to
believe that it somehow made itself.

Lamb said that Hazlitt was a greater authority when he praised than
when he abused, a doctrine which may be true of others than Hazlitt.
The true distinction is rather that Hazlitt, though always unsafe as a

482 HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

judge, is admirable as an advocate in his own cause, and poor when
merely speaking from his brief. Of Mrs. Inehbald I must say what
Hazlitt shocked his audience by saying of Hannah More ; that she has
written a good deal which I have not read, and I therefore cannot deny
that her novels might have been written by Yenus ; but I cannot admit
that Wycherley's brutal Plain- dealer is as good as ten volumes of sermons.
"It is curious to see," says Hazlitt, rather naively, " how the same
subject is treated by two such different authors as Shakspere and
Wycherley." Macaulay's remark about the same coincidence is more
to the point. " Wycherley borrows Viola," says that vigorous moralist,
" and Viola forthwith becomes a pander of the basest sort." That is
literally true. Indeed, Hazlitt's love for the dramatists of the Restoration
is something of a puzzle, except so far as it is explained by early associa-
tions. Even then it is hard to explain the sympathy which Hazlitt, the
lover of Rousseau and sentiment, feels for Congreve, whose speciality it is
that a touch of sentiment is as rare in his painfully- witty dialogues as a
drop of water in the desert. Perhaps a contempt for the prejudices of
respectable people gave zest to Hazlitt's enjoyment of a literature repre-
sentative of a social atmosphere most propitious to his best feelings.
And yet, though I cannot take Hazlitt's judgment, I would frankly
admit that Hazlitt's enthusiasm brings out Congreve's real merits with
a force of which a calmer judge would be incapable. His warm praises
of The Beggar's Opera, his assault upon Sidney's Arcadia, his sarcasms
against that most detestable of poetasters, Tom Moore, are all excellent
in their way, whether we do or do not agree with his final result. "When-
ever Hazlitt writes from his own mind, in short, he writes what is well
worth reading. Hazlitt learnt something in his later years from Lamb.
He prefers, he says, those papers of Elia in which there was the least
infusion of antiquated language ; and, in fact, Lamb never inoculated
him with his taste for the old English literature. Hazlitt gave a series
of lectures upon the Elizabethan dramatists, and carelessly remarks some
time afterwards that he has only read about a quarter of Beaumont and
Fletcher's plays, and intends to read the rest when he has a chance. It
is plain, indeed, that the lectures, though written at times with great
spirit, are the work of a man who has got them up for the occasion. And
in his more ambitious and successful essays upon Shakspere the same
want of reading appears in another way. He is more familiar with
Shakspere's text than many better scholars. His familiarity is proved
by a habit of quotation of which it has been disputed whether it is a merit
or a defect. What phrenologists would call the adhesiveness of Hazlitt's
mind, its extreme retentiveness for any impression which has once been
received, tempts him to a constant repetition of familiar phrases and illus-
trations. He has, too, a trick of working in patches of his old Essays,
which he expressly defends on the ground that a book which has not
reached a second edition may be considered by its author as manuscript.
This self-plagiarism sometimes worries us like a man whose conversation

WILLIAM IIAZLITT. 483

runs in ruts. But his quotations, where used in moderation, often give, to my
taste at least, a pleasant richness to his style. Shakspere, in particular,
seems to be a storehouse into which he can always dip for an appropriate
turn. But his love of Shakspere is of a characteristic kind. He has not
counted syllables nor weighed various readings. He does not throw a new
light upon delicate indications of thought and sentiment, nor philosophize
after the manner of Coleridge and the Germans, nor regard Shakspere
as the representative of his age according to the sweeping method of
M. Taine. Neither does he seem to love Shakspere himself as he loves
Eousseau or Richardson. He speaks contemptuously of the Sonnets and
Poems, and, though I respect his sincerity, I think that such a verdict
necessarily indicates indifference to the most Shaksperian parts of
Shakspere. The calm assertion that the qualities of the Poems are the
reverse of the qualities of the Plays is unworthy of Hazlitt's general
acuteness. That which really attracts Hazlitt is sufficiently indicated by
the title of his book ; he describes the characters of Shakspere's plays.
It is lago, and Timon, and Coriolanus, and Antony, and Cleopatra, who
really interest him. He loves and hates them as if they were his own
contemporaries ; he gives the main outlines of their character with a
spirited touch. And yet one somehow feels that Hazlitt is not at his best
in Shaksperian criticism ; his eulogies savour of commonplace, and are
wanting in spontaneity. There is not that warm glow of personal feeling
which gives light and warmth to his style whenever he touches upon his
early favourites. Perhaps he is a little daunted by the greatness of his
task, and, perhaps, there is something in the Shaksperian width of
sympathy and in the Shaksperian humour which lies beyond Hazlitt's
sphere. His criticism of Hamlet is feeble ; he does not do justice to
Mercutio or to Jaques ; but he sympathises more heartily with the
tremendous passion of Lear and Othello, and finds something congenial to
his taste in Coriolanus and Timon of Athens. It is characteristic, too,
that he evidently understands Shakspere better on the stage than in the
closet. When he can associate lago and Shylock with the visible presence
of Kean, he can introduce that personal element which is so necessary to
his best writing.

The best, indeed, of Hazlitt's criticisms — if the word may be so far
extended — are his criticisms of living men. The criticism of contemporary
portraits called the Spirit of the Age is one of the first of those series
which have now become popular, as it is certainly one of the very best. The
descriptions of Bentham, and Godwin, and Coleridge, and Home Tooke,
are masterpieces in their way. They are, of course, unfair ; but that is
part of their charm. One would no more take for granted Hazlitt's valu-
ation of Wordsworth than Timon's judgment of Alcibiades. Hazlitt sees
through coloured glasses, but his vision is not the less penetrating. The
vulgar satirist is such a one as Hazlitt somewhere mentioned who called
Wordsworth a dunce. Hazlitt was quite incapable of such a solecism.
He knew, nobody better, that a telling caricature must be a good likeness.

484 HOUKS IN A LIBRARY.

If lie darkens the shades, and here and there exaggerates an ungainly
feature, we still know that the shade exists and that the feature is not
symmetrical. De Quincey reports the saying of some admiring friend of
Hazlitt, who confessed to a shudder whenever Hazlitt used his habitual
gesture of placing his hand within his waistcoat. The hand might emerge
armed with a dagger. Whenever, said the same friend (Heaven preserve
us from our friends !), Hazlitt had been distracted for a moment from the
general conversation, he looked round with a mingled air of suspicion and
defiance as though some objectionable phrase might have evaded his cen-
sure in the interval. The traits recur to us when we read Hazlitt's de-
scriptions of the men he had known. We seem to see the dark sardonic
man, watching the faces and gestures of his friends, ready to take sudden
offence at any affront to his cherished prejudices, and yet hampered by a
kind of nervous timidity which makes him unpleasantly conscious of his
own awkwardness. He remains silent, till somebody unwittingly contradicts
his unspoken thoughts — the most irritating kind of contradiction to some
people ! — and perhaps heaps indiscriminating praise on an old friend —
a term nearly synonymous with an old enemy. Then the dagger suddenly
flashes out, and Hazlitt strikes two or three rapid blows, aimed with un-
erring accuracy at the weak points of the armour which he knows so well.
And then, as he strikes, a relenting comes over him ; he remembers old
days with a sudden gust of fondness, and puts a touch of scorn for his
allies or himself. Coleridge may deserve a blow, but the applause of
Coleridge's enemies awakes his self-reproach. His invective turns into
panegyric, and he warms for a time into hearty admiration, which proves
that his irritation arises from an excess, not from a defect, of sensibility ;
till finding that he has gone a little too far, he lets his praise slide into
equivocal description, and with some parting epigram, he relapses into
silence. The portraits thus drawn are never wanting in piquancy nor in
fidelity. Brooding over his injuries and his desertions, Hazlitt has pon-
dered almost with the eagerness of a lover upon the qualities of his in-
timates. Suspicion, unjust it may be, has given keenness to his investi-
gation. He has interpreted in his own fashion every mood and gesture.
He has watched his friends as a courtier watches a royal favourite. He
has stored in his memory, as we fancy, the good retorts which his shyness
or unreadiness smothered at the propitious moment, and brings them out
in the shape of a personal description. When such a man sits at our
tables, silent and apparently self-absorbed, and yet shrewd and sensitive,
we may well be afraid of the dagger, though it may not be drawn till
after our death, and may write memoirs instead of piercing flesh. And
yet Hazlitt is no mean assassin of reputations ; nor is his enmity as a
rule more than the seamy side of friendship. Grifford, indeed, and Croker,
" the talking potato," are treated as outside the pale of human rights.

Excellent as Hazlitt can be as a dispenser of praise and blame, he
seems to me to be at his best in a different capacity. The first of his per-
formances which attracted much attention was the Round Table, designed

WILLIAM HA.ZLITT. 485

by Leigh Hunt (who contributed a few papers), on the old Spectator model.
In the Essays afterwards collected in the volumes called Table Talk and
the Plain Speaker, he is still better, because more certain of his position.
It would, indeed, be difficult to name any writer from the days of Addisou
to those of Lamb, who has surpassed Hazlitt's best performances of this
kind. Addison is too unlike to justify a comparison ; and, to say the
truth, though he has rather more in common with Lamb, the contrast is
much more obvious than the resemblance. Each wants the other's most
characteristic vein ; Hazlitt has hardly a touch of humour, and Lamb is
incapable of Hazlitt's caustic scorn for the world and himself. They
have indeed in common, besides certain superficial tastes, a love of
pathetic brooding over the past. But the sentiment exerted is radically
different. Lamb forgets himself when brooding over an old author or
summoning up the " old familiar faces." His melancholy and his mirth
cast delightful cross-lights upon the topics of which he converses, and we
know, when we pause to reflect, that it is not the intrinsic merit of the
objects, but Lamb's own character, which has caused our pleasure.
They would be dull, that is, in other hands ; but the feeling is embodied
in the object described, and not made itself the source of our interest.
With Hazlitt, it is the opposite. He is never more present than when he
is dwelling upon the past. Even in criticising a book or a man his
favourite mode is to tell us how he came to love or to hate him ; and in
the non-critical Essays he is always appealing to us, directly or indirectly,
for sympathy with his own personal emotions. He tells us how passion-
ately he is yearning for the days of his youth ; he is trying to escape from
his pressing annoyances ; wrapping himself in sacred associations against
the fret and worry of surrounding cares ; repaying himself for the scorn of
women or Quarterly Re viewers by retreating into some imaginary
hermitage ; and it is the delight of dreaming upon which he dwells more
than upon the beauty of the visions revealed to his inward eye. The force
with which this sentiment is presented gives a curious fascination to some
of his Essays. Take, for example, the Essay in liable Talk, " On Living to
Oneself," — an Essay written, as he is careful to tell us, on a mild January
day in the country, whilst the fire is blazing on the hearth and a partridge
getting ready for his supper. There he expatiates in happy isolation on
the enjoyments of living as " a silent spectator of the mighty scheme of
things ; " as being in the world, and not of it ; watching the clouds and the
stars, poring over a book or gazing at a picture, without a thought of
becoming an author or an artist. He has drifted into a quiet little
backwater, and congratulates himself in all sincerity on his escape from
the turbulent stream outside. He drinks in the delight of rest at every
pore ; reduces himself for the time to the state of a polyp drifting on the
warm ocean stream ; and becomes a voluptuous hermit. He calls up the
old days when he acted up to his principles, and found pleasure enough in
endless meditation and quiet observation of nature. He preaches most
edifyingly on the disappointments, the excitements, the rough impacts of

486 HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

hard facts upon sensitive natures, which haunt the world outside, and
declares, in all sincerity, " This sort of dreaming existence is the best.
He who quits it to go in search of realities generally barters repose for
repeated disappointments and vain regrets." He is sincere, and therefore
eloquent ; and we need not, unless we please, add the remark that he enjoys
rest because it is a relief from toil ; and that he will curse the country as
heartily as any man if doomed to perpetual exile from town. This medita-
tion on the phenomena of his own sensations leads him often into interest-
ing reflections of a psychological kind. He analyses his own feelings with
constant eagerness, as he analyses the character of his enemies. A good
specimen is the Essay " On Antiquity," in the Plain Speaker, which
begins with some striking remarks on the apparently arbitrary mode in
which some objects and periods seem older to us than others, in defiance
of chronology. The monuments of the Middle Ages seem more antique
than the Greek statues and temples with their immortal youth. " It is
not the full- grown, articulated, thoroughly accomplished periods of the world
that we regard with the pity or reverence due to age so much as those
imperfect, unformed, uncertain periods which seem to totter on the verge
of non-existence, to shrink from the grasp of our feeble imagination, as
they crawl out of, or retire into the womb of time, of which our utmost
assurance is to doubt whether they ever were or not." And then, as
usual, he passes to his own experience, and meditates on the changed
aspect of the world in youth and maturer life. The petty, personal
emotions pass away, whilst the grand and ideal " remains with us unim-
paired in its lofty abstraction from age to age." Therefore, though the
inference is not quite clear, he can never forget the first time he saw Mrs.
Siddons act, or the appearance of Burke's " Letter to a Noble Lord." And
then, in a passage worthy of Sir Thomas Browne, he describes the change
produced as our minds are stereotyped, as our most striking thoughts
become truisms, and we lose the faculty of admiration. In our youth
" art woos us ; science tempts us with her intricate labyrinths ; each
step presents unlooked-for vistas, and closes upon us our backward
path. Our onward road is strange, obscure, and infinite. We are
bewildered in a shadow, lost in a dream. Our perceptions have the
brightness and indistinctness of a trance. Our continuity of consciousness
is broken, crumbles, and falls to pieces. We go on learning and forget-
ting every hour. Our feelings are chaotic, confused, strange to each
other and ourselves." But in time we learn by rote the lessons which we
had to spell out in our youth. "A very short period (from 15 to 25 or
30) includes the whole map and table of contents of human life. From
that time we may be said to live our lives over again, repeat ourselves — the
same thoughts return at stated intervals, like the tunes of a barrel-organ ;
and the volume of the universe is no more than a form of words, a book
of reference."

From such musings Hazlitt can turn to describe any fresh impression
which has interested him, in spite of his occasional weariness, with a

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 487

freshness and vivacity which proves that his eye had not grown dim, nor
his temperament incapable of enjoyment. He fell in love with Miss
Sarah Wilson at the tolerably ripe age of 43 ; and his desire to live in
the past is not to be taken more seriously than his contempt for his
literary reputation. It lasts only till some vivid sensation occurs in the
present. In congenial company he could take a lively share in conversa-
tion, as is proved not only by external evidence but by his very amusing
book of conversations with Northcote — an old cynic out of whom it does
not seem that anybody else could strike many sparks, — or from the Essay,
partly historical, it is to be supposed, in which he records his celebrated
discussion with Lamb on persons whom one would wish to have seen.
But perhaps some of his most characteristic performances in this line are
those in which he anticipates the modern taste for muscularity. His
wayward disposition to depreciate ostensibly his own department of action,
leads him to write upon the " disadvantages of intellectual superiority,"
and to maintain the thesis that the glory of the Indian jugglers is more
desirable than that of a statesman. And perhaps the same sentiment,
mingled with sheer artistic love of the physically beautiful, prompts his
eloquence upon the game of Fives — in which he praises the great player
Cavanagh as- warmly and describes his last moments as pathetically as if
he were talking of Rousseau — and still more his immortal Essay on the
fight between the Gasman and Bill Neate. Prize-fighting is fortunately
fallen into hopeless decay, and we are pretty well ashamed of the last
flicker of enthusiasm created by Sayers and Heenan. We may therefore
enjoy without remorse the prose-poem in which Hazlitt kindles with
genuine enthusiasm to describe the fearful glories of the great battle.
Even to one who hates the most brutalising of amusements, the spirit
of the writer is irrepressibly contagious. We condemn, but we applaud ;
we are half disposed for the moment to talk the old twaddle about British
pluck ; and when Hazlitt' s companion on his way home pulls out of his
pocket a volume of the Nouvelle Hdu'ise, admit for a moment that " love
after the Fancy is," as the historian assures us, " compatible with a culti-
vation of sentiment." If Hazlitt had thrown as much into his description
of the Battle of Waterloo, and had taken the English side, he would have
been a popular writer. But even Hazlitt cannot quite embalm the
memories of Cribb, Belcher, and Gully.

It is time, however, to stop. More might be said by a qualified writer
of Hazlitt' s merits as a judge of pictures or of the stage. The same
literary qualities mark all his writings. De Quincey, of course, condemns
Hazlitt, as he does Lamb, for a want of " continuity." " A man," he
says, " whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and non-sequa-
cious." But then De Quincey will hardly allow that any man is eloquent
except Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and Thomas De Quincey.
Hazlitt certainly does not belong to their school ; nor, on the other hand,
has he the plain homespun force of Swift and Cobbett. And yet readers
who do not insist upon measuring all prose by the same standard, will

488 HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

probably agree that if Hazlitt is not a great rhetorician ; if he aims at no
gorgeous effects of complex harmony, he has yet an eloquence of his own.
It is indeed an eloquence which does not imply quick sympathy with many
moods of feeling, or an intellectual vision at once penetrating and compre-
hensive. It is the eloquence characteristic of a proud and sensitive
nature, which expresses a very keen if narrow range of feeling, and implies
a powerful grasp of one, but only one side of the truth. Hazlitt harps a
good deal upon one string ; but that string vibrates forcibly. His best
passages are generally an accumulation of short, pithy sentences, shaped
in strong feeling, and coloured by picturesque association ; but repeating,
rather than corroborating, each other. Each blow goes home, but falls
on the same place. He varies the phrase more than the thought ; and
sometimes he becomes obscure, because he is so absorbed in his own
feelings that he forgets the very existence of strangers who require expla-
nation. Read through Hazlitt, and this monotony becomes a little
tiresome ; but dip into him at intervals, and you will often be astonished
that so vigorous a writer has not left some more enduring monument of
his remarkable powers.

THEN, BEFORE SHE COULD PREVENT HIM HE FELL UPON HIS KNEES.

489

CHAPTER XIX.
IN GOLDEN SQUARE.

HAT is a mood? Whence
does it come ? Why does
it overwhelm us with its
strange stupidities. Here
we sit quietly in our chairs,
and what adventures are
ours. What comings and
goings, What momentary
emotion and curious changes
and conflicts ; armies of
thought sweep past, expe-
rience, memory, hope, are
all ranged in battle array ;
sometimes the two fight from
daybreak until sunset and
on into the night, nor is it
perhaps till the morning that
we know which army has
retreated and to which the
field belongs. For a time
some such battle was raging in Angelica's heart as she sat quite quiet upon
the couch ; then came silence and the deadness of humiliation. Some
sudden hatred and indignation had come over Miss Angel, like a dry
east wind parching her very soul. She had not deserved this, she said ;
she had been sincere ; she had not sought her own advantage in all this ;
and it was hard to be humiliated.

To Angelica this strange distorted mood came as a punishment for
other things, for the gentle vanities and infidelities which had brought her
to this pass, which had led heron to overrate her own worth and judgment,
and that perhaps of the persons whom she honoured.

It is Goethe who says that those who will not forgive themselves for
small faults are persons who overrate their own importance. Angelica
of late had had many excuses for overrating herself, and perhaps for this
very reason suffered more acutely than she might have done at another
time from the mistake she had made.

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 184. 24.

490 MISS ANGEL.

Young, ardent, reckless ; how was she to realise to herself the calm
imperturbability of a nature which was not a passionate one or quickly
responsive to things that were not tangible, and to which it was
unaccustomed.

The determination to which Mr. Reynolds came was one which in the
end, perhaps, was best for all, for Angelica herself and for others, but the
wisdom of his judgment could only be measured by time. Perhaps it
was some dim unacknowledged consciousness of the truth of his own
want of earnestness which made him mistrust his sentiment for Miss
Angel, its strength and power of endurance.

He walked away moderately satisfied with the part he had played ;
Angel sat quite still, as I have said, looking into the gathering dusk,
watching the lights fade ; they changed from blue twilight into grey and
dimmest shadow ; chill, cold, silent, the spring evening gathered round
her, and her white face and figure faded into its darkness.

Fate is kind sometimes with unexpected blessings, that seem all
the brighter when they come in hours of twilight. Open a door into a room
full of sorrowful shames and regrets. Flash the light of a candle upon all
these vapours and dismal consternations. . . .

There is a sound of voices on the stairs ; there have been exclama-
tions and thumpings and summonings ; some one is calling out her
name eagerly, and the noise comes nearer and the light starts into the
room, and somehow Angel, out of her twilight shame, suddenly finds her-
self in light, in love, enfolded in two trembling arms that hold her tight
close to a shabby old beating heart. She is blessed almost before she
knows who it is that has come ; she feels she is safe, scarce knowing
how security has come to her ; safe upon her father's heart with the
benediction of his tender faith upon her; she knows all this almost
before she has realised that it is he. She had not even heard the foot-
steps travelling- upstairs, so engrossed had she been by her dreary pre-
sent. That present is over, changed in the twinkling of an eye. She
gives a little happy cry, tears fill her eyes ; a sudden flood of ease flows
to her heart, the heavy load seems uplifted as she clasps and clings to the
old man, sobbing and at peace once more.

In after years that moment came back to her sometimes, and that
meeting, the thought of her dim despairing loneliness, of the father's love
outside the closed door. That faithful blessing (never absent indeed in
its tender infallibility), had been coming nearer and nearer to its expres-
sion at the time when she needed its comfort.

It may be our blessing as well as our punishment that the now is
not all with us as we hold it, nor the moment all over that is past.
It is never quite too late to remember, never quite too late to
love ; although the heart no longer throbs that we might have warmed,
the arms are laid low that would have opened to us. But who shall say
that time and place are to be a limit to the intangible spirit of love and
reconciliation, and that new-found trust and long- delayed gratitude

MISS ANGEL. 491

may not mean more than we imagine in our lonely and silenced
regret ?

John Joseph was not alone, the porters were carrying up his trunk,
with the great cords and padlocks. It contained a cheese among other
treasures, and a goat-skin waistcoat, a present from his sister-in-law, and
some linen for Angelica's own wear, and a' peasant's hat and bodice from
Coire, that Miss Angel had wished for.

Behind the hair trunk and holding by Antonio's hand came a little
person, of some ten years' experience, climbing the stairs, with weary
little feet, looking about with dark observant eyes, set in a shy ingenuous
round face.

This was a little orphan cousin of Angelica's, Rosa, from Uncle
Michele's farm, who had been despatched to keep liouse with her grand
relations in London.

Old John had a liking for the little creature, who put him in mind of
his own Angelica at her age, and he had brought her off without much
pressing ; he only stipulated that Michele should pay her travelling
expenses as far as Lyons. " Couldn't we walk, Uncle John ? " said little
Rosa, anxiously ; but Uncle John told her she should come in a coach
with horses and postilions. What would Angelica say if they were to
arrive all in rags and covered with dust ? They might have come in
rags, in sackcloth and ashes. Angelica had no words wherewith to bid
them welcome ; they were come home, that was enough. How had
Antonio known they were arriving. What fortunate chance had sent him
to meet them ? The fortunate chance was that Antonio, being anxious
about Miss Angel's woebegone looks an hour before, had walked back by
the winding street at the square corner (that street which led so often to
her house), and he had been standing outside at the windows, when old
Kauflmann, shaken by his long journey, agitated, suspicious, fearing
murder, and I know not what dangers, drove up in a hired coach. The
first person the old man saw was Antonio, with folded arms, standing
upon the pavement. He could scarcely believe in his good fortune. Was
this the house, this Angelica's palace ? The tall windows opened upon
iron rails, carved and bent into shape as iron railings used to be in those
days. Her door was also ornamented with delicate tracery, and on either
side a narrow window let the light into the flagged hall, where a black-
and-white pavement had been laid down by some former inhabitant.
The place is little changed. Only yesterday we crossed the quaint
little square, with its bare trees. The drifting clouds shone with city
lights and gleams. The old houses stand in rows ; they are turned to
quaint uses — schools of arms, societies, little day-schools for children,
foreign table-d'hotes, a " supreme council" rules in a ground-floor
parlour. Italian courriers congregate in the corner house, by which
Zucchi used to pass on his way to the flagged hall. There are old shops
for china and wooden carving in the adjoining streets. In one of the
houses, M. R. tells me of a lawyer's office, where a painting by Miss

24—2

492 MISS ANGEL.

Kauffniann still graces the panel of the chimney. Perhaps that may have
been the house where Zucchi lodged, and the painting may have been her
gift to the faithful friend. The faithful friend was made happy to-night
by the sight of the happiness of the people he was interested in. They
had a little impromptu feast in the studio. The lamp was lighted, the
table was spread, old Kauffman produced his cheese, and would have had
Angelica's servants join them at supper, if she had not laughed the pro-
posal off. Lord Henry happened to call in late, on his way to gome
card-party in Berkeley Square. He stared at the homely gathering, at
the old man, at the little girl, half asleep, swinging her weary legs, with
her head against Antonio's shoulder.

He tried to enter into his usual sentimental vein of talk with the mis-
tress of the house, but she was naturally absorbed, and had no scruples in
letting him see that he was in the way. He went off annoyed by his re-
ception.

" That one there appears to have something wrong in the head," said
old John Joseph, as Lord Henry walked away. " I spoke to him three
times and he did not answer, but examined me as if I were an ox. These
English people seem stupid and dull of comprehension."

" They are clever enough," said Antonio with a sneer, " and insolent
enough at times to require a lesson." His vexation woke up little sleepy
Kosa. The child raised her head, and looked round the room with blink-
ing eyes,

" You will love some of them, father, when you know them better—
don't beliove cross old Antonio," said Angelica, " nor let us think of any-
body but ourselves to-night." She rose from the table, and came round
to where Antonio was sitting.

"Look at this child, she is half asleep," said Antonio, softening,
as he usually did at Miss Angel's approach.

" Give her to me, Antonio," said Angel. " Come, Rosa, I will put
you into your little bed," and then she opened her arms and little
Rosa nestled into them with languid childish trust. The two men
got up from the table, and followed Miss Angel into the adjoining room
where Marisnna had made up the little bed in a corner. Old Kauffmann
began uncording Rosa's box, Angel sat down on the bedside smiling,
with a happy grateful heart. Mr. Reynolds was far from her mind
as little Rosa slept with her head hanging warm against her shoulder.
The little thing woke up when Miss Angel undressed her, but she was soon
dreaming again, unconscious of the strange new world into which she
had come from her green home in the valley.

That was tranquil happiness ; and all the next days were happy, and
Beemed as if they were old days come back. Antonio spent most of them
in Golden Square ; he was going away soon, he said, and returning to
his work near Windsor. He had many messages for Angelica from his
friends there, from Dr. Starr and his seven daughters.

" They say your room is always ready ; you are never to go anywhere

MISS ANGEL.

else ; it is a most agreeable house to live in. The seven young ladies ar«
charming," said Antonio smiling.

" I cannot spare her yet," said John Joseph one day when Miss
Angel had left the room. " But I am too tender a father to oppose her
good prospects, and I shall know how to resign myself to a new separa-
tion when my child is summoned to the sovereign Court. Then she
shall stay with your friends. I feel sometimes, Antonio, as though I
were a foolish old man, and out of place in this brilliant circle. That
lord came again this morning with the Lady Ambassadress. Their
manner waa extraordinary, but I would not for worlds that Angelica
should know it. They are her patrons, they must be humoured by us."

One day Angelica found her father looking very much delighted.
Antonio was also in the room, but lie seemed annoyed.

"A friend had been there," said old Joseph, triumphant; "one
whose friendship might be worth much to them all — one who "

" It is that man from Venice," said Antonio. " I do not see how any
of us can profit by his coming."

" Count de Horn? I shall be very glad to see him," said Miss Angel,
laughing, and sitting down at her easel. " Was he nice, father ? Was
he glad to see us established in our splendour ? "

" He is coming again," said Zucchi. "You will be able to ask him
any questions you choose. Your father made him as welcome as if he had
been a son of the house."

" And does not my father make others welcome, too ? " said Angelica,
looking round reproachfully.

Antonio shrugged his shoulders. "John Joseph knows well enough
who is useful to him," he said.

When Count de Horn called again, as ill-luck would have it, Antonio
was again there, and more than usually sarcastic. Angelica looked at him
and shook her head to try and stop his rudeness to her guest, whom she
was really glad to see. Antonio marched off in a rage.

M. de Horn seemed to notice nothing, but went on praising picture
after picture. He even suggested one, of which the subject was to be a
Cupid, with the motto " Garde a vous." Angelica actually executed this.

" We hope the Count will purchase the study," said old Kauffmann.

Antonio afterwards said he should not be surprised if he did j it waa
a most vulgar and commonplace composition.

Angelica nearly stamped with vexation. "Nothing pleases you that
I do."

" Many things please me that you do, but you want me to compliment
your vanity from morning to night," said Zucchi, trembling with vexation,
upsetting a table in his wrath, and making himself generally odious.

Miss Angel"' s vanity was of a less excusable nature than good old John
Joseph's reflected self-laudations. He became very pious about this time,
and used to frequent the little Catholic chapel near Manchester Square,
and return thanks to heaven for Angelica's success — for her patrons those

494 MISS ANGEL.

lords, this valuable Count their friend — for her talents, for his own repose
and happiness. He used to come back rather cross, and scold little Bosa,
or the man-servant, or Angel if she came to meet him, or Antonio if he
began to sermonise.

Antonio bore the old man's vexatious moods with admirable temper.
He was charming to any one young and helpless, or to old and dependent
people. To successful people, however, to his equals and superiors,
Antonio was, it must be confessed, perfectly odious at times.

CHAPTER XX.
THOSE WHO ABE ABLE TO RULE IN THE CITY.

DE HORN was a mystery to other people besides Antonio. He was never
entirely at his ease. He would stand, or sit, or talk, apparently without
effort, but nothing seemed spontaneous. He never appeared quite to belong
to the society in which he was, or even to care to do so. He used to have
strange fits of abstraction, during which he seemed to lose the thread of
what was going on. One day, instead of walking upstairs into Angelica's
studio, he wandered down into the kitchens below, to the utter amaze-
ment of the man and the cook. On another occasion he clambered up
to the hanging board of his own coach. He was very kind but capricious
to his servants and dependants. Many tales were told of his valour and
military skill. He had commanded a regiment in the French army.
People said he was now engaged upon some secret diplomatic mission.
He had coma from Venice by way of Vienna and Paris, and was now
established in rooms in St. James's. He did not entertain, but his
splendid equipage and liveries gave him notoriety, and his good looks
and elaborate courtesy made him popular, especially with women ; men
were a little shy of him. He had fought a duel or two ; he played cards
as everybody else did, but he never drank any wine. His riding was
unrivalled, and it was really a fine sight to see him mounted on one of
Lord W.'s spirited chargers, and galloping round and round the stable-
yard. His dancing was also said to be unequalled. He had already
engaged Miss Angel for a couple of sets at Lady W.'s great ball, to
which every one was looking forward.

De Horn was a tall and distinguished-looking man, with a thoughtful
countenance. His keen eyes seemed to read the unspoken minds of those
with whom he came in contact. It was true that he knew something of
the world ; he could read men and women to a certain point, measure
their shortcomings and their vanities with a curious quickness of appre-
hension, but that was all. There is a far wider science of human nature,
of which scarcely the first lessons had reached him. To understand
people's good and generous qualities, to know their best and highest
nature, we must be in some measure tuned to meet them.

MISS ANGEL. 495

Nobody knew very much about De Horn, although everybody was
talking about him. Angelica used to meet him constantly. She was
always glad to see him in the room when she entered. Dr. Burney
was still giving his musical parties that autumn. Angelica used to
go there, and De Horn rarely missed one, although he seemed not to
care for literary society as a rule, and used to look with an odd
expression at the tea-table and the six-weeks-old dish of baked pears
which the company systematically rejected. The pears might be in-
different, but the company was of the best, and Dr. Burney, with his
sword and court-dress, would come in from the Duke of Cumberland's,
bringing a flavour of highest social refinement.

De Horn sometimes spoke of. life in Sweden, of his home at
Hafvudsta, with a certain well-bred reserve. Angelica was much interested
by the few words he let drop one day concerning his picture-galleries.

" Had he pictures ? What pictures ? " asked Angelica.

" I trust before long that I may be able to answer your question by
pointing to some now in your own studio, madam," he said, with the
slow foreign accent. «' What charm can those of the old men have for
us compared to that which your work must ever exercise ? "

This was the style of conversation that Angelica did not object to,
though common sense made her reply : " I can imagine that a friend's
work may have its own interest; but the old men, as you call them,
Count," said Miss Angel, coquettishly, " have their own wonderful gifts,
which we cannot hope to follow or repeat. What pictures have you ?
Are they of the Italian school ? "

"Yes, yes," said the Count, absently. "Your Hobbema painted a
very fine portrait of my father "

Angelica looked puzzled. The Count suddenly began to laugh, and
said, " Forgive my distractions, madam, since you are the cause of them.
What were we talking about ? "

" We are talking about Dr. Johnson, Count," said one of the ladies
present, who did not wish Angelica to monopolize their lion. " He is
expected here presently. Have you ever met him ? "

"An old man — something like this," said the Count, taking a few steps
and changing his face. It was a curiously effective piece of mimicry,
and the result was so striking that everybody exclaimed, and began
to entreat De Horn to perform some other characters. Angelica was
scarcely pleased when he suddenly looked at his watch and darted across
the room in imitation of Lord W.'s peculiar manner.

" No, no, no ! Lord W. is the kindest man, the best of creatures,"
she cried. " I cannot bear to see him imitated."

"And yet you yourself have painted his portrait," said De Horn, re-
proachfully, immediately returning to her side. His looks seemed to say
" I only did it to please you. I hate the whole thing." In vain they all
begged for further specimens of his power. He took leave at the first
pause in the conversation. Miss Reynolds came and sat down in the place

496 MISS ANGEL.

he had left vacant. " What an actor that man is ! " the little lady said ; ' ' I
wonder whether good judges would agree with me. And yet, oddly enough,
it seemed to me for the first time that he was not acting to-night when
he performed those characters. Where is your father ? why have you not
brought him?"

"My father is at home," said Miss Angel ; "he would not come out."
Happy as he was, and proud of Angelica and of her brilliant success,
and delighted as he might be by the accounts of her popularity, old
Kauffmann felt very forlorn sometimes in the strange London-world
into which he had penetrated, and even as if Angelica was no longer the
same little Angel he had been accustomed to. At first he tried to conceal
this feeling : for a week after his arrival, and on the following Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, he concealed it ; on Friday his depression be-
came too evident for Angel not to guess with her quickfwits that some-
thing was amiss. The old man spent much of his time in her studio,
received her guests with the old well-known formula, but, alas, here even
his trump cards, the Cardinal and the Bishop of Como, seemed to have
lost their potency.

Angelica used to find it difficult to impress English customs upon
old John Joseph, whose familiarity and obsequiousness were sometimes
a little trying to her friends. She was not one of those who dwell upon
the faults of the people they love, but it was impossible to be blind to the
small social difficulties that arose from time to time.

People stared at the old fellow, as Lord Henry had done, some
ignored him, some turned away ; certainly Lady W. was barely civil to him
when she came, and if they had not had that one quarrel already, Angelica
would have spoken to her on the subject. But, as it was, she dared risk no
more scenes, for she did not feel in herself the strength to withstand
unkind words and feelings from the person to whom she owed so much.
Miss Reynolds, who had persisted in her visits, was the one person willing
to listen while old Kauffmann recounted the present and past glories of
Angelica's career. Alas ! none were to compare to these present honours,
and yet were they happier now than in the old wandering days when they
knew not from hour to hour what would befall them ? But people strive for
something apart from happiness, and must not complain if success does
not always bring those consolations which belong to less prosperous times.
Old Kauffmann felt the want of definite occupation, which is almost a
necessary in life, when sunshine (that best of occupations) fails. He
visited the sights most diligently. Little Rosa of the dark eyes was his
companion in his walks ; with her he went to see Zucchi in his lodging
in Soho. There were some sights as well unseen. One day they met
two carts with seven men going to be hanged at Tyburn.

The Swede's criticisms were very consoling to both the artists,
shivering from Antonio's last sermon. Antonio knew what he was talking
about. De Horn had natural cleverness, but no real feeling whatever for
art. He praised Angelica because it suited him to do so, and when he stood

MISS ANGEL. 497

absorbed before her easel and exclaimed, " Good heavens, what genius ! "
he scarcely looked at the picture, but at the blushing painter.

" There is a man of worth," old John Joseph would cry, rubbing his
hands. " My Angel, has he given you an order ? Have you asked him
the full price ? Remember to ask a good price from those who can pay,
to whom gold is nothing."

" I cannot agree with you there," Antonio would say. " A picture is
worth its own value. I cannot endure that your daughter should sell her
dignity with her work, and change her price according to the bidder."

Old John Joseph was getting very impatient of Antonio's expostulations.

"Che, che*, che ! " he said, angrily ; " keep thy hand in thy empty pocket
if it pleases thee, Antonio. Thou comest with thy croak, croak, like a
bird of ill omen. Go, my Angel ; trouble not thyself. She looks quite
pale and worn, and it is all thy doing, Antonio ; thou art robbing her of
her beauty and freshness."

And, sure enough, Angel suddenly began to cry.

" Yes," she said ; " you wound me, you pain- me ; you say we are bad
people, that my work is worthless, that I make money by false pretence,
by defrauding other people — you, Antonio, to whom we have always tried
to show kindness and affection. Why do you do it ? Why do you
mistrust old friends, and give us nothing but pain by your coming ? "

Her irritation was caused, had Antonio but known it, by very different
things, but, as people do, she vented it upon Antonio, patient and silent
enough now, and cut to the heart by her fierce attack. If he had but
known it, never did she feel more trust in him, never more secret longing
for his help and wish for his approval, than as she stood there angry,
reproachful, with angry looks and white quivering lips. De Horn's
attentions had brought back the impression of Mr. Reynolds's cruel
behaviour. She was to meet him that evening at Lady W.'s ball. De
Horn was also to be there. Her heart was heavy with irritated foreboding.
She childishly poured the suppressed irritation of the moment upon
poor Antonio. The thunder had been gathering ; the storm now broke.

" Is this the way you venture to speak to me ? " cried Antonio, also
in the wrong, also angry. " You two, who owe me a thousand benefits !
Not of money, perhaps — that has not been mine to give —but is care
nothing ? Are anxious thought and fatigue and weariness in your service
nothing? And now you, John Joseph, reproach me with my empty
pocket, and forget all. You, Angelica, say that all my long fidelity and
truth- speaking have given you nothing but pain. You shall be spared
that pain in future. I leave you to your own infatuated vanity, to
your worldly associates. Do you think I am blind ? Do you think I
do not see what is passing before my eyes, the baits thrown out to
riches, to rank, to all unworthy^ objects ? I don't know how^much I
have loved you, Angelica. Henceforth I leave you, and shall turn my
thoughts away from your life and your interests. If you are sorry some
day, that old fox John Joseph can come and tell me so."

24_5

498 MISS ANGEL.

And exit Antonio, banging the door.

" Oh, father ! " cried Angel, falling back into a chair, and covering
her eyes.

" Teh, tch !" said old John Joseph; " it is nothing, nothing, I tell
you. He is insupportable with his jealousy. He will come back soon
enough, on all fours, to ask our pardon. Insolent calumniator ! Old fox! —
did you hear, Angel, what he called me ? "

This happened on the very afternoon of the day when Lady W.'s
great ball was to be given. Angel, who had been looking forward to it
with childish eagerness, now suddenly seemed to turn indifferent — to hate
the very notion of dancing with a heavy heart ; when the moment came
she reluctantly followed little Rosa, who had run in to remind her that it
was time to get ready. The scene with Zucchi had troubled Angelica
greatly. She felt that he had been in earnest, and that he was really gone,
whatever her father may say.

"Cousin Angel, are you not longing to look at your dress?" said
little Rosa. " Grandpapa and I have put it out upon the bed for you for
a surprise. Come, come ; " and she took one of the listless hands and
tried to drag her up from her seat.

It was even a greater event to little Rosa that Angelica should go to
this great ball than to Angelica herself. «' Will there be anybody so
grand as you ? " said the little thing, looking delightedly at the dress
that was spread out upon the bed.

Angelica's bed-room was a great dark room, with a red paper and one
or two dark old-fashioned pieces of furniture which had been left by the
last inhabitant, a melancholy old bachelor who had died there. One door
opened into the studio, through which little Rosa now came again, care-
fully carrying the tall lamp which the woman-servant had just brought up.
Upon the bed lay the beautiful white brocade ready to put on, with white
satin shoes pointing their toes, and the fan already prepared to flaunt.
Angelica had painted it herself with her favourite theme from Poussin, of
shepherds and pipes and mausoleums. How Miss Angel had enjoyed
making her- preparations, and now

" You are not looking," said the little girl. To please her the young
painter bent over the dress. A tear fell on the sleeve of the silver bro-
cade, making a little stain.

" Oh, cousin 1 " said little Rosa, horror-stricken.

" A brocade trimmed with pearls and tears, child — that is a new
fashion," said Angelica, smiling sadly, and then she sat down listlessly by
the side of the bed. She was a little stunned somehow, and scarcely
could have told you what had happened or why her tears were falling.
After a few minutes she roused herself and began to get ready with the
help of her kind little tirewoman. She felt so strangely ; it seemed to her
as if she had received a dull blow, and the effects were still upon her.
Listless, ashamed, provoked, indignant, she had never looked less hand-
some than to-night. She talked on to little tiptoe Rosa ; she patiently

MISS ANGEL. 499

turned and twirled before old John Joseph's admiring eyes ; he held
the Roman lamp on high to see her more plainly. Her dress of white
brocade was a present from Lord Essex, who had brought the stuff with
such evident pleasure and kindness that Angelica had not known how to
refuse the gift, and she had had it made up for the great occasion.

It would have been more becoming to her than the celebrated rosebud
dress, had she been in equal spirits ; white is the natural colour for all
young women, that in which they look their best, but Angelica's best
to-night was a sad and absent best. . . .

Lady Diana had good-naturedly sent her own carriage and man-
servant to fetch her friend and the brocade.

"Heaven bless thee, my child!" said John Joseph, with great
solemnity, when the carriage was announced. " Be good and happy, and
continue to recompense your old father for all his long sacrifices. They
seem to him as nothing when you are honoured and esteemed according
to your merit." And then she drove off in the dark, and a page was
turned over for ever in her life.

CHAPTER XXI.

" MUSICIANS WAITING; ENTER SERVANTS."

LADY W. had not spared thought and trouble to make her ball go off
with all brilliancy of wax and fire, of minuet and country dance, of beauty
dressed to best advantage, and music playing in time to dignified graces ;
servants without number were standing about the doors displaying their
masters' gold-braided ambitions and bright-coloured liveries. De Horn's
green lacqueys were conspicuous among them ; they carried wands in their
hands and wore huge nosegays. The park was lighted by torches, lamps
were hanging along the avenues that led to the house. A crowd stood
outside the iron gates, cheering occasionally as the long names and the
splendours and persons belonging to each came driving up. I think
people were less blase then than they are now, and thought more seriously
upon certain subjects. Dancing, for instance, and powdering, and pos-
tures took up a great deal of time ; so did conversation' and correspondence
— of all of which exercises our own generation seems somewhat impatient,
as it hurries on its way curtailing with small ceremony.

Miss Angel started in her grand equipage to take her part in all the state
ceremonies, and her father put on his old cloak and prepared to follow into
the crowd to have the glory of seeing his child pass into the paradise of lords.
The Princess of Brunswick was to be there and other great personages.
Little Rosa begged so hard to be allowed to go too, that as it was a fine
November night shining with many stars and crossed by no chill winds,
the old man consented to it, and the little girl started clinging to his hand
and dancing with delight along the pavement. I suppose to one or two
people present or in the crowd within or without every ball is delightful ;

500 MISS ANGEL.

certainly little Rosa in her outer darkness was as happy as any of the
splendid and lighted-up ladies within — far happier than Angel herself, who
had come in a strange and depressed state of mind.

By degrees (it often happens after depression), her spirits rose wildly.
If a new gown, plenty of music, smooth polished floors, admiration, and
half-a-dozen persons at her elbow, could make her happy, these elements
were not wanting. Antonio was gone, Mr. Reynolds had left her, but all
these vanities remained. People talk of fleeting worldliness ; it seemed
to be the one thing that she could count upon. Friendship left her in a
fury ; love made a speech and walked out of the room ; but here was
faithful vanity, and amenities unchanging ; here were partners and compli-
ments, here was De Horn unremitting in courteous attention. Since other
things were not for her, she would take what she could hold. Was Fri-
volity a divine goddess after all ? was this to be the experience of her life,
to find divinity in one thing after another ? At times during that eventful
evening Miss Angel's laughter and spirits were almost wild, but at others she
drooped. There was anxiety in the air ; the secret feelings of the last few
months seemed mingling with the scene before her. Almost the first per-
son she saw as she came into the room was Mr. Reynolds talking to one of
the beautiful Ladies Waldegrave. He came up to her, held out his hand
with a gentle deprecating look. She hardly knew how to respond ;
there was a dazzle of lights before her eyes, of music in her ears. She
turned away quickly, and just realised the fact that Lady Diana, who was
in crimson and looking greatly bored, was beckoning to her to come and
stand by her side.

From their corner the two ladies could see into the great dining-room,
which had been decorated and turned into a dancing-hall. An arch had
been opened into the little octagon room, Miss Angel's late retreat.

Her bed-room had been transformed into a retiring boudoir, with lamps
and low divans ; almost all the windows were unshuttered, and the lights
on the terrace without, and the shouts of the bystanders, seemed to make
a fiery circle and outer incantation to the glittering magic within. There
is a picture by Stothard of a court ball in those days, delicately and
charmingly indicated. There is a sweeping and measured calm in all the
brilliance, a high-toed grace and composure. Lady W.'s ball was remark-
able for this mixture of brightness and grave restraining sense of high
dignity present.

The country- dances were performed with great spirit. Angelica danced
twice with M. de Horn, who came and reminded her that she was pro-
mised as she stood by Lady Di. De Horn's dancing was celebrated for its
excellence. He was stately, composed, graceful, moving his long limbs with
a sort of careless ease. When dancing, he seemed quite different from the
somewhat conscious person he appeared under ordinary circumstances.
His ear for music must have been remarkable ; and the whole glittering
set of country- dancers seemed to be inspirited and kept to the measure by
this one man's performance. They swayed and bowed, and stamped their

MISS ANGEL. 501

high heels ; the swords swung, the gentlemen's gold embroideries, which
they shared with their lacqueys, twinkled ; the stately lady figures rose
and sank, and pointed their satin toes. De Horn among them all, in his
black and silver, seemed to beat his' own time and to keep the music itself
in measure. Angelica made no secret of her pleasure in his performance.
When excellence reaches a certain point, even dancing becomes a fine art,
and ceases to be a personal display to real artistic natures. Perhaps this
may have been a small fine art, but it was all in all for the moment ; and
when De Horn's glance sought Angelica's after one of their complicated
evolutions, she gave a bright and unqualified look of approval and
interest.

Mr. Reynolds was still standing not far off, and he saw her glance, and
then he looked down at his shoebuckles, feeling as if he had no right to
watch Angelica's expressions or movements any more. That look seamed
to tell him he had been right to absolve his conscience. She was a ghost
to him — that beautiful living woman, with the light of youth in her eyes,
of interest and fine intelligence. Mr. Reynolds was gone when De Horn
conducted her back to her place by Lady Di. He remained by her side,
not talking exactly, for he was a pcrsonnage muet, and depended more
upon his legs than his wits for the favour he received from the world.
He stood listening to Angelica's talk with everybody else, and putting in a
word every now and then more or less to the purpose.

" What a stupid man De Horn is ! " said Lady Di once, when he had
moved away, called off by some acquaintance. "I cannot imagine him
the hero I am assured he is. They say he fought with wonderful courage
at Hastenbeck a year ago. He does not look warlike now."

" Do you not think so ? " said the Kauffmann. " I think the man is a
very good specimen of a human being."

Was it magnetism and force of will by which De Horn made his way ?
It was some curious power he had of .making others half interested, half
afraid. Angelica dimly felt that she was in danger. He still seemed with
her, even when she was talking to others. Goethe tells Eckermann about
attractive and repulsive powers belonging to human beings as they walk
in mysteries. It must have been some magnetic powers in De Horn which
imposed upon so many.

As the handsome couple stood side by side they commanded a view of
the brilliant company in the blazing hall and on the staircase drawn up to
receive the Princess of Brunswick and the Duke of Cumberland, who had
arrived in state. The heads bend in long line, the curtseys vie in depth
and sweep : the procession sweeps on, the buzz of voices rises afresh.

Two people begin talking in the crowd of the Daily Courant, a news-
paper which has just come out.

" Its news is not of the latest," says one of the speakers, turning to
De Horn ; "it announces Count De Horn's expected arrival in London
via Paris and Dover." It is three months after date in its intelligence.

" Is he coming ? " said De Horn, with a start.

502 MISS ANGEL.

" He — who ? " said the other, and De Horn seemed suddenly to
remember to burst out laughing.

Angelica, preoccupied as she was, could not help wondering at the
agitation this little incident seemed to produce in her partner. He
presently asked her if she did not feel the heat. Would she not come
nearer an open window ?

"Are you ill ? Pray do not think of me," she said, for she saw that
he was deadly pale. But he would not leave her. He seemed to detain
her, by mere force of will to keep her apart from the rest of the company.
He began talking as he had never done before. " Ah ! that you were
in my own rank of life!" he said once; "but what matters rank or
difficulty where there is wit and courage and true love ? "

She became more and more uneasy, as his manner grew more free.
He followed her everywhere from room to room, into the supper-room at
last, where he handed some refreshment she had asked for across a table,
saying, "Let me serve you, madam. Ah! you are fortunate; herein
this country you have no vexing restrictions, as with us. Before I left
Sweden, a friend of mine was summoned before the magistrates for having
taken a cup of chocolate in her box at the play. She was condemned
to a week's imprisonment and a heavy fine."

"Is it possible ?" cried Angelica. " I should be sorry to pay such
a price for a cup of chocolate." (Alas! poor woman, she had to pay
a heavier price than this for that which Count de Horn was now handing
to her.)

" Our laws are of extraordinary severity," cried the Count. " I myself

have, I fear " he broke off abruptly. "Will you come back to the

dancing- room ? " he said, and he looked at her with one of those strange
uncertain glances.

As De Horn's agitation grew, Angelica felt her own insensibly increase.
She became more and more afraid, and once when he had been called
away by one of the Princess of Brunswick's attendant pages, she precipi-
tately engaged herself to Lord W., who happened to be standing near.

But fate seemed to interfere. Lady W. came up with a " No, W.,
you must not dance with Kauffmann. I know how much you would like
to do so ; but there is the Princess of Brunswick waiting to be taken
in to supper. Here is Count de Horn, who will, I am sure, supply your
place."

She was gone, and once more Angelica found her fingers in the grasp
of the very hand she was trying to avoid. His fingers held hers so
strangely, closing with a firm light pressure, that she seemed unable to
resist. "Here is a seat by the window," she said, trying to avoid him,
and with a sort of smile she withdrew her hand in an unconcerned way,
talking of something else all the while ; but again she happened to meet
thejook of his strange penetrating eyes as she glanced up ; it seemed to
her as if his glance held her as firmly as his closing fingers.

Old John Joseph was in the crowd outside, and had managed to

MISS ANGEL. 503

creep with little Rosa through the barriers. As they stood on the
terrace of the garden, they saw, to their delight, Angelica go by in her
brilliance, escorted by this magnificent squire.

" How white she looks, grandpapa 1 " said little Rosa ; " is she fright-
ened all alone ? "

"She is not all alone; that great Signor is talking to her," said
John Joseph. " Praised be heaven, that I see my child honoured as she
deserves ; all are acknowledging her rights. See, Rosa, they are looking
for her, she receives a message, she is led across. Rosa ! It is one of
the Princess's pages who has been sent for her," cried old John Joseph,
clasping his hands and creeping up closer and closer to the window and
trampling the flower-bed to behold the apotheosis of his Angel as she
is conducted to the great chair where the Princess is sitting in state.

"People are coming this way. Come quick," .whispers little Rosa,
pulling at his coat-tails. They are a timid pair, and the burst of voices
frightens them, and the two creep o!f carefully, and, unperceived, slide along
the rails and come out away into the street.

They find their way home, through dark moonlit streets, to the
house where the tired servants are sleeping.

Soon little Rosa, too, is dreaming of moonlight and of music.

Old John Joseph lights his pipe and sits down contentedly in the
great chair in the parlour, waiting until Angel should return ; he opens
the window to hear her first summons.

Long, warm, dark hours pass, and he nods sleepily in his place, all
wrapped in his cloak. The open window lets in the first light of dawn,
the birds begin to chirp crisply in the chill serenity.

The dawning light shines upon the ball, and upon the dancers still
untiringly pursuing their mazes. It shines upon a woman who has come
out from the hot glaring room, with its straining music and oppressive
scent of burning wax, into the dim grey garden where the trees just rustle
In the dawn, and the sparrows are whistling their early chorus with fresh
precision.

All that night Angelica had felt unnaturally wound up, excited, agitated.
This dim cool light seemed to call her back to rest, to tranquil mind, to
reality of heart and feeling. Her dress gleamed white among shadows.
Some silver cloud was drifting overhead.

Some one saw her go from the room, and came pursuing her steps. It
seemed impossible to avoid De Horn, who now followed her along the
twilight path. " Why do you come ? " she cried exasperated ; " do not
you see that I would avoid you ? "

"Why do I come ? " said De Horn. " Madam, I have much to say
to you. My happiness, my liberty, my life are in your hands. I have
had news to-night — news that overwhelms me. I am in dire disgrace.
My estates and my life may be forfeit. You alone can save me, save me
from despair."

504 MISS ANGEL.

Angelica turned her wondering looks. She saw he was in earnest ; he
looked ghastly.

" The Queen would listen to you" he cried. " Did you not see the
Princess smile as she gave you her Majesty's message and summons to
Windsor ? Your influence would save me," he repeated.

" Indeed I will do anything," faltered Angelica, greatly moved ; "but
you overrate, you entirely mistake."

" I do not overrate anything," he said, approaching his anxious face to
hers, and through the dim twilight his great black eyes gleamed, and, as the
light increased, she saw more plainly the lines of care and almost terror
in his face. Then, before she could prevent him, he fell upon his knees
and caught hold of her skirts with his two hands as he spoke.

" You have influence upon all whom you approach ; you could obtain
grace for your!husband," he cried, " if not for me. Oh, Angel, be
that which you are, a generous and noble-hearted woman. Give me my
life ! I love you to distraction, you see it, you know it. If you have
one womanly feeling, one pitiful thought for a wretch in torment, you
could save me, you alone." And he struck his breast.

" Oh I no, no," said Angel, doubting, not knowing how to answer,
how to escape.

He went on passionately entreating, and she, bewildered, excited,
let him go on, listened with rising agitation, melted as she listened, grew
interested against her own conviction, and suddenly, the spell of the
moment, the passionate petition, her own yielding nature, all overcame
her : some wave seemed to flow over her head, and it seemed to her as
if it was no new thing ; but as if that voice had been pleading and
pleading from the very beginning of life, as if all her coldness and in-
difference were cruelty and selfishness, and as if some conviction had
come to her, that he must be saved at any price, she alone must save him.

Suddenly, very suddenly, very quietly, she yielded, agreed to every-
thing, to anything he asked. She would meet him next day at the little
Catholic chapel out of Manchester Sjuare. He could hardly believe it as
she spoke, hardly believe that his prize was so easily won. She would
keep the secret, and as she said so he seized her hand and kissed it
again and again. " Oh, you could not deceive me ! *' he cried.

If any one were to suspect his marriage — such were the laws of
Sweden, De Horn assured her — he would be immediately carried off, im-
prisoned perhaps for life ; " but you, my treasure, my Angel of deliverance,
under the shadow of your pure wings J shall be safe." He seemed almost
overpowered, and for a moment Angelica lost courage.

But she made no opposition, when De Horn seized her hand, and
pulled Lady W.'s little ring off her finger.

" This is a pledge of your truth and goodness ; you dare not fail me
now." Though his words were harsh, his looks were melting ; they seemed
to appeal to her very heart. She could not speak, but bent her head in
assent. When she looked up De Horn was hastily escaping along a

MISS ANGEL. 505

shadowy path ; for one instant he stopped, waved farewell, and pointed
towards the house, from whence a whole stream of dancers now issued.

The sun rose over the houses, a glittering stream of gold fell upon
Angelica in her silver dress. As she turned to meet the company, she
seemed on fire, advancing radiant and excited. How much are omens
worth ?

Poor Angel ! hitherto people had reproached her with lightness of
nature. Henceforward the burden of life lay heavy enough to satisfy her
most envious detractor?.

CHAPTER XXII.
I MIGHT FOHGET MY WEAKER LOT.

ANGELICA had little knowledge of character. She was too much absorbed
in her own impressions to receive very definite images of the minds of
the people she lived among. She could scarcely understand how events
appeared to them. For some hours she lay still upon her bed, living
over and over again the strange experiences that had come to her. It
seemed to her as if she alone were concerned in all. Then at last she fell
into a deep sleep, from which all emotion, all fear, all regret had passed
away. She only awakened to hear her father's voice softly calling her
from the room outside.

. " Angelica, Angelica, my child 1 "

" Yes, father," answered Angel with a sigh, awakening.

The door was locked, and she did not unclose it.

"I hear that Zucchi is in town, preparing for a journey to Italy,"
said old Kauffmann through the chink. " Will you come with me, An-
gelica, and bid farewell to that misguided young man ? "

" I am tired, father," said Angelica ; " cannot he come and see us as
usual?" "

" I have been at his lodgings," continued old Kauflmann mysteriously.
" I cannot persuade him to come, Angelica. You, my child, have more
influence than I over that hog-headed youth. Haste I haste ! dress thy-
self, and come with thy old father. I want to hear of last night. "What
did they say to thee ? they did not ask after thy old father, Angelica ?"

" I cannot go out ; I am busy this morning," said Angel from within :
she had now risen and was coming and going about the room.

She was determined not to be absent that morning ; De Horn might
come ; a message might come. What was this strange new state of mind
in which she did not dare to face her father. She found that she dreaded
meeting him. The thought of seeing Antonio, also, frightened her : she
felt as if he would read her very heart in one glance.

Old Kauffmann was surprised that his daughter should venture to be
obstinate. His temper had been ruffled by Zucchi's reception. He had
already visited him that morning. The young man was busy packing ;
winding up his affairs, seeing to many details, Old Kauffmann's reproach-

506 MISS ANGEL.

ful reconciliation rather bored him than otherwise, Zucchi was pre-
occupied, depressed by his father's death, hurrying to his brothers and
sisters. Old Kauffmann, with his martyr-like airs, vexed him. His
moral aphorisms about resignation, his long descriptions of his own
household prosperity and elevation, were not calculated to put Antonio
into better spirits. Old Kauffmann perceived that something was amiss.
And so he had determined that Angelica must come herself to the rescue.
But Angelica is also obstinate, will not open, and calls out from time to
time, " I am coming, father. Dear father, do not knock so loud. Let
me dress in peace."

Do I disturb your peace ? "Is this the way you speak to your
father ? " shouts the old fellow, more and more irate and vexed by every
moment's delay. " After my years of care, of self-denial, after the educa-
tion I have bestowed upon you, with efforts scarcely to be told," he says,
raising his voice, for he hears footsteps approaching, and is glad of an
audience to his wrongs — " is this the way to treat your father, whose long
sacrifices came to the very notice of the Lord Cardinal. Ungrateful child,
where is your obedience ? why do you refuse to accompany me on this
visit of reconciliation and farewell ? "

Then he looked round to see who had come in, and what the effect of
his eloquence had been upon the visitor ; was it Antonio after all ?
Antonio at that moment was far away in spirit. Could Angelica have seen
his heart as it was then it might have added a pang to the moment. How
bitterly did he reproach himself afterwards for his indifference and failure
at this critical time. Some phase had come over him. Weariness of
waiting, conviction of the hopelessness of his dreams ; for the first time
vivid personal preoccupations had come to separate him from Angelica's
interests. It was not Antonio but De Horn who walked in upon
Kauffmann's recriminations. He found him with his long blue coat-tails
flying, and his nose against Angelica's panel.

" Ungrateful child !" the old father shouts with renewed eloquence.
" What an example for thy little innocent Cousin Rosa, my dead brother's
only daughter — a legacy to our tenderness," and then Angelica from
within hears a second voice and a change of tone in old John Joseph.
Her heart beats faster than ever. It is De Horn already come. Come
— for what ? Her trembling fingers tangle the strings. She can hardly
fasten her dress, pin on the great flapping cap, beneath which her eyes
shine so brightly ; hook the band round her waist : somehow or other she
is ready at last, she flings open her window for a breath of air, and then
with shaking hands unlocks her door and comes forth. The studio is
all fall of sunshine, It is late in the morning and the sun is high.

Da Horn bows low as she appears. He is standing in the window
with her father.

Old Kauffmann had been for the last few minutes escorting the Count
from portfolio to portfolio, exhibiting Angelica's performances with a
running commentary of his own, diving into portfolios, and all the while
secretly calculating the possible sum to which De Horn would go for orders.

MISS ANGEL. 507

" Here is your Excellency's own suggestion, Garte a fous " (so he
pronounced it), ''rendered by my naughty inspired one. That one,
possessed with such gifts of heaven, should prove rebellious to her father's
expressed desire, is indeed a lesson to all. Then seeing Angelica's worn
looks, he cried, " Thou art pale, my child. Why didst thou not tell me
thou wert tired ? " and old Kauffmann, with real tenderness, went hurrying
up to her and took her listless hand.

" 'Tis nothing, father, only last night's excitement," she answered.

Then she stood silent. She could not look at the Count, but turned
her head away.

He advanced slowly and was silent for an instant.

"I came, madam, according to our appointment, to invite you to visit
Lord Henry's gallery of pictures," said De Horn, at last, with a keen ex-
pressive glance, which made Angelica's cheeks blush crimson.

"Ah, now she is looking better," said old Kauffmann, eagerly. " Go,
my child, go with his Excellency. Why didst thou not explain ? . . . A
walk will do thee good. I will return to that ingrate. Where is the
sketch for her Majesty's portrait, Angelica. The Count is anxious to see
it. We think of representing the Queen as Venus awakening the sleep-
ing arts of England. The idea seems to me worthy of our great Dante
himself."

Then he went on talking of the ball, of the Princess, of the brilliant scene
of his Angel's triumph the night before ; then he said he should delay no
longer, but return at once to Zucchi at his lodging. " It is better to forget
the past ; Antonio is a young man who owes almost everything to our pro-
tection ; he has proved himself an ingrate, but that is no reason to give him
up altogether," said old Kauffmann. Angelica did not hear a word he said.
She saw him put on his cloak, look about in the corner of the room for
his stick, take his three-cornered hat and go off, calling to little Bosa
who was at play down below. Angelica, in her state of suppressed ex-
citement and nervousness, was at once terrified to be alone with De Horn,
and, longing for some further explanation, some greater certainty, she did
not want to face what was before her. She tried to forget everything in
the present. The present was this unknown person, so familiar, already
so mysterious. The present was her own studio, her own beating heart,
her pictures in every corner, the dreams, and the allegories, and the fanci-
ful bedizenments of the truth.'

People are sometimes distraught and driven on by unaccountable im-
pulses. These two people seemed possessed ; it is impossible to say what
was real, what was mere illusion in their relation. "I have brought you
back your ring," said the Count, quickly ; " come, there is no time to be
lost. I have made all arrangements. Will you come ? " he repeated, and
he took both her hands, and looked at her with his deep eyes.

" Do you remember the day we first met ? " De Horn continued, gazing
at her fixedly. " Some strange presentiment drew me in your steps. I
followed you in my gondola ; I watched you as you passed from picture
to picture in the Doge's Palace. Angelica, from the first moment I knew

508 MISS ANGEL,

you, I had a presentiment how it would end ; even when you left Venice,
I knew I should see you again."

" Lady Diana had a presentiment too, I suppose," said Angelica, re-
covering a little and speaking with a gentle laugh.

De Horn turned white, then black. " I was mad. I am in earnest
now," he said. Then eagerly, " Don't delay, pray do not delay ! The
time is running short ; the priest is waiting ; you have promised ; you,
Angelica, are not of those who deceive."

"I hope not," said she, clasping her hands.

Angelica went stubbornly into her room, dressed herself, pulled on her
silk hood, the broad frills fell over her face. Then she came out and re-
turned to the studio, where De Horn was waiting gazing at her picture : he
sprang forward with two long strides. " Are you ready ? " he said. " My
good Angel 1 my preserver ! my idol ! " So he called her. His love-
making was somewhat to order, somewhat mechanical, so she afterwards
felt. At the time she was in a state of such strange excitement that she
did not very clearly know what he said. She only knew that this was
some one who was grateful for her favours, some one in trouble whom
ehe could serve ; that by serving him she best served herself.

Here was a protector able and willing to help her. Henceforth she
should have her own standing place in the world ; no longer to be tossed
to and fro by variable tides, no longer be dependent upon the chance favours
of fashion, of patrons, upon their humours and fancies. She should have
some one to turn to whose right it would be to defend her, some one noble,
generous, gentle, the prince of her wildest dreams. People might blame,
let them blame ; she had a right, as other women had, to be loved, to
give happiness, and to receive it ; who should dare interfere.

Little Rosa saw them as they started and came running up. " Grand-
papa did not take me with him. May I come with you, cousin ? " she
asked, taking Angel's hand.

Angelica held the little fingers tight in hers for an instant, and looked
up at De Horn, who shook his head impatiently. " Go back, child," she
answered, with a soft kiss ; "I shall not be long away from you." She
remembered the words afterwards, and they seemed to her significant.

The child looked up wondering as they walked away along the sun-
shining pavement, then they and their shadows crossed the angle of the
square and disappeared behind the railings — the light drifting figure, the
tall black man with his sword and his cocked-hat.

De Horn appeared impassive as usual, but secretly he was in a fume
of impatience. They were not safe until they had reached the church.
They walked quickly and in silence. Angelica scarcely knew how to
speak to him ; once she felt inclined to turn back : they were passing the
house where Zucchi lodged, some scarce controllable impulse made her
stop ; but as she hesitated she looked in her companion's face, and that
one glance showed her it was too late. He pulled her hand through his
arm, and she knew that she was glad it was too late.

Everybody knows how strangely all the things that people have been

MISS ANGEL. 509

and felt and loved sometimes, almost from very vividness seem to lose
their separate existence in our mind. The images grow confused, and we
know what we fear and hope without realising why or how. Angelica was
in some such state as she hurried on with De Horn.

The people along the street made way for them as they hastened past.
No one seemed to notice them particularly ; she saw the common story of
every day — the fishwives shouting their wares, the coaches rolling, the
windows opening and shutting ; they also met a ghastly procession on its
way to Tyburn, with a crowd hurrying along. De Horn turned pale, drew
her closer to him and hurried away down a side street. They stopped at
last at the Jow doorway in a passage out of Spanish Place. Afterwards
Angelica remembered that a great carriage went by just then ; as it passed
she saw the harness glittering in the sun.

CHAPTER XXKI.

SIGN.

IN supreme moments of life people notice many things unconnected with
the circumstance that is impending. Angel ever after remembered the
stupid little details of that morning's walk, and the sight of the glittering
of harness in the sunshine would give her some odd feeling of mingled
shame and regret, so did the swing of a curtain at times when it took a
certain fold. De Horn held up the old curtain that swung before the
chapel door, and she walked in with her hand upon his arm. It was a
warm sunshiny morning, the streaks of dusty light reached to the altar,
where a priest was standing with an open book, and the two chorister boys
were in attendance. Now-a-days such a thing could not be, even then
it was scarcely possible ; but chance and opportunity had helped De Horn.
He had met the priest, perhaps the only man in London who would have
served his purpose, and his evil genius had not failed him yet.

The ceremony began, and then Angel finds herself before the altar,
looking at the darkened picture of Mary Mediatrix with the stabbed heart
in flames. And the priest reads on, and the words of fate echo through
the chapel, and the dream is dreamed out — a dream of blessing, a dream
of prayer, a dream of peace never to be fulfilled. The whole thing seems
so real, and is so baseless a fabric, a semblance only of what might have
been so true for both these people. The prayers beat against the walls
with chill echoes, the little choristers swing their incense ; outside in the
street the people are passing on their daily business. A woman seeing the
door open comes in and kneels in a quiet corner of the chapel ; the Count
started and looked round uneasily, hearing footsteps ; then, reassured, he
turned his dark eyes, not without some expression of feeling, upon the
bent head by his side. And then the priest's voice ceases at last and the
boys give a parting swing to their censers. It is over; the blessing is
spoken in Latin, reluctantly enough and inefficaciously enough, to vindi-
cate the power of all true benedictions.

510 MISS ANGEL.

"You have yet to sign," said the priest hoarsely; he was an oldish
man, and seemed ill and scarce able to stand. More than once his voice
had faltered as he read the service. He came slowly down the steps of the
altar and led the way to the vestry. There, after taking off his robe and
slipping on his common daily vestment, he fetched a great book from a
closet, and made them sign Frederick De Horn — Angelica Kauffmann in
the ruled place in the long column.

Angelica, incautious, incomplete, loving-hearted, went on acting in
this dream as if it were all a reality, and looked up smiling with her eyes
full of tears. " You see I have done as you wished," she said. And the
stranger she had so imprudently trusted, forgetting for one instant that
it was but a semblance of a shadow, broke out into some vehement and
almost tender protestations of affection and unalterable fidelity.

Then he turned, still holding her hand, and whispered something to
the priest and slipped some money into his palm. The priest seemed to
demur, to ask for something more.

De Horn looked vexed. Angelica was still absorbed and not very
observant.

" Have you a purse ?" said De Horn to her ; "in my agitation I have
forgotten mine."

Angelica fumbled in her pocket and put her little purse with its hard-
earned guineas into his hand with a low laugh.

" I did not know it cost so much to get married," she said gaily.

" This is an unusual marriage," the priest replied, knitting his brows ;
" the fees are very heavy, and there may be more to pay."

Then arm in arm the new-married pair walked down the aisle in silence ;
there was no triumph of music and friendship to escort them, but they
heeded it not, and they came to the doorway where the curtain was swing-
ing. Again De Horn lifted it, for his bride to pass under, and stepped back
into the shadow as he did so. She, with her radiant beaming face, stepped
out into the sunshiny street, and at that moment by some strange chance
a lady crossing the road followed by her footman came face to face with
the new-made bride. Angelica stopped, turned white, then crimson.

"You! Angelica, I am in good luck to meet you," cried Lady Diana,
for it was she. " What, have you been confessing to your priest ? Why
do you look so amazed, child ? "

" How did — how came you here ? " faltered Angelica.

" I have a cousin living in Manchester Square* Lady W set

me down just now, and the day was so fine that I determined to walk
home," said Diana, smiling. "I did not expect to find such good
company along the road."

Lady Diana seemed to take it for granted that Angelica would walk
back with her, and began to move onwards at an easy pace. Angelica
lingered and looked round anxiously and bewildered. De Horn had not
come out. Lady Diana remembered afterwards how strange her manner
had been.

" Could you— could you wait here," said Angelica, with a little cry,

MISS ANGEL. 51

in great agitation. " Don't — don't come in with me. I will — my con-
fessor." She pushed against the leather curtain and rushed into the
chapel again, trembling lest Diana should follow. The place was quite
empty now, no one was praying or being married at the altar, all the
lights were out. De Horn was not there. She crossed, calling him
once or twice gently, and reached the door of the vestry where they had
signed the papers a few minutes before. As she came along Angelica
heard voices, those of De Horn and the priest who had married them.
Were they angry ? Surely she heard wrongly ?

" If you dare," said De Horn ; but as she opened the door she found
herself almost in his arms. "Is she gone, my Angel ?" he cried in a
different tone.

" Lady Diana is waiting ; shall I tell her ? oh, may I tell her all ? "
said Angelica imploringly.

" Not now, not now," he answered emphatically. " Good heaven !
do you know that my very life may be forfeited if you do not keep my
secret?" Then he gently put her away. " Go back now," he said; "go
with her, it will prevent suspicion. I will make my arrangements ; leave
all to me. I shall follow you to Windsor. As soon as it is safe for me to
speak, the whole world shall be aware of my happiness. Go now, Angel
of my life. She might suspect if you delay," he said in great agitation, as
he led her gently towards the door ; and somehow Angel found herself
alone, quite alone in the dim chapel once more, with a strange sinking of
heart. She heard Lady Di's straggling footsteps coming in search of her.

"Is he gone ? " said Lady Di, slipping her hand into her friend's arm.

" He, who ? " faltered Angelica. " What do you mean ? "

" Did you not tell me that you were looking for your confessor ? " said
the other lady. " Ah ! child, I fear that for some people there are many
things to confess after a ball," and she smiled and then sighed a little
sadly. Then, as they came away, she went on talking more seriously,
saying that for her part she was glad to have been born a Protestant in a
Protestant country. " I could not endure," she said, " to feel myself in
the bondage of another person's will ; perhaps that is why I have remained
protesting," she said, "neglected, but free."

Angelica scarcely listened as Lady Di talked on ; it was with difficulty
she could bring herself to answer. No wonder that she was absorbed in
her own affairs. She had thrown herself into her part, with all her
fervour of nature ; this strange future did not frighten her, although her
heart beat with some vague alarm. Should she be able to do her duty by
her husband? She was not afraid, nor did she fear for her father.
Surely, surely, she should be able to make his happiness still. Was it
not her special gift to make those happy whom she loved ? Where had
Lady Diana wandered in her talk ? . .

"Dear Angelica," she was saying, "you must forgive me now if I
say something to you which has often been upon my lips. There is one
person who frightens me for you — one person who haunts your steps. I
could not help noticing his manner the night of our ball. There is some-

512 MISS ANGEL.

thing about that man — something false, believe me. I would not trust hirri
with any one or any thing I prized."

" How suspicious people are," cried Angelica, firing up passionately ;
" how uncharitable in their judgments. "What has Count de Horn done
to you or me but kindness ? How, how can you speak so cruelly ? " All
Ler pent-up agitation broke into tears of excitement. Lady Diana was
not a little indignant with her for her childishness.

"You are perfectly absurd," said that plain-spoken lady. "I have
little patience, as you know, with affectation. What is Count de Horn to
you or to me, that we should quarrel about him ? " They had reached
the door of Angelica's own house by this time. Wearied out and over-
excited, the poor bride palled the bell, and, when her servant came,
rushed in without a word, without bidding her friend farewell, brushing
past her father on the stair, and once more ran into her own room and
locked herself in, in a passion of tears and excitement.

But this storm did not last long. In an hour she had recovered, and
came out and joined her two companions. She might be silent to them of
what had passed, but she would condescend to no small deceptions, so
she determined. Yes, she had been crying. " Never mind, father," she
repeated, clinging to him for an instant ; " it is no real trouble affects me.
I know not," she added, " whether it is happiness or sorrow." She said
this with the old familiar action, and holding his arm. She had never
been sweeter than at that moment.

Her grace, her tranquillity, her gentle bright emotion, unconsciously
reassured him. Little Rosa caught some hidden gaiety from her cousin's
manner. " How pretty you look, cousin Angel, in your white dress," said
the child, " but the winter is come, you will not be able to wear it any
more."

" Antonio is gone," said the old man. " I saw him start. His father
is dead. Antonio's doings are mad enough to frighten his friends. He
has given up the chief part of his inheritance to his sister, he tells me.
I think he does it on purpose to make me angry."

Whatever poor Angelica may have shown of feeling that day, it is certain
that her bridegroom never lost his composure. He came again that after-
noon, actually called as usual, and finding some company present played
a part as if nothing had happened, and to Angelica's dismay went away
without a look or a sign, leaving Lord Henry discoursing upon the beauty
of waxwork and its superiority to marble. Eossi describes De Horn's
perfect calm through all this deception; This man's interested feeling was
so mixed up and complicated with real respect and admiration that it would
have required a far more diffident and suspicious person than my poor heroine
to distinguish the false from the true, in all that had happened. De Horn's
part with her was not all acted ; that was the difficulty. Others found
him out, because with them he was but a performer, with her he was as
sincere as it was possible for a man of his nature to be.

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE

MAY, 1875.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PLEIADES.

E weather broke suddenly
after this last sunshiny
November day. Angelica
could not go out. The
wind tossed the clouds,
and heaped dull palls over
Golden Square. The light
scarce sufficed to the pain-
ter's work. John Joseph,
too, seemed ailing, and
required all her spare time.
A week went by utterly
uneventful and silent as
Angelica nursed her father
and tended him. Every-
thing that had happened
seemed almost to pass from
her mind. It was not,
could not be true, she
sometimes thought, as the

days went by, while she sat painting in her house in Golden Square.

She was not doing her best work at this time. How was it possible, as

she sat listening to every step, starting at every post and scrap of paper ?
One stormy day Mariana brought in a letter which had been left at

the door.

It was blotted with ink and with rain, and oddly spelt. Angelica her-
YOL. xxxi. — NO. 185. 25.

514 MISS ANGEL.

self wrote a pretty and delicately lined handwriting, and she was a little
disappointed by the look of this clumsy manuscript.

" Wait, my idol," it said. " The time is not yet come. You may be
summoned to the Queen in a day or two. This I have on good authority.
Then will be the moment to disclose our marriage. I shall join you at
Windsor. — Yours till death, DE HORN."

This was all — a mere scrap to exist upon ; but Angelica was of a
bright and hopeful disposition. She thought well of life on the whole,
and though all was uncertain, and the skies clouded, and the winds rose,
and though winter had suddenly broke in upon her warm sunshine and
tranquillity, she hoped on, and wove her fancy pieces, and secretly enjoyed
her dignities. A countess ! What would old John Joseph say when she
told him ? He would surely, surely forgive the deception. One day she
could not help asking him if he should like her to marry a high Court
gentleman, and live among the great.

" Eh ! my child, who can say ! Nothing is impossible," said the old
man. "My little Angelica will have to take her old father with her,"
said the old man, fondly.

" We must never separate, never, father," cried she, flinging herself
into his arms.

When the summons to Windsor actually came — as De Horn had
predicted it would — old Kauftmann was not equal to the journey, and
Angelica set off very reluctantly alone. She left him with little Eosa in
attendance. If only Antonio had been there to cheer him she might have
minded less.

Antonio was far away. He had travelled rapidly, and was already at
his journey's end, thoughtfully pacing a sweet and tranquil sunshine as it
flowed along a high terraced walk. From the high battlemented terrace
he could look down into a walled garden, with its great pots, and the
citron and pomegranate trees. Some lemons still hung to the branches,
burning like gold. Some aromatic scent still perfumed tUe air.

Sounds came from the rippling plain beyond the villa. Oxen were
dragging their sweet- savoured loads. Some sound of voices, of the reed
that a village Pan was piping to his flock — came floating across the melting
Campagna and along the terrace. Antonio, as he walked, could fancy a
slight figure drifting — almost hear a gay voice echoing for a moment more
clearly than the shepherd's pipe. Should he find her in that little pavilion
at the terrace end ? He went up to it, opened the door, and looked in
almost expecting to meet the glad flash of the azure he loved better even
than those Italian skies. There was no one in the little arched pavilion,
only the beauties from its casements spread a sight of all the wonders of
Italy rippling to the fragrant horizon. It was all lovely in its dimness,
this shadowy land of ilex and of cypress, of tender light and delicate
echo. ... At that moment Angelica, muffled in John Joseph's own cloak,
hooded, snooded, shodden with fur, is slowly travelling along the snowy
English lanes that lead to Windsor, to the great Castle, sumptuous on its

MISS ANGEL. 515

hill, to the old straggling city of gables, and of quaint memorials, such as
those that belong to our grotesque and fire-warmed land. Notwithstand-
ing the fires in all the gabled houses, the snow was on the ground, the
ice was lying in the pools and on the fields, the flying figures of the skaters
were dazzling black across the white when Angelica drove into the town.

Antonio had given full directions, and the chaise stopped at a gablec
house in Eton, fronting the Castle with the many towers and tall battle-
ments. Some one looked from a latticed window, some one came to a
door, there was a sound of the scampering of feet, and, when Angelica,
a poor shivering little drifting figure, alighted in the cold twilight, a kind-
looking man, in a powdered wig, such as schoolmasters do not wear now-
a- days, looked out from the parlour. He came forward and welcomed hei
kindly.

" Welcome, Mrs. Kauffmann. We -were expecting you," he said,
"Mr. Zucchi's friends are ours. You must be frozen by your journey,
Welcome, my dear ; let me introduce you to my girls," and he threw open
the door and led Angel in upon his arm to a dazzling room, with faces.,
and fire-light, and voices. In her bewilderment she could see nothing at
first. By degrees she came to her usual perceptions.

There were six or seven girls — full-grown, handsome young women — in
mourning for their mother. Some wore muslin kerchiefs and plain mob-
caps. Two of them were powdered and in full dress. One, however, was
shaved and wore neither cap nor covering to her head. They all seemed to
advance at once. Most of them were quite grave ; only the bald one smiled.

" These are my daughters," said Dr. Starr again, not knowing what
else to say. " They all know you by name, and through Mr. Zucchi.
Here are Decie, Dosie, Fanny, Alley, Jinny, and Kitty. Patty is not
yet come home. You must be frozen. Come near the fire."

" Miss Kauffmann must indeed be cold after her long journey," said
the shaved young lady, dragging up a big chair.

" Quite right, Jinny ; that is a comfortable arm-chair for her to warm
herself in," said the father. "I find a good arm-chair very resting
after a long journey."

" We ought to tell Miss Kauffmann at once that a message has been
sent from the Castle to inquire if she is come. Her Majesty will be ready
to sit for her portrait to-morrow at three o'clock," said one of the young
ladies. . . . " Are you not frightened to death?" cried Jinny. "La!
how terrified I should be if I had to paint the Queen's portrait."

After a little pause the eldest daughter proposed to take Angelica up
to see her room. She was a very sweet and noble-looking creature, and
her colour came and went every time she spoke. "I have had a fire
lighted for you," she said.

" Capital thing, a fire, this cold weather," cried the father, striking his
hands together. " Take her up, Decie — take her up."

Decie led the way with a simple sort of dignity. Her straight tall
figure sailed on before, and Angel followed in silence.

25—2

516 MISS ANGEL.

" This is the room Mr. Zucchi likes," the young lady said, opening a
low wooden door into a pleasant sloping bed-chamber. " We heard from
him yesterday. He had not reached his journey's end. I hope you will
want for nothing."

Then three more sisters came in, attended to the fire, brought forward
another chair and some hot spiced currant wine, which they made their
visitor imbibe. All these young maidens were silent, swift, helpful, and
friendly ; the bald one was the most original and talkative of the whole
party ; she was only waiting for- her hair to grow to go out to India to
keep house for a brother, she told Angelica. Jinny looked on with bright
grey eyes while Angelica unpacked her modest wardrobe, her painting
box, her canvas, her palettes and brushes.

Of all Angelica's transmigrations this seemed one of the most curious.
Here she was a Calypso established in this quaint household, with this
colony of nymphs to tend her and make her welcome. When Miss
Jinny left the room she stood at the lattice peeping out at wide snowy
fields, at the flowing river that crossed between the elms. There, at
half-a-mile's flight, stood the Castle rearing upon the height. A live king
and queen were actually ruling from the round towers, sending messages
to summon her to their court.

As she looked out across the white waste, she saw lights flaming
from the casements and from the distant Castle itself. Was not she
herself a Court lady now — a countess in her husband's right ? She
laughed as she remembered it all. Some incongruous thought came to
her in between two of Miss Jinny's visits of her childhood, of the quiet
far away Valley of Coire, with the rushing stream, and of the mother's
face looking down into hers, innocent and wistful as she could remember
it still. Sometimes Angel had thought of trying to paint her mother's
face, but it seemed too dear to paint, too near her heart now. Here
were her own eyes to look at in the window-pane, with their new ex-
pression, and they seemed to her like her mother's to-night. She stood
some time looking into and through the lattice window. The crisp snow
was lying on the pond. The beech-trees along the fields were brushing
the wintry sky. The little Eton boys were all safe in their various
cupboards. She could hear the cheerful voices and heels of Dr. Starr's
young pupils trampling up some back wooden staircase that led to
their part of the house, which was separated from that which the
family and the guests inhabited. The world was white and black. The
little houses with their gables were beginning to light up. The people
were crossing the bridge that led to Windsor. The river shuddered into
blocks of floating ice, and Angel blew on her fingers to warm them before
she finished unpacking, and as she blew upon her finger she saw that she
had kept on her wedding-ring, which she usually wore on a chain round
her neck. There it was, a sign that her dream was a reality, otherwise
she might have doubted the whole thing, so brief, so vague did it all seem.
Then some one knocked at the door, and Dosie Starr, the second daughter,

MISS ANGEL. 517

came in, tall and blooming as any of the sisters, to bid Miss Kauffmann
to come down to tea. She was followed by Miss Jinny ringing a bell.
Its loud din seemed cheerful and reassuring. Angelica suddenly deter-
mined to give up wondering, to live from day to day, absorbed by this
regular life ; it seemed ordered to the minute, with a certain homely and
yet delightful monotony. What is the name of the country which is
farthest from Bohemia? Is it Philistia? This was a Philistia so gentle,
so kind-hearted, so modest in its ways, that the grace of Bohemia itself
seemed to belong to it. Dr. Starr, that contented person, was almost
worshipped by his daughters. It was pretty to see them about him,
listening to his words, attending to his wants. They were all so handsome
and so naturally dignified and gentle that, although the house was -email,
there seemed neither ugliness nor confusion in the life that went on there.
Miss Starr, the eldest daughter, attended to the boys ; Miss Dosie, the
second, took the housekeeping, so the talkative Jinny informed Angelica.
" I am the clever ugly one, you know," Miss Jinny announced ; " and as
none of my sisters could be spared, they have determined upon me to go
to the Indies, and to keep my brother's house."
" So you have brothers too ?" said Angel.

" We are a perfect constellation of Starrs," cried Miss Jinny ; " we
have four brothers in India, we are eleven in all. Too many to remain
at home, people say, but we could not spare one of us except me perhaps."
" We must wait till your hair is grown to decide such a question," said
Angelica, smiling. " I am very glad you are all here, especially Miss Starr."
" Is she not a darling lovely creature?" cried Jinny; " but Dosie and
Alethea are just as dear. Poor Kitty is not looking well just now ; she
is the most delicate, and Patricia has been so busy among her poor that
you have not yet seen her. People say she is the handsomest of us all.
I think" (here Miss Jinny became confidential) " Mr. Zucchi, though
he does not say so, admires her more than any. You have known him
for years, have you not ? " Angelica could only burst out into a warm
rhapsody concerning her friend. They had grown up together. She had
never known him do an unkind or dishonourable action. He had a
warm heart, and a generous disposition.

" He has been painting our china closet," said Miss Jinny. "My
father met him at Frogmore, where he was decorating some of the apart-
ments. Miss Moser introduced us to him, and all this year he has con-
stantly been staying with us, and with Mr. Evans."

" Who is Mr. Evans ? " asked Angelica, curiously. It all interested her,
and even, if the truth were told, she secretly resented the delicate vine-
leaves and myrtle-branches that she recognized meandering upon the walls
of the old china closet, which Miss Jinny showed her on their way down-
stairs. There were also four figures painted by Zucchi on the ceiling,
admirable likenesses of the four eldest young ladies. One held a book,
the other held a cornucopia, the third carried a spindle, and the fourth a
compass.

518 MISS ANGEL.

" Now I understand his strange conduct," thought Angelica, opening
her eyes. As they groped their way by twisting places and dark
lattices to the narrow little panelled passage that led to the tea-table,
Angelica found a pretty domestic scene in the parlour ; a silver kettle
hissing, a homely evening meal of silver and honey and oaten cake,
spread out hospitably upon the mahogany table. The simplicity and
kindness of the household made Angel feel happy at that minute, happier
than she had felt since that haunting morning.

Everything was shining, fragrant, somewhat chill, though the fire, of
which so much had been said, was burning brightly. Dr. Starr talked
of a thaw, but the town was still in its dazzling shroud. The low windows
with their diamond panes were marked black upon the whiteness of the
snow, which had gathered in little heaps against the hinges. The birds
came hopping along the ledges with their puffed breasts. The sisters
were sitting down one by one smiling and joking with one another ; the
Mr. Evans Jinny had mentioned had come to tea. He was helping
dark-eyed Miss Dosie Starr with the kettle. Decie, the eldest of all,
a long sweet figure, was standing by the fire, apparently watching a
plate of hot toast, but secretly far away. Dr. Starr sat at the end of
the mahogany table, with gleaming buckles, and handsome brown eyes,
smiling upon his children. Dosie, the tea-maker, had eyes like his, dark
and animated. She was calling out to him gaily. There was a certain
ability and distinction in all she did, and if she poured out tea or gave
out linen, it somehow became an act of gentle grace, as well as of
duty, in her hands. Alethea, the third sister, was the tallest of the
three ; it was she Antonio had represented with a spindle, and in truth
this young maiden spun many a silver thread as she sat by her father's
side. She had a rare gift for music, and to her belonged the little spinnet
in the corner by the window. She had played the chapel organ some-
times, or she listened with music in her eyes when the great throbs passed
over the people's heads as the waves of a rising sea. As they are all settling
down, the door opens, and the fourth sister comes in — Patricia, with the
pale head and the auriole of golden hair. She carries a book in her hand,
a book which opens upon heroic stories, such as those which Angel her-
self had dreamed at times, and which Patricia studies with her father.
Dr. Starr is very proud of his girls' attainments, and teaches them himself.

CHAPTER XXV.

AVE CAESAR.

THE appointment with the Queen was, they told her, for three o'clock
on the following day. Angel set off in a chair, with an attendant to carry
her palette and boxes, with many farewells and encouraging signals from
her kind hostesses. The distance from the house to the Castle was not
great; the bridge was soon crossed, the steep soon surmounted. Peaceful

MISS ANGEL. 619

sentinels do not oppose her entrance, and she finds herself within the
royal precincts, in the great open court, with the King's palaces and
towers, and the King's pleasure-gardens all about ; and the gables of
the poor knights to typify his bounty, and the King's gloom of cloister
for his meditation, and the vaulted Chapel windows to light his high
devotion.

The bearers stop to rest for an instant. Angelica from her chair can
look into the great moat, and through an archway, across the steep court,
she calches a glimpse of the whole wide country spreading beyond the
terrace. Then the men trudge on again to a door at the end of the
inner court, where two footmen in the royal uniform are standing.
Mrs. Kauffmann seems to be expected.

She is helped out, her cases are taken from the porter and from the
chaise by the attendants ; one red-coated footman leads the way, the other
follows, carrying her apparatus.

Angelica tripped up the great steps, feeling as if she were some sort
of doomed princess at the gates of the ogre's palace. Her heart
fluttered ; she would have been thankful to run away. She envied
the servant who was calmly following her and carrying her easels and
brushes, she envied the sentries who knew exactly what they had to do,
and who could not go wrong if they continued walking up and down out-
side and shouldering their guns. So she mounted, trying to reassure
herself with some of her father's adages, and with the remembrance of her
visit to the Cardinal at Coire.

But that had been nothing like so alarming. Then orange-flowers
were in the air, warm winds were blowing, the birds were flying among
the nestling trees in the garden, kind priests were resting in the shade.
This was so cold, so hard, and chill — the great walls were so massive, the
soldiers looked so utterly indifferent. The lovely great view was white
with snow and swathed in mists.

She was going to meet she knew not what restraints and difficulties.
People whose words and looks must be different from her own, since they
inspired all bystanders with awe. Dr. Starr's lectures had not been
without their effect on the impressionable Mrs. Kauffmann. It was indeed
a solemn privilege to be allowed to depict the sacred and anointed heads.
Caesar- worship does not end with Mr. Gibbon's History. The
altars of Augustus could scarcely have been more fervently served than
those of good King George and Queen Charlotte. Eton by tradition was
loyal to its ruling sovereign, and Dr. Starr, who was a simple and serious
man, had out-traditioned Eton in his devotion. The lively Jinny once
got into dire disgrace for some audacious revolutionary sentiments.

" My child," said her father mildly, but earnestly, " what pit is
yawning before you ? What danger do you not run by allowing such idle
words to pass your lips ? Innocent laughter I should be the first to
encourage ; but this is indeed unbecoming censure of those placed by
Providence in authority over you : persons called to the rule of a mighty

520 MISS ANGEL.

kingdom, and thus entitled to the reverence of the young. My dear
child, I am grieved to have to speak so seriously."

Poor Jinny left the room in penitential tears.

Meantime Angel climbs the palace steps.

One or two groups of pages and attendants were standing about, look-
ing not unlike pictures themselves. A page in the court dress of the
period came forward and politely invited Angelica to follow him.

She was led up a small side staircase, but from lunettes and turns and
archways she catches glimpses of the stately stone flight. Then she came
at once into a room where the attendants requested her to wait. It was
a lofty sunny room, hung with tapestry. Vashti, Esther, Ahasuerus
were all playing their parts in the loomed web ; the light from the tall
windows warmed the place ; the soft tints of the great carpets seemed
to float upon the walls as dreams half defined. Through the hall windows
came the December sunlight. It fell upon the great paved court below.

Angelica's very natural emotion and agitation at the thought of the
ordeal before her extended itself to all the inanimate objects round about
her, and gave a certain life to the figures as they met her gaze. Over one
door hung a Queen Mary in her pathetic veil and dress of black, with her
sad white face. Esther was on her knees before Ahasuerus decked in
her jewels. Angelica thought of her own petition, and wondered whether
her request would be granted.

Something more than the mere execution of her picture seemed to
depend upon this interview. Safe in her pocket she carried that letter
from De Horn, reminding her that she had now his interests to consult as
well as her own. " Perhaps," thought Angelica, not without terror, " his
whole future career may depend upon the excellence of my likeness of
her Majesty."

She started, hearing a sound ; it was not the Queen, but some attendants
who came and removed the easel into an adjoining room.

This was the Vandyke room, where Angelica was finally established.
The noble army of martyrs were hanging on the walls. King Charles —
his children with their sweet eyes — Straflbrd listening to the letter. . . .

All this sumptuous light and dignity seemed to bid her welcome, and
to give her confidence ; she seemed to have found a friend now that
Vandyke's noble hand was held out to her. She was but a woman, but she
too could paint, could rule light and space, call harmonies of colour to
her service. Her terrors seemed to vanish as she waited, looking and
noting with attentive eyes.

As she looked about she caught sight of herself in a glass inserted in
a long shutter, and was struck by the expression of her own features.
"Surely I can depend upon myself," she said. "It is not for nothing
that I have my gift, my inspiration." The lady in the glass opened her
eyes in response, and Angelica suddenly saw a second figure reflected
there, and turned overwhelmed with shame to meet the Queen. She
could only stand against the wall in silent confusion. . . .

MISS ANGEL. 521

The interview ended more prosperously than it began. So Angelica
told them all when she came back to the gabled house.

The Queen had been most gracious, had made no allusion to the
looking-glass, smiled, had praised her work, had appointed a second
sitting for the following day.

The King himself, in his blue coat, had come in.

" What did he say ? " asked Jinny and Dosie. " Tell us quickly ! "

"Shall I tell you?" said Angel, smiling. "He said, 'Ah! very
good, very good indeed, Miss Zimmermann ! Paint a great many pic-
tures, hey?'"

The sisters looked a little disappointed.

"Why, papa himself might have said as much ! " said Miss Jinny.
" He has been asking for you. He brought in a letter somebody left.
Have you seen it, Miss Kauffmann ? " and Jinny began looking about the
sideboard- shelf and the chimney-ledge.

" Is that your father's handwriting ? " said the young lady, inquisi-
tively, as she found the letter. " I suppose it is a foreign writing."

When Angelica saw the writing she turned somewhat pale, and almost
immediately left the room. Then she ran upstairs to her own chamber
and shut the door, and slipped the bolt. Then she stood up in the middle
of the low latticed room, and, with a beating heart, read the crooked lines
by the twilight that came through the lattice. At first she could scarcely
see them for agitation : —

" My adored Wife, — The time is at hand for all to be disclosed. I
need no longer try the noble patience you have hitherto shown. Expect we
in the course of a few days. When L come you shall confide all in the
Queen, and she I know will befriend us. Believe in my unchanging devo-
tion, and forgive the wrongs I may have done you.

Devotedly yours till death,

F. de Horn:'

She read — she read again. Was she disappointed ?

Angelica could have wished that her instructions had been a little
more explicit ; 'that her mysterious husband had said something more
definite about himself, about the wrorgs even to which he alluded, that
he had given his reasons for secrecy.

She was vaguely excited, vaguely disappointed, provoked, bewildered.
She knew not what to think, as she turned this piece of paper in her
hand. Her eyes filled with tears — heavy burning tears — that fell upon
the letter, which, to tell the truth, had cost its writer many a struggle, for
the Count was not handy with his pen.

Poor little thing, crying in the twilight ! The tears relieved her heart,
until she dried them to the sound of one of the summoning bells.

As the evening went on the sisters gathered round Alethea's instru-
ment, and Angel joined in the chorus they were practising. They all
listened, with expressive looks of admiration, to her beautiful voice. At

25—5

522 MISS ANGEL.

one time she had seriously thought of making music her profession. Her
voice was lovely, and her method was excellent.

They made her sing by herself when their chorus was ended, and she
tried to remember some of the peasant songs from her native Coire.
There was one upspringing melody, with wild, sweet wings (so it seemed
to Miss Dosie, who was listening in the window). The music seemed to
carry them all away into some distant life, to bring the wide rural fresh-
ness of natural things into the shining little English parlour ; to bring the
breath of wild thyme, the rush of streams, the peace and uplifting of nature
upon them all, still bound in their prim conventional order. Angelica's
own heart was eased as she sang. She herself seemed to be suddenly
convinced. It was a resurrection of hope, of reality, striking into this
harmony of sound, and expressing the sympathy of all true souls. The
notes met, embraced with heart's gladness, struck their chord, and died
away from all their ears.

Miss Jinny had been laughing and crying in her corner. When
Angelica finished she rushed up and kissed her vehemently, saying,
11 You are a dear creature ! "

CHAPTER XXVI.

FOURBE FANTAISIE.

NEXT day Angelica, her blithest self, was at her work, and had made
considerable progress before Queen Charlotte entered the gallery. Miss
Kauffmann was painting eagerly, too eagerly indeed, thinking of what the
Queen would say, of what she should say to the Queen. Her mysterious
little letter was still in her pocket. She longed to have her explanation
over, but she seemed to hear something in her ears repeating, " Wait
with patience."

Angelica was getting very tired of patience. The Queen sat with
great dignity and affability, and passed the time asking Miss Kauffmann
questions about herself, about the things she did, the way she spent her
life. Every now and then the pages came, in their black court dresses,
bringing messages and retiring immediately.

Once the door opened, and a stout lady, with a red face, walked in,
curtsied deeply, and waited for the Queen to address her, which she did
almost immediately.

" I sent for you, my good Schwellenberg," said Queen Charlotte, "that
you should see what Miss Kauffmann is engaged upon. I was sure that
she would appreciate a candid criticism upon my picture from so old and
faithful a friend as yourself."

Poor Miss Kauffmann herself felt far less assured of this fact. The
Queen had acted in all kindness, knowing her attendant's peculiarity, .and
the disfavour witlf which she viewed anything in wliich she had had no
voice.

MISS ANGEL. 523

" Yes, your Majesty," said Mrs. Schwellenberg, bustling forward, " I
Till see."

"It is necessary to know something of art to understand a picture in
this early stage," said Angelica, and she looked up doubtfully. Mrs.
Schwellenberg caught the look and the words and frowned.

" You make de eye so small," said she. " One need not be painters
to see dat."

" Are you sure of the fact?" said the Queen. " Perhaps, as Miss
Kaufimacn suggests, it is the effect of the unfinished painting."

"Oh, ver well," said Mrs. Schwellenberg. "It is as your Majesty
choose. If your Majesty ask me, I answers ; if not, I keeps my 'pinions
to me."

Miss Angel's blue eyes twinkled a little maliciously. Mrs. Schwellen-
berg retreated, and the brush went steadily on.

Presently another messenger came in, and handed a folded paper to
the Queen, which she read, and then saying, "I beg your pardon, Miss
Kauffmann," beckoned Mrs. Schwellenberg to her side. " Will you go
to the King, and remind him, from me, that Count de Horn will be here
at a little before five o'clock ? " she said, in a low voice. " He has asked
for a private interview. I will receive him in the great gallery. I am
always glad to welcome an old friend."

Mrs. Schwellenberg left the room. The message seemed simple and
unimportant enough. Angelica sat paralyzed. What had she heard ?
She tried to go on painting, but her hand trembled. She tried to speak,
but something in her throat rose and choked her words. Her heart
throbbed and throbbed with strange passionate triumph.

"Yes, Count Frederick de Horn is a very old acquaintance of mine,"
the Queen continued, half to herself, half addressing the painter. *' He
distinguished himself in the late war. He has come over on a special
mission to the King."

" Oh, Madam ! " said Angelica, rather wildly.

The Queen was preoccupied, and did not notice her agitation. After
a moment's silence she spoke again. " Pray, Miss Kauffmann, if it is not
disagreeable to you to answer, tell me is this rumour true that I hear
concerning you and Mr. Eeynolds, and am I to congratulate you upon
your approaching marriage ?"

Here was an opening. Did the Queen suspect already ?

"No, Madam," said Angelica, faltering; " that is not true, but "

"But there is someone else," said the Queen, graciously; and as she
spoke she glanced at Angelica's left hand, upon which her wedding-ring
was shining.

" That ring tells a story, perhaps," said Queen Charlotte, gravely.
" Since when is it the custom for young unmarried ladies to wear wed-
ding-rings ? "

Angelica blushed crimson ; but what did it matter ? He was come. The
hour was come. Triumphant, palpitating, dazzled, she forgot everything

524 MISS ANGEL.

save that the supreme moment had arrived. Here was the Queen, august,
all powerful. Here was her hero close at hand. It seemed to her that
she could hear his horses' feet in the courtyard below. With beating
heart, with hands tremblingly clasped, she stepped into the great light of
the window, and stood before the amazed Queen Charlotte.

"Madam, you have guessed all ; your Majesty can read all hearts !
Yes, it is true that my ring tells a story. Your clemency alone can make
it a happy one."

The Queen's look was scarcely encouraging. Queen Charlotte, as it
is well known, had an aversion to extremes of feeling and vehemence of
expression.

As for Angelica, no sooner had she heard her own voice than she
suddenly remembered her promise, all de Horn's warnings — remembered
that she had not yet leave to speak, and the words died away upon her
lips. She turned faint and giddy.

"You are ill," said the Queen, rising.

" No, Madam," said Angelica, recovering herself with a great effort.
" Will your Majesty excuse me if I have for a moment forgotten my self-
control ? "

Dignified Queen Charlotte relaxes her stern frown — the lovely, im-
ploring face before her is almost irresistible.

" I see you are much agitated," she said, " and I have little time to
give you at this minute. You can wait in Mrs. Schwellenberg's apart-
ment, and speak to me after the audience."

And, almost at that instant, once more the attendants entered, and
Mrs. Schwellenberg herself returned, with another deep curtsey. Angelica
hardly knew what happened, hardly heard what they all said. Did not
some one tell her to wait, that Mrs. Schwellenberg would return ?

Then they all went away, and she was left alone. Was he come ?
Was it thus they were to meet, as in some fairy tale, at the summit of
prosperity and success ? . . . .

Angelica's agitation was too great for her to keep quiet. Although
she said to herself that all was well, some secret feeling almost over-
whelmed her at times. A sudden terror had come after her passing
conviction. At one moment she felt safe at the end of her troubles, the
next instant seemed to terrify her, overwhelm her with terrors of every
Bort. She began pacing the room impatiently ; she could scarcely endure
the suspense. Presently it occurred to her that she might return into the
tapestried chamber, from whence she could see the courtyard, see him.
descend from the carriage, and perhaps recognize her husband's liveriesx
if he had come in state, with his coach and servants in attendance.

She opened a wrong door somehow, and found herself in a dark and
lofty lobby, vaulted, lighted by many windows, that all opened upon the
great staircase, where pages were standing and people passing. Some
servants came up the steps; a soldier standing by presented arms.
Then a red-haired man dressed in black passed by, carrying his cocked

MISS ANGEL. 525

hat under his arm ; he looked up at a picture as he passed, and Angelica
saw him very plainly. It was a face utterly unknown to her. A secretary
with papers followed, then two more servants in the well-known green
liveries.

They swept along the marble and disappeared through a great doorway,
which was not closed behind them. At the same moment Angelica came
out to the head of the great staircase, and watched them walk away along the
great gallery towards the inner room where the King was to receive them.

As the last person in the train disappeared, Angelica turned to one of
the pages standing by. " Who was that ? " she said.

The young man looked surprised at the unexpected apparition of a
powdered lady coming out from the apartments unattended.

" That is the Swedish Envoy, Colonel Count Frederick de Horn, on
his way to an audience with the King," he answered, in an oracular voice,
and then he turned away and went to join the others standing by the fire
down below.

Frederick de Horn ! She staggered, put her hand to her bewildered
head, and shrank back through the door by which she had come out, into
the room where she had been at work.

Was that Frederick de Horn ?

It was some one who had taken the name ? Some impostor, some
wicked person. She did not know how the time passed; she stood
petrified with a thousand thoughts, almost too painful to realise. Suspi-
cions crowded upon her. She hated herself; she would not suspect. She
waited, that was all she could do ; waited until the door opened, and
some one entered, not the Queen, alas ! but her fierce and fat attendant.

" Her Majesty bids you come in my rooms," said Mrs. Schwellenberg ;
" she is now with de Count. She vill come back to hear vat you 'ave to
say. She will not be long. De Count — I know vat he come for. De
Queen cannot 'elp him. Prepare yourself, Miss," and she gave a snort
and looked at Angelica from head to foot ; " I tink I can guess it all vat
you 'ave to say."

" Can you guess ? " said poor Angel. " How can you guess ? "

" I know many tings," said Mrs. Schwellenberg. " Frederick de
Horn, he often ask my advice. I have stayed at his castle at Hafvudsta.
He make a stupid marriage. He did not come to me den," said the
malicious woman. " Dat is what 'appens when one is not particular ;
people is made fools off."

"What do you mean? Have you seen Count de Horn now?"
persisted Angelica, wildly. " Why is he come ? He is not the only Count
de Horn ? I myself know another who comes from Hafvudsta."

" Dere is no other," said the old woman, "only his little son.
Countess de Horn was made a fool off, by a man who lived in de house
and stole her papers and jewels, and forged his name. De Count 'ave
come to find him. Dat is von reason he is come," said Mrs. Schwellen-
)berg. " I hope he will catch de tief, and 'ang him on de gallows."

526 MISS ANGEL.

Angelica turned with a face of horror, then suddenly flashed out :

" Silence, woman," she cried, stepping forward with a swift mad fury
of indignation.

Mrs. Schwellenberg shrugged her fat shoulders, threw up her hands,
and waddled out as hard as she could go, to tell the Queen. She had
spoken by the merest chance, but Angel turned sick and pale and cold, and
gave a sort of wild cry ; she understood it all now. Now it was all clear.
Now she understood everything, the sense of something to bo dreaded.
Now she understood that poor enigmatical letter. Now she knew that
she had dimly suspected him all along. She remembered his terror at
the ball, his mysterious embarrassments and allusions. Some cruel truth
had dawned upon her. He, her husband as she called him, was the
impostor. Now — now she knew herself deceived, disgraced hopelessly —
hopelessly. She felt as if the atmosphere were choking her — as if the
Castle with all its towers and walls was crushing her down — as if the
one thing to do was to escape, to break away from this fatal spot.

To escape from it all, from the Queen's gracious maddening conde-
scension, from the little pages and round- eyed ladies in waiting, to be
herself, silent, desperate, alone, with this terrible overwhelming revelation :
this was the one idea which presented itself to Angelica's mind. A sort
of state horror seemed to her to fill the room, to come round about her,
closing in and suffocating her ; she went to a window and madly tried to
open it, but she wrenched the handle the wrong way in her agitation and
hurt her hand. With a sort of low shuddering cry she turned away, and
as she did so she caught sight of the picture of Queen Mary hanging
grimly over the door, with its ghostly emblems of scaffolds and of parting
prayers. To die, she thought, only to die, that would be less hard than
to be deceived, less hard than to deceive. She had deceived her father —
she had meant no harm, she was justly punished now. Punished — she
was disgraced, overwhelmed. It seemed to her for the first few minutes
that there was no means, no possible way of living on from day to day for
all the rest of her life, to face them all. How was it possible ? She had
mechanically taken up her cloak, and as she sought for an exit to the room
she saw her face reflected white, ghastly white, in the looking-glass. She
rushed to the door, flung it open and hurried down the gallery — anything
to get away from this cruel place, where such grief had found her out.
She left her work on the easel, her gloves lying upon the floor, her dream
of happiness broken into a thousand shreds, all scattered and dispersed.

That little procession seemed branded on her mind : the envoy with
his unknown face, the servants in their familiar livery.

The pages stared at her as she passed, but did not attempt to stop
her. A porter stood by the outer door and she signed to him to open:
her throat was too much parched for her lo speak. She came out with a,
great sigh into the open air of heaven.

MISS ANGEL. 527

CHAPTER XXVII.
NOW FROM THE CAPITOL STEPS,

THEN she heard a chiming of bells, a humming of voices in the air.
The people were passing from afternoon chapel, crossing the courtyard
with its many old Tudor gates and the archways and inner courts. The
old knights were returning to their houses, and creeping from their stalls,
where they sat Sunday after Sunday enshrined in state, with heraldic flags
waving above their heads. Angel felt inclined to seize one of them by the
hand as he passed, and say " Tell me is it true — is it all nothing, nothing ?"
The people were quietly coming out of chapel ; peaceful prayers incarnate
walking away in the shape of men and of women, some worn by time, all
cruel, all indifferent to her woe. To avoid them the bewildered woman
turned into the cloister : a great swell of organ notes pursued her. The
doors of St. George's Chapel were thrown open wide ; she flew on, looking
straight before her, with strange fixed crazed eyes. She had got into the
cloisters, and in her confusion she ran twice round the inner court with its
wooden span of arch ; then she made her way out, hurrying past a mes-
senger from the Queen, who had been sent to follow her and bring her
back. Somehow in this blind flight she came to the steps that led from
the kingly Castle heights to the wide and subject world. She saw the great
snow- streaked plain sweeping at her feet, and she longed in a mad be-
wildered way to leap forward and end it all. It was a strange wild experience
in this bright and gentle life, one tnat scarcely belonged to her nature.
Her nerves were quivering with a poignant shame, her heart was so heavy
within her breast that it seemed to weigh her down, but her feet took her
safe from habit. The town, with its streets and passengers, its toil of life,
was spread down below ; the people looking up may have seen the
poor scared figure with the flying cloak coming headlong down the
flight ; then her head turned, she could hardly keep steady, for a moment.
She was obliged to stop, to cling to the wall. This very difficulty dis-
tracted her. She reached the end of the flight safely somehow, and came
out through the archway into the street. As Angel still hurried on
down the middle of the road, she thought that. people were looking at
her. Some one stopped and spoke to her and asked if she were ill.

" Am I ill ? " said Angelica ; her own voice was quite shrill and
strange. Then she heard other voices, and her name softly called in
tones of commiseration, and without having seen that any one was approach-
ing she found herself surrounded, alone no longer. An enclosing kindness
seemed to have come between her and curious strangers : a home seemed
to meet her there in that desolate street, a home alive with kind faces and
voices and encircling arms. Four of the girls with whom she was living had
come according to their wont, walking by couples up Windsor Street to
meet their sisters returning from afternoon chapel. They had already met
Patty and Alethea with their prayer-books advancing with the dispersing

528 MISS ANGEL.

stream of chapel-goers, when the poor bewildered figure emerged from
under the archway and came flitting towards them. They hardly knew her.

"Is it? . . . it is Angelica," said Decie, springing for ward. They ran
up to her with their gentle hurrying steps and came round her as she fell
almost fainting into their arms : her head sank upon Alley's shoulder ;
Patty's kind arm was round her waist ; Dscie and Dosie stood sheltering
her from the assembling bystanders.

It was like one of the stories from some old poet's song, or one of those
allegories Miss Angel liked to paint : the pitying maidens with their kind
hearts and voices protecting the poor "stricken lady in her forlorn distress.
They did not ask what it was, but she told them then and there without
preamble. " Oh ! I have had a blow," she said, and she pressed her hand
to her aching heart. " A cruel blow. I have done wrong — and yet there
was no great wrong — and I am punished. Oh ! punished and disgraced
for all my life."

" What has happened ? " said Decie.

" It is that Queen — I know it," cried impetuous Kitty. " I wish she
were "

" Wait, Kitty," said Alethea, " she will tell us all ; " and she encircled
Angelica more closely with her arm, and they all moved forward together,
leading their poor broken guest along the road.

Angel made no resistance, feeling safe in their custody. She was utterly
broken down, utterly at an end of her strength. " I cannot keep this
secret any longer," she panted forth at last. " This morning when I woke
I thought I was married : look at my ring. It was a fortnight since he
gave it me in our chapel. Now I know — now — that those we trust de-
ceive, those we believe in are the first to turn against us ; those who have
promised to return come not. He promised he would come when he left
me, but I have never seen him since, and now — now — I know the very
name he gave me was not his own. I have seen the real De Horn, my
husband is a liar. Trust no one — no one. Take warning by me."

" Oh ! no, no, no ! " cried Decie, the eldest of the sisters, speaking with
unexpected life and passion, and suddenly striking some individual note
among them all. " Do not fear to trust ; none whom you truly love can
really deceive ; they sin against you, but they are yours — it is the law of
life."

Dosie and Patty looked strangely at their sister. They knew why she
exclaimed so passionately. Angelica was comforted for the moment.

"I pray that you are right : but is not mine a cruel story ? " she
said, with a wild sort of sob. " I know not what my fate is, if I am
married or not married, or to whom I am pledged, or from whom I received
my wedding-ring."

The girls murmured a sort of chorus of sympathy and encouragement.

" All will be explained. Father must take you home. He will make
all straight for you," they said, soothing her, and they led her on, regard-:
less of the wondering looks of the people.

MISS ANGEL. 529

As they passed across the bridge with its frozen ivy houses, they were
forced to stand up against the low parapet, while a great coach with green
liveries and footmen dragged by four horses clattered past on its way from
the Castle.

Angelica hid her face in her hands.

" That is the real De Horn," she whispered ; her sobs broke out
afresh, nor ceased till they reached the house. The young ladies almost
carried her to her room, laid her down, spent and wearied upon the bed,
brought lavender and bathed her temples.

What shall be said, for words are thorns to grief ?
Withhold thyself a little, and fear the gods.

Their kindness was so great, their sympathy so tender and unobtru-
sive, that Angel felt comforted somehow, and at last, worn by her miser-
able tears, she fell into an exhausted sleep ; from which she was only
awakened by a messenger from the Castle : the Queen wished to speak
with her again. But she was in no state to present herself before her
gracious benefactress.

Good Dr. Starr himself returned in the coach which had been sent,
with all explanations, and expressions of deep gratitude for favours received.

He came home disturbed indeed ; but, flattered by his reception. He
had not repeated all Angelica's confidence ; he had described her state and
dwelt upon her nervous feverish condition. Until something more de-
finite could be ascertained, he had, good man that he was, and the father
of daughters, felt that it might be better for Angelica's future happiness
that the story should not get abroad. He could, as he well knew, trust
his girls' prudence. Jinny herself could be silent, when desired to be
discreet.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

I KNEW THE RIGHT, AND DID IT.

ONE day soon after these events, Mr. Reynolds was painting in his
studio, when he received a letter in an unknown writing :

« Sir} — May I intrude upon your valuable time and request that you mil
come at your very earliest convenience to Mrs. Angelica Kauffmann's.
There is great trouble in the house, and your help and opinion will, I am
convinced, prove invaluable to our poor friends, whom I feel myself scarcely
competent to advise. Your obedient faithful servant,

" W. M. Starr:'

The painter went on for a few minutes painting the model before him.
It was perhaps Kitty Clive, smiling and winsome ; but after a few minutes
he found he could not continue, and he made some excuse.

" Are you indisposed? have you had some distracting summons ? "
said the sitter.

530 MISS ANGEL.

" Yes, indeed," he answered ; " it is one I cannot neglect."
Ten minutes later he was prepared to hurry off to Golden Square.
But on his very door-step he met a tall grave man, powdered and dressed
in black, who introduced himself as the writer of the note.

It was Dr. Starr, who without preamble begged to be taken into a
private room. Mr. Reynolds led him into the dining-room, and stood
leaning against the marble chimney-piece as he listened to the story which
Dr. Starr told briefly and clearly, and without much comment.

" I hear that the Swedish Envoy has left a secretary behind him in
London," said Dr. Starr, after he had briefly told the story. "I brought
the lady up to her father this morning. I found poor Mr. Kauffmann . in
the most pitiable state. It seems that a priest came to him at breakfast-
time, and revealed the whole plot. The man also hinted that for a con-
sideration he could disclose still more. I am anxious to get back. I
dread leaving these poor people without protection, at the mercy of
those villains' revelations."

" But we assuredly had best make inquiries for ourselves," said Mr.
Reynolds.

After a brief consultation Mr. Reynolds parted from Dr. Starr, and
took the direct road to Lord W.'s house. Even if he were absent, as he
feared, Lady Diana would give good advice, and she wo'uld befriend
Angelica.

Lord and Lady W. were both absent from London ; only Lady Diana
was at home alone with the children. She sent them into the garden to
play, and left her more congenial occupations of horn-book and story-
telling to listen to Mr. Reynolds' revelations. She took it all in
immediately.

" It is all true," she cried, flushing with anger. " I know it, I feel it.
I have suspected it for some time past. We have been blinded, every
one of us. Good heavens ! She must have been married that very
morning I met her. Go to her, Mr. Reynolds. I will follow ; I will come
to Golden Square and bring my friend, Sir John Fielding, with me, in less
than an hour's time. He is a magistrate ; he will know what to do."

" Let me go to him," said Mr. Reynolds; and then at her suggestion
he also walked off to the house of a certain Baron de Brandt, a Swede,
settled in London.

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Reynolds reached Golden
Square. Old Kauffmann, who had been watching for him in the hall,
admitted him in immediately. He was trembling, unshaved, unwashed ;
he caught hold of the painter's arm with his two brown hands.

" Oh, you are come at last ! " he said. " I thought you were never
coming. That fellow is upstairs. I wrote to him ; she insisted on it. He
cannot explain himself; he cannot deny his impostures. My child is mad,
is possessed," cried the old man, sinking down in a heap on the steps
that led to the upper floor. " She has forgotten her careful training," he
cried, wringing his hands ; " the example I have set her, the friends who

MISS ANGEL. 531

have honoured me in her ; she has sacrificed her peace, her life, to an
impostor."

"I fear it is too true. I have been making inquiries in several
quarters," said Mr. Reynolds,, gravely. " The real Count de Horn em-
barked at Dover yesterday, and left for Sweden. This man, whom we
have all entertained, has assumed a name to which he has no right. I
have applied for a warrant, and I have spoken to a magistrate, for there
are now rumours of a previous marriage," said Mr. Reynolds, pacing the
hall. "Lady Diana, to whom this villain had the audacity to propose
in Venice, will help us to unravel his history."

" Come, come," cried the old man, with sudden energy, rising to his
feet. " Let us confront him, monster that he is. He is upstairs with my
daughter. I would not have left them alone, but that it was her wish.
You, you are a true friend," cried the old man, suddenly flinging himself
into Mr. Reynolds' arms.

The Englishman, somewhat embarrassed, drew gently back. The old
German, repulsed by him, clung to 'the banisters, broken and trembling.
Mr. Reynolds stood looking on, full of sincerest pity and concern, scarce
knowing what to do or to say to comfort such sorrow. He himself was
very pale, his bland lips were firmly closed ; but what was his feeling com-
pared to this ?

Alas ! he wondered, would it have been better had he trusted more to
the instinct which had once led him to Angelica, which had touched him
so keenly when she held out her hand, which was still existing somewhere
in his secret heart, but kept under by his deliberate will. Would that he
could now stretch out his hand and rescue her from her sea of trouble.
Once more the mist came into his eyes, with some bitter pang of passing
remorse. Was it indeed of her, or of himself and his own material
interest, that he had thought when he left her that summer's day ?

John Joseph, who was in tears, wiped them away in a cloud of snuff
with his great coloured handkerchief, and assumed some dignity of bearing,
as they entered the studio, into which the afternoon sun was blinding.

Then suddenly old Kauffmann gave an angry leap and rushed across
the room. Mr. Reynolds stepped back ashamed and provoked beyond
words or expression of words.

The two were in the window, their backs to the light. Angelica
was standing holding to De Horn's arm, and looking up into his
face. De Horn was speaking in a low voice. She seemed to have
relented, to be forgiving all, to be listening to him, yielding quietly
to his persuasions, looking forgiveness. Her nature was utterly feeble,
unreasoning, unreliable, thought Mr. Reynolds, with mingled pity and
scorn. With a sort of shriek old Kauffmann rushed up to her, and would
have torn her away in his speechless indignation. Angelica turned : with
one hand she still held by De Horn's arm, with the other she caught
her father's angrily upraised hand.

''Listen, dearest," she said to the old man. "I wish you to know

532 MISS ANGEL.

all. He has told me all. He loves me, indeed he does, and although
he has deceived me in other ways, indeed he has not deceived me in
that. He has shown me the letter you sent him this morning by the
priest. It is a very cruel one, dear father. Have you forgotten the days
when you yourself were young and loved and were loved ? "

" Silence, unhappy girl," the old man cried. " Oh, for shame ! Mr.
Reynolds is witness that I only meant to spare you. This man is an im-
postor, a lacquey in his master's clothes, who dared to come into the pre-
sence of honest people, and to rob and to lie, and to deceive an old man and

a helpless woman. He is married already. He is perjured. He "

The words failed in his frantic agitation, and John Joseph could not
go on. De Horn's face turned to an ashy paleness. He had not
imagined that all would be so soon discovered; but for the moment in
the presence of all these witnesses, he determined to put the best coun-
tenance he could upon it.

This false De Horn, seeing his one advantage, "kept tight hold by the
little hand that seemed alone to befriend him.

" You may call me what you will," he said, not without emotion ; " but
this lady is nevertheless my wife. She was married to me at the Catholic
Chapel by the priest whom you yourself saw. She went there of her own
free will ; her goodness induces her to overlook the wrongs I have done

to her, to hold by the validity of the ceremony Come, my idol,"

he said, turning to her. "Let us leave this censorious country, where
cruel things are said and offences imputed. I will protect you in future,
and you shall never regret your confidence in me."

" Angelica ! " shrieked the poor old father, flinging himself upon her
and grasping her in his arms. " Are you mad ? Do you hear ? He is

married already. Ask Mr. Eeynolds. He is "

" Leave her," cried De Horn, in a sudden black tempest of fury,
trying to push off the old man, who stumbled and fell, perhaps feeling
that it was expected of him to do so.

Mr. Reynolds came up greatly shocked.

Angelica, with a cry, started away from De Horn, and, kneeling by her
father, raised his grey head on to her lap. He was not hurt. Seeing her
face he relented and rose immediately. It was an agonizing scene for
her — horrible, and most miserable — the most miserable of her life.

I think there is some saving grace in honesty of purpose, in truth of
feeling, that helps people out of cruel passes that seem almost insur-
mountable at the time.

Angelica could not love De Horn, she knew him too little ; but she
had some strange feeling of loyalty towards him, and his wrong-doing
could not change this. It seemed to her as if, having more to forgive
made the link that bound them even more close. As her father rose to
his feet she too sprang up and stood with steady eyes fixed on her hus-
band, eo she called him. The first accusation had seemed little to her
in comparison to this last, that of his previous marriage.

MISS ANGEL. 633

Was lie married ? She could not, would not believe it. Mr. Reynolds
could not mean that. " Oh, tell me," she said ; " you owe me the truth.
Do not be afraid ; I will not desert you." Her tones were utterly sweet,
and came from her very heart. " Are you already married ? Am not I
your wife ? " She went up to him and put her gentle hand on his
shoulder and looked at him fixedly with her two steadfast eyes.

" You are an Angel indeed," said the man, suddenly flushing up
crimson, all touched and overcome by her confidence. " This is the
truth : I have a Protestant wife in Sweden, but I myself am a Catholic,
and my marriage with her has been disputed. We were only wedded
according to Protestant rites. You, madame, are a Catholic, and the
priest assured me that the ceremony was valid."

" The case had better be tried," said Mr. Reynolds, quietly. "I
should think there would be little doubt of the verdict."

" The verdict would give her most certain and effectual release from
any promises she might have made me, were they ten times more valid,"
said De Horn, with a strange laugh. " Do you know what punishment is
reserved in this country and in my own for persons convicted of bigamy?"

Mr. Reynolds flushed and bit his lips, and began to pace the room.

" Listen, listen 1 " cried old Kauffmann, suddenly laughing in a
ghastly sort of way, and scuttling to the window, which he threw wide
open. He was almost beside himself with grief and rage, and theatrical
effects came to him naturally. He pointed to the window.

From the street below came hoarse voices, loudly shouting and
calling the last dying speeches of some malefactors hung at Tyburn the
day before.

" I know all that," said De Horn, quietly. " I have known it all the
time, and if it had not been for this lady's presence, long ago I should
have escaped the country."

Angel looked from De Horn to Mr. Reynolds, to whom she turned
with a wild appealing glance. " You are my friend, are you not ? You
promised once, you will save him now," she said, putting her hands to
her ears to shut out those horrible voices.

Mr. Reynolds stopped in his walk and took out his watch. "As it is
Miss Kauffmann's wish," he said, in a matter-of-fact voice, " it seems
to me but fair I should tell you that I have appointed a magistrate to
meet me here in half-an-hour, and that the door of the house is watched
by two men down in the street below."

" You are a friend indeed," cried old Kauffmann, coming back from
the window, trembling and croaking, and thoroughly unnerved. " Now,
you impostor! Now is our turn."

" Tell me," said Angel, walking straight up to De Horn, " have you
money to escape with ? I have but ten pounds in the house."

"Are you a madwoman?" cried her father. But Mr. Reynolds
himself now interfered. "I have brought money," he said. "I thought
it might be wanted for a different purpose;" and then very stiffly, but

534 MISS ANGEL.

not uncourbeously, " I know not, sir, by what name to address you, but
if you will accept my advice, and act upon this lady's wishes, you will
take this sum and leave the country at once and for ever. Count de
Horn, whose name you have assumed, left for Sweden this morning; but,
as I learned to-day, a secretary has remained behind with instructions to
trace you and bring the authority of the law to bear on the offences of
which you are accused."

The shadows were lengthening, the minutes seemed like hours : for one
long, long moment no one spoke.

Then De Horn came up to Angel. " Remember that you have saved a
.lost soul," he said, hoarsely. " Henceforth I believe in utter goodness and
generosity." Then to Mr. Reynolds, " You may call me by my real name,
which is De Horn," he said. " My father gave me leave to bear it ; my
mother, Christine Brandt, is a servant in a village inn."

They all looked at one another — What is that ? Angelica was the
first to move ; she was listening with alarm to every sound. "Now come,"
said she, simply taking his hand, then led the way downstairs and through
her father's bedroom into the flagged court behind the house. It was a
smutty and dismal spot, from which a door in the wall led into a shed,
through which there was an issue into a back alley ; country fields and
places were not far distant in those days from the very heart of London
itself. And De Horn knew that he was safe. " lean get home by the
hatch between this and Russell Square," he said.

" Don't go back to your lodging," said Angel. " Take my advice : for
my sake, my peace of mind, fly at once.

He lingered, looking up and down, and then with a sort of burst :
" There is only one way by which I can show you my sincerity,"
he said, " but one way in which I can merit your forgiveness for the wrong
I would have done," he repeated. As he spoke he seemed some one else,
whom Angelica had never seen before, some one almost common in tone,
altered in manner, but stricken to truth and to reality of soul and feeling, not
acting a part, but sincere in every breath and word. He looked at her with
hard sad eyes ; then he suddenly caught her in his arms. " I can only
prove to you my deep gratitude by never seeing you more," he said.
" I have no words when I think that these are the last I shall ever speak
to you."

He pressed her to his heart, and before she could utter a word he was
gone, running down the narrow alley. Some children were dancing in the
sunset. She saw his long figure darting past them. He never looked
back, he was gone. She crossed the shed and came into the stone court,
and looked up at the windows of her own home : her old father was lean-
ing out anxiously from her bedroom, and the light fell on his grey hair,
and some birds flew straggling across the sky, and all the phantoms of
the last few years came to meet her.

535

§,ri nf

THE Art of Furnishing is a term the meaning of which has recently under-
gone a very great change. Down to a few years ago it referred, in its natural
and ordinary application, to the upholsterer. Persons who had an eye to
cheapness, or who thought themselves clever at making bargains, at-
tended sales, or bought second-hand goods. But if saving money was
not a primary object, or if those who wished to economize distrusted their
own ability to economize wisely, the upholsterer had things his own way.
.Those were the days of drawing-room " suites " and dining-room " sets,"
of "centre" and "loo" tables, of "lounging," "easy," and "occa-
sional " chairs, and of many other phrases still enshrined in cabinet-
makers' catalogues. Pieces of furniture were not thought of as separate
objects. Each had its place in a little army, and was put as far as
possible into the same uniform as its fellow-soldiers. Over an orderly
system such as this the upholsterer was necessarily supreme. He sur-
veyed the field of battle, ascertained the length of his employer's purse,
and uttered the magical words, " damask," " satin," or " rep." In the new
sense of the term, the art of furnishing is scarcely applied to the uphol-
sterer at all. Houses are furnished by their owners. They represent the
taste, not of such and such a firm, but of those who have to live in them.
No doubt these amateur furnishers are still in a minority, but it is a
minority which is constantly growing, and which meanwhile makes up
for its smalmess by the unceasing activity of its proselytism. Its mem-
bers are all missionaries, for it may be safely said that whenever a house
is furnished in this new fashion, all the friends and acquaintance of the
owner are sure to hear of it. The cabinet or the secretary may have
been bought by stealth, but the happy purchaser rarely blushes to find it
fame. At all events, be the minority large or small, it is of this minority
that I propose to speak. I shall not maintain that its taste is always
good, or that the importance of the subject is always equal to the enthu-
siasm of those who talk about it. The undiscriminating admiration
expressed for old furniture is called forth by its faults as well as by its
merits ; and a mysterious sanctity is sometimes attached to the name of
Queen Anne which the intrinsic loveliness of the object which is sup-
posed to have come down from that golden age scarcely justifies. Even
at its best furnishing can claim but a modest place among the arts ; and it
would be well if young converts to the pursuit would bear this more
constantly in mind. Still it is important that it should not be altogether
banished from that glorious company. The complacent acquiescence in

536 THE ART OF FUKNISHING.

avoidable ugliness which characterized the first half of the present cen-
tury beyond all preceding periods had its influence on men of greater
mark than the upholsterer. The bad pre-eminence of that time
was as visible in the architecture of houses as in their furniture, in
the pictures which hung upon the walls as in the chairs and tables
which filled the rooms. In a country like England, in which so much
of life is passed at home, furniture plays a more important part than
it does in countries where people live a great deal out of doors. The
objects which surround them in their houses are to many persons the
objects which have most to do with giving pleasure to the eye. For
one man who has a beautiful landscape or a fine building within view of
his windows, there are thousands who, for any enjoyment to be derived
from the prospect, need never carry their eyes beyond the four walls of
the room in which they are sitting. In spite of the feelings incident to
a pursuit which has suddenly become fashionable, it is a gain to such
men that they should have something pleasanter to look at than the
contents of an ordinary furniture shop. If the crusade against the up-
holsterers has given a new attraction to home, and added one more to
the too narrow list of interests which lie beyond the range of business
life, it is a further and appreciable advantage.

The reaction against the intolerable ugliness of modern furniture was
in part identical with the earlier movement against classical architecture
and stuccoed houses. But it was long before the improvement in taste
passed from architecture to furniture. The architectural renaissance of
thirty years ago was essentially a Gothic renaissance, and the study of
Gothic art was not, in the first instance, calculated to do much towards
improving taste in furniture. The few pieces that have come down from
the middle ages are mostly of greater dimensions than can be easily fitted
to the requirements of a modern house. The furniture which became a
baronial hall could hardly be got into a London dining-room, and, when
there, would be altogether incongruous with the walls and the ceiling.
Very large rooms, on the building of which much money was spent, had
naturally a large amount of structural ornamentation. The sides were
panelled, the roof was supported by massive beams and connecting
arches, all carved or coloured. Rooms of this kind might be called
furnished the moment they had left the architect's hands, and the pieces
of necessary furniture that were afterwards added were naturally of a
grandeur and massiveness appropriate to the rooms in which they were
meant to stand. Such old oak furniture as has been successfully intro-
duced into modern rooms of moderate size has mostly been taken
from cottages, where at all times there was very little space to spare.
By-and-by, as the Gothic reaction lost some of its early force, people began
to ask themselves whether the ages of greatest excellence in Church
decoration were necessarily the ages of greatest excellence in house
decoration. This inquiry was closely connected with the feeling which
has of late been growing up in favour of the despised eighteenth century.

THE ART OF FURNISHING. 537

When objects that had been unregarded or condemned so long as no
merit was recognized in anything later than the fourteenth century came
to be compared with contemporary furniture, it was found that the gulf
between the chairs and tables of 1850 and those of a century before was
proportionably as great as that between Westminster Hall and the
National Gallery. It was inevitable that this discovery should be made
by amateurs. Even if it had been made by the upholsterers in the first
instance, it must have remained without fruit so long as there was no
public ready to accept it. Furniture is . made to sell, and there is no
room in the upholstery trade for that passionate devotion to art which
leads a painter to choose to keep his pictures unsold rather than lower
them to the popular level. A man who loves art with this disinterested-
ness will hardly devote himself to a branch of it in which so many things
besides beauty have to be considered. If the present liking for good fur-
niture lasts, the art of furnishing will in time fall once more into the
hands of professionals. Cabinet-makers will be driven — are already
indeed being driven — to follow the change of taste, and will devote them-
selves with greater or less success, first to copying, and then to continuing
the furniture of a better period. For the present, however, it may be
assumed almost universally that wherever there has been unusual success,
or even unusual effort, in furnishing, it expresses the taste or the aims of the
owner rather than of the upholsterer. It is A who has furnished his
house, not Messrs. B an<J C who have furnished it for him.

The first question which presents itself in dealing with this subject is
the precise relation between the furnisher and the collector. For rea-
sons to be explained directly the art of furnishing must for the present be
closely connected with the judicious buying of old furniture. Yet if the
two ideas are not carefully kept distinct, the result will certainly be
a failure from the furnisher's point of view. The common association of
rarity and ugliness, though unfortunately not absolutely true, since some
of the ugliest things are also the commonest, has an element of truth in
it. The collector has always an eye to the ultimate money value of the
objects he collects. He may have no intention of selling them, but the
price that they will fetch is the standard of comparison by which he
weighs his own collection against others. In the last resort it is inevit-
able that it should be so. This picture-gallery may be richer and that
poorer in the works of a particular school, but when all allowances have
been made the balance between the contents of the two must be struck by
what they would respectively fetch in the auction-room. Consequently the
collector as such will prefer rarity to beauty if the latter happens to be so
common as to carry with it no special value. But as between objects of
equal or nearly equal rarity, it is their beauty that determines their
relative worth in the collector's eyes, and as a general rule the objects
which he hankers after are more pleasing in themselves than those which
he is supposed to despise because they are common. The china col-
lector, for example, is sometimes accused of hanging his drawing-room
YOL. xxxi. — NO. 185. 26.

538 THE AKT OF FURNISHING.

with " kitchen" plates. The answer to this charge is that the blue-
and-white porcelain of Nankin is happier in its arrangement of colour,
and more successful because more restrained in its designs, than most
European wares of the same kind. There is as much difference between
a. fine blue-and-white plate and a printed willow-pattern plate taken from
the kitchen as there is between a fine water-colour drawing and a coarse
chromo-lithograph. It is true that a piece of European china, which is
in many respects inferior to the Oriental piece, will often fetch more
money. But the reason of this is partly that the taste of the collecting
public, like that of all other publics, is not uniformly good, partly that
the European piece may have some special merits, as fineness of paste or
delicacy of decoration, and partly that when a class of generally beautiful
objects is collected particular links in it may become interesting, which,
if they had stood by themselves, would have attracted no notice. When
this much has been said in defence of collectors, it must be repeated that
collecting and furnishing must be kept strictly separate. The motives
which determine a collector to a purchase are beauty — beauty, that is, in
regard to the class of objects which he collects — and rarity. In furnish-
ing, rarity must be struck out altogether, while even beauty must be treated
as secondary. The point to be chiefly considered is the effect of the fur-
niture in the particular room in which it is to stand, and every one knows
how difficult it is to decide whether this effect will be bad or good by
merely looking at furniture in a dealer's shop. You are struck with the
colour or the delicacy of marquetry, or with the simplicity or sharpness of
carving, or with some undescribable grace of design or happy employment
of material ; and you at once feel sure that the object in which these
merits are enshrined is exactly what is wanted for this corner or for that
recess. When the desire of your eyes is brought home, you perhaps per-
suade yourself for a few days that it is all you thought it would be ; after
that, this height of self-deception proves unattainable, and by degrees you
acknowledge to yourself that the only thing to be done is get it back to the
dealer's. The corner or the recess remains unfilled perhaps for some time,
until at length you feel the need of putting something there for mere use'
sake. You seize upon the first decent bit of old furniture that you come
across, and it at once proves to be the very ideal object you have been looking
for. Seen by itself, it has no remarkable merit ; seen in that particular place
and with those particular surroundings, it has very great merit indeed. Of
course it is not possible in all cases to see furniture in its place before
deciding on buying it. Indeed, pushed to extremes, the process would
necessarily result in buying nothing unless everything could be bought at
the same time,, and all stand on trial together. But the moral holds
good to this extent, that the position and surroundings of furniture are of
more importance than the furniture itself. It must be a very large house
that will allow of much furniture being bought on the principle of seeing
if you can find a place for it. The buyer must carry in his head the
space which the table or the cabinet is to occupy when he is at the

THE ART OP FURNISHING. 539

dealer's, and carry back with him when he goes home the size and shape
and character of the table or the cabinet which he wishes to put into the
vacant space.

Well then, it may be said, why should furnishing and collecting go
together in any way ? What did you mean when you said just now that
for the present the art of furnishing must be closely connected with the
judicious buying of old furniture ? Why not have all furniture made to
fit the places and to suit the character of the rooms in which it is to
stand ? In answering these questions there are three things to be con-
sidered : the special characteristics of old furniture ; the special faults
observable in new furniture of an artistic or decorative kind ; and the
difficulties which stand in the way of reproducing the characteristics of
old furniture on anything like a large scale. One eminent merit of old
furniture is implied in the mere statement that it is old. If any collector
in the latter part of the twentieth century should be so hopelessly lunatic
as to wish to surround himself with furniture made in the middle of
the nineteenth century, he will probably have to be content with fragments.
Very little of it will have survived in its integrity. By the side of a great
deal of modern furniture old furniture may at once be known by the
superiority of its workmanship. The tables stand more steadily, the
drawers open more smoothly, more care has been given to all the details.
It is true that there are particular classes of furniture in which new
requirements or new inventions have given birth to real improvements.
For example, the easy- chairs and sofas of modern times are more com-
fortable though less beautiful than the easy-chairs and sofas of a century
ago. Whether we lounge more than our grandfathers, or whether the art
of stuffing has been carried to greater perfection, new stuffed furniture,
when it is good, is better than old. But the instances in which the com-
parison yields a similar result might be told on one hand. For the most
part the furniture of the eighteenth and even of the seventeenth century
was far more nicely adapted to its object than furniture made to answer
the same purpose since. Look at the " davenport" which has so gene-
rally superseded the "bureau" or " secretary " at which ladies wrote
their letters and reckoned up their accounts a hundred years back. It
resembles its predecessor in being intended for serious work as well as
for the mere scribbling of a note, and therefore it is properly fitted up
with receptacles for papers and memoranda of all kinds. But to get at
these the writer must either raise up the desk on which her blotting-book
rests, or reach round to drawers at the side — neither of which methods are
very convenient in practice. In the old-fashioned "secretary " her papers
and account-books were arranged in drawers and pigeon-holes that faced her
as she wrote, and she could get at the contents of all or any of them
without deranging the desk in front of her or changing her position
except to raise her arm. Another merit of the best old work is its sim-
plicity. The leg of a modern table is usually covered at intervals with a kind
of wooden goitres answering no useful end, and giving no pleasure to the eye.

26—

540 THE AR± OP

The only object in introducing them seems to have been to show how
many strange excrescences can be created by the turning-lathe. The
leg of an old table goes straight down to the ground, either as a square
or as a circle, and if anything not reeded for support is introduced, it is
done so quietly and with so little pretension that the idea of support
remains the leading idea. In old furniture, if you ask yourself why such and
such a feature is present, you can almost always see that the workman had
a purpose in what he did. He meant the addition either to increase the
usefulness of his work or to make it ornamental as well as useful. The
modern cabinet maker seems seldom to have any end in view beyond
doing what he himself and everybody ?round him have been doing all
their working lives, or else doing something different solely for the sake of
change. His idea of ornamentation alternates between extravagant ex-
centricities of outline and equally extravagant juxtapositions of colours,
or, if he goes beyond this, it is usually in the direction of additional cost-
liness of material. All that he does is done because he has a vague feeling
that he must do something, not, as was the case with the old workman,
with an intention of doing a particular thing for a particular purpose. It
is obvious that this latter quality was far more calculated to lead to good
workmanship than the former. The one implies thought, the other
implies nothing more than a kind of despairing inability to think. The
man who knew why he made the legs of his cfiairs and tables in one shape
and not in another, and why he used ornamentation of a particular kind
and applied it in a particular way, would be likely to know that the function
of a drawer is to slide in and out easily, and that it is not enough that a
piece of furniture should convey the promise of solidity to the eye if the
promise is broken when it comes to wear and tear. It is not meant of
course that there is no such thing as well-made modern furniture. But
soundness of construction is a rare merit now-a-days, and it is a merit
that has to be paid for. Even after the reaction that has of late years
set in in favour of old furniture, it can still be bought more cheaply than
equally strong modern furniture.

Supposing that these merits of sound workmanship, simplicity of
design and cheapness of cost, could be secured in new furniture, would
it then be equal to old furniture ? It is plain that if it will not be equal,
at all events in essentials, the art of furnishing must by-and-by come to
an end. There is a limit to the amount of old furniture that can be
brought into the market, and at the rate at which it is now being hunted
out the supply will be virtually exhausted before many years have passed.
Fortunately, however, there is no need to place old furniture upon this
pinnacle of unapproachable merit. Centuries may roll away without
giving birth to another John Bellini or seeing a cathedral built which
shall rival Amiens or Ely, but the humble achievements of the carpenter
are not beyond the reach of common men. The causes which have
made the furniture of the nineteenth century so unsatisfactory can be
pointed out and in themselves are not past remedy. There is no neces-

THE ART OF FURNISHING. 541

sity that chairs and tables should be pretentious or badly made or covered
with ornament which is only valued because it cost a great deal of
money. These are faults which would soon disappear if the furnishing
public came to see that they are faults. It does not need an expert's eye
to detect whether a table stands firmly on its legs or a drawer moves
smoothly in its groove. It is true that an ingenious tradesman will con-
trive to conceal some facts which are exceedingly material to the perman-
ence of furniture. There may be no means of determining whether wood
is seasoned or unseasoned, except by waiting to see whether the furniture
in which it has been used gets warped by use. But, in proportion as
cabinet-makers found their work more accurately judged and appreciated,
they would set greater store by their own reputation, and be more loth to
risk loss of customers in the race after immediate profits. Indeed, it is
only fair to say that this error has never been universal. Even in the
times when taste was at its worst there have been upholsterers who
have sent out good work, and have set their faces steadily against the
general disposition to scamp everything which is not seen, and to think
that a piece of furniture has lasted long enough if it has looked well while
it has stood in the shop and has survived by a decent interval the passage
from the shop to the purchaser's house. As regards cheapness, the pro-
spect is less hopeful. When the greater cost alike of material and of
labour is taken into account, it is hard to see how furniture as good as
the old can ever be made anything like as cheaply. It may be objected
that very many new materials have been brought into use during the
present century, and that the facilities for bringing materials from all
countries have been greatly increased. But these new materials are
mostly substitutes for those formerly in use, and it is seldom that for
artistic purposes the substitute proves as valuable as the original. There
are instances to the contrary, as the displacement of the softer and
cheaper woods which were employed by carvers in the last century by
oak, but, as a rule, the new material will not lend itself to the purposes
of the cabinet-maker as readily as the old one. No w^od, for example,
has taken the place of mahogany, and the difficulty ot getting really
fine mahogany increases every day. The increased cost of material is
trifling, however, compared with the increased cost of labour. This in-
crease is of two kinds, one arising from the general rise in wages in all
trades, the other arising from the separation which has grown up between
the ordinary and the art workman. In the last century there was a great
deal of original work done by ordinary carpenters. In his very interest-
ing catalogue of the ancient and modern woodwork in the South Kensing-
ton Museum, Mr. Pollen says that the pupils of Gibbons were the
founders of an " admirable school of architectural carvers to whom we
owe the ornamental mouldings so common in the old London of the
eighteenth century." They worked in soft woods, so that no great ex-
penditure of time was needed, and if the result was a failure no serious loss
was incurred. Mr. Pollen gives the following description of a chimney-

642 THE ABT OF FDKNISHING.

piece front carved in lime-wood, probably by the father of Sir Humphry
Davy, which is now in the furniture -court in the Museum. " The cornice
mouldings are covered with delicate surface carving, and the lower member
is a small pierced battlement in the manner of Chippendale. .ZEsop's fable
of the Stork and the Fox is the subject of the centre panel ; the stork is
returning the trick of the fox, by giving him nothing but a long-necked
vase, out of which she is eatiog, while the fox is reduced to licking the
lip of the jar for his share. Little panels filled with such subjects, or
with Apollo, the Muses, and similar classical compositions, continned to
the end of the century to form the centres of chimney-piece ornament in
London houses." It would be impossible to get work of this kind done
now, except by artists of much higher mark than the carvers of the last
century, many of whom were probably little, if at all, superior to ordi-
nary carpenters. The gulf between the artist and the workman has be-
come too wide to be often crossed, and in the rare cases when it is crossed
the carpenter in becoming an artist usually ceases to be a carpenter. What
is wanted is such a diffusion of taste as shall once more bring the simpler
forms of artistic workmanship within the reach of common workmen.

The chief cause which has placed it beyond their reach is the extension
of machinery. It is not worth the while of a cabinet-maker to employ
workmen to carve the slight ornamentation which is all that is commonly
given to a chair or a table, when a machine will give him more showy
results in less time and at less cost. But machine-made ornament is
destitute of the incommunicable charm which belongs to handwork, and
unfortunately this is the one charm which makes ornament worth having.
Ornament is only beautiful in so far as it expresses the mind of the work-
man. It may be objected that if there were no machinery workmen
would still be employed in copying the same design over and over again,
and that if machinery saves them this labour it really prevents them from
becoming no better than machines themselves. If the experiment had
never been tried, this plea might have been accepted, but, as a matter of
fact, it has be^L tried, and we know with what results. The workman,
released from the necessity of copying the designs of others, has not
become a designer on his own account : he has simply ceased to possess
even that skill of hand which copying demanded. So long as he had no
choice but to acquire this, he had, at all events, the opportunity of
developing any latent acuity of design which might happen to be in him.
The power of copying other men's work is with every artist the necessary
prelude to doing original work. Machinery has made this power un-
attainable by the great majority of furniture-makers. Compare, for
example, the training which a so-called " carver and gilder " now receives
with the training of the workman who went by the same name a century
ago. A carver and gilder now-a-days is probably unable to carve anything ;
but the absence of the faculty is no inconvenience to him, because
modern frames are not carved at all : they are made of putty, moulded
to represent carving. When a frame is ordered, the carver and gilder's

THE ART OP FURNISHING 543

business is simply to choose, or ask his customer to choose, between
the various patterns with which the frame merchant has supplied him, and
to see that as many feet of the composition as are needed are strongly
fastened together and covered with the proper amount of gold-leaf. What-
ever originality there once was in the man's work has altogether disap-
peared. He no longer carves a frame out of the raw material before him,
either following strictly the copy before him or introducing such modifi-
cations in it as experience or fancy may suggest to him. He merely takes
the moulded strips which are furnished to him, mechanically fastens them
together, and then gilds them. It needs no explanation to show how little
calculated this latter process is to bring out any artistic capacity that
there may be in the man. If he were really a carver in fact as well as in
name he might, no doubt, remain a mere copyist all his life, but if there
were any faculty in him of becoming something more than a mere copyist,
it could hardly fail to show itself. As he became more perfect in his
work he would see more clearly the imperfections of his predecessors'
work, and from seeing them it would be but a short step to supplying
them. Where the example before him was itself a copy, he would come
still closer to the original ; where it was the offspring of the workman's
own fancy, he would make the reproduction more spirited or more grace-
ful. What is true of picture-frames and mirror-frames is true, more or
less, of all furniture into which ornamentation enters. Everywhere the
workman has been displaced either by the inanimate or the animate
machine, and as the first condition of making modern furniture as effective
as the furniture of the last century is to give the workman his old place,
it is scarcely possible that good furniture can ever be cheap.

The third merit attributed to old furniture, simplicity, ought to be
more within our reach. The introduction of machinery has been exceed-
ingly injurious in this respect also. The ornamental parts of furniture
have been made in large quantities, and, being ready to hand, they have
naturally been applied to various pieces of furniture without much regard
to harmony or appropriateness. Place a Chippendale chair by the side of
an ordinary ornamented modern chair and the truth of this will at once be
seen. The maker of the one has had the general idea of the chair in his
head from the first, and such ornament as is introduced has grown natur-
ally out of the needs and opportunities of the design. The maker of the
other has simply picked out from the produce of the turning -lathe
the ornaments which lend themselves most readily to his purpose, and has
then had them fastened together. This latter process is obviously incon-
sistent with simplicity, because it is inconsistent with the appropriate-
ness of part to part and of the whole to its purpose, which is a chief ele-
ment of simplicity. There is another characteristic of modern upholstery
which is equally injurious to this cardinal virtue in furniture. This is its
exaggerated eclecticism. There is no age or country which is not laid
under tribute by some of our art furnishers. Pompeian houses, French
castles, and Italian palaces may all be ransacked to supply designs for a

544 THE AET OF FUENISHING.

London drawing-room. The upholsterer never stops to consider how the
colouring which looks so pleasantly cool under the sun of Southern Italy will
suit the fog and smoke of an English winter ; how the sideboard which
seemed in its place on the dais of a vast hall will become the modest limits
to which London builders are necessarily restricted, or how the huge pier-
glasses which were in place in rooms which contained but little other fur-
niture will look amidst that crowd of objects, serving neither for use nor
pleasure, with which people who have more money than taste are so fond of
surrounding themselves. It may be objected that eclecticism is not necessa-
rily incompatible with simplicity, inasmuch as each individual object imitated
may be well conceived for its own purpose. This might be true if the
styles from which the upholsterer has to make his choice were suited to
similar social conditions. But, as was said some way back, furniture in
the middle ages was mostly intended for very large rooms, and the same
thing holds good of the furniture of the Renaissance. Consequently, in order
to adapt a Gothic or a Cinque-cento design to the use of the nineteenth
century, it becomes necessary to reduce it in -size, and when this has been
done many of the parts may appear quite out of keeping with the scale on
which they now have to be made. A so-called Gothic table, measuring
perhaps eighteen inches across, will have its legs composed of base, shaft,
and richly-carved capital. The mouse which runs under them may pos-
sibly be as much impressed by them as we are by the mighty columns which
support a cathedral roof, but a man cannot hope to put himself into this
frame of mind unless he first goes down on all fours. A real mediaeval
coffee-table would be such a table as the men and women who lived in the
middle ages would have made to hold a cup of coffee, supposing that they
had had coffee to drink, or cups to drink it out of. But all that we know
of the immense fertility and adaptiveness of Gothic invention makes it in
the highest degree improbable that such a table would have borne any
resemblance to a miniature section of a cathedral nave.

It appears, then, first, that old furniture is at present superior to
modern furniture ; next, that the qualities which make it so are not likely to
be soon reproduced in modern f tirniture ; and, thirdly, that as the quantity
of old furniture is necessarily limited, the future of the art of furnish-
ing mainly depends on the degree in which the taste of upholsterers and
of their customers admits of improvement. For the present, therefore,
the judicious furnisher will, as has been said, resort chiefly, though not
exclusively, to the shops of dealers in old furniture. By so doing he
will exercise a better influence on upholsterers than by buying the
new furniture which they offer him. So soon as the trade discover that
the present passion for old furniture is not a mere caprice, that it is quite
distinct from the taste for collecting antiquities, and has its root in a
genuine preference for certain types of furniture which were made a
century ago and are not made now, they will begin to consider whether
they cannot supply these types as well as their predecessors. It has been
seen that there are many obstacles in the way of their succeeding in such

THE AET OP FURNISHING. 545

an attempt, but some of them, at all events, are not insurmountable,
and if they are got over it will probably be by the agency of trade
enterprise.

There are two principal exceptions to this rule of preferring old furni-
ture to new. Furniture is meant for use and comfort in the first instance,
and there are some modern needs which no furniture made in the last
century will supply. Washing-apparatus is one of these. The little en-
closed washstands which our grandfathers used are much better suited for
jugs and basins of the dimensions still met with abroad than for the
larger vessels which satisfy contemporary English notions in the matter of
soap and water. Stuffed furniture is another case in point. A really com-
fortable easy-chair is a thing of recent invention, and to forego the use of
it because our forefathers were not so fortunate as to possess it would show
an entire want of comprehension of the reasons which ought as a rule to
lead to the purchase of old rather than of modern furniture. The other
exception is when you are fortunate enough to find a carpenter who can
copy old furniture and adapt his designs to the particular requirements of
his customers. Before modern workmen can improve upon old furniture
they must be able to reproduce it, so that every copy which is honestly
produced is a step towards the formation of a really good school of artistic
cabinet-makers. I say every copy which is honestly pi educed, because
there is an immense quantity of dishonest imitation in the old furniture
trade. There is more than one fashionable dealer in old furniture in
the west of London who habitually sells as old furniture a great part of
which is new. The framework usually is what it professes to be, because
as yet it pays better to buy old sideboards or secretaries made originally
in plain wood, and add the inlaying or the carving of which they were not
thought worthy, than to make the whole thing new from the foundation.
Some of the results of this " enriching " process — to use the trade term
—are quite equal to old work. At present they are degraded by the dis-
honest use to which the dealer puts them, and any one who encourages
the production of really good marquetry or carved furniture is helping the
workman to emancipate himself from a system which denies. him his
proper credit in order to enable the dealer to meet the demand for old
furniture without the trouble of hunting or the delay of waiting for it.

At this point it will probably be objected that I have said nothing to
guide a purchaser through the labyrinth of a curiosity- shop. The buyer
of modern furniture is in no difficulties on this head. He puts himself
into an upholsterer's hands, and thenceforward has only to decide between
suggestions which chiefly differ in the length of purse required to carry
them out. But amateur furnishing is assumed to be the work of indi-
vidual preference ; and if those who undertake it have no knowledge to
guide them their rooms may easily become an incongruous medley in
which age will be expected to cover every conceivable sin against taste.
Unfortunately no formula can be devised that will at once ensure a buyer
of old furniture against making mistakes. He must learn how to spend

26—5

546 THE ABT OF FUENISHING.

his money wisely, and — as in most other studies — the lessons that do him
most benefit will be those gained from his own blunders. Only a few
very general hints can here be given by way of starting him on the right
path. And first, is he to buy any description of old furniture that pleases
his fancy, or ought he to choose a particular style and stick to it ? There
is a tendency occasionally visible to make modern rooms a needlessly pre-
cise reproduction not merely of a particular century, but of a particular
decade in a century. The owner seems to have aimed at making his
friends believe that everything they see was made for an ancestor in the
year 1710 or in the year 1770. The development of styles in furniture
was not so rapid as this effort would imply. There is no necessary in-
congruity between chairs made in the reign of Queen Anne and tables
made in the reign of George III. Each period did some things better
than others, and neither was infallibly preserved against faults of taste.
If a room is furnished entirely in the first-named style, it may look
heavy ; if it is furnished entirely in the former style, it may look too
slight and fanciful. Much the same thing may be said as regards
different countries. If the furniture is exclusively of English origin,
the colouring may be too sombre ; if it is exclusively French or Ihitch
it may want repose. Still there are certain broad divisions of styles be-
tween which a choice must be made. No room would look satisfactory
if mediaeval, renaissance, and eighteenth- century furniture were mingled
in equal proportions. Occasionally, a piece of furniture belonging to one
of these periods may successfully be introduced into a room furnished,
for the most part, in the style of another period, but the experiment
always involves some risk. To which of these three periods the furni-
ture of a house should, for the most part, belong, is not a matter that
admits of question. Whatever may be the abstract merits of eighteenth-
century art, it has one quality which gives it an overwhelming claim to be
the starting-point of a furniture revival. The eighteenth century was the
first really domestic century — the first period in which life, especially life
in towns, was subjected to the conditions with which we are ourselves
familiar. It was to be expected, therefore, that whatever there was of
artistic feeling in this century should largely express itself in furniture.
If we only knew the age by the graceful women and the quaint charming
children who survive in Keynolds's pictures, we might infer that the
appointments of their houses had been as dainty and refined as their own
faces and dresses. If other periods had had the same wants to meet,
they might have met them equally well. As regards the middle ages,
Gothic art was probably capable of suiting itself to every possible variety
of circumstance and of furnishing a room twelve feet square as appro-
priately as the dining-hall of a feudal castle or the presence-chamber of
a royal palace. But Gothic art was never given the room twelve feet
gquare to try its hand on, and the contemporary artists who have
made the attempt have only succeeded in proving that they are most
successful when they copy the actual work of their predecessors. If ever

THE ART OF FURNISHING. 547

domestic Gothic becomes a living and progressive style, it may win as con-
spicuous triumphs in the region of furniture as in the region of architecture.
But at present it is wiser to go no further back than an age in which the
artistic succession had not come actually to an end, and there were still
men who took a genuine pleasure in the objects they produced, even though
those objects were of no more dignity than a table or a sideboard.

It is open to us to improve upon eighteenth- century furniture, whether
that improvement take the shape of a return to a yet earlier period or of
a wholly new development. But let us first learn to rival the eighteenth
century, to make furniture as good as was made then, with as little pre-
tension, with as little exaggeration, with the same directness of aim, with
as constant a sense that the subordination of beauty to use does not forbid
the workman to give beauty a place in his design. Nor need there be any
fear that the choice of the eighteenth century will unduly limit the freedom
of those who wish to make the furnishing of their houses a reflection of
their own taste and not a mere antiquarian exercise. The reigns of Anne
and the three first Georges in England; of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. in
France, and of the corresponding period in Holland, give ample oppor-
tunity for the exercise of individual preference. The carved mahogany of
Chippendale, the combination of mahogany and satin-wood which suc-
ceeded to it, the inlaid arabesque which was especially affected in
England, the rich colouring and floral patterns of the best school of Dutch
marquetry, the subdued tints and graceful designs which are associated
with French marquetry, may be combined in endless diversities of arrange-
ment. I cannot warrant the reader against making mistakes, but I can
assure him that, if he -uses his eyes and his brain properly, his mistakes
need not be numerous, while the pleasure of detecting them for himself
will be almost worth the money that they have cost.

548

0f

CHAPTER VI.
HABET !

ABOUT one o'clock of the day on which Moira Fergus was married, her
father returned home from the curing-house for his dinner. He was sur-
prised to find no one inside the small cottage. There were the usual
preparations, certainly — a loaf of bread and a jug of milk on the side-
table, and the big black pot hung high over the smouldering peats. He
was angry that she should not be there ; but he had no thought of what
had occurred.

In a sullen mood he proceeded to get for himself his dinner. He
lowered the black pot and raked up the peats ; then, when the steam
began to rise, he helped himself, and sate down to the small table. Moira
should pay for this.

But by-and-by, as the time passed, and there was no Moira, he began
to be suspicious ; and he had not well finished his dinner when he started
off, with a dark look on his face, for the cottage in which Angus M'Each-
ran lived. There was an old woman there who acted in some measure
the part of cook and housekeeper for Angus — a bent, shrivelled old
woman, more sulky even than John Fergus himself.

" Is Angus M'Eachran in the house ? " said he, in the Gaelic.

" And it is a foolish man you are to ask such a question ! " the old
woman said. "As if a young man will be in the house in the middle of
the day, when all the young men will be at the fishing."

With a petulant oath, Fergus went past her and walked into the
cottage. There was no one inside.

Then, with his suspicions growing momentarily stronger, he walked
away from Ardtilleach, until, at one point of the coast, he reached the
school which did service for the whole of the island. He went inside and
spoke to the schoolmaster, Alister Lewis; and Moira's younger sisters
were called aside and questioned. They knew nothing of her.

Then he went back to Ardtilleach, and by this time there was a great
commotion in the village, for it was known that Moira Fergus could not
be found, and that her father was seeking everywhere for her. The old
women came out of the hovels, and the old men came in from the potato-
fields, and the small children listened, wondering, but understanding
nothing.

" Ay, ay, it iss a ferry angry man he is, and the young lass wilj hef
many a hard word from him ; and if she will go away, what iss the reason
of it that she should not go away ?" said one.

THE MAEKIAGE OF MOIEA FERGUS. 549

" Ay, ay," said one old man, coming up with an armful of smoke-
saturated roofing, which he was about to carry to one of the small fields*,
" and iss it known that Angus M'Eachran will not go out with the
poat this morning, and young Tonald Neil he will go out with the poat,
and that wass what I will see myself when I wass coming from Harra-
bost."

This was news indeed, and it was made the basis of a thousand con-
jectures. Moira Fergus and Angus M'Eachran had gone away from
Darroch, and caught up one of the schooners making for the Lewis.
They were on their way to Stornoway ; and from Stornoway they would
go to Glasgow or America ; and John Fergus would see his daughter
Moira no more.

When John Fergus made his appearance, these gossipers were silent,
for there was anger on his face, and they feared him.

" You hef not seen Moira ? " said he.

" No," answered one and all.

" Hef you seen Angus M'Eachran then ? "

" This iss what I will tell you, John Fergus," said the old man,
who had laid down his bundle of black straw. " It wass Tonald Neil
he will be for going out this morning in the poat, and Angus M'Eachran
he wass not in the poat, and it iss many a one will say now that if
Angus M'Eachran and Moira hef gone away to Styornoway — *-"

" They hef not gone to Styornoway ! " exclaimed Fergus. " It iss a
fool that you are, Peter Taggart, to speak of Styornoway ! "

But at this moment the group of idlers was moved by a new sur-
prise ; for who should appear at the further end of the village than
the daughter of Mr. Mackenzie, the king of the far island of Borva, and
she was coming along on horseback, with her husband, a tall young
Englishman, by her side. What could this wonderful portent mean ?
Were they on their way to visit AHster Lewis, the schoolmaster, who
was a clever man and a travelled man, and had been to Stornoway,
and Glasgow, and other distant places ?

They saw her, while as yet she was some distance off, dismount
from the horse, and then her husband led the animal until he found
a post to which he tied the bridle. Then these two came along to-
gether, and the village people thought she resembled a queen, and
had the dress of a queen, and the air of a queen.

" And where is the house of John Fergus ? " said she, when she
came up, to an old woman.

The old woman was rather taken aback by this great honour, and
she hurriedly dropped a curtsey, and exclaimed, —

" Ay, iss it John Fergus ? And here is John Fergus himself! "

Moira' s father was standing apart, with sullen brows. He had a
dim suspicion that this unexpected visit had something to do with the
disappearance of his daughter.

" Mr. Fergus," said Sheila, going forward to him, and speaking to

550 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

him in a low voice, " I am going to ask you to be a kind man and
a reasonable man this day. And it is a very simple thing I hef to tell
you. It was last week that Mr. MacDonald, the minister, came to
Borva, and he was saying that Angus M'Eachran and your daughter
Moira, they would like to be married, and that you were against it "

" Iss it against it you will say ? " he broke in, fiercely. " I would like
to see "

" Let me speak to you, Mr. Fergus," said the young lady gently.
" Well, Angus and Moira did not see any use in waiting, for they knew
you would never consent, and I believe they had determined to run away
from Darroch and go to Glasgow "

" And hef they gone to Glasgow ? " demanded Fergus, in a voice that
was heard even by the neighbours, who had remained at a respectful dis-
tance.

" No, they hef not. The minister thought, and I thought, that would
be a very bad thing. I said you were a reasonable man, Mr. Fergus, and
I would go to you to speak with you, and you would listen to it, and you
would understand that a young girl does no wrong in thinking of getting
married "

" Where iss Moira ? " said he, suddenly. " You — you hef taken her
away — ay, that iss it — it iss a ferry grand laty you are, but if you hef
taken away Moira Fergus "

" Mr. Fergus," said Sheila's husband, stepping forward, "I'd strongly
advise you to be a little more civil."

" And you ! " said he, turning fiercely on this new assailant, " what
iss it to you that I will hef command ofer my own house ? And what iss it
to you to come and touch such things ? And I say to you, where iss Moira ? "

Mr. Lavender would have replied, and, doubtless, with injudicious
vehemence, but Sheila interposed.

" I will tell you where she is, Mr. Fergus," she said, quietly. "Now
you will be a reasonable man, and you will see how it is better to make
the best of what is done ; and Moira is a good lass, and — and — she is
coming now to Ardtilleach, and Angus too, and it was over at Mr. Mac-
Donald's manse to-day they were and you will be a reasonable man,

Mr. Fergus "

" At the manse!" he cried, seeing the whole thing. "And they
were married?"

" Well, yes, indeed, Mr. Fergus "

At this confirmation of his suspicions his rage became quite uncon-
trollable, and he suddenly broke upon Sheila with a flood of vituperation
in Gaelic. Her husband could not understand a word, but he saw the
girl retreat a step, with her face pale.

He sprang forward.

" Speak English, you hound, or I'll kick you down to the shore
and back again ! " he cried.

" Iss it English!" Fergus shouted in his rage. "Iss it English!

THE MAEEIAGE OF MOIKA FEKGUS. 551

Ay, it iss the English thiefs coming about the islands to steal when
the door is left open ! And it iss you, Sheila Mackenzie, it iss you
that will answer for this "

In his ungovernable passion he had raised his clenched fist in the
air, and inadvertently he advanced a step. Probably he had not the least
intention in the world of striking Sheila, but the threatening gesture was
quite enough for her husband ; so that, quick as lightning, he dealt John
Fergus a blow right on the forehead which sent him staggering backward
until he tripped and fell heavily. There was a scream from the old
women, who came running forward to the prostrate man. Mr. Lavender
turned to his wife, his face a trifle pale. •

" Are your nerves fluttered, Sheila ? " he said. " Come over to this
bench here, and sit down. Will you have a drop of whiskey ? "

Sheila was indeed trembling ; she suffered herself to be led to the
wooden bench, and there she sate down.

" Have you hurt him ? " she said, in a low voice.

" Certainly," said he. " I have hurt him, and my own knuckles as
well. But he'll come to, all right. Don't you mind him."

Mr. Lavender walked back to the group of people. John Fergus was
sitting up in the middle of the road, looking considerably dazed.

" Here, some of you folks, get me a drop of whiskey, and a clean
glass, and some water."

The request was attended to at once.

"Well, John Fergus," said Mr. Lavender, " you'll keep a more civil
tongue in your head next time I pay you a visit."

He went back to his wife and prevailed on her to take a little whiskey
and water to steady her nerves.

" It is a bad thing you hef done," she said, sadly. " He will never
forgive them now."

" He never would have forgiven them," replied the husband. " I
saw that at once. Your appeals were only making him more frantic.
Besides, do you think I would allow, in any case, a cantankerous old fool
like that to swear at you in his beast of a language ? "

" And what shall we do now ? "

" Why, go back again — that's all. We shall meet the younger folks
on the road."

" We cannot go away till you see how John Fergus is."

" Oh, John Fergus is right enough — see, there he goes, slinking off
to one of the cottages, probably his own. A little rest will do him good,
and let his temper cool. Now, Sheila, pull yourself together ; you've got
to entertain a distinguished guest on board the yacht this evening, and
we must not lose time."

Sheila rose and took her husband's arm. As they walked along to
the post where the horse was tied, the villagers came up to them, and
more than one said, —

" Ay, ay, sir, it wass ferry well done, and a ferry goot thing whateffer,

552 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

that you will teach John Fergus to keep a civil tongue, and he is a ferry
coorse man, and no one will dare to say anything to him. Ay, and to
think that he would speak like that to Miss Sheila Mackenzie — it wass
well done, ay, and ferry well done."

" But he is not hurt ? " Sheila said.

" Well, he iss hurt, ay, and he iss not hurt ; but he will be going to
lie down, and when he gets up again, then there will be nothing ; but he
iss ferry wake on the legs, and there iss no more anger in his speech — no,
there will be no more anger now for the rest of this day whateffer."

So Mr. and Mrs. Lavender went away from Ardtilleach, the latter
rather down-hearted over the failure of her enterprise, the former endea-
vouring to convince her that that might have been expected, and that no
great harm had been done. Indeed, when in crossing the lonely moor-
land road, they saw Angus M'Eachran and Moira Fergus at a great dis-
tance, coming toward them, Sheila " lifted up her voice and wept," and
it was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her. She dismounted
from the saddle, and sate down on a block of silver-grey granite by the
roadside, to await Moira's coming ; and, when the young Highland girl
came up, she could scarcely speak to her. Moira was infinitely perturbed
to see this great lady grieved because of her, and, when she heard all that
had happened, she said, sadly, —

" But that iss what I hef expected, and there wass no other thing that
I hef expected. If there wass any chance of getting a smooth word from
my father, do you think, Mrs. Laffenter, that Angus M'Eachran and me
we would be for going away to Glassgow ? "

" It is a bad home-coming after the wedding that you will hef," said
her friend.

" Yes, indeed, but we hef looked for that ; and it iss a great thing you
hef done for us, Mrs. Laffenter, in coming all the way from Borva to the
wedding ; but we will not forget that ; and it will be remembered in the
island for many a day. And now you will be for going on to the manse,
Mrs. Laffenter."

" Moira," said her friend, " we are going away to London in a day or
two now, and I would like to hef a word from you, and you or Angus will
send me a letter, to tell me what is going on in Darroch."

" Indeed, yes," said Angus, " and they will know you ferry well in
London if we send the letter, or iss there more ass one of the same name
in London? "

" You must have the address," said Mr. Lavender, getting out a card.

He looked at the card as if it were some strange talisman ; then he
put it in his pocket ; there was a little hand-shaking, and the bride and
bridegroom went on their way.

" Moira I " Mrs. Lavender called out, suddenly.

The girl turned and came back ; she was met half way by her friend,
who had a great sympathy and sadness in her eyes.

" It is ferry sorry for you I am this day," said Sheila, in a low voice,

THE MAKBIAGE OF MOIEA FERGUS. 553

" and there is not anything I would not do to hef got for you a better
home-coming. And you will speak to your father, Moira — not now, when
he is in his anger — but afterwards, and perhaps he will see that what is
done is done, and he will be friends with you."

" I will try that, Mrs. Laffenter," said the girl.

" And you will send me a letter to London ? "

" Oh, ay, I will send you the letter to London, and it will be a proud
day for me the day that I will send you a letter and you will not say
a word of it to any one, Mrs. Laffenter, if there iss not the ferry goot
English in the letter, for it iss Angus he can write the goot English
petter ass me."

" Your English will be good enough, Moira," said her friend. " Good-
bye."

So again they parted ; and that was the last these two saw of each
other for many long days and months.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FIRST CLOUD.

IT was well on in the afternoon when Angus M'Eachran and his young
wife reached Ardtilleach ; and by that time one or two of the boats had
come in from the ling fishing ; so that there were a good many people
about. And there was a great commotion in the place over the news of
what had happened — a commotion such as had not shaken Ardtilleach
since the foundering of the French schooner on Harrabost Head. More-
over, two or three of the young fellows took solemn oath in the Gaelic
that they would not allow Angus M'Eachran's wedding to pass over without
a dance and a dram, whatever was thought of it by John Fergus, who
remained sullen, sour, and ashamed in his own home.

There was a great deal of hand-shaking when the bride and bridegroom
arrived ; and many were the good wishes expressed by the old women
about the future of Moira. The young girl was grateful ; but her eyes
kept wandering about the place, apparently seeking for her father.

There was no time to organize a great entertainment, as was done when
Alister Lewis, the schoolmaster, married Ailasa MacDonald, a young lass
from Killeena ; but one of the curers — the very curer, indeed, who was
John Fergus's master — came forward in a handsome manner, and said
that if two or three of the young fellows would begin and roll some
barrels aside, he would tender the use of his curing-house, so that some
frugal supper and a dance might be possible. This was done in due time,
and Angus' s companions set to work to hold some little feast in his
honour. One went away, declaring that he would himself, as sure as he
was a living man, bring six gallons of whiskey to the curing-house.
Another, a famous musician, went off for his fiddle. Another declared
that it would be a shame, and a very great shame, if Alister Lewis were
not told of the approaching celebration, and immediately set out for the

554 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

school-house. Then the boys about obtained permission from old Donald
Neil to gather the potato-shaws out of his field, and these they brought
to the point of the shore outside the curing-house, so that, when night
came, a mighty bonfire and beacon should tell even the ships out at
sea that great doings were going on on land.

Angus M'Eachran was very_proud of all this, and very glad to bo
among his own people again. The ceremony over there at the Free
Church Manse had rather frightened him; now he felt at home; and,
having drunk a glass or two, he^was as anxious for a dance as any one.
But with Moira the case was very different. Of all the crowd, she was
the only one who was anxious, sad, and preoccupied. She had none of
the quick laughter of a bride.

" Ay, and what iss the matter with you, Moira ?" said her husband.
" There iss nothing the matter with me, Angus," she replied ; but the
wistful and anxious look did not depart from her face.

Well, there was not much of a supper that night, and, indeed, many
did not go into the curing-house at all, but remained outside, where
dancing had already begun on a rocky plateau, covered with short sea-
grass. It was a lovely night — the wonderful glow of the northern twilight
shining over the dark heavens, and the stars gradually becoming more
distinct on the smooth surface of the sea. There was a fresher air out
here on the rocks than in the heated curing-house, and the whiskey was as
good outside as in.

Then a great shout arose, for the boys had put a light to the bonfire,
and presently the long, lithe tongues of fire began to leap up, while the
young men took to performing feats of jumping through the flames. In the
excitement of the moment the curer, who had had a glass, became reck-
less, and ordered the boys to bring a heap of driftwood from the curing-
house. Then, indeed, there was a bonfire — such a bonfire as the shores
of Darroch and Killeena had never seen before. There was a great noise
and confusion, of course, friend calling to friend, and the old women trying
to prevent the boys from springing through the flames.

In the midst of all this noise Moira slipped away from the side of her
husband. She had been inside the curing-house, and there her health
and the health of her husband had been loyally drunk, and she had gone
round the whole company, shaking hands with each, while she said
« Shlainte !'" and put her lips tof the whiskey. The cry of " The fire ! "
of course called everyone out, and in the crowd she was separated from
her husband. She seized this opportunity.

The great red glare was shining athwart the hollows in the rocks, and
even lighting up palely the fronts of the cottages of Ardtilleach, so that
she had not much fear for her footing as she passed over to the road.
There seemed to be no one left in Ardtilleach. There was not a sound to
be heard — nothing but the distant voices of the people calling to each
other round the bonfire. All the fishermen, and the young women, and
the old folks, and the children had gone out to the point.

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 555

Moira went rapidly along the cottages till she came to her father's,
her heart beating hurriedly. When she reached the door a cry of fright
had nearly escaped her, for there was her father — his face partly lit up by
the reflection of the red light — sternly regarding her. He did not move
to let her pass into the house. Ho did not say a word to her ; he only
looked at her as if she were a dog, a boat, a piece of stone. Rather than
this terrible reception, she would have had him break out into a fury of
rage.

She was not prepared for it ; and after the first wild look of entreaty,
she turned her eyes to the ground, and stood there, trembling and
speechless.

" Hef you no word for me ? " she said at length.

" None ! " he answered.

He seemed to be regarding the distant bonfire, its long shoots of
flame into the black night, and the alternate dusky and red figures
moving round it.

* ' It wass many a time," she began, in desperation, hoping to make
some excuse ; "it wass many a time, I will say to you -"

"Do you hear what I hef told you ? " said he, fiercely. " I hef no
word to speak to you — no, not if you wass to lif in Ardtilleach for sixty
years. To-morrow you will be to me as if you wass dead ; to-morrow,
and the next day, and all the years after that. You hef gone away ; ay,
and you shall stay away, Moira Fergus ! I hef no more speaking for you,
nor for Angus M'Eachran ; and it iss a foolish man Angus M'Eachran
will be if he comes near me or my house."

" Father— only this "

"I tell you, Moira Fergus, to go away; or, by Kott, I will tek you,
and I will trag you out to the curing -house, and put you among your
trunken frients ! That iss what I will do, by Kott ! "

His vehemence frightened her ; she went back a step, and then she
looked at him. He turned and went inside the cottage. Then there was
nothing for the girl but to go back to her friends, whose shouts still re-
sounded through the silence of the night.

" Ay, and where hef you been, Moira ? " her husband said, he alone
having noticed her absence.

" I wass down to my father's house," she answered, sadly.

" And what will he say to you ? "

" He bass no word for me. To-morrow, and the next day, and all the
time after that, I will be just as one that iss dead to him ; ay, ay, sure
enough."

" And what of that ? " her husband said. " Tit you not know that
pefore ? And what iss the harm of it ? It iss a ferry goot thing indeed
and mirover that you will be away from a coorse man, that wass ferry
terriple to you and to all his neighbours. And it iss ferry little you hef
to complain apout, Moira ; and now you will come and hef a tance."

" It iss not any tance I will be thinking about," said the girl.

656 THE MARRIAGE OP MOIRA FERGUS.

He became a little impatient.

" In the name of Kott, what iss it you will want, Moira ! It iss a
strange thing to hef a young lass going apout ferry sorrowful on the tay
of her wedding. And it iss many a one will say that you are not ferry
glad of the wedding."

That was true enough. It was remarked that, whereas everybody
was ready for a dance and a song, only Moira seemed to care nothing
for the dance and the song. But the old women knew the reason of it ;
and one said to the other —

"Ay, ay, it iss a hard thing for a young lass to go away from her own
home to get marriet, and it iss ferry strange she will be for a time, and
then she will heed that no more. But Moira Fergus, it iss ferry pad for
Moira Fergus that her father iss a coorse and a wild man, and she will hef
no chance of being frients with him any more ; and the young lass — well,
she is a young lass — and that will trouple a young lass, indeed and
mirover."

But these shrewd experiences had no hold of Angus M'Eachran. His
quick Celtic temperament resented the affront put upon him, on his very
wedding day, by the girl whom he had married. The neighbours saw she
was anything but glad ; and the young man had it in his heart to say,
" Moira, if you are sorry for the wedding, I am too ; and sorrier still that I
cannot go and have it undone." He moved away from her.

By this time the tumult round the bonfire had subsided, for now nothing
but smouldering ashes were left, and the people had formed again into
dancing groups, and talking groups, and drinking groups — perhaps the
first two ought to be included in the third. Angus M'Eachran would not
dance at all ; but he had recovered his temper, and once or twice he went
and said a friendly word to Moira, who was standing with some of the old
women looking on at the reels. But what had fired this other young
fellow to call out : —

" Hey ! there iss one man not here this day, and, by Kott, he ought
to be here this day. And he iss a foolish man and a madman that will
stay at home when his own daughter is being married ! "

" Ay, ay ! " said two or three.

" And this iss what I say," continued the fisherman, who had evi-
dently had a glass. " I am going ofer to John Fergus's house ! "

" Ay, and me too," responded one or two of his companions.

" And we will hef a joke with him," cried one.

" Ay, ay, and we will hef him out ! " cried another.

" We will put a light to his thatch ! " cried a third. " And you will
see if John Fergus will not come out to his daughter's wedding ! "

At this, Moira darted forward before them.

"If there iss one of you," she said in an excited way, "if there iss
one of you will go near to my father's house this night, this iss what I will
do — I will go and jump ofer the rock there into the water."

" Ay, ay," said her husband, coming forward rather gloomily, "it iss

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 557

no use the having a joke with John Fergus. Let John Fergus alone. If
he will not come out to his daughter's wedding, that is nothing to any one
— it iss a ferry goot thing there are others that hef come to the wed-
ding, and ass for John Fergus, he will be ferry welcome to stay at home
this night, or the next night, or the next fife huntret years, and tarn himl "
So that matter passed over, and the merrymaking was resumed — the
fiddler having illimitable calls on him, and the very oldest determined to
show that they had not altogether lost the use of toe and heel. There
was no lack of whiskey ; and altogether the improvised entertainment in
honour of the wedding of Moira Fergus became a notable and memorable
thing. But there were two or three present who remarked that Moira
looked very sorrowful ; and that Angus M'Eachran was not so well pleased
with her as a husband should be with his newly-married wife.

CHAPTER Vllf.
AN INTERMEDDLER.

JOHN FERGUS kept his word : his daughter was as one dead to him. When
he passed her in the village, he had neither look nor speech for her ; and
then she went home with a heavy heart. At first her husband tried to
reason with her about her unavailing silence and sadness ; but he soon got
tired of that, and impatient, and glad to be out with his companions in
the boat, or on the beach, where a laugh and a joke was possible.

" What, in the name of Kott, iss the use of it, Moira ? " he would
say to her, when he was near losing his temper. " Hef you not known
all along that your father, John Fergus, would hef no word for you if
you wass to go and get married ? Hef I not told you that ? And it wass
many a time you will say to me, ' Angus, I cannot stay longer in the
house with my father ; ' and then I hef said to you, ' Moira, it will be a
ferry tifferent thing when you hef a house to yourself, and you will be the
mistress of the house and no one will speak a coorse word to you.' And
now you hef no more thought of that — you hef no more thought of any-
thing but your father — and this iss what I will say to you, Moira, that
no man hass the patience with a wife who iss discontented from the
morning to the night, and it iss many's the time I hef wished you could
go back to your father — and tarn him ! "

In due course of time, and in fulfilment of her promise, Moira sate down
one day and wrote a letter to Mrs. Lavender, who was still in London.
This letter she brought to her husband, asking him to address it for her,
and hinting that he might look through it, for she was better at spelling
the Gaelic than the English. Angus got a pen and sate down.

He had not read far when an angry light came to his eyes. Moira's
letter to her friend was not the letter which a young wife might be expected
to write. It was very sad and mournful ; and it was all about her father, and
the impossibility of conciliating him. There was not a word in it of her

558 THE MAERIAGE OF MOIBA FERGUS.

husband, or of his project of building a cottage with a slate roof, or of
the recent state of the fishing around the coast. It was all her father,
and her father, and her father ; and the young fisherman's face grew
dark. Finding that she had gone outside, he got another piece of paper
and wrote as follows : —

" This is what Moira haz to tell to you, Mrs. Laffenter, and this is
all she haz to tell to you, and it is not ferra much whatever. But there
is another word I would say to you that Moira haz not said, and when a
man marries a wife, is not to be triffen out of the house that he will
marry a wife, and this is what haz come to us, that Moira she will think
nothing of from the morning to the night but the quarrel with John
Fergus, and it is not any other thing she will think of, and there is no man
will haf the patience with that. And that is how we are, Mrs. Laffenter,
and you will not trouple yourself to say a word of it to Moira, for I haf
said a great many things to her ; but it is no use there is in them, and all
the day she will haf no word for me, and no laugh or a joke like a young
lass, and it is the Gott's mercy there will be one or two young men about
or I would go away to Glassgow indeed and mirover. And you waz ferra
kind to us, Mrs. Laffenter, and it is no great gladness I haf in telling you
the story, but I waz thinking if you got Moira's letter you would be for
writing to John Fergus, and there will be no use in that at all. And I am
your obedient servant to command, Angus M'Eachran. The feshen haz
been ferra good round about Darroch since you waz here, but a man haz
no heart to go to the feshen when he comes back to a discontented house."

He did not show Moira that second letter — he knew that remonstrance
was of no avail ; he merely inclosed it in the same envelope and ad-
dressed that to Mrs. Lavender in London.

A day or two afterwards Mr. MacDonald, the minister, came over to
Ardtilleach, and he was a short distance from the village when, to his
great surprise, he saw Angus M'Eachran sitting out on the rocks over
the sea, in the company of old Donald Neil, and both of them making
very merry indeed, as he heard from their laughing. The minister crossed
over to them. They were seated on the dry turf of the rocks ; and there
was a black bottle and a single glass between them.

"And are you ferry well, Angus ?" said the minister. "And you,
Donald Neil ? And it wass no thought of seeing you, Angus, that I had
this tay. You are not at the fishing ? "

"No," said the young man, with some embarasssment. " A man
cannot always be going to the fishing." A

" I do not think," said the minister, "no, I do not think, Angus
M'Eachran, there iss any young man but yourself in the whole of
Ardtilleach this tay — except the young men in the curing-houses."

" Well, well ! " said Angus shortly ; "iss there any one of the young
men hass been so often to the fishing ass I hef been, and where iss the
one that hass ass much money in the bank at Styornoway ? "

" Ay, ay," said the minister, " that iss a goot thing, and a ferry goot

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 559

thing, mil-over ; and you will find the goot of the money when you will
pegin to puild the cottage with the slate roof. But the money will not
get any the bigger, Angus M'Eachran, if you will stay at home on the fine
tays for the fishing, ay, and if you will sit out on the rocks trinking
whiskey in the middle of the tay ! "

The minister had grown a trifle vehement.

" There iss no harm in a glass," said Angus M'Eachran, gloomily.
" There iss no harm in a glass ! " retorted Mr. MacDonald, with
impatience. " There iss no harm in a glass — ay, I know there iss no great
harm in a glass if you will meet with a frient, and when the work iss tone,
and then there iss no harm in a glass. But there iss a harm, and a ferry
great harm, in it, Angus M'Eachran, if a young man will gif up his work,
and tek to trinking in the middle of the tay — and not a glass, no, but
a bottle — and it iss too much whiskey you hef trank this tay, Angus
M'Eachran."

The young man made no protestation, no excuse. He sate moodily
contemplating the rocks before him. His companion, the father of the
young man who had taken Angus' s place in the boat, was uncomfortably
conscious of guilt, and remained silent.

"I do not know," Angus said at length, "I do not know, Mr.
MacDonald, that I will go any more to the fishing."

" Hey ! " cried the minister, " and iss it a madman you are, Angus
M'Eachran ? And what will you do, then, that you will go no more to
the fishing ? "

" I do not know," he said, gloomily. " Ifc iss not anything I hef the
heart to do, unless it will be to go away to Glassgow ; there iss not anything
else I hef the heart to do."

"To Glassgow!" cried the minister, in angry excitement; "you,
Angus M'Eachran ! Ay, it iss once before I will stop you from going to
Glassgow ! "

" And that was ferry well done ! " said the young fisherman, with a
bitter laugh, " and there wass much goot came of it, that we did not go
away to Glassgow. Well, Mr. MacDonald, I will say nothing against you
for that. It iss no fault to you that Moira and me — well, it iss not any
use the speaking of it."

The minister turned to the old man.

" Tonald Neil, get up on your feet, and go away ofer to the road
there. It iss a few words I hef to say to Angus M'Eachran."

The old man rose with some difficulty, and hobbled away over the
rocks. No sooner had he gone than the minister, with an angry look in
his face, caught up the black bottle, dashed it down on the rocks below,
where the remaining whiskey spurted about in all directions.

" The teffle — and tarn him ! — tek effery drop of the whiskey you will
trink in the tays when you should be at the fishing, Angus M'Eachran,

and you with a young wife "

" A young wife 1 " cried the fisherman bitterly (paying no attention to

560 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS*

the destruction of the whiskey) ; " it iss no young wife I hef, Mr.
MacDonald. It iss a young lass I hef marriet — yes, that iss true enough
whateffer — but it iss a young lass that hass no thought for her husband,
and hass no laugh or a joke at any time, and that sits by herself all the
day, with her crying and her tiscontent, and will say no word when you
reason with her ; and iss that a young wife ? No, py Kott, Mr. MacDonald,
that iss no young wife — and why should I go to the fishing ? "

" Ay, ay, Angus M'Eachran," said the minister, "this iss a ferry pad
story you hef told me this day, and it wass no thought of this I had when
you were married ofer at the manse, and when Mrs. Laffenter will come
back in the evening, and when she was ferry sorry that John Fergus wass
an angry man, I will be saying to her, ' Mrs. Laffenter, it wass effery one
knew that pefore ; and it wass no shame to you, and no fault to you, that
he wass still a foolish man. And Moira Fergus, she will be petter, ay, and
ferry much petter, to go and lif with Angus M'Eachran than with John
Fergus, and it iss a ferry goot thing you hef done this tay, and it iss ferry
kind of you to come all the way from Borva.' "

" Ay, ay," said Angus, " that wass well said, Mr. MacDonald ; for
who could hef told that this would come out of it ? "

" But you must hef patience with the lass, Angus," the minister said,
" and you will say a word to her "

" I will say a word to her! " exclaimed Angus, with a flash of fire in
his eyes. "Iss it one word, or fife huntret tousant words I hef said to
her ? No, I will say no more words to her — there hass been too much
of that mirover. It iss to Glassgow I am going, and then she will go back
to her father — and tarn him 1 "

" Then you will be a wicket man, Angus M'Eachran ! " exclaimed the
minister, "ay, a foolish and a wicket man, to think of such things 1 And
what will you do in Glassgow ? "

" I do not know."

" No, you do not know ! You will take to the whiskey, that iss what
you will do in Glassgow. Angus M'Eachran, I tell you to put that out of
your head ; and when I come back from the school-house, ay, I will go
and see Moira, and I will say a word to her, but not any word of your
going to Glassgow, which iss a foolish thing for a young man to think of."

He did as he had promised ; and on his entering Angus M'Eachran's
house he found Moira alone.

" Well, well," he said to her, " it iss a goot thing for a young wife to
be tiligent, and look after the house ; but there iss more ass that that iss
wanted of a young wife — and I hef just seen Angus M'Eachran, Moira."

" Ay," said the girl, rather indifferently ; " and hass he not gone out
to the fishing ?"

" No, he hass not gone out to the fishing ; and this iss what I hef to
say to you, Moira, that unless you take care, ay, and ferry great care, ay,
he will go out to the fishing not any more."

She looked up quickly, and in fear.

THE MAERIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 561

"Is Angus ill?"

" 111 1 Ay, he is ill; but it iss not in his pody that he iss ill. He
iss a fine, strong young man, and there iss many a young lass would hef
been glad to hef Angus M'Eachran for her husband ; and now that he iss
marriet, it wass you, Moira, that should be a good wife to him. And do
you know why he is not at the fishing ? It iss bekass he hass no heart
to go to the fishing. And why should a young man hef no care for his
work and his house ? — unless this, Moira, that the house is not agreaple
to him."

The girl sighed.

" I know that, Mr. MacDonald," she said. " It iss many's the time
Angus will say that to me."

" And in Kott's name then, Moira," said the minister, indignantly,
" why will you not mek the house lighter for him ? Iss it nothing to you
that your husband will hef a dull house, ay, and a house that will trife
him into idleness such as no young man in Ardtilleach would speak of '?
Iss it nothing to you, Moira ? "

The girl turned to him, with her eyes full of tears.

" Iss it nothing to me, Mr. MacDonald ? Ay, it iss a great teal to
me. And it iss many the time I will say to myself that I will heed no
more the quarrel with my father, and that if he will go by in the fillage
without a look or a word, that will be nothing to me. But it iss ferry
easy, Mr. MacDonald, to say such things to yourself ; and it iss not so
ferry easy for a young lass to hef a quarrel with her father, and that all the
neighpours will see there iss a quarrel, and not a look or a word between
them not any more ass if they wass stranchers to each other. Ay, ay,
that iss no light thing for a young lass "

"Well, I hef no patience with you, Moira," said the minister.
" Wass not all this pefore you when you wass getting marriet ? "

" Ay," said the girl, with another sigh, " that iss a true word. But
there are many things that you will expect, and you will not know what
they are until they hef come to you, Mr. MacDonald, — and — and "

" Well, well, well ! " said the minister, rather testily, " now that it
hass come to you, Moira, what iss the use of fretting, and fretting, and
fretting ?"

" There iss not any use in it, Mr. MacDonald," she said, simply.
" But it iss not effery one will be aple to put such things out of the mind
. — no, that iss not easy to do."

He stood about for a minute or two, impatient, angry, and conscious
that all his reasoning and arguments were of no avail.

" I will go ofer to the curing-house," said he, " and hef a word with
your father."

" Mr. MacDonald, you will hef the trouble for nothing. What will
you do when Miss Sheila Mackenzie will not be aple to do anything ?
And it iss many a one in the fillage hass gone to my father — and it iss
always the same — he will hear no word of me ; and if they hef peen

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 185 27.

562 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

anxious and ferry anxious, then he will get ferry angry, and they hef come
away more afrait of him than effer. No, that iss no use, Mr. MacDonald,
the going to my father at the curing-house."

" Then it iss a last word I hef to say to you, Moira," said the minister
in an altered tone, as he stepped forward and took her hand. " You are
a good lass, and you are not willing to do harm to any one. It iss a great
harm you are doing to Angus M'Eachran — ay, indeed, Moira, you hef
goot cause to wonder — but that iss true, and it iss a great harm you are
doing to yourself. For if there iss no lightness in the house, a young
man will not stay in the house, and if his wife iss always fretting and hass
no laugh for him when he comes home, he will hef it in his heart not to
come to the house at all, and that iss ferry pad for a young man. And
you must try, Moira, to get rid of your fretting ; or you will be ferry sorry
one tay that you tit not get rid of your fretting. Now, good-bye, Moira ;
and mind what I hef said to you this tay."

So the minister left, not in a very hopeful or happy mood. As he
passed the house of John Fergus, he frowned ; and then he remembered
that he had not checked Angus M'Eachran for using a certain phrase
about John Fergus.

"Well, well," thought Mr. MacDonald, " it is no great matter ; and
if I was Angus M'Eachran perhaps it is the same words I would be for
using, whether the minister was there or no."

CHAPTER IX.
IN THE DEEPS.

THINGS went from bad to worse, and that rapidly. Moira knew but little
of what was going on, for the neighbours were slow to tell her. But
every one in Ardtilleach was aware that Angus M'Eachran had sold his
share in the boat to young Donald Neil ; and that, while this ready money
lasted, he had done no work at all, but merely lounged about until he
could get hold of one or two companions to go off on a drinking frolic.
Moira saw him go out each day ; she did not know but that he was gone
to the fishing. When he returned late at night, she sometimes saw that
he had been having a glass, and she was a little perturbed. But Angus
had a strong head ; and he managed to conceal from her for a long time
the fashion in which he was spending his life.

He did not deliberately set to work to drink himself and his young
wife out of house and fyome. He had fits of remorse, and always was
about to turn over a new leaf — next day ; but the next day came, and
Moira was silent and sad, and then he would go out to get a cheerful word
with some companions, and a glass. Moreover, the savings of a fisher-
man either increase or decrease ; they never stand still. When the motive
was taken away for the steady addition to the little hoard in the bank at
Stornoway, that fund itself was in danger. And at length it became
known in Ardtilleach that Angus M'Eachran had squandered that also,

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIBA FERGUS. 563

and that now, if he wanted money, he must go into debt with one of the
curers, and hire himself out for one of the curers' boats.

The appearance of the man altered too. He had been rather a smart
young fellow, careful of his clothes, and cleanly in his habits ; now, as
Moira noticed, he paid less attention to these things, and heeded her not
when she remonstrated.

One night Angus M'Eachran came home, and staggered into the
cottage. Moira regarded him with affright. He sate down on a wooden
stool by the peat-fire.

" Now there iss an end of it," said he, gloomily.

" An end of what, Angus ? " said she, in great alarm.

" An end of you, and of me, and of Ardtilleach; and it iss not in
Ardtilleach I can lif any more, but it iss to Glassgow that I am going."

" To Glassgow ! " she cried.

" Ay," said he, " this iss no longer any place for me. I hef no share
in the poat. I hef no money in the pank. It iss all gone away — in the
tammed whiskey — and it iss not a farthing of money I can get from any
one — and what iss to become of you, Moira ? "

She did not cry aloud, nor were her eyes wet with tears, but she sate
with a white face, trying to comprehend the ruin that had befallen them.

" Angus, Angus 1 " she cried, "you will stay in Ardtilleach ! You
will not go to Glassgow ! It iss many another poat that will be glad to
hef you, and there iss no one can mek so much at the fishing ass you "

" And what iss the goot of it," he said, " that a man will mek money,
and hef to lif a hard life to mek money, and when he comes home, then
it iss not like coming home to him at all ? What I hef done that wass
bad enough ; what you hef done, Moira Fergus, well it iss something of
this that you hef done."

She dared not answer — some strange consciousness oppressed her.
She went away from him, and sate in a corner, and cried bitterly. He
spoke no more to her that night.

Next morning he was in a very different humour ; he was discontented,
quarrelsome, and for the first time of their married life spoke rudely and
tauntingly to her. The knowledge that he was now a beggar — that the
neighbours regarded him as an outcast — that his old companions in the
boat were away at their work, leaving him a despicable idler to consort
with the old men about — seemed to drive him to desperation. Hitherto
he had always said, in answer to friendly remonstrances, that there were
more fish in the sea than ever came out of it ; and that by- and- by he
would set to work again. Now it seemed to have occurred to him that
his former companions were rather shy of him ; and that he had a bad
name throughout the island.

"Yes," said he, angrily, to her, "when I go to Glassgow, then you
can go to your father, and you can ask him to tek you back to his house.
It wass my house that wass not goot enough for you ; and from the
morning to the night it wass neffer a smile or a laugh wass on your face ;

27—2

564 THE MARKIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

and now when I will go away to Glassgow, you will be a great deal petter,
ay, and ferry much petter, in the house of your father John Fergus —
and tarn him ! "

She said not a word in reply, for her heart was full ; but she put a
shawl round her shoulders and walked away over to the curing-house,
where her father was. Angus M'Eachran was mad with rage. Was she
already taking him at his word ; and seeking to return to her father's
house ? With a wild feeling of vengeance at his heart, be determined
there and then to leave the place ; and as he set out from Ardtilleach,
without a word of good-bye to any one in it, the last thing that he saw
was John Fergus coming out to the door of the curing-house to speak to
Moira. With many an angry and silent imprecation, he strode along the
rough road, and then he began to bethink himself how a penniless man
was to make his way to distant Stornoway and to Glasgow.

The purpose of Moira Fergus was quite different from that which her
husband had imagined.

" What will you want with me ? " said her father, coldly, when he
came out in response to her message. « < I hef told you, Moira Fergus,
that it iss no word I hef for you. You hef gone to another house ; you
will stay there — ay, if you wass to lif in Ardtilleach for sixty years."

"It iss Angus M'Eachran," she said, with tears in her eyes, "and —
and — he iss going away to Glassgow if he cannot go to the fishing — and — if
you would speak a word to Mr. Maclean "

"Ay, he iss going to Glassgow?" said John Fergus, with an angry
flash in his eyes. ' ' And the teffle only knows that he iss fit for nothing
but the going to Glassgow. Ay, ay, Moira Fergus, and it wass a prout
tay for you, the tay you were marriet to Angus M'Eachran ; but it iss
not a prout tay any more, that you are married to a man that iss a peggar
and a trunkard, and bass not a penny in ta whole world ; no, it iss net
any longer a prout tay for you that you marriet Angus M'Eachran ! "

With that he turned and went into the curing-house, slamming the
door after him.

" And it iss a hard man you are," said Moira, sadly.

She walked back to her own little cottage, almost fearing that her
husband might be inside. He was not ; so she entered, and sat down to
contemplate the miserable future that lay before her, and to consider what
she could do to induce Angus M'Eachran to remain in Ardtilleach, and
take to the fishing and sober ways again.

First of all, she thought of writing to her friends in London ; but
Angus had the address, and she dared not ask him for it. Then she
thought of making a pilgrimage all the way to Borva to beg of the great
Mr. Mackenzie there to bring his influence to bear on her husband and on
Mr. Maclean the curer, so that some arrangement might be made between
them. But how could she, all by herself, make her way to Borva ? And
where might Angus M'Eachran be by the time she came back ?

Meanwhile Angus was not about the village, nor yet out on the rocks,

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 565

nor yet down in the little harbour ; so, with a sad heart enough, she pre-
pared her frugal mid- day meal, and sate down to that by herself. She
had no great desire for food, for she was crying most of the time.

Late that evening a neighbour came in, who said she had just
returned from Harrabost.

" Ay, Moira," said she, " and what iss wrong now, that Angus M'Each-
ran will be for going away from \ itilleach ? "

Moira stared at her.

" I do not know what you mean, Mrs. Cameron," she said.

" You do not know, then ? You hef not heard the news, that Angus
M'Eachran will be away to Glassgow ? "

Moira started up with a quick cry. Her first thought was to rush out of
the house to overtake him and turn him back ; but how was that possible ?

" Oh, Mrs. Cameron, what iss it you tell me this tay ! And where
tit you see Angus ? And are you quite sure ? "

"Well, well, Moira," said the old woman, "it iss not any great
matter the going to Glassgow ; and if you will sit down now, I will tell you."

The girl sate down, silently, and crossed her hands on her lap.
There was no more crying now ; the last blow had fallen, and despair had
supervened.

" You know, Moira, my son that lifs round at the pack of Harrabost,
and I wass ofer to see him, and all was ferry well, and his wife bass got
ferry well through her trouple. And when I wass for coming away, it
was Angus M'Eachran will come running up to the house, and ferry wild
he wass in the look of him. ' Duncan Cameron,' says he, ' will you gif
me your poat for two minutes or for three minutes, for I am told that
this is the M'Alisters' poat that iss coming along, and they are going
to Taransay.' You know the M'Alisters' poat, Moira, that they pought
at Styornoway?"

Moira nodded assent.

"Well, you know, Moira, that Duncan was always a good frient to
Angus M'Eachran ; and he said, « Yes, Angus M'Eachran, you may hef
the poat, and she is down at the shore, and you can run her out yourself,
for the oars and the thole-pins are in her.' But Angus M'Eachran he
says, ' Duncan, you will come with me to pring pack the poat, for I will
ask the M'Alisters to tek me with them to Taransay ; for it iss to Taran-
say I am going.' "

"Ay, to Taransay!" said Moira, eagerly. "And it wass only to
Taransay ? "

" I will tell you that, Moira," the old woman continued, who would
narrate her story in her own way. " Well, well, I went to him, and I said,
' What iss it that takes you to Taransay, Angus M'Eachran, and when will
you be coming pack from Taransay ? ' ' Mrs. Cameron,' says he, ' I do
not know when I will be coming pack from Taransay, for it iss to Glassgow I
am going ; and it iss perhaps that I willneffer see Ardtilleach anymore.' "

" No, no, no," the girl moaned ; " he did not say that, Mrs. Cameron !"

566 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

" And I said to him, ' It iss a foolish man you are, Angus M'Each-
ran, to speak such things, and you with a young wife in Ardtilleach.'
' Ay,' said he, * Mrs. Cameron, and if there wass no young wife, it iss
perhaps that I would be in Ardtilleach now, and hef my money, and the
share in the poat ; but it iss a pad tay the tay that a young man marries a
lass that is tiscontented and hass no heart in the house, and that iss it
that I am going away from Ardtilleach ; and Moira — well, Moira hass her
father in Ardtilleach.' Ay, that iss what he said to me, Moira, ass Dun-
can and him they were putting out the poat from the shore."

" My father ! " the girl murmured, " I hef not any father now — no,
and not any husband — it iss the two that I hef lost. Ay, and Angus
M'Eachran hass gone away to Glassgow."

There was no bitter wailing and lamentation ; only the hands in her
lap were more tightly clenched. The red peats nickered up in the dusk ;
and her face seemed drawn and haggard.

" Ay, and they pulled out to the M'Alisters' poat when she came by,
and I wass looking at them all the time from the shore, and Angus
M'Eachran, when the M'Alisters put their poat apout, he got apoard of
her, and there wass not much talking petween them. And Duncan, I
could hear him cry out, ' Good-pye to you this tay, Angus M'Eachran ! '
And Angus he cried out, * Goot-pye to you, Duncan Cameron ! ' And
when Duncan he came back to the shore, he will tell me that the M'Alis-
ters were going down to the ferry pig poat that iss at Taransay and that
hass come round from Lochnamaddy, and Angus M'Eachran he wass say-
ing he would know some of the sailors in her, and the captain would tek
him to Glassgow if he worked the passage. Ay, ay, Moira, I can see it
iss not the good news I hef prought to you this night ; and it iss a pad
thing for a young lass when her husband goes away to Glassgow ; but you
do not know yet that he will stay in Glassgow, and you will write a line
to him, Moira "

" How can I write a line to him, Mrs. Cameron ? " the girl said ;
" there iss more people in Glassgow ass there iss in Styornoway, and the
Lewis, and Harris all put together ; and how will they know which of
them iss Angus M'Eachran ? "

" Then you will send the letter to Styornoway, and you will gif it to
the captain of the great poat, the Clansman ; and iss there any one in
Glassgow that he will not know ? "

"A letter," Moira said, wistfully. "There iss no letter that will
bring Angus M'Eachran pack, not now that he hass gone away from Ard-
tilleach. And I will say good-night to you now, Mrs. Cameron. It iss
a little tired I am."

" You are not ferry well the night, Moira," said the old woman, look-
ing at her. " I do not know that I will leaf you by yourself the night."
" But I will ferry much rather be by myself, Mrs. Cameron — ay, ay,
I hef many things to think ofer ; and it iss in the morning I will come to
see you, Mrs. Cameron, for I am thinking of going to Glassgow."

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 567

" Ay, you will come to me in the morning, like a good lass," said
Mrs. Cameron, " and then you will think no more of going to Glassgow,
which would be a foolish thing for a young lass, and it iss not yet, no, nor
to-morrow, nor any time we will let you do such a foolish thing, and go
away from Ardtilleach."

CHAPTER X.
A PROCLAMATION.

MOIRA did not go to Glasgow ; she remained by herself in Ardtilleach,
in the small cottage all by herself, whither one or two of the neighbours,
having a great pity for her condition, came to her, and occasionally brought
her a little present of tea or sugar. How she managed to live at all, no
one knew ; but she was very proud, and maintained to those who visited
her that she was well off and content. She was very clever with her
needle, and in this way requited her friends for any little kindness they
showed her.

So the days and the weeks went by, and nothing was heard of Angus
M'Eachran. Mr. MacDonald made inquiries of the men who had gone
with him to Taransay ; and they said he had undertaken to work his
passage to Glasgow in a boat that was going round the island for salt-fish.
That was all they knew.

Well, Mr. MacDonald was not a rich man, and he had a small house ;
but his heart was touched by the mute misery of this poor lass who was
living in the cottage all by herself, as one widowed, or an outcast from her
neighbours. So he went to her and asked her to come over to the manse
and stay there until something should be heard of her husband.

" It is a ferry goot man you are, Mr. MacDonald," she said, " and a
ferry kind man you hef been, always and now too, to me ; but I cannot
go with you to the manse."

" Eott pless me ! " he cried, impatiently. " How can you lif all by
yourself ? It iss not goot for a young lass to lif all by herself."

" Ay, ay, Mr. MacDonald, and sometimes it is ferry goot ; for she
will begin to go back ofer what hass passed, and she will know where she
wass wrong, and if there iss punishment for that, she will take the punish-
ment to herself."

" And where should the punishment be coming," said he, warmly,
" if not to the young man who would go away to Glassgow and leaf a
young wife without money, without anything, after he has trank all the
money? "

" You do not know — you do not know, Mr. MacDonald," she said,
sadly, and shaking her head. Then she added, almost wildly, " Ay, Mr.
MacDonald, and you hef no word against the young wife that will trife
her husband into the trinking, and trife him away from his own house
and the place he was porn, and all his frients, and the poat that he had,

568 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

and will trife him away to Glassgow — and you hef no word against that,
Mr. MacDonald ? "

" Well, it iss all ofer, Moira," said he, gently. " And what iss the
use now of your lifing here by yourself; and when your peats are
finished, who will go out and cut the peats for you ? "

" I can cut the peats for myself, Mr. MacDonald," said she, simply ;
" and it iss one or two of the neighbours they will cut some peats for me,
for on the warm tays it iss little I hef to do, and I can go out and turn
their peats for them."

" You will be better ofer at the manse, Moira."

" It iss ferry kind you are, Mr. MacDonald ; but I will not go ofer to
the manse."

In his dire perplexity Mr. MacDonald went away back to the manse ;
and spent a portion of the evening in writing a long and beautifully-
worded letter to Mrs. Lavender, the young married lady who had been
present at Moira's wedding, and who was now in London. If Mr.
MacDonald's spoken English was peculiar in pronunciation, his written
English was accurate enough ; and to add a grace to it, and show that he
was not merely an undisciplined islander, he introduced into it a scrap
or two of Latin. He treated the story of Moira and her husband from a
high literary point of view. He invited the attention of the great lady in
London to this incident in the humble annals of the poor. She would
doubtless remember, amid the gaieties of the world of fashion, and in the
thousand distractions of the vast metropolis, the simple ceremony of
which she had been a spectator in the distant islands, which, if they were
not the nitentes Cycladas of the Roman bard — and so forth. Mr.
MacDonald was proud of this composition. He sealed it up with great care,
and addressed it to " The Hon. Mrs. Lavender " at her house in London.

An answer came with surprising swiftness. Mr. MacDonald was
besought to convoy Moira forthwith to the island of Borva, where the wife
of Mr. Mackenzie's keeper would give her something to do about Mrs.
Lavender's house. Mr. and Mrs. Lavender would be back in the
Hebrides in about three weeks. If the rains had been heavy, Moira was
to keep fires in all the rooms of the house, especially the bed-rooms, inces-
santly. And Mrs. Lavender charged Mr. MacDonald with the fulfilment of
these her commands. He was in no wise to fail to have Moira M'Eachran
removed from her solitary cottage to the spacious house at Borva.

The minister was a proud man the day he went over to Ardtilleach
with this warrant in his hand. Would Moira withstand him now ?
Indeed the girl yielded to all this show of authority ; and humbly, and
gratefully, and silently she set to work to "put together the few things she
possessed, so that she might leave the village in which she was born.
Indeed, she went away from Ardtilleach with little regret. Her life there
had not been happy. She went round to a few of the cottages to bid
good-bye to her neighbours ; and when it became known to John Fergus
that his daughter was going away to Borva, he instantly departed for

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 569

Killeena, on some mission or another, and remained there the whole day,
so that she should not see him before leaving.

She remained a couple of days at the manse, waiting for a boat ; and
then, when the chance served, the minister himself went with her to
Borva, and took her up to the house of Mr. Mackenzie, who was called the
king of that island. After a few friendly words from the great man — who
then took Mr. MacDonald away with him, that they might have a talk over
the designs of Prussia, the new bridge on the road to the Butt of Lewis, and
other matters of great public importance — Moira was handed over to the
keeper's wife, who was housekeeper there. She did not know what she
had done to be received with so much friendliness and kindness ; she was
not aware, indeed, that a letter from London had preceded her arrival.

She slept in Mr. Mackenzie's house, and she had her meals there,
but most of the day she spent in the empty house to which Mr. and
Mrs. Lavender were shortly coming. What she could do in the way of
preparing the place kfor their reception, she did right willingly. There
was never a more devoted servant ; and her gratitude towards those who
befriended her was on many occasions too much for her English — she had
to escape from its constraint into the Gaelic.

Then there was a great stir throughout the island, for every one
knew that Mr. and Mrs. -Lavender were on their way from London; and
the wonderful waggonette — which was in effect a boat placed on wheels,
with oars and everything complete — that Mr. Lavender had built for him-
self, was, one morning, taken down Loch Boag, and landed at Callernish,
and driven across to Stornoway. The Clansman was coming in that day.

It was in the dusk of the evening that the party from London — there
were one or two strangers — arrived in the little bay underneath Mrs.
Lavender's house, and walked up the steep incline, the luggage following
on the shoulders of the sailors. And the very first words that Mrs.
Lavender uttered on entering the house were —

" Where is Moira Fergus ? "

The girl was greatly afraid to find herself in the presence of all these
people ; and Mrs. Lavender, seeing that, quickly took her aside, into a
room where they were by themselves. Moira was crying.

" And you have not heard anything more of him, Moira ? " she asked.

" No, I hev heard no word at all," the girl said, " and I do not look
for that now, not any more. I hef lost effery one now, both my father
and my husband, and it iss myself that hass done it ; and when I think
of it all, I will say to myself that neffer any one wass alife that hass
done as I hef done "

" No, no, no, Moira," her friend said. "It is not so bad as that. Mr.
MacDonald wrote to me that you fretted a great deal, and that Angus
was very impatient, and he does not know what made him go away to
Glasgow, for how could that make it any better ? But we will find him
for you, Moira."

"You will find him," the girl said sadly; "and what if you will

27—5

570 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

find him ? He will neffer come back to Ardtilleach. You do not know
all about it, Mrs. Laffenter-— no, I am sure Mr. MacDonald is a ferry
kind man, and he would not tell you all about it. And this is why
Angus M'Eachran will go away to Glassgow — that he had trank all the
money there wass in the bank at Styornoway, and he had no more a share
in the poat, and he wass ashamed to go apout Ardtilleach. And all that
wass my doing — indeed it wass "

" Well, well, you must give up fretting about it, Moira, and we will
get Angus back to Ardtilleach, or back to Borva "

" But you do not know, Mrs. Laffenter," the girl said, in an excited
and despairing way; " you do not know the harm that wass done to
Angus M'Eachran ! And will he effer get back from that — from the
trinking, and the trinking, and I myself with ferry little thought of it at
Ardtilleach ? And where iss he now ? And what iss he doing ? It wass no
more care for his life that he had when he went away from Ardtilleaclr ! "

" Well, well, Moira," said her friend, soothingly, " if you were to
blame for part of it all, you have suffered a great deal ; and so has he,
for it is not a happy thing for a man to go away from a young wife, and
go away among strangers, without any friend, or occupation, or money.
You seem to have got into a bad plight at Ardtilleach — perhaps it was
better to have it broken up like that. It was certainly a great pity that
you did not discover all you know now before things came to their worst ;
but if they are at their worst, they must mend, you know. So you must
not give up hope just yet."

Moira suddenly recollected herself.

" I am keeping you from your frients, Mrs. Laffenter," said she ;
" and it iss ferry kind of you, but I do not wish that you will be troupled
apout me and Angus M'Eachran. And I hef not thanked you for sending
me here ; and I do not know how to do that ; but it iss not bekass I hef
no feeling apout it that I cannot thank you, Mrs. Laffenter."

She was a servant in the house ; she would not shake hands with
Mrs. Lavender. But her mistress took her hand, and said, with a great
kindness in her face, —

" I will say good- night to you now, Moira, for I may not see you again
to-night. And to-morrow morning, you will come to me, and I will tell
you what can be done about Angus M'Eachran."

That evening, after dinner, Mrs. Lavender told the story to her guests
from London ; and she was obviously greatly distressed about it ; but her
husband said, —

" The young fellow had no money; he is bound to be in Glasgow.
We can easily get at him by advertising in the papers ; and if you can
persuade him to come to Borva, we shall have plenty of work for him, for
he is a clever carpenter. But if he has enlisted "

" I propose," said one of the guests, a young American lady, recently
married, " I propose that, if he has enlisted, we who are here now sub-
scribe to buy him out."

THE MABRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 571

Her husband, a less impulsive and more practical person, got a piece
of paper, and wrote these words on it : —

Should this meet the eye of Angus M'Eachran, of Ardtilleach, in the
island of Darroch, he will hear of something to his advantage by communi-
cating at once with Mrs. Lavender, Sea-view, i&land ofBorva, Hebrides.

CHAPTER XI.
A PROPHET IN THE WILDERNESS.

IT would have been strange, indeed, if Angus M'Eachran had missed
seeing this advertisement, for it was in all the Glasgow newspapers,
morning after morning. It happened that, late one night, he was in a
miserable little public-house near the Broomielaw, with two or three
companions. He was now a very different man from the smart young
fisherman who had lived at Ardtilleach. The ravages of drink were every-
where visible, in his face, in his shabby dress, in his trembling hand. He
was at the moment sullen and silent, though his companions, who were
Highlanders employed about the harbour, were talking excitedly enough,
in their native tongue.

M'Eachran had also got occasional work about the ships ; but he
stuck to it only until he had earned a few shillings, and then he went off
on a fresh drinking-bout. There were always plenty of " loafers " about
to join him ; he became a familiar figure in all the small public-houses
about ; and in garrulous moments he had told his companions some-
thing of his history, so that both himself and the circumstances of his
leaving his native place were widely known.

On this evening the landlord of the public-house came into the den in
which the Highlandmen were drinking, and said, pointing to a portion of
the newspaper he held in his hands —

" Is this no you, M'Eachran ? "

Angus M'Eachran took the newspaper, and read the lines pointed out.

" Ay, it iss me," he said, gloomily.

" Man, there's something there for ye ! " the publican said. " Canna
ye read it ? They've gotten some money for ye, as sure as ye 're a leevin
sinner! "

" It iss no money they hef for me," said M'Eachran; "it is these
ferry grand people, and they will want me to go pack to Ardtilleach. No,
I hef had enough, and plenty, and more ass that of Ardtilleach. The
teffle will tek the tay that I go pack to Ardtilleach ! "

" Ye're a fulish cratur, man. Do ye think they wud gang to the
awfu' expense o' advertisin' in the newspapers if there wasna something
gran' waitin' for ye ? "

" Go and tarn you, John Jameson, and go and pring me another
mutchkin of your pad whiskey, that iss not fit to be put before
s wines."

572 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRi FERGUS.

The landlord did not care to quarrel with a good customer. He went
off to get the whiskey, merely saying, in an under tone, —

" They Hielanmen, they've nae mair manners than a stot ; but they're
the deevils to swallow whiskey."

He took no notice of the advertisement ; he did not even care to
speculate on what it might mean. Had Angus M'Eachran parted from
his wife merely through some fierce quarrel, and had he resolved to
go to Glasgow merely as a measure of revenge, the prospect of a
reconciliation might have been welcome. But it was not so. He had
left Ardtilleach simply out of sheer despair. He had drank all his
money ; he had disgraced himself in the eyes of his neighbours ; he
had long ago abandoned any notion of having any real companionship
with his wife. Besides, by this time he had acquired the drunkard's
craving ; and in Glasgow, provided he could get any sort of work, he
would be able to do as he pleased with his money. When he got to
Glasgow, he abandoned himself to drinking without any remorse. His
chances in life were gone ; there remained but this. He had no boat, no
home, no relatives ; his society was in the public-house ; the one enjoy-
able experience of the day was the sensation of beatific stupor rising into
his head after drinking repeated doses of whiskey. If he was ill and surly
next morning, there was but little sense of shame mingled with his moods.
Nor did he consider himself a very ill-used person, whose wrongs ought to
excite compassion. He simply was what he was, as the natural result of
what had gone before ; and he looked neither to the past nor to the
future. It was enough if he had the wherewithal in his pocket to pay for
another dram ; and he did not care to ask whether, in the bygone time,
he was the injuring or the injured party.

But it became more difficult for him to get those odd jobs about the
quays, for his unsteady habits were notorious, and no one could depend
on his remaining sober for a single day. He became shabbier and
shabbier in appearance ; and now the winter was coming on, and many a
day he shivered with the cold as he walked aimlessly about the streets.
When he could get no work, and when he had no money with which to go
into a public- house, he would often wander idly along the inner thorough-
fares of the town, perhaps with some vague hope of meeting an acquaint-
ance who would give him a glass. He was not afraid of meeting any of
his old friends from Ardtilleach ; they could not have recognized him.

One night he was going up Candleriggs Street in this aimless fashion,
and a bitterly cold night it was. A north-east wind was blowing down
the thoroughfares, driving a stinging sleet before it ; even the hardiest
were glad to escape indoors from such weather. Angus M'Eachran
was not proof against cold and wet as he had been in former dayp.
He shivered like a reed in the wind ; his limbs were chilled ; if he had
not been in the semi-bemused state of the confirmed drunkard he would
have crept back to his miserable lodging. As it was, his only thought at
the moment was to get a little shelter from the bitter wind.

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FEEGUS. 573

He came to the entrance into the City Hall, and here was an open
space, the light of which promised something of warmth. There were a
great many people going in; and "Free Admission" stared every one
in the face. M'Eachran crept into a corner, glad to be out of the
cold for a moment.

The mere going by of people seemed to have a fascination for him.
His head was dazed. When a friendly old gentleman in passing said,
" Weel, ma man, are ye no comin' in ? I dinna think you could do better,"
he answered, vaguely, " Yes," and joined the stream. There was a great
crush ; he was borne into the hall. So dense was the crowd that no one
seemed to notice his shabby clothes. He got no seat, but he was well
propped up ; and the heat of the great assembly began to thaw his frozen
limbs.

And who was this maniac and mountebank on the platform — this
short, stout, ungainly man, with lank yellow hair, prominent front teeth,
and exceedingly long arms which he flung about as he stamped up and
down and ranted ? Truly, he was a ridiculous-looking person ; and it
was no wonder that highly cultivated people, who read the reviews, and
went into mild frenzy over blue and white china, and were agitated about
the eastern position, should refuse to go and hear this stump- orator who
was lecturing on temperance all over the country. The stories told of
his ad captandum vulgarity and his irreverence were shocking. Jokes
were made about the wild fashion in which he dealt with his JIB ; although,
being a Yorkshireman of inferior education, he never added an ht he
simply ignored the letter altogether, and was profoundly unconscious of
doing so. He spoke with a strong north-country accent ; he marched
up and down the platform, with perspiration on his unlovely face ; he
sawed the air with his arms, and was by turns angry with a screeching
anger and pathetic with a theatrical effusiveness. A person of refined
taste could not approve of Mr. Robert J. Davis and his oratory. The
exhibition was altogether too absurd. And yet there are in this country
at present thousands of human beings whom this man rescued from ruin;
there are thousands of homes which he restored to peace and happiness,
after that seemed impossible ; there are thousands of women who cannot
utter that commonplace name without tears of gratitude. And these
people never thought the less of B. J. Davis because he ill-treated the
letter li.

"Yes, my friends," this uncouth creature was saying, or rather
bawling, " you see that miserable drunkard crawling along the street, dirt
on his clothes, idiotcy in his face, his eyes turned away for shame — and
you despise him — and are you not right in despising him? Perhaps
you don't know. Well, I'll tell you. That skulking creature, that
reptile of the gutter, was once the heir of all the ages ; and when he was
born he came into a wonderful heritage that had been stored up for him
through centuries and centuries. Great statesmen had spent their lives
in making laws for him ; patriots had shed their blood for him ; men of

574 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS.

science had made bridges, and railways, and steam-ships for him ; dis-
coverers and great merchants had gone over all the earth, and there was
sugar coming from one place, and cotton from another, and tea from
another — from all parts of the world these things were coming. And for
all this, and for far more than that, what was expected of him ? — only
that he should grow up a respectable citizen, and enjoy the freedom and
the laws that his forefathers fought for, and do his duty towards God,
and the State, and the friends whose anxious care had guided him through
all the perils of childhood. What was his gratitude ? What has he
done ? — what but throw shame on the name of the mother who bore him,
making himself a curse to society and a disgrace to friends who now avoid
him. Has he a wife ? — think of her ! Has he children ? — think of
them ! Good God, think of the young girl going away from her father's
home, and trusting all her life to this new guidance, and looking forward
to the years of old age, and the gentle going out of an honourable and
peaceful life. And this is the guidance — this is the protection — that she
sits up in the night-time, with her eyes red with weeping, and she listens
for the drunken stagger of an inhuman ruffian, and she prays that God
would in his mercy send some swift disease upon her, and hurry her out
of her grief and her shame. That is the return that the drunkard makes
for all the love and care that have been lavished on him — and you despise
him — yes, he despises himself as he crawls along the pavement — his
home broken up and ruined, his wife and children sent shivering to
the almshouse "

There was a sharp, quick cry at this moment ; and the lecturer
stopped. The people near Angus M'Eachran turned round ; and there
was the young fisherman, with his eyes fixed and glazed, and his arm up-
lifted as if appealing to the lecturer.

" The man is mad," said one ; " take him out."

But they could not take him out, for the crowd was too dense ; but as
some one at the door seemed to have fancied that a woman had fainted, a
tumbler of water was fetched and quickly handed over. M'Eachran
drank some of the water.

" No," said he, seeing they were trying to make way for him ;
" I am for staying here."

And there he did stay, until the end of the lecture, which was not a
long one. But that was only part of the evening's proceedings. Wind-
ing up with a passionate appeal to the people before him to come forward
and sign the abstention pledge — for the sake of their friends, if not of
themselves— the lecturer stepped down to a space in front of the platform
which had been kept clear, and there opened two large volumes which
were placed on a narrow wooden table.

The people began to pour out of the various doorways ; those who
wished to stay and put down their names were gradually left behind. Among
the latter was a young man who kept in the background, and was about
the very last to sign ; when he went up to the table, his face was pale, his

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 575

lips quite firm, his hand tremulous. This was what he wrote : — " Name,
Angus M'Eachran ; age 24 ; occupation, fisherman ; born, island of
Darroch \ resides, Glasgow." Mr. R. J. Davis looked at this young man
rather curiously — perhaps only guessing, but not quite knowing what he
had done that night.

CHAPTER XII.
AFTER MANY DAYS.

IT was a terrible struggle. The thirst for drink had a grip of him that
was an incessant torture : then there was the crushing difficulty of obtain-
ing work for a man of his appearance. First of all, he left Glasgow and
his associates there ; and went to Greenock — the fare by the steamboat
was only sixpence. He went down to the quays there, and hung about ;
and at last his Highland tongue won him the favour of the captain of a
small vessel that was being repaired in dock. He got M'Eachran some
little bit of work to do ; and the first thing to which the young man
devoted his earnings was the purchase of some second-hand clothes. He
was now in a better position to go and ask for work.

If a man can keep sober in Greenock, which is one of the most dingy
and rainy towns in this or any other country, he will keep sober anywhere.
Not only did M'Eachran keep sober ; but his sobriety, his industry, and his
versatility — in Darroch he was famous for being able to turn his hand to
anything — were speedily recognized by the foreman, and ended by his
securing permanent employment. Then wages were high — such wages
as had never been heard of in the Hebrides ; and his wants were few. It
was a strange thing to see the dogged industry of the Norseman fight
with the impatience of the Celt ; all day he would patiently and diligently
get through his work, and then at night he would fret and vex his heart
because he could not accomplish impossibilities. Nevertheless his com-
panions knew that Angus M'Eachran was amassing money ; for he earned
much and spent little.

Time went by ; he heard no news from Darroch or Killeena ; and yet
he would not write. Not only had he no hope of living again with Moira,
but he had no wish for it. The recollection of bygone times was too
gloomy. It was with quite another purpose that he was working hard
and saving money.

One evening, going home from his work, and almost at the thresh-
old of his own lodgings, he run against a withered old Highlander named
Connill, who was an under-keeper in Harris, and was acquainted with some
of the Darroch people.

" Kott pless me, iss it you, Angus M'Eachran ? " the old man cried.
" Ay, it iss many a tay since I will see you. And now you will come and
hef a tram and a word or two together."

"If you will come into the house, Duncan Connill," said Angus,
" and we are just at the house, I will gif you a tram ; but I hef not

576 THE MARRIAGE OF MOIEA

touched the whiskey myself not for more ass fourteen months I pelief.
And aie you ferry well, Duncan Connill ; and when wass you ofer in
Darroch ? "

They went in to the younger man's lodgings, and in front of the
cheerful fire they had a chat together, and M'Eachran told his old
acquaintance all that had recently happened to him.

" And now you will go pack to Darroch," said the old Highlandman.
" Ay, and it iss ferry prout Moira Fergus will be to see you looking so
well, and hafing such good clothes, and more ass two pound fife
a week."

"Well, I am not going pack to Darroch, and, yes, I am going pack
to Darroch," said Angus ; " but it iss not to stay in Darroch that I am
going pack. Moira she will be with her father ; and I will not tek her
away from her father — it wass enough there wass of that pefore ; but I
will mek the arranchement to gif her some money from one week to the
next week, ass a man would gif his wife, and then I will come pack
to Greenock, and she will stay with John Fergus — and tarn John
Fergus!"

" Ay, ay," said the old Highlandman, " and that iss ferry well said,
Angus M'Eachran ; and if the lass will stay with her father, in the name
of Kott let her stay with her father ! — but if I wass you, Angus M'Eachran,
it iss not much of the money I would gif a lass that would stay with
her father, and her a marriet wife — no, I would not gif her much of
the money, Angus."

" Well," said Angus, " it iss more ass fourteen months or eighteen
months that I hef giffen her no money at all."

" And I wass thinking," said Duncan Connill, " that it wass many
the tay since I hef been to Darroch ; but when I wass there, it wass
said that Moira wass away ofer at Borva, with Mr. Mackenzie's daughter,
that wass marriet to an Englishman "

" Ay, ay," said Angus, " she wass a goot frient to Moira and to me ;
and if she would tek Moira away for a time to Borva, that wass a great
kindness too ; but you do not think, Duncan Connill, she will always
stay at Borva, and her always thinking of John Fergus ? But when she
hass the money of her own, then she will do what she likes to do, even
although she iss in the house of John Fergus."

" And when will you think of coming to Darroch, Angus ? "

" I do not know that, Duncan Connill. We are ferry pusy just now,
and all the yard working ofertime, and ferry good wages. But it iss not
ferry long before I will come to Darroch ; and if you would send me
a line to tell me of the people there — what you can hear of them in
Styornoway — it would be a kind thing to do, Duncan Connill."

And so the old man took back Angus M'Eachran's address to the
Hebrides ; and began to noise it abroad that Angus was making a great
deal of money in Greenock ; and that he had a notion of coming some day
to Stornoway, and of getting into business there as a builder of boats.

THE MARRIAGE OF MOIRA FERGUS. 577

About three weeks after Duncan Connill had seen Angus M'Eachran,
a young girl timidly tapped at the door of Angus's lodgings, and asked
the landlady if he was inside.

" No, he's no," said the woman, sulkily; for landladies who have
good lodgers do not like their being called upon by young women.
The good lodgers are apt to marry and go away.

" When will he be in ?" said the girl.

" I dinna ken."

So she turned away, and went out into the dismal streets of
Greenock, over which there gloomed a grey and smoky twilight. She
had not gone far when she suddenly darted forward, and caught a
man by the hand, and looked up into his face.

11 Angus 1 "

" Ay, iss it you, Moira Fergus ? " said he coldly, and drawing back.
" And what hef you come for to Greenock ? "

" It wass to see you, Angus M'Eachran — but not that you will
speak to me like that," said the girl, beginning to cry.

" And who iss with you ? " said he ; not moved in the least by her
tears.

"There iss no one with me," she said, passionately; "and there
wass no one with me all the way from Styornoway ; and when Duncan
Connill will tell me you wass in Greenock, I will say to him, ' I am
going to see Angus M'Eachran ; and I do not know what he will say
to me ; but I hef something to say to him.' And it is this, Angus,
that I wass a bad wife to you, and it iss many's the night I hef cried
apout it since you wass away, from the night to the morning ; and now
that I hef been away from Darroch for more ass a year, it iss not
any more to Darroch I would be for going — no, nor to Borva, nor to
Styornoway — but where you are, Angus, if you will tek me — and where
you will go I will go, too — if that iss your wish, Angus M'Eachran."

She stood there, mutely awaiting his decision, and trying to restrain
her tears.

" Moira," said he, " come into the house. It iss a great thing you
hef told me this tay ; and it iss ferry sorry I am that I tit not hear of
it pefore. But there iss many a tay that iss yet to come, Moira."

These two went into Angus M'Eachran's lodgings ; and the landlady
was more civil when something of Moira's story was told her ; and the
young wife — with trembling hands and tearful eyes, but with a great and
silent joy at her heart — sate down to the little tea-table on which Angus's
evening meal was laid. That was not a sumptuous banquet ; but there
was no happier meeting anywhere in the world that night than the
meeting of these two simple Highland folks. And here the story of
Moira Fergus, and of her marriage with Angus M'Eachran, may fitly
end.

578

" For the Madonna of Orvieto he did all the stories of the end of the world with
a marvellous and inventive fancy. Angels, devils, ruins, earthquakes, fires, miracles
of Antichrist and many more such-like things, and moreover nudes, foreshortenings,
and many fine figures, imagining the terror there will be in that last tremendous day.
By the which he stirred up the minds of all those who have come after him, in such
sort that they have found easier the difficulties of that manner." — VASARI.

III.

THE spirited paintings done in 1497 for the white monks of Monte Oliveto,
unrivalled as they were at their date, the last two of the series particularly,
for the expression of physical life and energy, do not all the same give the
full measure of Signorelli's genius. His occasion for a triumph and a
monument was yet to come. It came thus. About half way between
Siena and Eome is the city of Orvieto, crowning a long hill above the
Chiana, near the point where that river and the Tiber join. Orvieto, one
of the most ferocious and lawless of Italian communities, made amends for
extravagant crime and bloodshed, as was the manner of that imaginative
race, by religious aspirations of infinite fervour and religious monuments of
infinite magnificence. The hour when the aspirations began to find a fit
expression in the monuments was in the latter half of the thirteenth cen-
tury, as indeed that was the pregnant, forming, deciding hour for the
whole civilisation of these Tuscan communities. One event of the time
which helped to throw the people of Orvieto into a mood of intense devo-
tion was the eucharistic miracle, one of the most famous in the annals of
the Church, that happened at Bolsena close by. Within a few years after
the miracle of Bolsena the cathedral of Orvieto rose. It was designed
and in great part superintended by artists from Siena, and stands to
this day an example of the Tuscan Gothic only second in richness of every
kind to the famous cathedral of Siena itself. It was in 1408, nearly a
hundred and twenty years after the foundation of the church, that a large
chapel, called in documents the New Chapel, and by the people the
Chapel of S. Brizio, was added to the south transept. And one of the first
cares of the people of the city during the fifteenth century was the decora-
tion of this chapel. Presently they fixed on Fra Angelico to paint it for
them. This was in the year 1447, when the holy Dominican, drawing
already towards the end of his days, was engaged at the Vatican by
Eugenius IV. and afterwards by the good Pope Nicholas. The authorities
of Orvieto thought he would be willing to come and work for them during

LUCA SIGNOKELLI. 57 9

the hot months of each year, when Home was unhealthy, until the whole
chapel should be finished.* The matter was duly arranged, and Angelico
came with his assistants, and in the four months of the first summer finished
two compartments of the vaulted ceiling, painting Christ enthroned among
Angels in one, and in the other a choir of Prophets. The whole of the
celestial hierarchies were to be figured in these spaces of the ceiling ; but
Angelico, why we do not know, came no more after the first year, and the
work stood still and was not taken up again for a very long while. The
next consultations of which we have the minutes belong to 1489—91.
The council of the cathedral feel that something must be done, and have
cast their eye on Perugino. " Inasmuch," say they, " as it is many
years, videlicet forty-four, since the New Chapel was begun to be painted,
and the scaffoldings are still there, and to the discredit of the said works
and the said church the undertaking was never gone on with, well were
it now that it were completed to the honour of God and the most Holy
Virgin Mary, and to the honour of the Church and the whole State ; and
now there comes a certain famous master Peter of Perugia, according to
what is proved in the Vatican, for they say there are many paintings of
his there" (cujus ut dicitur sunt ibidem multas picturas). A bargain is
accordingly made with Master Peter of Perugia. But he turns out diffi-
cult to deal with. So noble a painter, a spirit in his work so holy, so
serene, so earnest and careful, it shocks us to find extortionate in making
and unscrupulous in keeping a bargain. But such by a hundred evidences
was Perugino. For reasons of his own advantage he continually shirked
the execution of his contract with the authorities of Orvieto. After ten
years of negotiation and disappointment, they finally, in the spring of
1499, resolved to put the work into other hands, and chose Luca Signorelli
on the strength of " many most beautiful pictures said to have been done
by him in divers cities, and especially in Siena." No doubt it was the
fame of that recent work at Monte Oliveto, not in, but near Siena, which
above all determined the choice. His first engagement extended only to
the completion of the vaulted compartments of the ceiling. Two of these
Angelico had finished ; and for two more, a company of the Apostles
about the Virgin, and a choir of Angels bearing the instruments of the
Passion, he had left designs. These Signorelli was to carry out ; the re-
maining four choirs of the Patriarchs, Doctors, Martyrs, Virgins, were to
be his own invention and design.

And thus two things most opposite are brought together — Angelico and
Signorelli, the art of the spirit and the art of the body. Signorelli did his
best not to seem too unlike his predecessor. And modern reparations
have done something to add a further uniformity to the character of their
work. But in spite of Signorelli's self-restraint, and in spite of what in-
dividual characters time has tampered with or effaced, the two parts of the

* " Qui forsan veniret," so runs the minute, " ad pingendam dictam cappellam,'
et est famosus ultra alios pictores ytalicos."

580 LUCA SIGNOBELLI.

ceiling remain sufficiently unlike. Angelico's serene creations — those types
of stainless beatitude, those grave and sweet ecstasies — are sufficiently alien
from the athletic manner of Signorelli, even in the compartments where he
has had but to work out his predecessor's designs, still more in those
where he has been left to himself. He keeps, indeed, what the place and
the subjects demand, the old arrangement of enthroned figures grouped
pyramid-wise on a gold background ; but the simple attitudes/the tranquil
draperies, the fervent calm, he cannot keep ; dignity his work has, but
the dignity which comes of finished science, and a large and masterful
energy in putting it forth. Angelico's vivid scale of pure primary colour
gives place to his more broken and secondary tones of olive and red.
However, his work pleased. And in the spring of the next year (1500) it
was decided to engage him to complete the decoration of the chapel by
painting its walls, hitherto untouched. For the next three or four years,
though not without interruptions, he wrought at this undertaking — an
undertaking, as he had conceived it, vast and bold and comprehensive
almost without precedent in his art.

The chapel walls stand covered from floor to vault with the painter's
handiwork. A course of rich arabesque decorations goes round their
lower half, interspersed with panel-shaped spaces, of which some contain por-
traits and others small histories in a single colour. Above this decorative
course, great multitudinous pageants of tribulation, of doom, of resurrection,
of torment, of blessedness, at the first sight half appall and somehow
half affront you. Let us come presently to the study of these, getting
used to the place first, and beginning with an examination of the lighter
and less formidable ornamental parts on the level of the eye. This
arabesque or grotesque work is only an example of what the Renaissance
was growing daily more in love with by this time — the imitation of those
mixed scrolls of human and siren and animal and vegetable forms which
were being unburied one after another in ruins of the Roman time.
But what are these six mighty heads set one by one in painted frames amid
the grotesques ; and what are these other painted rounds or tablets filled
with vehement and moving miniature scenes in a greenish monochrome ?
One austere and laureate profile you recognise in a moment. It is Dante ;
but who are his companions ? By their wreaths they are poets too ;
and the subjects painted in the rounds or tablets about them are likely,
you infer, to be taken from their poetry. By degrees you pick out episodes
you can identify, though often it is not easy. Several from the Pur-
gatory of Dante are the most unmistakeable. Here are the poet and his
guide at the foot of the unscaleable rocks, pointing out to one another how
vain were all nimbleness of leg in such a place. Here is Virgil bidding
Dante kneel at the approach of the angel of God, the " divine bird,"
" sweeping the air with his immortal wings."* Here is Sordello embrac-

* Signorelli has made a curious mistake in understanding his text here ; treating
the vaso snelletto e kggiero of Dante as a vase which the angel holds in his hand

LUCA SIGNORELLI. 581

ing the knees of Dante ; and again Dante asleep and dreaming of Mount
Ida and the golden eagle, while his guide stands in converse with Lucia.
And here are the hapless three " whose haughty necks a mighty stone
bows down." But besides these and more from the same source, there
are numbers of compositions that Dante will not explain. A group of
naked heroes, for instance, standing with great wands of office, and
judging two bound culprits that are brought before them — this looks lite
the trial for murder in Homer's Iliad. And the stately nymph in
converse with the helmeted warrior — that is evidently the meeting of
^Eneas with the disguised Venus in the first book of the JEneid — incessu
patuil. In another place Perseus rescues Andromeda; farther on
Phineus disturbs the marriage-feast in the house of Cepheus ; Pluto
whirls off a struggling Proserpine on his car ; Ceres rushes dishevelled
and disconsolate over the land ; Orpheus stops the pains of Tartarus with
his music ; recovers Eurydice ; loses her again ; all which belongs to the
Metamorphoses of Ovid. Elsewhere Hercules having liberated Theseus
has his foot on the throat of Cerberus, and that may come from Horace
— perrupit Acherunta herculeus labor. Another round looks like the
murder of Pompey by Achillas in the Pharsalia. And thus the little
episodes in monochrome or chiarascuro give a key to the identity of the
heads in the neighbourhood of which they are distributed. Evidently,
besides Dante, and Virgil his master and necessary associate, these four
other portraits with their laurel wreaths stand for the four poets whom
Dante found in one group among the noble ancients who knew not Christ,
untormented but ungladdened for ever in the groves of Limbo : —

Otnero pocta sovrano,

L'altro e Orazio Latino che viene,

Ovidio e il terzo, e 1'ultimo Lucano.

Nothing can be more characteristic than all this of the spirit of the
Renaissance. Signorelli is altogether one with his time in decorating a
Christian chapel with pagan mythologies and metamorphoses, and thinking
it no harm that Homer and Horace and Ovid and Lucan should fill frames
where the enthroned Virgin and martyrs and prophets and patriarchs will
look down on them from amid their beatitudes to the end of time. But
Signorelli does this in a perfectly serious spirit, as, indeed, the spirit of
the classical Renaissance was essentially serious and high in the fifteenth
century, not abasing sacred things to the level of profane, but rather
exalting profane things, the memorable things of Greek and Roman an-
• tiquity, to the level of sacred. In making much of Greece and Rome, it
cannot be too often reiterated, the imagination of the fifteenth century did
not reverse, it did but develop and carry out, what had been begun by the
thirteenth century, that age, as I have said, of all pregnant inspiration
and fruitful initiative in Italy. In this very case, see how Signorelli does
but sit at the feet of Dante ; how he gets at his pagan antiquity not by

instead of a vessel on which he comes wafted. For this observation I am indebted
to the work of a local writer, Signer Ludovico Luzi, whose diligence and research are
as admirable as his verbiage and false eloquence are trying.

582 LUCA SIGNOKELLI.

independent approaches, but through the great Christian poem of two
hundred years earlier. That Signorelli himself was no accomplished
humanist, no scholar in Greek or Latin poetry, is evident from this — that
the contract assigning to him the completion of the chapel for a sum of
five hundred and seventy-five ducats, with the usual conditions, is made out
in Italian, instead of the customary dog-Latin of the law, for the express
reason that the painter may the better understand it (vulgari sermone ad
ipsius claram intelligentiam). On the other hand, that his thoughts were
full of the fervid dogmatism, the intense Christianity of Dante, as the
thoughts of every great artist in Italy from Giotto to Michelangelo were
full of them, is clear by a hundred tokens. But this does not a whit
prevent him from holding Virgil and Homer and the rest almost as sacred
as the Prophecies and the Gospels and the Apocalypse, and caring almost
as much to realise the utterances of the one as of the other.

As for the style of these little round or oblong illustrations in chi-
aroscuro, they are as vigorous, as busy, as animated, as anything can be,
somewhat slight of course, but overflowing with power and energy. The
compositions are always admirably designed for their spaces. Sometimes,
as in the dream of Dante, or the Orpheus in Hades, they will be quite
splendid and dignified little romantic pictures; but oftener, as in the
rape of Proserpine, or the distraction of Ceres, vehemence will be pushed
to caricature, and motion expressed with that conventional whirl and
concentric flutter of draperies which Signorelli does like a drawing-
master's flourish almost. But it is time we looked above these subor-
dinate ornaments, and nerved ourselves to the study of the six tremendous
scenes, two side by side on either wall to right and left, one enclosing
the doorway arch, and another the window opposite, which are the real
glory of the New Chapel.

Here is a complete manifestation of those things which are to come to
pass in the latter days. The painter of it has an imagination that shrinks
from nothing, but realises out to the full, sternly and with a perfect
daring, all the ideas which the Christian prophecies and traditions set
before him. For the final and consummating scenes, indeed, those of
resurrection, of perdition, of salvation, he had the precedent of innu-
merable works in which Italian art had been trying to express these
things for two hundred years and more, from the pulpit- sculptures of the
Pisans down ; and for the modes of punishment and reward, the conceptions
of fiends and angels, he could go, as all Italian art had gone, to Dante.
But for the stories of Antichrist and the end of the world, with which
Signorelli begins, he had no precedent or authority of the same kind ;
he had to work for himself with the current data, which were the prophe-
cies of Christ to his disciples in the twenty-fourth of Matthew, the
visions of the Revelation and the pseudo-revelations of Esdras and John,
with the prophecies of Ezekiel and other Old Testament prophets connected
•with these in popular interpretation. Accordingly, in the first great picture
he shows us the valley of Jerusalem, with the Temple, a great porticoed
structure in the Italian classic of the time, filling the distance on the

LUCA SIGNOKELLI. 583

right ; the three years and a half of the reign of Antichrist have begun ;
the steps of the Temple are beset with ruffian soldiers in black armour ;
and just before its portico on the extreme right the witnesses Enoch and
Elias are being slain at the feet of the false prophet ; one hoary blood-
bedabbled head is on the ground, the sword is raised to come down upon
the throat of the other. Four groups fill the main field of the picture,
so conducted as to tell the whole story, and at the same time to cover
the space with an admirable art of distribution. One great group all
along the foreground shows the preachings of Antichrist and his triumph.
The apocalyptic descriptions of him are utterly unfit for art to realise —
" his eyebrows like a wild beast's ; his right eye like the star which rises
in the morning, and the other like a lion's ; his mouth about one cubit ;
his teeth a span long ; his fingers like scythes." All this mystical ex-
travagance Signorelli has wisely left unattempted ; his Antichrist has the
feature and fashion of Christ himself, only with a sinister look of the eyes
and mouth betraying that divine favour. A horned imp stands on the
pedestal behind him, and prompts him as he preaches. To right of him
is the crowd of those whom he is persuading : a gorgeous and violent
young lord with his arms akimbo ; grave and reverend seniors folded in
their noble drapery ; the pursy cheeks of gluttony ; the bald crown and
parrot beak of avaricious age ; one fair mother with her child ; all sorts
and conditions of men standing there, and designed with that splendid
union of typical dignity and individual character in which Ghirlandaio
was this master's only rival, as well as that fiery expression of physical
life and animation in which he was without a rival. To the left of the
preacher are those whom he has already won. A lithe athletic villain in
his shirt-sleeves has just heaped before Antichrist a quantity of church
plate and other spoils of sacrilege. His second agent is a crafty old
counsellor in a rich suit, who deals out money from a bag, and among
the crowd who take it are a couple of nuns and a half unwilling youth
in flowing locks and drapery. Behind these presses another company
of types in which the age seems to live and breathe before us — portraits,
many of them, of -citizens of Orvieto whose names are still on record.
Further to the left the huge wiry frame of an executioner, the fellow and
counterpart of the church- robber, stands bent over in the act of strangling
one of those who will not follow after his master ; and all around lie
trunks and severed heads of monks and friars. Close up to the frame
of the composition stand two impassive spectators of the tribulation :
one is a Dominican of sweet and holy mien ; the other a strong grave
man of sixty in dusky cloak and cap, with flowing hair, and hands crossed
before him. These are portraits of Fra Angelico and Signorelli ; this is the
corner chosen by Signorelli to commemorate himself and his predecessor
in the work, as Italian artists were wont to commemorate themselves in
some corner or another with a kind of grave humility. Further off, in
the centre of the picture, the raising by Antichrist of one dead draws
new worshippers, — "for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets,

584 LUCA SIGNOEELLI.

and shall show great signs and wonders ; insomuch that, if it were pos-
sible, they shall deceive the very elect." In another place a group of
holy men, sages and monks and friars, are gathered together to strengthen
and comfort one another. One of them expounds from an open book,
another counts on his fingers the mystic number three and a half — " a
time, times, and half a time" — during which this tribulation shall last.
Opposite this group Signorelli seems to have devised an express occasion
for the things he most delighted in, out of the two data, " He shall be
exalted even to Heaven, and shall be cast down even to Hades, making
false displays ; " and again, " I will rain upon him, and upon his bands,
and upon the many people that are . with him, an overflowing rain, and
great hailstones, fire, and brimstone." The false Christ has lifted himself
up to the sky in sight of his worshippers ; the angel of God swoops
rushing at him, amid an explosion of fiery studs and bolts and shafts of
vengeance ; he falls through the air in headlong overthrow, and the bolts
of his ruin drive past him to earth and strike down and scatter and
dismay his followers. Such ruin of horse and foot, such falling back-
wards and crouching forward and plunging aside — such desperate fore-
shortenings, as they roll stricken or cringing from the stroke 1 It astounds
you to see what science, what calculations of the body's appearance in
impossible conditions, Signorelli brings to the aid of his hardy imagina-
tion, and how triumphantly and unflinchingly he has carried the look of
life into these catastrophes transcending life.

The next scene, that which surrounds the arch of the entrance-door
into the chapel, gives play for more violent combinations of the same
kind. It is the end of the world. Near the top of the arch on one side
a flight of horrid-coloured fiends has been let loose in front of bars of
cloud in the blood-stained sky. They hurl and blow great shafts of fire
that slant down upon the affrighted peoples, while tongues and spouts of
fire leap at the same time out of the ground. Fugitives, some on horse-
back, many of them mothers with their babes, crouch and flee and clasp
hands to head, and the nearmost of them, a group of just such fantas-
tically clad young athletes as we saw standing so full of prowess in the
train of King Totila, come hurtling and tumbling overwhelmed, one of
them turning round with a last vain effort of defiance, till they roll almost
out of the picture. On the other side of the arch that which is written
is fulfilled, how " the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not
give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of
the heavens shall be shaken." The sun and moon are dead-coloured balls
in the sky. The stars rain down. You see a town, and the waves of
the sea boiling higher than its towers. A company of strong half-naked
brigands are despatching a couple of unlucky prisoners. A marble
temple falls in ruins, and a white-robed woman rushes into the arms of her
friends from the crash of its architecture and capitals. Close to the fore-
ground, sibyls with their books, prophets, mages, and two warriors, a rever-
end and valiant company, stand aware of and awaiting the coming doom.

LUCA SIGNORELLI. 585

So far, Signorelli has represented these apocalyptic catastrophes in
the dress and fashion of his own time. But in the remaining scenes
dress and fashion do not come in ; he has to deal with the unshrouded
body of man after the resurrection of the flesh. It is the moment of re-
surrection itself that he has taken for the next great picture. The arch-
angels Michael and Gabriel, two colossal forms, stand erect in air and
with strained cheeks blow the summons to the great awakening from long
straight trumpets directed downwards. Each strong angel has bright out-
spread wings, one blue-green and the other purple ; they are naked but
for a light robe and ribands fluttering about the loins of each. The air
about and below them is full of the flight and rejoicing of transparent
forms, ethereal cherubs and child- angels. Below, there is no attempt at
realising the earth as earth ; it is simply a plain of abstract white, with
the awakened dead emerging from it or standing about. In the right-
hand foreground are a few who, skeletons still, have the actions of living
men, doing with their bare bones what it takes muscles to do really, and
drawing themselves from the ground or standing on one side till the full
renewal of their bodies. That is a grim fantasy which art has often
repeated and which could well be spared. Here, however, it fills no
great place, and interferes little with our delight in looking at the multi-
tude of noble creatures scattered, in a thin composition of many groups,
upon the plain beneath the summoning angels. " The dead in Christ
shall rise first," says St. Paul ; and Signorelli has taken this prophecy,
and with it the other apocalyptic tradition according to which the
renewed body was to know no difference of age and youth, but all were
to arise " thirty years old." So here they stand in the mid strength and
flower of manhood or womanhood, embracing each other or tenderly conver-
sing in twos or threes, giving thanks and waiting for the consummation of
their blessedness ; one helping another by the wrist to free himself from the
tomb, one pointing aloft to the heavenly heralds, another with hii back to
us gazing upwards with head thrown back and hands on hips, another
with folded arms absorbed in the happiness of feeling himself alive and
repossessed of his limbs. Signorelli's intense artistic delight in the
human body transfers itself .spontaneously to the personages of the scene,
and it is that last sentiment — the tranquil physical rapture of renewed con-
sciousness and life restored and perfected — which fills and governs all the
groups. Beyond this noble physical contentment, they are in all moods
beside of devout expectancy, of thanksgiving, of the adoring surprise of
those who find themselves disturbed but to be rewarded. All this is ex-
pressed by Signorelli with immense dignity and force and grace, and with
very little of that air of strained and imitated devotion which we have
found in some of his work. But the splendour of design and modelling
in the bodies makes the real greatness of the work — a splendour, a science,
a resource wholly new in art, and going together with an admirable
simplicity and directness of technical execution. In women, however,
it is to be noticed, Signorelli shows a less noble choice than in men :
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 185. 28.

586 LUCA SIGNOEELLI.

and the figures of women, a small minority among the men, are treated
with a lack of the classical sense of beauty and perfect form. It was
nearly a hundred years since this sense had, in the work of Ghiberti,
shown itself already fully awakened. But where Ghiberti had been an
idealist, Signorelli exhibited a realism sometimes almost approaching that
of the German schools.

Next comes the retribution of the wicked. Three warrior angels in
shining mail, one with his sword half unsheathed, stand firm and heavy in
the clouds to the right ; over against them some of the wicked, who have
been bold to try and scale heaven, are hurled in fantastic overthrow or
plucked back by pursuing fiends. Below is a horrid medley of tormen-
tors and tormented. This fierce drama of vengeance in the Christian
scheme had been a subject of art's endeavours from the first. But the
Italian imagination had shown itself not naturally apt at ugliness and
horrors. In spite of the precedent and dictation of Dante, a painter's
or sculptor's Inferno had generally been little but a jriece of harmless and
puerile hobgoblinry. Among the few angrier and more fully realised
examples is in one of the relief scupltures on the front of this very Orvieto
cathedral. But Signorelli went far beyond all others in confronting and
realising out the torments of the damned. Of course there is no vulgar
mutilation and outrageous atrocity as in some modern attempts of the kind ;
but there is as much dreadfulness and cruelty as a masculine and unde-
bauched imagination can allow itself. Signorelli has perfected a singularly
fearful kind of fiend, with skinny face and tusky teeth, and pointed flocks
of wool for his abominable old beard and eyebrows, and a bat's wings, and
all the angles of his rapacious body running to claws, and his flesh of
various vile and deathly colours, green or ashen or livid purple. And in
the tussle before us these malignant creations have their will among their
shrieking victims ; and it is a strangling, a scourging, a biting, a carrying
off of wicked women by the ankles upon fiendish shoulders, a planting of
fiendish feet upon prostrate howling heads, a hurling of vigorous sinners
into flames, an agony of terror and chastisement and vain defiance, of
which, if you can look at it, you acknowledge the prodigious power and in-
ventiveness and mastery, but from which you had rather turn quickly away.

Turning away, the broad arched band round the chapel window, coming
next in order, shows you, in a bad light unluckily, the transition between
the kingdoms of punishment and of reward. In the right-hand half, next to
the scene of retribution, Signorelli has wrought the noblest and most com-
plete of all illustrations to the opening of Dante's Inferno. The Stygian
stream, Charon and his boat, the press of disconsolate souls, Minos sitting
in judgment, all are there according to a masterly conception and distri-
bution. About the top of the arch are great draped figures of angels. Four
of them stand making music and welcoming the redeemed souls that are
ushered upwards from the left. This left-hand part of the arch contains
some signally beautiful and solemn figures, angels and redeemed, the
blessing and the blest, and so leads us on to the last great scene of multi-

LUCA SIGNORELLI. 587

tude and pageant, the pageant of paradise and the multitude of the elect.
Generally this Paradise is considered the chief of Signorelli's creations ;
certainly it is the creation upon which he has spent most labour and
resource, and which most impresses you with the sense of richness. The
whole space is studded full with a rain of gold bosses. The upper part of
the great vault is a mansion for music-making angels ; nine of them sit
there on the clouds in their many-coloured draperies, playing and wor-
shipping. The redeemed men and women, in size somewhat lesser than
the angels, crowd the ground below with their naked incorruptible bodies.
Above their heads two mighty angels rush together from either side with
beautiful whirling draperies, and scatter roses as they meet. Other angels
come down hovering and ministering, and set garlands on the heads of the
redeemed. Among these, once more, are few women and many men ; and
of the men a very large proportion bear the tonsure. In all this Signo-
relli has put forth his utmost strength. Still I think in certain things he
remains behind weaker painters. In the angelic orchestra above we still
see gestures and a composition somewhat ponderous and angular, we miss
the lovely rhythm and beauty of some masters. He still contends with,
but scarcely equals, Botticelli in the richness of golden rays and showered
roses, and Angelico in the confidential tenderness of the angels who come
down and encourage the humbler elect with crowns and palms and sweet
whisperings. But then, in the parts which come natural to his own
genius, he here surpasses himself and all others. The naked adoring
figures of the blessed carry further yet all the qualities that gave greatness
and mastery to the groups in the resurrection. The pair of meeting angels
with their frank impassioned mien and rapturous flight, and the voluminous
rhythmical sweeping of their robes, is one of the most magnificent and
faultless achievements in the whole range of painting.

IV.

The Renaissance had as yet seen nothing so daring or so
learned as this, nothing in which Art had been pushed so far beyond her
ancient confines. The work, I have said, is the master's triumph
and his monument. Not that the strenuous powers which carried
it through were quickly destined either to repose or to decay. Signorelli
had full twenty honoured and active years yet to live. We may see him
again at Siena, where he made cartoons (but they were never carried out)
for new compartments in the wonderful engraved pavement of the cathe-
dral ; and where presently afterwards he painted the several panels of a
vast altar-piece ordered for the little town (where I believe it is still to be
found) of Arcevia near the Adriatic. At Siena in these days, too, befel the
sickness and death of his son, and some may admire and some shudder
at the manner of his mourning. For whatever other passion the father felt,
the passion of science was the strongest in him, and with his own hand
lie took the knife to the corpse, and studied anatomy on the body of his

28—2

588 LUCA SIGNORELLI.

son. Or we may follow him a second time to Rome, where he engaged in
new work for the Vatican. But this was not for long. The new genera-
tion, the crowning generation, had grown up. In the next year after Sig-
norelli's work had been completed at Orvieto, Lionardo da Vinci had come
back from Milan to Florence, and with his great battle cartoon had shown
& science still more consummate, a still more amazing mastery of motion
and energy, than Signorelli's own. A year more and Lionardo's exploit
had been capped by the young Michelangelo in his cartoon of the " Sol-
diers Surprised in Bathing." The young Michelangelo for sculpture, the
young Raphael for painting, were then introduced to Pope Julius II. by
his architect Bramante of Urbino. As soon as Raphael began to work in
the chambers of the Vatican, so marvellous seemed what he did that he
was forthwith preferred by Julius above the older men engaged just
before. The work newly begun by Signorelli, Perugino, Pinturicchio, and
Sodoma, was stopped or taken down, and they went home superseded and
eclipsed. Some of the men of that elder generation were discouraged and
offended by the new turn which art had thus taken in younger hands.
Perugino, for instance, was a conservative in his art, and between him
and the admirers of Michelangelo at Florence there was open aversion
and contempt. While all about him is changing, Perugino's manner
does not change, though perhaps it grows weaker, in the last years of his
life. But Signorelli, we can see, is of another mettle. Whether because
he had a less settled and harmonious imagination of his own, less formed
and decided instincts, whether because he was more desirous to learn and
to improve, he continued in the end, as we may easily convince ourselves,
to take lessons from right and left, and to incorporate other men's
excellences with his own.

From 1510 until his death Signorelli lived in his native Cortona,
taking his turn once and again in the magistracy of the city, and working
as hard as ever at his art. Many altar-pieces of this late time are among
his finest work. To talk of them at large would mean little to the reader
unless he had seen them, and would be superfluous then. Let us pause
only at one or two that particularly illustrate this receptiveness of
Signorelli in his old age, and his capacity for improvement down to the very
end. The Communion of the Apostles, painted in 1512 for a charitable
confraternity at Cortona, and now in the cathedral, is a good example.
Instead of the usual arrangement, the disciples kneel or stand in two
groups of five to right and left of the picture, and Christ walks towards us
between the files, giving the bread as he goes, with the two remaining
disciples following at his shoulders. That is an arrangement certainly,
I think, taken from a picture painted years before by an indifferent
Flemish artist, Justus of Ghent, who had been brought into the neigh-
bourhood by the Duke of Urbino. And in the sidelong poise of the
Saviour's head, and its relief against the exquisite gradation of an arched
opening of sky, there is a remarkable affinity with Lionardo's famous
Cenacolo of Milan. The picture is a singularly noble and beautiful

LUCA SIGNOBELLI. 589

one, in which the various elements of Signorelli's art — the breadth and
energy which are natural to him, the devout and intellectual graces which
he studies or affects, and these motives suggested by other men's work —
combine far more intimately and harmoniously than usual, so that the
work is full not only of power, but of the most profound and solemn
charm. Following the same line of observation, we might point out the
figure of a John at the foot of the cross, in one of Signorelli's finest
Crucifixions at Borgo S. Sepolcro, as taken apparently, in features,
attitude, and drapery, from one of the engravings of Albert Diirer.
But there is one instance more signal than the rest of the power of
learning and progressing and receiving from other people. At this only
let us stop, and the soontr because it is connected with one of the plea-
santest episodes in the artist's biography. In the year 1520, when he
was close upon eighty, "he made," records Vasari, " a picture for the
Company of St. Jerome at Arezzo, the price of which was partly paid by
Master Niccolo Gamurrini, Doctor of Laws and auditor of the Rota, whose
portrait, painted from life, is in the said picture, and shows him on his
knees before the Madonna, to whom he is presented by St. Nicholas, who
is in the picture." A living descendant of the donor, Sigr. Gamurrini,
has lately placed this picture in the public gallery of Arezzo. The critics
and historians of these things have not done justice to it, for it is, despite
the customary over-restoration, by far the most splendid example of
Signorelli's powers in this order of devotional composition. The Virgin
sits in glory in mid- air, her feet resting on the usual huddle of cherubs'
heads, while the Father in benediction swoops foreshortened amid a rirg
of cherubs above her. To left and right of her in the air are angels of
Signorelli's usual cast, in whom the bold carriage of the athlete mixes with
the adoring sweetness of the ecstatic ; a little lower, St. Donatus on one
hand of her and St. Stephen on the other ; on the ground, below Donatus,
a naked Jerome pointing to his bleeding breast, the sign of his penitences ;
and below Stephen, a kneeling man of law — the donor Niccolo Gamurrini
that is — introduced by Nicholas his patron saint; and between these
figures and Jerome, a David sitting full in front under the Virgin, and
looking up to her as he plays upon the psaltery ; while two prophets of
the Old Testament adore in the rear, each carrying his scriptured scroll.
The Virgin holds in her left hand the lily of the Annunciation, and with
her right slightly supports the child, who, looking another way the while,
fits back a chipped piece into the glass cup which St. Donatus holds aloft.
The colouring, where restoration has left it fairly alone, is beyond any
other of the master, with the noblest splendour and richest transparency
in passages like the figured robes and jewelled mitres and crosiers of the
bishop-saints, the wine held up against the sky, the crimson cover of Dona-
tus's book, the green of Isaiah's dress, the warm white of David's psaltery.
David is a figure of design extraordinarily grand and sumptuous, made
like Christ in countenance, only with more flowing hair and beard, and
wearing robes of rich scarlet and orange with white sleeves rolled back
from his arms and strong veined hands. And now note how Signorelli

590 .LUCA SIGNORELLI.

repeats his old self in some points and departs from his old self in others.
The lean old Jerome of this picture is almost the exact double of a lean
old Adam in an altar-piece painted by him forty years before (in the
Cathedral of Perugia). But the Christ- child, as unlike as possible to the
ungainly and uninteresting Christ- children of Signorelli's early altar-
pieces, is one of those lovely and perfected beings that Raphael had lately
launched upon art, with its sweet majestic action, its beautiful wise coun-
tenance, and the exquisite design of its body, limbs, and curling hair. And
just as the child has been caught from Raphael, so you may see that
Michelangelo's work in the Sixtine Chapel has given the older master the
hint for the head of his green-robed Isaiah — a head full of indescribable
passion and power.

And now, having taken account of the picture, let us listen again to
our friend Vasari. " This picture," says he, " was carried from Cortona
to Arezzo on the shoulders of men belonging to the company it was
painted for : and Luca, for as old as he was, insisted on coming over to
put it up, as well as partly to see his friends and relations again. And
inasmuch as he stayed at the house of the Vasari, where I was then a little
child of eight, I can remember how that good old man, all graciousness
and politeness as' he was, having heard from the master who had to teach
me my letters that I minded nothing in school except scribbling likenesses
— I remember, I say, how he turned to Antonio my father and said,
' Antonio, since little George won't learn his letters, by all means let him
learn drawing ; for even if he did mind his letters, still drawing, although
it might be no use, would at all events be a credit and satisfaction to him,
as to any other gentleman.' And with that he turned to me, as I stood
there opposite to him, and said, ' Mind your lessons, little kinsman.' He
said a great many more things of me which I won't repeat, for my con-
science tells me that I am a long way from having fulfilled the opinion
that good old man had of me. And because they told him, what was the
truth, that at that time I was subject to bleedings at the nose so violent
that I sometimes fainted from them, he put a key on my neck with his
hand in a manner infinitely affectionate ; and that recollection of Luca
will stand eternally fixed in my mind. When the said picture had been
set in its place, he went off to Cortona again, and was accompanied a
great way on his road by a number of citizens, as was no less than due to
his character, for indeed he always lived more like a lord and honoured
gentleman than like a painter."

After this, the strength so long unbroken must have quickly given
way. A receipt of Signorelli's, written only three years later (in 1523), is
extant, and shows a hand quite infirm. Still he painted on. In 1524
the Cardinal of Cortona built himself a new palace half a mile outside
the city, and called in a pupil of Signorelli to help his architect with the
decorations. But for the chapel of this palace he wished to have some-
thing from Signorelli's own hand ; and the master, though partly disabled
from paralysis (impedito dal parletico), began a " Baptism " for his bishop.
But death overtook him at the work.

LUOA SIGNORELLI. 591

In one of the choicest private galleries of Florence, that of the Torri-
giani, there is a noble head of an old man in a close scarlet cap and
scarlet silk cloak trimmed with black. The face is strong and grave,
with the jaw large and firm, great kindly furrows from nose to mouth, and
eyebrows of a bold arch above large intent grey eyes, of which the lower
lids are a little red and weary, as those of an aged artist might be. The
painter is Luca Signorelli, and at his very best. Tradition says the
picture is his own portrait. Diligent modern authorities doubt this, and
say it seems to represent "a person of higher condition."* But that is
no argument, for have we not just heard how the good old man lived more
like a lord than like a painter ? And elsewhere Vasari takes pains to tell
us how he always "lived splendidly," and " took pleasure in being well
dressed" — the last phrase running more explicitly in an earlier edition to
the effect that he " always dressed in silk." An objection more to the point
is that the portrait does at first sight look very different from those Signorelli
has left of himself at Orvieto — one, as we have seen, in the character of a
humble spectator in the corner of the great drama of Antichrist ; the other
painted on a slate in company with the superintendent of the cathedral
works. But what really makes this striking difference is the fashion of
the hair, which is long and flowing in the Orvieto pictures, and cropped
close in the picture at the Torrigiani palace. The features are not incon-
sistent, and it is a point in favour of the traditional account that the
woodcut given by Vasari is very like the Torrigiani portrait, and unlike the
portraits of Orvieto. I believe this is, in truth, none other than Luca in
his honoured age. He has put in the background figures of naked men,
almost identical with those of the shepherds in that first Madonna painted
for Lorenzo forty years before, besides a classic arch, a classic temple,
and a woman with whirling drapery. But these are the things he had
clung to and cared about from the first ; they are types and pledges of that
delight in the strength and beauty of the living body, which, with
the love of classic science and the love of motion and energy, had been the
vital principle of all his art. To put these types and pledges behind a
portrait of himself in his old age — what would that be but to vindicate his
calling and assert his victory ?

V.

Great messages need to be spoken in a great language. " The burn-
ing messages of prophecy uttered by the stammering lips of infancy" — that
is what Italian art gives us at the beginning. By the beginning I mean
the thirteenth century, the age of initiative, of genius, when civilisation
made a new start in the Italian communities, and men began to live and
think and act with a new desire of greatness and excellence, and when
poetry, sculpture, painting, the arts which commemorate and survive life
and thought and action, and realise more completely than they the great-
ness and excellence of men's desires, began to grow and tower into sudden

* Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. p. 30.

592 LUCA SIGNORELLI.

glory. The artists of that age of growth and initiative were concerned
with ideas the most momentous and impassioned that could press upon the
mind of men. The devout conjectures, the credulous traditions, of many
childish and inventive ages had crystallised into that body of Christian
dogma which by this time stood sharp, real, familiar, importunate in the
foreground of all men's thoughts. The task of painting and sculpture in
the thirteenth century is to " show forth to rude men who know not letters
the miraculous things wroaght by virtue and in virtue of the holy faith." *
First the sculptors of Pisa, next the group of Florentine painters, with
Giotto their sovereign, and at the same time the group, scarcely second to
the Florentines, of the painters of Siena — all these took up the task in the
days, or just before the days, of Dante, and soon acquitted themselves of
it with a greatness, I say, and an excellence unknown before. No trivial
themes call them away from the great cycle of Christian revelation.
Between the book of Genesis and the book of the Apocalypse, between
the creation of man and his doom, is their range. Or if anywhere besides,
it is among the martyrdoms and penances of the early saints, or among
miracles, like those of St. Francis, that had in latter days helped to re-
kindle faith in the miracles of old, or among visions, the visions of Dante,
that had brought home to all men, with an utter and intense reality, alike
the messages of Scripture, and the dogmas of the Church, and the tales of
the saints, and the living history and passions of the time. And the
character which Italian art took in the thirteenth century, that pregnant,
forming, initiating epoch, it kept for the two hundred and fifty years of its
glory. The spirit of the Old and New Testaments, the spirit of St.
Francis, the spirit of Dante, brooded upon it last as first. Some impetuous
students and fervid exponents have denied this, and averred that Savona-
rola saw the end of that of which Dante saw the beginning. Worldliness
and paganism, say they, had transformed Christian art and sapped its
nobler powers before the end of the fifteenth century. Not so. The truth
is, that from Giotto in the thirteenth century to Michelangelo in the six-
teenth— from the painted vaults of the lower Church of Assisi to the
painted vaults of the Sixtine Chapel — there is no revolution, still less is
there corruption or degeneracy ; there is expansion and a progress from
strength to strength. Giotto and his companions did very much to give
just expression to those momentous, those burning messages. No one
ever surpassed the Florentines of the thirteenth century in intellectual
force and simplicity, in the union of a grave moral exaltation which made
them conceive nobly, with a sturdy sense and shrewdness which helped
them to observe closely. But in some things they were stammerers 'still.
Not by the noblest conceiving, not by the shrewdest closeness in observa-
tion, can any one or any two generations of artists perfect their instrument
of expression, least of all for these stupendous purposes. Between the

* Thus expressed in the first article of the constitution of the guild of painters of
Siena.

LUCA SIGNOKELLI.

generation that grew up with Dante and the generation that thronged in
childhood after the footsteps of Savonarola, art took in Italy many diffe-
rent aspects, and nourished herself from many different sources. But
whatever study she made of worldly character and the realities of common
life, whatever of jewellery and ornament and goldsmith's work, whatever of
anatomy and the body's structure, whatever of geometry and perspective,
whatever of the classical antique, she was doing nothing all the while but
expand her powers and perfect her instrument of expression. She was
learning and practising her language.

Now, what is the highest language and most accomplished dialect of
art ? The Greeks answered that question long ago. The body of man or
woman, said they. Take the human body, divest it of disguise, accident, and
paltriness, conceive and fashion in it a form answering ideally to one or
another of the myriad forces of nature or of the human spirit ; that is the
great, the universal language of Art — that is the imagery most fit for her
intents. And this answer of the Greeks is valid to the end of time.
Many things worth attending to Art can say in other and humbler dialects.
Much she can express under the common images of life, and in representa-
tions of daily sights and the draped humanities of the market-place. But
not the highest things ; the highest she must body forth in that form above
accident, exempt from disguise, archetypal, universal, beautiful. Con-
sider this Christian cycle which rilled the minds of the middle age.
It contains, indeed, abundance of subjects that call not for this high
imagery, but rather for close and fair apparel — the gold- embroidered tissues
about an enthroned Madonna, the vestments of bishop and cardinal, the
robes and crowns of angels, the friar's gown and hood, the comely drape-
ries of the saints. But the great subjects of all — the mighty catastrophes
of man's origin and doom — the Creation, the Fall, Judgment, Hell,
Paradise ? These, to be properly expressed, admit not coitume or acci-
dent ; these at least the new art must needs learn to express in that lofty
dialect of the naked body. That the creed which tells of them had set out
by condemning nakedness and being ashamed of the body, is no matter ;
if the catastrophes are to be imagined and shown forth to men at all, in
that likeness it must be. And it is here that early art is least effectual, not
intimately knowing the body, its inner structure, its subtler proportions, or
the play of its fair and living surfaces. That language has to be learnt from
the alphabet almost. Presently the discovery of classical remains gives an
immense help and impetus to the study. But the ancient models them-
selves will not fully serve. For the ancients had been men of other minds ;
the pagan had harboured thoughts less vivid than the Christian of an original
and a final catastrophe of the world. He had been haunted by less porten-
tous images of doom, less ecstatic hopes of recompence. The forces of na-
ture and of the human spirit, of which the images had been conceived and
fashioned in ancient pagan art — a Zeus, an Apollo, a Pallas, an Aphrodite,
a Persephone, a Herakles — were forces comparatively serene and luminous
and circumscribed, not too mysterious and awful to be thought quietly of,

28—5

594 LUCA SIGNORELLI.

eren the mightiest of them, not too instant and dire in menace, in promise
not too transcendent, in power not too overwhelming. But of the gods of
the new creed and of their rule, of the sins and punishments of Chris-
tianity, its virtues and rewards, its revelations and catastrophes, the very
characters are mystery and awfulness, imminent terror and transcendent
joy, power unlimited and irresistible. And so, if Christian art is to rise
to the height of its great argument, it must learn to manage the same
imagery in another and less tranquil way than the ancients used. Chris-
tian art, for its highest purposes, must learn all and more than^all the
ancient mastery of the living body, and, with that, must keep its own
mastery of the face, the mirror of the spirit and its passions. It must
group and build up this universal human imagery in schemes the most
arduous and combinations the most sublime — must wield and fling abroad
human shapes the most perfect and mighty, and with countenances as
majestic as the limbs, in such postures and expressions as shall body forth
whatever is most stupendous and superhuman in the new conception of
spiritual power.

To accomplish this enterprise, harder than any Hellas undertook of
old — to recover, modulate, and expand the accents of Hellas till they were
equal to these new and mightier modern utterances — was that a task
which one generation, or two generations, could be expected to bring to
good ? Manifestly not. Looking at Italy at the end of the thirteenth
century and afterwards, the question would rather have seemed to be,
would there be breath enough, would there be endurance enough, in this
new civilisation, to hold out until the enterprise could possibly be accom-
plished? Would the genius and inspiration, the impassioned Italian
way of feeling and realising these prodigious themes, last until a long
enough practice should have perfected the instrument for expressing them ?
Indeed it might have seemed not. The conditions of the Italian civilisa-
tion were so fearfully unstable. The fire of the Italian genius burned so
fast, and with such a fearful waste. The two hundred and fifty inspired
years of Italy,* from the age of Dante and the overthrow of the imperial
power in Italy, to the age of Michelangelo, and the devastation and con-
quest of Italy between France and Germany, were years of a political and
social state not perilous merely, but, it might fairly seem, impossible. A
jealous, perpetual, and insidious rivalry of the five important territorial
powers of the Peninsula — the Papacy, the Kingdom, the Duchy of Milan,
the Republics of Venice and Florence — one against another or two against
three in ever-shifting combinations ; Anjou and Aragon and presently France
perpetually looking on and ready to strike in ; the emperors perpetually
seeking to give reality to their titular claims ; a score of petty republics
and a hundred petty despotisms interspersed among the larger powers ;

* Convenient dates to bear in mind are — for the beginning of the period, 1265, the
birth of Dante, or 1268, the overthrow of the Ghibelline forces and extinction of
the house of Hohenstaufen;— for its end, 1527, the sack of Rome.

LUCA SIGNORELLI. 595

every republic except Venice distracted with hereditary factions, with unre-
mitting anarchy, revolution, confiscation, banishment, bloodshed ; every
despotism an arena for the wantonness of some passionate and lawless
will ; every community at war with its neighbours and itself ; ad-
venturers loose upon the country at the head of armed hordes, always
ready to change sides in the medley and always seeking to carve out
principalities and found dynasties of their own ; a world of endless and
as it looks aimless warfare, violence, intrigue, faithlessness, wasteful and
deadly public and private passions ; and upon the prosecution of each aim-
less passion a force of human character and genius expended enough to have
founded and organised an empire — how could all that last ? How could
such a civilisation not promptly perish ? How could the brightest genius
of a race guiding its destinies so wildly, were it a race never so gifted,
not quickly flame down and sink to darkness ? The vitality of Italy,
or her good fortune, was such that this mad civilisation of hers did hold
out, this spendthrift genius did flourish, just long enough for the
completion of that undertaking on the study of which we are at
present intent. The fire in her veins was not spent until a crown-
ing generation of artists had had time to be born — the generation
of Raphael and Michelangelo. These grew up and achieved the quest
on which the national genius had set out two hundred and fifty
years before. Posterity may go to the Vatican, and do homage to
their perfect and consummate utterance of mysteries more than human
in a language loftier than the Hellenic. But Michelangelo lived to see
the civilisation of his country crumble about him — to see not only Italian
polity transformed and Italy devastated and partitioned by strangers,
but the inspiration of Italy fail and her genius grow cold. He handed
on that high and perfected language of art to men who had nothing to
say in it. For if great messages need a great language to speak them,
so also do they need a great heart and mind to conceive them. And
the last great hearts and minds of Italy were those of Michelangelo and his
generation. They were born just before the inevitable collapse. Their
disciples and followers were the children of a time already enervated and
exhausted, and no wonder. When they try to speak with that large utter-
ance of the gods, they can but emptily mouth and rant. This is the only
secret of the sudden decadence of Italian art in the sixteenth century, and
of the fact that the worst forms of the decadence are found among the
immediate followers of Michelangelo. It was not, as some say, that
Michelangelo set them a vicious example. His example would have been,
and is, the best in the world for spirits of his own mettle. But an
enervated and exhausted time, when a great and flaming civilisation had
just burnt out, could yield no such spirits. And so it is that the followers
of Michelangelo, attempting to walk the terribil via in his footsteps, betray
jaded and feeble powers. They try to express, like him, superhuman
things in terms of the human body, and to deal with forms and images of
strength and majesty ; but they have no thoughts to match their language,

696 LUCA SIGNORELLI.

no imagination to sustain it, and their art becomes, I Bay, but a vain
mouthing and ranting, the mockery of true sublimity.

Michelangelo, then, must be judged and understood not by the sudden
disasters which followed him, but by the gradual conquests which pre-
pared the way for him, and on which he put the climax. Of all that
came by way of preparation, the work of Luca Signorelli is, in painting,
the most closely related to that of the crowning master himself. It is
not merely that there are specific groups and figures in Michelangelo's
Last Judgment for which you can see the hint in Signorelli's designs at
Orvieto. It is that Signorelli, in general terms, brought the great and
difficult language of the highest art nearest to its full compass and perfect
structure. Much that is sympathetic and delightful in earlier and eon-
temporary art is wanting to him. Much that in the creations of Michel-
angelo is august, profound, impressive beyond all reach of comment or
interpretation, Signorelli fails to approach or so much as to foreshadow.
Nay, in some matters, where his imagination is not aroused and does not
animate his science, we are aware of a certain dulness of invention, a
certain mannered ostentation of power, which seems almost to foreshadow
the decadence that came after Michelangelo. But Signorelli is one of
the greatest and most manly of all masters wherever his imagination is
aroused and does animate and sustain his science. And that happens, we
have seen, as often as he has to deal with events or affections that give play
to motion and animation, to human energy and passion, to the beauty and
fairness of the body. In these things he is sovereign, and it is no paltry
sovereignty. It is no doubtful glory to have been the first in whose
hands Art learnt to deal as she list, absolutely and imperiously, with the
corporal frame and mechanism of man — to plant a race of perfect human
beings all firm and lithe and springy upon their feet in the carelessness or
eagerness of life, or to show them writhing and precipitated in the terror
of doom, and overwhelmed among the ruins of their own pomp ; to drive
them headlong across fields of fire- furrowed air, the bolts of the catapult
of the wrath of God ; to mingle and coil and tangle them, incarnations of
mortal despair, among the more hideous incarnations of immortal hate,
or to set them with uplifted faces on the flower- strewn plain, when this
corruptible has put on incorruption, and the re-embodied spirits feel upon
them the blessedness of their new and everlasting youth.

S. C.

697

Success 0f Cransit

ALTHOUGH many months must elapse before astronomers can hope to
complete their analysis of the results obtained during the recent transit,
yet already they can estimate the degree of success then achieved, — or,
which is in truth the same thing, the degree of accuracy with which the
sun's distance can be ascertained by means of the observations made last
December. We propose to give a summary of the proceedings and vari-
ous fortunes of the observers of the transit, indicating the general results
of the operations carried out at different places and by different methods.
Apart from the scientific importance of these operations, a certain non-
scientific, but very real interest attaches to them, from the fact that nearly
a quarter of a million of money was expended by the various scientific
nations on the preparations and expeditions for observing the behaviour of
Venus during the four hours of her transit. Certainly on no previous
occasion has so large a sum, or indeed a sum even approaching this, been
expended on a research of a purely scientific character. For the mistake
must not be made, of supposing that even indirectly the determination of
the sun's distance has the slightest commercial or material value. We
do not say that the work effected by the various expeditions had no such
value ; on the contrary, the careful determination of the true geographical
position of the various stations must be regarded as a most useful addition
to that mass of knowledge on which safe and successful voyaging depends.
And it may well be that the experiments carried out and the various
methods of observation employed, or attempted, may hereafter lead tore-
suits of considerable material value. But the actual determination of the
sun's distance cannot in the least degree affect the material interests of
the human race, either in itself or by reason of any consequences which
can be imagined as resulting from it. We were no worse off when we
supposed the sun to be 95 millions of miles from us, than we are now %
when we know that the distance is probably no greater than 92 millions
of miles, or than we shall be a few months hence when we may pronounce
confidently how many hundreds of thousands of miles the sun is from us.
That is, we were no worse off in any material circumstance. We travelled
as safely over our little globe when we supposed its diameter less than the
twelve-thousandth part of the sun's distance, as we do now that we know
the sun's distance exceeds the earth's diameter only about 11 J thousand
times. Our commercial relations were not one whit affected by that old
mistake of ours ; and it seems as inconceivable that any real material gain
can follow from the determination of the sun's distance, as that the com-

598 SUCCESS OF THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

mercial relations of the human race will one day be extended to Venus,
Mercury, and Mars, or beyond the multitudinous asteroids to the regions
where the giants, Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, traverse their
mighty orbits. If we thought of visiting any of those planets it might be
important to know at exactly what distances they travel, but until then, a
knowledge of the scale of the solar system is a result of only scientific in-
terest, and of no conceivable use to the inhabitants of earth.

But at the very outset, the thought may occur to some that we may
be concerned, or if we ourselves are not, our remote descendants may be
concerned, in a very serious way, in this matter of the sun's distance.
Suppose that instead of astronomers having mistaken our distance from
the sun when they inferred it from the transit observations of 1761 and
1769, their estimate was altogether right. Then, as we now know cer-
tainly, that the sun's distance is not so great by fully three millions of miles,
it would follow that the earth has drawn closer to the sun by that amount.
Three millions of miles in a century ! or, as the matter is assuming so
serious an aspect, let us determine more accurately the real rate of ap-
proach. Astronomers, a quarter of. a century ago, set 95,365,000 miles
for the earth's distance, as determined from the transit of 1769. It was
in 1854 that this measurement was first seriously questioned ; and before
1859 the value now used in the Nautical Almanac, 91,400,000 miles, had
been registered by astronomers as the most probable. In other words,
according to this startling way of viewing the matter, the rate of the earth's
approach towards the sun amounts to about four million miles in 90
years. Only 91^ millions remain ; and therefore this most unsatisfactory
rule-of-three sum is set for us, — If the earth approach the sun by four
million miles in 90 years,' how long will it be before she falls into the sun,
his present distance being 91-J- million miles ? The answer is, in 2059
years wanting three months. Only two millennia would remain for this
unfortunate earth, nay, long before the first millennium was over all life
would probably have perished from her surface. Half her sunward
journey being accomplished, the sun would loot: four times as large and
pour four times as much light and heat upon the earth. Whatever faith
we may have in the power of selection to modify existing races so as to fit
them for varying conditions, we know that in the process a thousand years
are as one day. Practically the human race as it is at this day would have
to endure the fourfold light and heat of that tremendous sun. A very few
years of his action would depopulate the earth.

Fortunately, however, astronomy assures us that no such change
is taking place. Apart from all other considerations, we find in the
fact that the sun would grow seemingly larger if the earth were ap-
proaching him, the assurance that she has not approached him appreciably
during the two thousand years which have elapsed since first astronomers
noted the apparent size of the sun. The old measurements of his disc
agree closely with those obtained in our own time. If this argument is
thought to be weakened by the consideration that perhaps the sun may

SUCCESS OF THE TBANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 599

be contracting as we draw nearer, and by an odd coincidence, contracting
at such a rate as always to appear of precisely the same size, — then we
must revert for comfort to the laws of planetary motion. These, empiri-
cally determined by Kepler, and placed on a firm basis by the physical
reasoning of Newton, assure us that any change in the earth's distance
from the sun will be responded to by a change in the time occupied by the
earth in circling around the sun — that is, in the length of the year. The
connection between the two changes is very simple. By whatever
portion the sun's distance is diminished, the year will be diminished by a
portion half as great again. Take for instance the imagined reduction of
the sun's distance by rather more than three million miles, or by about a
thirtieth part, then the year would be diminished, not by a thirtieth of its
length, but by a twentieth (half as great again as a thirtieth), — that is, by
more than 18 days. But we know that nothing of the kind has happened
since the year 1769. Nay, the length of the year has certainly not
changed by a single minute in the last three thousand years. In fact, the
laws of astronomy, combined with observed facts, assure us that the earth
does not approach the sun by a thousand miles in hundreds of thousands
of years.

We may then turn to the consideration of the observations made
during the recent transit of Venus, without being hampered by the fear that
astronomers have been measuring a distance which is continually changing,
so that the results obtained this century will next century be found
erroneous.

Let us in the first place endeavour to form clear ideas of what was
actually taking place while the transit was in progress. Of course, every
one knows that Venus was passing between the earth and the sun ; but it
is necessary to know, further, in what way the earth was posed during the
transit, in order that the value of different stations may be discrimi-
nated. We propose to adopt a novel way of considering the matter, — a
method which, in the absence of illustrative diagrams, unsuited to these
pages, seems to us the simplest and best.

Suppose an intelligent being on the darkened side of Venus during
the hours of transit, that is, on the hemisphere of Venus turned earthwards,
and that his powers of vision were such that he could not only see the
continents and oceans of our earth and watch them slowly moving (from
left to right) as she rotated, but also could perceive the exact moment when
the shadow of Venus touched the earth, and watch the edge of that shadow
passing athwart the earth's illuminated hemisphere. (For there was a
shadow thus thrown on the earth all the time the transit lasted, though
the actual quantity of sunlight cut off was an extremely minute proportion
of the whole, so that no one not acquainted with the fact that Venus was
in transit could have suspected it from the loss of light and heat.) This
shadow, where it crossed the earth, had the shape of a vast circle, more
than three hundred thousand miles in diameter, and therefore very much
larger than the earth. If it had gone straight across the earth, so that

600 SUCCESS Otf THE TEANSIT EXPEDITIONS*

during the middle of its passage the earth occupied its centre, then the
passage of the shadow would have lasted eight hours ; but as its centre
passed far above the earth, the earth was only immersed in the shadow for
about four hours. If the reader will cut a circle of tissue-paper some
two feet in diameter, and, placing a silver sixpence on a table, will slide
the circle over it, pushing the circle so that the centre describes a
straight line passing five or six inches from the sixpence, then will the
sliding circle fairly represent the shadow of Venus, while the sixpence
will represent the sunlit face of the earth.

Our observer on Venus, then, looking at the earth at about the time
when he knew that terrestrial folk expected the beginning of the transit, saw
it rolling in the summer of its southern hemisphere.* Its southern polar
regions, glowing with their snows under the sun's rays, were visible, while the
northern polar regions were turned away, though the snows of the northern
winter were visible, fringing the upper boundary of the earth's disc. At
that hour, we in England were for the most part asleep, seeing that the
time was two o'clock on a December morning. The observer on Venus
saw the eastern parts of Asia lately come into view on the left upper part
of the illumined disc, while the Sandwich Isles, Marquesas, and the rest,
were about to pass out of view on the right ; in the lower half of the disc
Australia and New Zealand were visible, enjoying a midsummer's day,
while the islands of Mauritius, Kodriguez, Kerguelen and others, had lately
come into view, so that it was early morning there.

The intelligent observer on Venus knew that the shadow of his planet
would first strike the earth near the Sandwich Isles, its advancing edge travel-
ling athwart her face in the course of about twenty-five minutes, and passing
off close by Kerguelen Land. This was only the advancing edge, be it noted,
and its passing from the earth meant simply the total immersion of the
earth in the shadow ; if the reader revert to his tissue-paper circle and
sixpence (provided, of course, ten minutes ago, at our suggestion), he will
see that the edge of the tissue circle first reaching the sixpence on the
outside will presently touch the sixpence on its own inside or concavity,
and that thenceforward the sixpence will be wholly covered by the tissue
circle, until reached by the retreating edge.

Our observer on Venue, if he considered carefully what was going on
before him, would perceive the importance of those stations on the earth
where the advancing edge of the shadow arrived either very early or very
late. So many minutes elapse while the shadow's edge is sweeping from
the former stations to the latter, and so many miles separate these stations ;
and clearly the recognition of these facts is equivalent to the determination
of the rate (in miles per minute) at which the shadow is advancing. This,

* The scene is that presented to us when we study Mars during the summer of
his southern hemisphere, when, as Holmes says —

" The snows that glittered on the disc of Mars
Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb
Rolls in the crimson summer of its year4"

SUCCESS OP THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 601

in turn, amounts to the measurement of the earth's distance from the
sun. For the astronomer (whether on Venus or the earth) knows well
how long a time the shadow of Venus takes in going once round from
the earth to the earth again, — this being the interval during which
Venus passes through all her changes as a morning and evening star,
an interval determined ages ago in Chaldsea and Egypt, and known
in our day within a second or two. So that knowing thus how long
the shadow takes in going round, and having ascertained, further, at
what rate the part of it travels which is at the earth's distance, we know
the circumference of the earth's orbit, and therefore the earth's distance
from the sun. The observer on Venus could know all this if that wonderful
acuteness of vision which we have imagined, whereby he discerned the
faint shadow of Venus, were accompanied by a knowledge, no matter how
acquired, of the earth's size. But even if he did not know this, he could
understand that the inhabitants of earth (if an inhabitant of Venus could
suppose our wretchedly cold globe inhabited) must be able to apply this
method. He would argue that the Terrestrials, if folks of sense, would be
sure to have set observers near those two regions, where the advancing
edge of the shadow first reached and last touched the outline of their
globe's illuminated disc. If he sympathised with their anxiety to obtain
knowledge, he would examine with considerable interest the parts of the
earth thus favourably situated ; and if he saw a whitish light over them,
such as our astronomers often see near the edge of the disc of Mars, he
would be concerned to think that probably this whiteness indicated the
presence of a good deal of cloud and mist, which could not but interfere
with the observations of observers stationed there.

Next, for nearly four hours, our observer on Venus would watch the
earth slowly rotating, the Sandwich Isles, Marquesas, and other places passing
out of view on the right, while Africa, Arabia, Asia Minor, Persia, the Cas-
pian and Black Seas, and the eastern parts of Russia in Europe, came into
view on the left. He would know that the sun had set for the former places,
while at these others, which had come into view as he looked, day had
broken and the morning hours were in progress. At the former the be-
ginning of the transit had been visible, but not the end ; at the latter the
end would be seen, but the beginning had not been visible ; while all those
regions which had remained in view the whole time, as Australia, New
Zealand, the East Indies, and the eastern parts of Asia generally, would
have seen the whole transit. And he might reason about these last-named
regions, that among the fortunate observers of the whole transit those
stationed northwards would see his own planet depressed southwards on
the sun's face, while those stationed southwards would see her disc raised
northwards ; while if they could determine by what portion of the sun's
diameter she was raised or depressed (whether they effected this by direct
observation, or by taking photographic likenesses of the sun with Venus
on his face, or by timing the length of her apparent passage), they would
learn how large the sun is, and, therefore, would be able to infer his dis-

602 SUCCESS OF THE TEANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

tance. Our observer would, therefore, look with special interest at stations
suitably placed on the northern and southern parts of the earth's visible
face, to judge from the aspect of those parts what sort of weather was pre-
vailing there. Nor would he wholly limit his attention in this particular
inquiry to the regions whence the whole transit could be seen. For he
would argue that though the terrestrial observers might be so unskilful as
to be solely dependent on observations of the duration of transit for their
estimate of the position of Venus on the sun's face at the time of mid-
transit, yet also they might be able to determine this directly, or by taking
photographic pictures near the time of mid-transit. So that though, in the
former case, it would be essential that the whole transit should be seen
(for how otherwise could the duration be determined ?), yet in the latter
case the middle of the transit would be the really important epoch. On
this account he would pay special attention to the aspect of the extreme
northern and southern regions of the illuminated earth-face, at the time
when the passage of his planet's shadow over that face was about half
completed. The regions which he would examine with chief interest for
this purpose would be those in the northern hemisphere, within a space
enclosed by a line drawn from India around Lake Baikal, Kamtschatka,
the Japanese Archipelago, China, Cochin China, and so to India again ;
and those in the southern hemisphere enclosed by a line drawn from the
Cape of Good Hope, round Kodriguez, Mauritius, to South Australia,
around New Zealand and Chatham Island to Campbell Island, and so by
Kerguelen and Crozet Island to the Cape again.

Lastly, for the same reasons that made the advance of the shadow's
edge over the earth important, the passage of the shadow's retreating edge
would interest our observer on Venus. This edge would first make its
appearance on the lower right-hand quadrant of the earth's face, not far
from the south pole. It would travel retreatingly across New Zealand and
Tasmania, being presently seen reaching from Kerguelen Land to the
middle of Australia, and so on ; but the earliest part of this half of the
retreat would alone be important. Still retreating, the edge of the shadow
would draw near to the place where it would finally leave the earth. It
would be seen extending from Alexandria to North India ; then from the
Black Sea to Siberia ; and would finally leave the earth's disc at a place
about midway between Moscow and the White Sea. The time occupied
by this retreat of the shadow's edge across the earth was about twenty-five
minutes, like the time of passage of the advancing edge. The same
reasoning would apply to the retreat as to the advance ; and the
intelligent observer on Venus would look anxiously at New Zealand, Tas-
mania, South Australia, and islands south of Tasmania, to see what
weather prevailed for observing the end of transit where occurring earliest,
and with equal anxiety at North India, Egypt, Asia Minor, and the region
around the Caspian, Aral, and Black Seas, to note under what conditions
the end of the transit was observed where it occurred latest.

A difficulty might suggest itself to our observer, perhaps, as regards the

SUCCESS OP THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 603

observations especially directed to the beginning or end of the transit.
He might argue, It is all very well for me, looking at the earth from Venus,
to notice how long the shadow's edge takes, say, in advancing from the
Sandwich Isles to Kerguelen Land, or the retreating edge in passing from
New Zealand to Alexandria ; but how are the observers on earth to know
how long the interval is ? There must, for example, be one set of observers
on the Sandwich Isles, and another set on Kerguelen Land. But, sepa-
rated as they are by many thousands of miles, how can they communicate
to each other the occurrence of the beginning of the transit ? If these
sets of observers cannot communicate directly with each other, they must
be very good astronomers, or have very excellent time -keepers, if they can
determine the precise difference of time between their respective observa-
tions. And possibly our inhabitant of Venus might be disposed to believe
that this difficulty would cause terrestrial observers only to trust to this
method as a makeshift if other and easier methods chanced not to be
available. He would argue that the duration of transit might be timed by
observers at northern and southern stations with any ordinary time-
keepers, and would always thereafter admit of being compared ; while the
mid-transit position of Venus, as seen from two such stations, might be
determined or photographed with great readiness : but for two observers,
ten thousand miles apart, to ascertain the moment of absolute time when
transit began (or ended) so exactly that when they met, months after, they
could feel certain that just so many minutes and seconds separated the
moments when their several observations were made, must be a task of
very great difficulty. Probably the inhabitant of Venus would have been
surprised to learn with what marvellous accuracy the astronomers of our
earth had learned to determine true time for any station on the earth, even
without the aid of the electric telegraph. But he might even have been
more astonished had he known that, despite the existence of the difficulty
just indicated, and the fact that, notwithstanding all the modern improve-
ments, it still remained a serious one, astronomers on our earth had
actually been at one time in danger of overlooking the comparatively simple
methods of observation available at places whence the whole transit could
be seen.

The reader who has followed what we have here supposed our observer
in Venus to have perceived during the hours of transit, will understand
why certain regions on the earth were important for observations specially
intended to determine the distance of the sun. The transit itself was
visible wholly or in part from many places which were not in the least
worth occupying. Any one stationed on the island of Java, for instance,
could have seen the whole transit under most favourable conditions, the
sun being all the time high overhead ; but his observations, though they
might be exceedingly interesting in showing the features which Venus
presents in transit — the signs of an atmosphere, the traces of a twilight
circle on the planet, and so on — would have been of very little use indeed
towards the determination of the sun's distance ; since (i.) Java is not near

604 SUCCESS OF THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

the place where transit began earliest or began latest, but midday between
the two ; (ii.) Java is not near the place where transit ended earliest or
ended latest, but between the two ; and (iii.) Java is neither far north nor
far south, but close by the equator. Of course, even at such a station
observations would not have been absolutely worthless, because a mean
value necessarily differs from extreme values on either side of it ; but
where the object is to get the greatest possible difference, it is, of course,
essential to take cases differing as much as possible from the mean. The
rule medio tulissimus ibis is not the true rule in such a case, but must be
replaced by the contrary rule, either extreme being preferable to a mean
position.*

But before we proceed to consider what befell in the various regions
selected by astronomers for the observation of the transit, there is one
other circumstance in the supposed observation of the earth from Venus
which seems to us worthy of consideration. Although our books of astro-
nomy tell us that while it is day in one part of the earth it is night in
another, that while winter is in progress in one region it is summer-time
elsewhere, these circumstances are not so clearly apprehended as we
imagine they might be. But when once we consider the aspect of our
earth as studied from Venus at a time when Venus is between the earth
and the sun, so that the observer on Venus looks fully at the illumined
half of our earth, we apprehend clearly why these varied relations hold.
We see that one half of the earth being in sunlight, day is in progress
there, while it is night in the other half. We also perceive under what
varied conditions the different parts of the illuminated half exist. The
parts in the middle of the sunlit disc are those where the sun is nearly
overhead, while those near the edge have the sun low down. The rotation
taking place from left to right, parts on the right are passing towards the
boundary between light and darkness ; in other words, evening is approaching
there. The parts on the left have lately passed the boundary between light
and darkness ; in other words, the sun has lately risen there. Then the
pole, which is tipped into view (the southern in the case considered), is
clearly in sunlight all through the twenty-four hours, while the other pole
tipped out of view has continual night. We see that the southern hemi-
sphere, brought along with its pole more fully into sunlight, has long
summer days, while the northern hemisphere, turned partly away from the
sun, has short summer days. All this seems easily recognised when thus

* Nevertheless, it seems to us that considerable interest, and probably some value,
would have attached to observations made at or near the point on the earth where
the transit had not only exactly the mean duration, but both began exactly at a
mean epoch between earliest and latest beginning, and ended exactly at a mean epoch
between earliest and latest ending — at a point, in fact, where, so far as the duration
and the absolute moment of beginning and ending were concerned, the circumstances
were precisely the same as they would have been for the centre of the earth. The
largest of the Arroo Islands in the Arafura Sea would have been about the spot
where this would have happened.

SUCCESS OP THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 605

presented, and still better when a picture of the earth thus posed is shown,
whereas the ordinary explanation of the seasons illustrated by a picture in
impossible perspective, and by views of the earth showing only the northern
polar regions for all the seasons, is more readily understood by the teacher
than by the learner.

We can see, then, how it was that whereas, in England, the hour was two
o'clock on a winter's morning, observers in the Sandwich Isles were
awaiting the beginning of the transit in the afternoon ; others in Kerguelen
Land, Rodriguez, and Mauritius, were watching for the same event
early on a summer's morning ; and at the same time it was near noon on
a summer's day at Melbourne, Hobart Town, and Adelaide ; while in New
Zealand the beginning of the transit was looked for on a summer afternoon.
Again, the end of the transit occurred at about six o'clock on a winter's
morning with us, or long before sunrise ; but in Kerguelen Land, Mauri-
tius, and Rodriguez, the end of the transit was observed not long before
noon of a summer's day ; in New Zealand the end occurred shortly before
sunset ; and in Egypt and Asia Minor the sun rose with Venus already
on his face and drawing near to her place of egress, the transit concluding
there while it was still early morning. Nor were the conditions under
which the whole transit was observed less variable. In parts of Siberia
transit began soon after sunrise and ended not long before sunset, whereas
in Kerguelen the whole transit was observed during the first half of the
day, and in New Zealand the whole transit was observed during the latter
half of the day. There were southern spots, though no observers occu-
pied them, where the beginning of the transit occurred before sunset and
the end after sunrise, the beginning and end being thus visible, while the
progress of the transit could not have been observed ; while there were
northern places where the beginning occurred before sunrise and the end
after sunset, neither phase therefore being visible, though the progress of
the transit during the greater part of its continuance might have been
watched as the sun skirted the southern horizon during the short winter's
day of high northern latitudes.

But now let us inquire what degree of success attended the observers
who were deputed to occupy the stations most favourably placed. There
were, first, the observers who were -to time the beginning, one party
observing that phase as early as possible, and the other observing it as
late as possible, the former looking for the beginning on a winter's after-
noon, the latter looking for the beginning on a summer's morning. These
two parties formed one set, as it were, seeing that they were at opposite
ends of the same base-line, and that failure at either end would mean
failure of the entire operation. Next there were the observers who were
to time the end of the transit, one party observing it as early as possible,
the other observing it as late as possible ; the former looking for the end '
on a summer's afternoon, the latter looking for the end on a winter's
morning. These two parties, again, formed a single set, occupying the
extremities of one and the same base-line. Lastly, there were the ob-

606 SUCCESS OF THE TBANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

servers who were to be stationed where the whole transit could be seen,
and either to time its duration or to note the path followed by Venus
across the sun's face, one widely- extended party observing from the
northern hemisphere, and the other (still more widely extended) observing
from the southern hemisphere. And these two parties again formed one
set, though their distribution was so wide and the methods of observation
they employed so various, that they had much more numerous chances
of success than those two sets which confined their attention either to the
beginning or to the end of the transit. Very ample provision had been
made for these whole-transit parties. Originally it had been supposed
that this particular transit could not be advantageously observed at
stations where both the beginning and end could be seen ; but so com-
pletely was this erroneous view corrected, that far the greater number of
stations actually provided were of this kind, and the American astro-
nomers— who not only showed singular acumen and forethought in pre-
paration, but devoted a larger sum to the observations than any other
two nations together — decided, after careful inquiry, that no station ought
to be occupied from which the whole transit could not be observed.

First, then, let us consider what success the observers of the beginning
of transit achieved, remembering that, on the one hand, good observa-
tions at both ends of their line (very nearly a diameter of the earth in
length) were required for complete success ; but that, on the other hand,
complete success by this single method meant in reality a complete solu-
tion of the problem dealt with, even though all other methods failed :
albeit the more such solutions were obtained the more exactly would their
average approach the truth.

At the northern extremity of the line were three stations on the Sand-
wich Isles, all occupied by Great Britain. Captain Tupman, the head of
the British operations, was at Honolulu, and here " the sky was cloud-
less," he writes, " a circumstance not altogether in our favour, as the
heat of the sun was terrific." At Waimea, Atooi, the weather was
equally fine, " not the faintest cloud or mist appeared." At the third
station, Kailua, Owhyhee, on the contrary, an envious cloud obscured the
sun until after the important moment of the beginning of transit had
passed. On the whole, however, the observations made at the Sandwich
Island stations were successful. Captain Tupman, indeed, was not
satisfied with the determination of the moment when Venus had just
completely entered upon the sun's face. A circumstance which appears
to have taken many by surprise, though in reality it had been observed
in previous transits, rendered the observation more difficult than it other-
wise would have been. Venus has an atmosphere, probably as dense as
our earth's, and consequently there is a twilight- circle on Venus, and not
only so, but the sun would be raised by the atmospheric refraction just as
the setting sun with us is raised above the horizon after he has in reality
(that is, in a geometrical sense) passed below it. The sun is raised at
this time by more than his whole diameter. Now suppose Venus draw-

SUCCESS OF THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 607

ing near to the sun, and that we look at the point of her outline farthest
from his. In so doing (and taking no account of the part of her atmo-
sphere on her other side), we are looking at the sun in the same
direction as an inhabitant of Yenus stationed at that point we are looking
at. But this individual would see the sun close to his horizon, and raised
as much as our sun is raised near the time of sunset (always supposing
the atmosphere of Venus just like ours). The terrestrial observer is, as
it were, behind the supposed inhabitant of Venus, so that both see the
same effect produced,* only the terrestrial being so far behind, the dis-
placement of the sun is proportionately diminished. Nevertheless he also
would see the sun round that edge of Venus, even on our supposition
that the nearer half of the atmosphere of Venus produced no effect.
But in reality that half produces just the same effect as the other half,
doubling the displacement, so that the observer on earth cannot fail to
receive sunlight round that part of Venus, even, which is remotest from
the sun. All along the edge of the half of Venus farthest from the sun
his light is bent round and sent earthwards, though it need hardly be
said that the result is to give only the finest possible thread of sunlight
around that side of Venus, and no doubt to ordinary observation this
thread would be imperceptible.! Now, the nearer Venus draws to the
sun the brighter would this thread of light be, and when more than half of
her disc had passed on to the sun's, the circle of light bounding the other
half could hardly fail to be perceptible to a good observer armed with a
powerful telescope. But then conceive the difficulty thus occasioned.
What the observers had been specially instructed to look for (without, it
would appear, the least hint of the peculiarity in question, though very
carefully instructed about a certain quasi-mythical black drop) was the ap-
pearance of the sunlight between Venus and the sun, as her motion sepa-
rated her from the sun's edge. But on account of the action of Venus's
atmosphere a line of light (real sunlight, too) appeared round the part of
Venus which would last cross the sun's edge, and became distinct before
that part was even near true contact. Here, then, was the criterion of
contact suddenly rendered useless, and the observer left to judge of con-
tact in another way, if in the excitement of the moment he were not
deceived by this thread of light so as to suppose it indicated that Venus
had fully entered on the sun's face. We find that Captain Tupman,
though disconcerted, was not deceived, while Mr. Nichol, who observed
with a smaller telescope, was deceived, but apparently not disconcerted.
Mr. Nichol withdrew from observation thirty seconds before Captain
Tupman, " conceiving," writes the latter, "that contact was passed," and

* Much as though an insect were to look through a decanter of water at a page
of print from a distance of a yard or so, while another looked in the same direction,
but from a distance of two yards.

•f Nevertheless Prof. Newton, of Yale College, has seen the fine circle of light
completely formed round Venus, during one of those passages of the sun which
occur at intervals of about 584 clays, but ordinarily carry her past him without transit.

608 SUCCESS OF THE TBANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

recording nothing later. " I am not at all surprised," proceeds Captain
Tupman, " for there was nothing sudden to note, and the complete sub-
mergence" (here he regards Venus as sinking into the sun's disc) " was
so gradual, any one might have recorded ten seconds before I did, and
have been quite as accurate. My first impression was such an observa-
tion could not possess any value. It was something similar in principle
to having to decide where the zodiacal light terminates ! bearing in mind,
of course, that we expected to get the contact within a second or so of
time."

Unfortunately a photographic arrangement by which it had been hoped
that the true instant of contact would bo indicated, was not successfully
applied. This arrangement was what has been called the " Janssen
turning- wheel." A circular photographic plate was so arranged that a
series of sixty pictures could be obtained all round the edge, a second
being given to each, so that the whole process would last one minute. If
this minute were so taken as to include the moment of contact, then that
moment would be known, because the successive pictures were all care-
fully timed. Now it would appear that Captain Ttipman gave the signal
at exactly the right time, and the atmospheric conditions were excellent ;
the turning-wheel was set going, and everything seemed to have worked
well. But unfortunately when the pictures were developed it was found
that the telescope had been wrongly directed, so that in every one of the
sixty pictures " the planet is cut in half." This is the interpretation of
the unpleasant telegram received from Honolulu, a few days after the
transit, announcing that "Janssen failed."

So much for one end of the line ; though it is to be noticed that
measurements and ordinary square photographs were secured here, which
will doubtless have their value in aiding to determine the sun's distance.
Moreover, Captain Tupman' s foil account of the difficulty under which
he observed goes far to give an accuracy to his result which otherwise
would have been wanting. In 1769, it was the confused description of
phenomena, quite as much as the actual difficulties of observation, which
caused trouble afterwards.

At the other end of the line were parties who occupied Rodriguez and
Kerguelen Island. Confining our attention to the English parties, who
alone had to consider specially the moment when transit began, we have
to record success at Rodriguez, and partial success at Kerguelen Island.
From Kerguelen the news came that " Corbet, Coke, Goodridge observed "
the beginning, while Father Perry missed it, but observed the end of
transit, with which, however, at present we are not concerned. "English
photographs poor," said the telegram. It appears from later news that
only one direct observation of the beginning was secured, the rest being
included among the " photographs poor." The Rodriguez observations
were fairly good. So that one set of observations was, on the whole,
successfully accomplished.

The method of determining the sun's distance by observing the

SUCCESS OF THE TBANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 609

beginning of transit was sufficiently provided for. Of the triple cord
by which this important astronomical result was to be secured, one strand
had been woven ; and, although, in the weaving the poverty of some of
its filaments had been for the first time fully recognised, the strand still
remained fairly strong.

The second series of operations were those directed to secure the end
of the transit where it occurred earliest and latest. We remind the reader
that the extreme difference in this case, as with the beginning, amounted
to about twenty-five minutes — but that to secure the degree of accuracy
hoped for from these observations, it was necessary to determine the
difference in absolute time to within a second or two. We mention this
point here between the accounts of the two series of observations by this
method, because it is desirable that the reader should notice that in one
sense very plain and obvious evidence about the sun's distance is given by
this method, twenty-five minutes being a large time-interval ; while in
another sense the method is delicate and difficult, because to get the
sun's distance very accurately the time -intervals must be very accurately
measured.

At that end of the second base-line where transit ended earliest, the
English parties detailed to observe this phase were unfortunate. Major-
Palmer, the head of these parties, had stationed them with excellent
judgment in different parts of New Zealand. All that was known of the
conditions of weather at these various stations promised well. The day
before the transit was fine, the day after was provokingly calm and clear,
but unfortunately the day of the transit itself was overcast, until a short
time after the transit was over. An American party at Queenstown,.
Otago, saw part of the transit ; but even they did not see the important
end (important, at least, by the method we are considering). From New
Zealand the telegraph sent home to us here in England the unpleasant
words, " Nobody egress."

But although the parties specially sent out from England to observe
the end of transit missed that phase, other observers were more fortu-
nate. At Melbourne, in particular, Mr. Ellery, the head of the Observa-
tory there, had very fair success, though he reports that his photographs
were not so good as could be wished. The French observed the end of
transit successfully at New Caledonia ; while the Germans achieved excel-
lent success at Auckland Island, a station astronomically superior to
those occupied by Great Britain. At Campbell Island, a still better
station, the French had bad weather. But at St. Paul's Island (which,
however, was not specially chosen for observing the end of transit) they
made good observations. Theoretically the French and Germans ought
to have failed totally at these stations, which our Admiralty had rejected
as untenable ; but for this occasion (and let us hope for this occasion
only) those nations borrowed from us what we regard as our national
characteristic, and not knowing when they were beaten achieved a distin-
guished success.

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 185. 29.

610 SUCCESS OF THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

At the other end of the line the Russian parties, spread over the
regio n around the Caspian Sea, were uniformly thwarted by bad weather.
Not quite so favourably placed, the English and German parties near
Cairo and Alexandria made a series of successful observations. The sun
rose, indeed, enshrouded by clouds, and, as one of the English observers
described the occasion, there was a race between Venus, the sun, and the
clouds, whether the sun should leave the low-lying bank of clouds before
Venus left his disc, or Venus leave his disc first, and so the transit be
over before the sun was visible. Fortunately Venus was a few minutes
late, and thus the end of the transit was seen, which was the phase
specially to be observed at these stations. But there was another station
where English observers had good opportunities of noting the end of
transit. This was Roorkee, in North India, where, as in Egypt, the end
of transit was late by fully ten minutes. Here Colonel Tennant and his
party secured this phase, but not so neatly as was to be wished. Clocks
and working-gear generally seem to have a tendency in Colonel Tennant's
neighbourhood to strike work at unlucky moments. This happened
during the Indian eclipse ; and on the occasion of the transit the record-
ing instrument (a chronograph) stopped just forty seconds before the
critical moment. The photographs, too, were hazy, partly, says Colonel
Tennant, " the fault of the air, partly of telescopic tremor, and partly
that we have never been able to get good definition." " Search after
the cause," he adds, " is complicated by the fact of an occasional image
being fairly sharp."

The second strand of the triple cord is weaker than might be wished,
chiefly because of the clouds which unfortunately hung over the best
Russian stations at one end of the line, and our well-provided English
stations in New Zealand at the other end of the line. Still the strand is
by no means severed. Coupling it with the dther strand, formed from
observations of the beginning of transit, it may fairly be said that these
(which constitute the Delislean part of the cord on which the mea,sure-
ment of the sun's distance last December depends) possess considerable
strength. That they are not stronger is due, in the main, to mischances
against which no foresight or skill could have availed.

It is probable that the combined Delislean operations, taken alone,
would give the sun's distance with an error of not more than four
hundred thousand miles. At the best, that is, if weather had been
more favourable at some of the best stations, and if mishaps due to other
causes had not occurred, this method might have given the distance within
about two hundred and fifty thousand miles.

But we have now to consider the Halleyan strand of the triple cord,
or rather the central cord, supplementary to which were the two Delislean
strands.

In the northern hemisphere a large number of stations had been pro-
vided for observing the whole transit. Russia provided eleven, amongst
which were several in that dismally . bleak part of Siberia, close by the

SUCCESS OP THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS. 611

pole of winter cold, where our astronomer royal had despaired of seeing a
single station. It is singular, considering the opportunities for communi-
cation between Greenwich and Poulkowa, that though this Siberian region
had been pointed out early in 1869, and the best station therein — Nert-
schinsk — indicated by name, the astronomer royal remained ignorant for
five years of the fact that Russia would occupy this region, and even of
the probable weather there in winter. We find him in March 1874, in a
letter addressed to the Astronomical Society, expressing the idea that
the winter skies at Nertschinsk are as clouded as those at Petersburg
(where the sun is sometimes not seen for weeks together), and confidently
asserting his conviction that Russia would not occupy that station. Only
a week later, however, came the news that not Nertschinsk alone, but
eleven Siberian stations for observing the whole transit would be occupied,
while presently a Russian meteorological authority announced that the
weather in that region is clear on about eighty days out of a hundred. In
the meantime, the Americans had been making careful inquiries, and had
determined to occupy one Siberian station, one station in Japan, and
another at Tien-Tsin. France decided on occupying one station in Japan,
one in North China, and one at Saigon. The Germans sent a party to
Chefoo. And lastly, England had one northern station where the whole
transit could be observed, viz. Roorkee, already mentioned in dealing
with the observations of the end of transit.

At the greater number of these stations the transit was successfully
observed. Either the duration was timed, or photographs were taken, by
means of which the path followed by Venus could be ascertained, and
especially the important point of all, her position at the middle of her path
in the sun's face, where, of course, she made her nearest apparent
approach to his centre. In a list of stations where success was achieved,
recently published by the Astronomical Society, the following northern
Halleyan stations are named : in Siberia, — Nertschinsk, Wladiwostock,
Arrianda, Tschita, Possiet, Haborowka, andJKiachta ; in Japan, — Kobe,
Nagasaki, and Yokohama ; in China, — Pekin, Chefoo, and Saigon ; in
India, Roorkee. The importance of these successes will be understood
when it is remembered that these were nearly all (all save Roorkee and
Saigon) absolutely first-class stations. It is also worthy of mention,
perhaps, that in the original scheme of operations, drawn up in England
for the guidance of all the scientific nations, not one of these stations, or
even the regions in which they are placed, had been so much as men-
tioned.*

But these observations all belonged to one end only of the Halleyan
base-line, or rather to one side of the wide Halleyan field of operations.

* This statement, the truth of which can be readily tested, may serve to remove
some misapprehensi ns which have been occasioned by accounts apparently proceed-
ing from ill-info ir.ed persons. The reference is to the programme of operations
published in the notices of the Astronomical Society for December 1868.

29—2

612 SUCCESS OF THE TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS.

Had they not been balanced by southern observations, they would have
been as useless as a common balance would be which had but one arm
capable of bearing weight. Fortunately, southern stations were numerous,
and at many of them successful observations were made. The Ame-
ricans provided five southern stations where the whole transit could
be observed; France three, Germany two, Holland one, Lord Lindsay
one, and at all the English southern stations the "whole transit was visible.
As regards these English stations, however, we must in fairness point out
that not only were they not originally provided for the observation of. the
whole transit, but, when it was found that the whole transit could be
seen there (a fact overlooked in the original programme), it was deter-
mined that the duration should not be timed, but that the epochs of
beginning and ending should be noted and worked up after the Delislean
fashion. We trust our readers will perceive clearly that one may time
the moment when a certain event begins and ends, without learning how
long it lasts. At any rate, if they should fail to understand this, they
must nevertheless not be so ill-mannered as to question this authorised ex-
planation of the English arrangements.

The Americans, at Hobart Town and Queenstown, achieved such
success in photographing the transit that Prof. Newcomb, the head of the
Washington Observatory, estimates that these photographs, combined with
those taken at the three American stations in the north, would of them-
selves give the sun's distance within 250,000 miles. But since he
expressed that opinion, we have heard of further American successes at
Kerguelen Land ; the French were successful in observing and photo-
graphing the whole transit at St. Paul's Island and New Caledonia ; the
Germans at Auckland Island, Lord Lindsay's party obtained more than
two hundred photographs at the Mauritius. Good observations were
made by Meldrum also at the Mauritius, by Ellery at Melbourne, and by
observers at Sydney and elsewhere in South Australia. And although our
official astronomers may be unwilling to find any Halleyan value in their
successes at Rodriguez and Kerguelen, yet as the astronomers of other
nations, and perhaps unofficial astronomers in England, may find it pos-
sible to calculate the duration of an event from the observed time of its
beginniDg and ending, there can be little doubt that English observations
will fortify the southern series of Halleyan operations.

Newcomb's estimate, applied only to the news from three American
stations in the north and two in the south, shows how great the value
must be of the combined results from all the northern and southern
stations mentioned above. There can be little doubt that from these
observations, constituting the Halleyan series, the sun's distance will be
determinate within less than a hundred and fifty thousand miles.

Combining all the observations together, Delislean as well as Halleyan,
it may fairly be assumed that the probable error of the final result will not
be greater than a hundred thousand miles ; or, roughly, about one-nine-
hundredth part of the distance to be determined.

THE Tlta.NSIT EXPEDITIONS. 613

^ub be considered a most satisfactory result of the com-
bined scheme of operations. Few expected so large a proportion of fair
weather at the various stations spread over so wide a region, and where
the transit was observed under such varying conditions. It had been regarded
as probable that at about one-half of the stations there would be bad
weather and at the rest fair weather. But the actual number of stations
at which observations were successfully made was far greater than half the
total number. Then again, the stations at which success was achieved
were on the whole well distributed. If there had been bad weather at
most of the northern stations and fair weather at most of the southern
stations, the result would have been simply a disastrous failure. Or
again, if there had been a more equal distribution of weather between the
two hemispheres, but certain combinations of fair and bad weather
had been presented, the result would still have been failure. Thus if
there had been fine weather at the Sandwich Isles, but bad weather in
Kerguelen, Kodriguez, and Mauritius ; fine weather in New Zealand, but
bad weather in Egypt and North India, as well as at those Russian
stations where the weather actually was very bad ; while in the limited nor-
thern Halleyan region there had been bad weather, with fine weather at
St. Paul's, Campbell Island, &c. ; the result would have been the total
failure of all the three methods of operation. Fortunately, bad and good
weather were so distributed that all three methods had a fair share of
success, though it must be confessed that fortune, on the whole, favoured
most the stations Selected for observing the whole transit. In fact,
while Delislean operations at the beginning of transit were but fairly
successful, those directed to the end of transit barely escaped total
failure.

Two circumstances, alone, seem regrettable in the history of the late
transit ; and though, as a rule, it is idle to discuss what might have been,
yet, as another transit will occur before long, it may be well to consider
these two matters, as suggesting precautions which may be useful here-
after.

The first matter of regret is the circumstance that several stations
where the middle of the transit might have been advantageously observed,
were either not occupied at all, or not provided with suitable appliances for
observing that particular phase of the transit. Considering that the very
essence of transit observation, however disguised in the Halleyan or
Delislean methods, consists in the recognition of the varying distance at
which Venus seems to pass the sun's centre as seen from different
stations, it will be manifest that any station where Venus at the moment
of nearest approach (that is, at mid transit) was either exceptionally near
or exceptionally far from the centre of the sun's disc, was an important
strategic position. In old times, indeed, such a station would have been
of little use, because no instrumental or other means for determining the
exact distance between the centres of the two discs existed. But in our day,
photography supplies a means not merely of measuring this distance, but

S TRANSIT EXPEDITIONS.
614 SUCCESS OF THE TlUixSlT EX\

^•\£ions, they would hav

of securing a record of it. Moreover, the instrumenc c^a v>ut one av~
meter or sun-measurer supplies a very powerful and exact means of mea-
suring such a distance. Now the Russians and Americans occupied all
the stations in the northern hemisphere, where Venus in mid- transit was
most depressed towards the sun's centre, and there secured photographic
and heliometric results of extreme value. In the southern hemisphere,
the stations already referred to were moderately good for this particular
purpose. But the very best southern stations were either not occupied
or not properly provided for. Thus Cape Town, where there is a Govern-
ment observatory, was far superior in value for this purpose to Ker-
guelen, the best of the special stations, and yet no provision was made for
securing photographs or measurements of mid-transit. In point of
fact, half-a-dozen stations should have been provided in Cape Colony and
Natal. What we now know of the northern photographic results shows,
that photographs secured in South Africa would have been an invaluable
addition to the results secured last December.

The second regrettable circumstance is still more important, since it
affects the value of the entire series of photographs obtained by the
English, Russian, and German Government parties. It seems only too
certain that the method they employed for photographing the transit was
untrustworthy. The considerations on which this opinion depends are not
altogether suited, however, to these pages.

In summing up the results achieved during the recent transit, we are
struck by a certain disproportion between the share originally assigned to
England and that which she eventually took in the combined series of
operations. In the original programme of the astronomer royal, Eng-
land had the lion's share, Russia being next, and France third, while
Germany was left to do nothing, and America was expected only to assist
in observing the transit of 1882. It is singular that though England has
actually accomplished nearly twice as much as she originally undertook,
she has been far from taking the lion's share in the scheme of operations.
The work of America, judged by money cost (the readiest test), has been
nearly twice as great as England's. Russia has occupied more stations
than any two other nations together. France, Germany, and America
have between them made provision for four is^nd groups, the occupa-
tion of which was declared by English authorities too dangerous to be
attempted. Considering that the transit of 1882 would in the nature of
things fall specially to the share of America, it must be admitted that our
country must take very energetic measures on that occasion if she is to*
maintain her position in schemes of scientific enterprise.

615

m

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SOME OLD FRIENDS,

they heard that Wenna was coining down the road they
left Mr. Roscorla alone ; lovers like to have their meetings-
and partings unobserved.

She went into the room, pale and yet firm — there was even a sense
of gladness in her heart that now she must know the worst. What
would he say ? How would he receive her ? She knew that she was at
his mercy.

Well, Mr. Roscorla at this moment was angry enough', for he had been
deceived and trifled with in his absence, but he was also anxious, and his
anxiety caused him to conceal his anger. He came forward to her with
quite a pleasant look on his face ; he kissed her and said—

" Why, now, Wenna, how frightened you seem ! Did you think I was-
going to scold you ? No, no, no — I hope there is no necessity for that.
I am not unreasonable, or over- exacting, as a younger man might be ;
I can make allowances. Of course I can't say I liked what you told
me, when I first heard of it ; but then I reasoned with myself : I thought
of your lonely position ; of the natural liking a girl has for the attention
of a young man ; of the'possibility of any one going thoughtlessly wrong.
And really I see no great harm done. A passing fancy — that is all."

" Oh, I hope that is so ! " she cried suddenly, with a pathetic earnest-
ness of appeal. " It is so good of you, so generous of you to speak like
that ! "

For the first time she ventured to raise her eyes to his face. They

615 THREE FEATHERS.

were full of gratitude. Mr. Roscorla complimented himself on his
knowledge of women ; a younger man would have flown into a fury.

" Oh dear, yes, Wenna ! " he said lightly, "I suppose all girls have
their fancies stray a little bit from time to time ; but is there any harm
done ? None whatever ! There is nothing like marriage to fix the affections,
as I hope you will discover ere long — the sooner the better, indeed. Now
we will dismiss all those unpleasant matters we have been writing
about."

" Then you do forgive me ? You are not really angry with me ? "
she said ; and then, finding a welcome assurance in his face, she gratefully
took his hand and touched it with her lips.

This little act of graceful submission quite conquered Mr. Roscorla,
and definitely removed all lingering traces of anger from his heart. He
was no longer acting clemency when he said — with a slight blush on his
forehead : —

" You know, Wenna, I have not been free from blame either. That
letter — it was merely a piece of thoughtless anger ; but still it was very
kind of you to consider it cancelled and withdrawn when I asked you.
Well, I was in a bad temper at that time. You cannot look at things so
philosophically when you are far away from home ; you feel yourself so

helpless ; and you think you are being unfairly However, not another

word ! Come, let us talk of all your affairs, and all the work you have
done since I left."

It was a natural invitation ; and yet it revealed in a moment the
hollo wness of the apparent reconciliation between them. What chance of
mutual confidence could there be between these two ?

He asked Wenna if she had been busy in his absence; and the
thought immediately occurred to him that she had had at least sufficient
leisure to go walking about with young Trelyon.

He asked her about the Sewing Club ; and she stumbled into the
admission that Mr. Trelyon had presented that association with six sewing-
machines.

Always Trelyon — always the recurrence of that uneasy consciousness
of past events, which divided these two as completely as the Atlantic had
done. It was a strange meeting, after that long absence.

" It is a curious thing," he said, rather desperately, " how marriage
makes a husband and wife sure of each other. Anxiety is all over then.
We have near us, out in Jamaica, several men whose wives and families
are here in England ; and they accept their exile there as an ordinary
commercial necessity. But then they put their whole minds into their
work ; for they know that when they return to England they will find
their wives and families just as they left them. Of course, in the majority
of cases, the married men there have taken their wives out with them.
Do you fear a long sea- voyage, Wenna ? "

"I don't know," she said, rather startled.

" You ought to be a good sailor, you know."

THREE FEATHERS. 617

She said nothing to that : she was looking down, dreading what was
coming.

" I am sure you must be a good sailor. I have heard of many of your
boating adventures. Weren't you rather fond, some years ago, of going
out at night with the Lundy pilots ? "

" I have never gone a long voyage in a large vessel," Wenna said,
rather faintly.

" But if there was any reasonable object to be gained, an ordinary
sea- voyage would not frighten you ? "

" Perhaps not."
^' And they have really very good steamers going to the West Indies."

" Oh, indeed."

" First-rate ! You get a most comfortable cabin."

" I thought you rather — in your description of it — in your first
letter " »

" Oh," said he, hurriedly and lightly (for he had been claiming sym-
pathy on account of the discomfort of his voyage out), " perhaps I made
a little too much of that. Besides, I did not make a proper choice in
time. One gains experience in such matters. Now, if you were going out
to Jamaica, I should see that you had every comfort."

" But you don't wish me to go out to Jamaica ? " she said, almost
retreating from him.

" Well," said he, with a smile, for his only object at present was
to familiarise her with the idea, " I don't particularly wish it, unless the
project seemed a good one to you. You see, Wenna, I find that my stay
there must be longer than I expected. When I went out at first the
intention of my partners and myself was that I should merely be on the
spot to help our manager by agreeing his accounts at the moment, and
undertaking a lot of work of that sort, which otherwise would have con-
sumed time in correspondence. I was merely to see the whole thing well
started, and then return. But now I find that my superintendence may
be needed there for a long while. Just when everything promises so well,
I should not like to imperil all our chances simply for a year or two."

"Oh no, of course not," Wenna said: she had no objection to his
remaining in Jamaica for a year or two longer than he had intended.

" That being so," he continued, " it occurred to me that perhaps you
might consent to our marriage before I leave England again ; and that,
indeed, you might even make up your mind to try a trip to Jamaica. Of
course, we should have considerable spells of holiday, if you thought it
was worth while coming home for a short time. I assure you, you would
find the place delightful — far more delightful than anything I told you in
my letters, for I'm not very good at describing things. And there is a fair
amount of society."

He did not prefer the request in an impassioned manner. On the
contrary, he merely felt that he was satisfying himself by carrying out an
intention he had formed on his voyage home. If, he had said to himself,

618 THREE FEATHERS.

Wenna and he became friends, he would at least suggest to her that she
might put an end to all further suspense and anxiety by at once marrying
him and accompanying him to Jamaica.

"What do you say?" he said, with a friendly smile. "Or have I
frightened you too much ? Well, let us drop the subject altogether for
the present."

Wenna breathed again.

" Yes," said he, good-naturedly, "you can think over it. In the
meantime do not harass yourself about that or anything else. You know,
I have come home to spend a holiday."

" And won't you come and see the others ? " said Wenna, rising, with
a glad look of relief on her face.

"Oh yes, if you like," he said ; and then he stopped short, and an
angry gleam shot into his eyes.

" Wenna, who gave you that ring ? "

" Oh, Mabyn did," was the frank reply ; but all the same Wenna
blushed hotly, for that matter of the emerald ring had not been touched
upon.

"Mabyn did?" he repeated, somewhat suspiciously. " She must
have been in a generous mood."

" When you know Mabyn as well as I do, you will find out that she
always is," said Miss Wenna, quite cheerfully; she was indeed in the
best of spirits to find that this dreaded interview had not been so very
frightful after all, and that she had done no mortal injury to one who had
placed his happiness in her hands.

When Mr. Roscorla, some time after, set out to walk by himself up to
Bassett Cottage, whither his luggage had been sent before him, he felt a
little tired. He was not accustomed to violent emotions ; and that
morning he had gone through a good deal. His anger and anxiety had
for long been fighting for mastery; and both had reached their climax
that morning. On the one hand, he wished to ayenge himself for the
insult paid him, and to show that he was not to be trifled with ; on
the other hand, his anxiety lest he should be unable to make up matters
with Wenna, led him to put an unusual value upon her. What was the
result, now that he had definitely won her back to himself ? What was
the sentiment that followed on these jarring emotions of the morning ?

To tell the truth, a little disappointment. Wenna was not looking her
best when she entered the room ; even now he remembered that the pale
face rather shocked him. She was more — insignificant, perhaps, is the
best word — than he had expected. Now that he had got back the prize
which he thought he had lost, it did not seem to him, after all, to be
so wonderful.

And in this mood he went up and walked into the pretty little cottage
which had once been his home. " What ? " he said to himself, looking
in amazement at the small old-fashioned parlour, and at the still smaller
study, filled with books, "is it possible that I ever proposed to myself to-

THREE FEATHERS. 61 9

live and die in a hole like this ? — my only companion a cantankerous old
fool of a woman, my only occupation reading the newspapers, my only
society the good folks of the inn ? "

He thanked God he had escaped. His knocking about the world for t
bit had opened up his mind. The possibility of his having in time a
handsome income had let in upon him many new and daring ambitions.

His housekeeper, having expressed her grief that she had just posted
some letters to him, not knowing that he was returning to England,
brought in a number of small passbooks and a large sheet of" blue paper.

" If yii hain't too tired, zor, vor to look over the accounts, 'tis all theear
but the pultry that Mr. "

" Good heavens, Mrs. Cornish ! " said he, " do you think I am going
to look over a lot of grocers' bills ? "

Mrs. Cornish not only hinted in very plain language that her master
had been at one time particular enough about grocers' bills, and all other
bills, however trifling, but further proceeded to give him a full and minute
account of the various incidental expenses to which she had been put through
young Penny Luke having broken a window by flinging a stone from the.
road ; through the cat having knocked down the best tea-pot ; through the
pig having got out of its sty, gone mad, and smashed a cucumber -frame ;
and so forth, and so forth. In desperation, Mr. Roscorla got up,. put on
his hat, and went outside, leaving her at once astonished and indignant by
his want of interest in what at one time had been his only care.

Was this, then, the place in which he had chosen to spend the rest of
his life, without change, without movement, without interest ? It seemed
to him at the moment a living tomb. There was not a human being
within sight. Far away out there lay the grey-blue sea — a plain without
a speck on it. The great black crags at the mouth of the harbour were
voiceless and sterile ; could anything have been more bleak than the bare
uplands on which the pale sun of an English October was shining ? The
quiet crushed him ; there was not a nigger near to swear at ; nor could
he, at the impulse of a moment, get on horseback and ride over to the
busy and interesting and picturesque scene supplied by his faithful coolies
at work.

What was he to do on this very first day in England, for example ?
Unpack his luggage, in which were some curiosities he had brought home
for Wenna ? — there was too much trouble in that. Walk about the
garden and smoke a pipe as had been his wont ? — he had got emanci-
pated from these delights of dotage. Attack his grocers' bills ? — he swore
by all his gods that he would have nothing to do with the price of candles
and cheese now or at any future time. The return of the exile to his
native land had already produced a feeling of deep disappointment ; when
he married, he said to himself, he would take very good care not to sink
into an oyster-like life in Eglosilyan.

About a couple of hours after, however, he was reminded that
Eglosilyan had its small measure of society, by the receipt of a letter from

620 THREE FEATHERS.

Mrs. Trelyon, who said she had just heard of his arrival, and hastened to
ask him whether he would dine at the Hall, not next evening, but the
following one, to meet two old friends of his, General and Lady Weekes,
who were there on a brief visit.

" And I have written to ask Miss Rosewarne," Mrs. Trelyon continued,
"to spare us the same evening, so that we hope to have you both.
Perhaps you will kindly add your entreaties to mine."

The friendly intention of this postscript was evident ; and yet it did
not seem to please Mr. Roscorla. This Sir Percy Weekes had been a
friend of his father's ; and when the younger Roscorla was a young man
about town, Lady Weekes had been very kind to him, and had nearly got
him married once or twice. There was a great contrast between those
days and these. He hoped the old General would not be tempted to come
and visit him at Bassett Cottage.

" Oh, Wenna," said he, carelessly, to her next morning, "Mrs.
Trelyon told me she had asked you to go up there to-morrow evening."

" Yes," Wenna said, looking rather uncomfortable. Then she added,
quickly, " Would it displease you if I did not go ? I ought to be at a
children's party at Mr. Trewhella's."

This was precisely what Mr. Roscorla wanted ; but he said —

" You must not be shy, Wenna. However, please yourself; you need
have no fear of vexing me. But I must go ; for the Weekeses are old
friends of mine."

" They stayed at the inn two or three days in May last," said Wenna,
innocently. " They came here by chance and found Mrs. Trelyon from
home."

Mr. Roscorla seemed startled.

"Oh," said he. " Did they — did they — ask for me ? "

" Yes, I believe they did," Wenna said.

" Then you told them," said Mr. Roscorla, with a pleasant smile,
" you told them, of course, why you were the best person in the world to
give them information about me ? "

" Oh, dear, no," said Wenna, blushing hotly, " they spoke to
Jennifer."

Mr. Roscorla felt himself rebuked. It was George Rosewarne's
express wish that his daughters should not be approached by strangers
visiting the inn as if they were officially connected with the place : Mr.
Roscorla should have remembered that inquiries would be made of a
servant.

But, as it happened, Sir Percy and his wife had really made the
acquaintance of both Wenna and Mabyn on their chance visit to Eglo-
silyan ; and it was of these two girls they were speaking when Mr. Roscorla
was announced in Mrs. Trelyon's drawing-room the following evening.
The thin, wiry, white -moustached old man, who had wonderfully bright
eyes and a great vivacity of spirits for a veteran of seventy-four, was
standing in front of the fire, and declaring to everybody that two such

THREE FEATHERS. 021

well-accomplished, smart, talkative, and lady-like young women he had
never met with in his life.

"What did you say the name was, my dear Mrs. Trelyon? Rose-
warne, eh ? — Rosewarne ? A good old Cornish name — as good as yours,
Roscorla. So they're called Rosewarne — Gad, if her ladyship wants to
appoint a successor, I'm willing to let her choice fall on one o' those two
girls."

Her ladyship — a dark and silent old woman of eighty — did not like, in
the first place, to be called her ladyship, and did not relish either having
her death talked of as a joke.

"Roscorla, now — Roscorla — there's a good chance for you, eh?"
continued the old General. " We never could get you married, you
know — wild young dog. Don't ye know the girls ? "

" Oh, yes, Sir Percy," Mr. Roscorla said, with no great good will;
then he turned to the fire and began to warm his hands.

There was a tall young gentleman standing there who, in former days,
would have been delighted to cry out on such an occasion, " Why, Ros-
corla's going to marry one of 'em." He remained silent now.

He was very silent, too, throughout the evening ; and almost anxiously
civil towards Mr. Roscorla. He paid great attention when the latter was
describing to the company at table the beauties of West Indian scenery,
the delights of West Indian life, the change that had come over the
prospects of Jamaica since the introduction of coolie labour, and the
fashion in which the rich merchants of Cuba were setting about getting
plantations there for the growth of tobacco. Mr. Roscorla spoke with the
air of a man who now knew what the world was. When the old General asked
him if he were coming back to live in Eglosilyan after he had become a
millionaire, he laughed, and said that one's cofim came soon enough with-
out one's rushing to meet it. No; when he came back to England finally,
he would live in London ; and had Sir Percy still that old walled-in house
in Brompton ?

Sir Percy paid less heed to these descriptions of Jamaica than Harry
Trelyon did, for his next neighbour was old Mrs. Trelyon, and these two
venerable flirts were talking of old acquaintances and old times at Baih
and Cheltenham, and of the celebrated beauties, wits, and murderers of
other days, in a manner which her silent ladyship did not at all seem to
approve. The General was bringing out all his old-fashioned gallantry —
compliments, easy phrases in French, polite attentions ; his companion
began to use her fan with a coquettish grace, and was vastly pleased when
a reference was made to her celebrated flight to Gretna Green.

"Ah, Sir Percy," she said, " the men were men in those days, and
the women women, I promise you ; no beating about the bush, but the
fair word given, and the fair word taken ; and then a broken head for
whoever should interfere, father, uncle, or brother, no matter who ; and

you know our family, Sir Percy, our family were among the worst "

" I tell you what, madam," said the General, hotly, " your family had

622 THllEE FEATHERS.

among 'em the handsomest women in the west of England — and the
handsomest men, too, by Gad ! Do you remember Jane Swanhope — the
Fair Maid of Somerset they used to call her — that married the fellow
living down Yeovil way, who broke his neck in a steeplechase ? "

"Do I remember her?" said the old lad}7. " She was one of my
bridesmaids when they took me up to London to get married properly
after I came back ! She was my cousin on the mother's side ; but they
were connected with the Trelyons, too. And do you remember old John
Trelyon of Polkerris ; and did you ever see a man straighter in the back
than he was, at seventy-one, when he married his second wife — that was
at Exeter, I think ? But there now, you don't find such men and women in
these times ; and do you know the reason of that, Sir Percy ? I'll tell you ;
it's the doctors. The doctors can keep all the sickly ones alive now ;
before it was only the strong ones that lived. Dear, dear me, when I
hear some of those London women talk — it is nothing but a catalogue of
illnesses and diseases. No wonder they should say in church, « There
is no health in us ;' every one of them has something the matter, even the
young girls, poor things ; and pretty mothers they're likely to make !
They're a misery to themselves ; they'll bring miserable things into the
world; and all because the doctors have become so clever in pulling
sickly people through. That's my opinion, Sir Percy. The doctors are
responsible for five- sixths of all the suffering you hear of in families,
either through illness or the losing of one's friends and relatives."

" Upon my word, madam," the General protested, " you use the doctor
badly. He is blamed if he kills people, and he is blamed if he keeps
them alive. What is he to do ? "

"Do? He can't help saving the sickly ones now," the old lady
admitted ; "for relatives will have it done, and they know he can do it ;
but it's a great misfortune, Sir Percy, that's what it is, to have all these
sickly creatures growing up to intermarry into the good old families that
used to be famous for their comeliness and strength. There was a man,
yes, I remember him well, that came from Devonshire — he was a man of
good family, too, and they made such a noise about his wrestling. Said
I to myself, wrestling is not a fit amusement for gentlemen, but if this
man comes up to our country, there's one or other of the Trelyons will
try his mettle. And well I remember saying to my eldest son George —
you remember when he was a young man, Sir Percy, no older than his
own son there — ' George,' I said, ' if this Mr. So-and-so comes into these
parts, mind you have nothing to do with him ; for wrestling is not fit for
gentlemen.' 'All right, mother,' said he; but he laughed, and I knew
what the laugh meant. My dear Sir Percy, I tell you the man hadn't a
chance — I heard of it all afterwards. George caught him up, before he
could begin any of his tricks, and flung him on to the hedge — and there
were a dozen more in our family who could have done it, I'll be bound."
"But then, you know, Mrs. Trelyon," Mr. Roscorla ventured to say,
" physical strength is not everything that is needed. If the doctors were

THREE FEATHERS. 623

to let the sickly ones die, we might be losing all sorts of great poets, and
statesmen, and philosophers."
The old lady turned on him.

" And do you think a man has to be sickly to be clever ? No, no,
Mr. Koscorla, give him better health and you give him a better head,
that's what we believed in the old days. I fancy, now, there were greater
men before all this coddling began than there are now, yes, I do ; and if
there is a great man coming into the world, the chances are just as much
that he'll be among the strong ones as among the sickly ones — what do
you think, Sir Percy ? "

"I declare you're right, madam," said he, gallantly. " You've quite
convinced me. Of course, some of 'em must go — I say, let the sickly
ones go."

" I never heard such brutal, such murderous sentiments expressed in
my life before," said a solemn voice ; and every one became aware that at
last Lady Weekes had spoken. Her speech was the signal for universal
silence, in the midst of which the ladies got up and left the room.

Trelyon took his mother's place, and sent round the wine. He was
particularly attentive to Mr. Roscorla, who was surprised. Perhaps,
thought the latter, he is anxious to atone for all this bother that is now
happily over.

If the younger man was silent and preoccupied, that was not the case
with Mr. Roscorla, who was already assuming the airs of a rich person
and speaking of his being unable to live in this district or that district of
London, just as if he expected to purchase a lease of Buckingham Palace
on his return from Jamaica. .: .-.

" And how are all my old friends in Hans Place, Sir Percy! " he cried.
" You've been a deserter, sir, you've been a deserter for many a year
now," the General said gaily, " but we're all willing to have you back
again, to a quiet rubber after dinner, you know. Do you remember old
John Thwaites ? Ah, he's gone now— left 150,OOOZ. to build a hospital,
and only 5,OOOZ. to his sister. The poor old woman believed some one
would marry her when she got the whole of her brother's money — so
I'm told — and when the truth became known, what did she do ? Gad,
sir, she wrote a novel abusing her own brother. By the way, that reminds
me of a devilish good thing, I heard when I was here last — down at the
inn, you know — what's the name of the girls I was talking about ? Well,
her ladyship caught one of them reading a novel, and not very well
pleased with it, and says she to the young lady, ' Don't you like that
book ? ' Then, says the girl — let me see what was it ? — Gad, I must go

and ask her ladyship "

And off he trotted to the drawing-room. He came back in a couple
of minutes.

" Of course," said he. " Devilish stupid of me to forget it. ' Why ? '
said the young lady, « I think the author has been trying to keep the
fourth commandment, for there's nothing in the book that has any like-

624 THREE FEATHERS.

ness to anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or the heavens

under the earth "

" The waters under the earth."

" I mean the waters, of course. Gad, her ladyship was immensely
tickled."

" Which of the two young ladies was it, Sir Percy ? The younger, I
suppose ? " said Mr. Roscorla.

"No, no, the elder sister, of course," said Trelyon.
"Yes, the elder one it was — the quiet one — and an uncommon nice
girl she is. Well, there's Captain Walters — the old sea-dog — still to the
fore; and his uniform too—don't you remember the uniform with the
red cuffs that hasn't been seen in the navy for a couple of centuries,
I should think ! His son's got into Parliament now — gone over to the
Rads, and the working-men, and those fellows that are scheming to get
the land divided among themselves — all in the name of philosophy — and
it's a devilish fine sort of philosophy, that is, when you haven't a rap in
your pocket, and when you prove that everybody who has must give it
up. He came to my house the other day, and he was jawing away about
Primogeniture, and Entail, and Direct Taxation, and equal electoral
districts, and I don't know what besides. 'Walters,' said I, 'Walters,
you've got nothing to share, and so you don't mind a general division.
When you have, you'll want to stick to what's in your own pocket.' Had
him there, eh ? "

The old general beamed and laughed over his smartness ; he was con-
scious of having said something that, in shape at least, was like an epigram.

',' I must rub up my acquaintance in that quarter," said Roscorla,
"before I leave again. Fortunately, I have always kept up]my club sub-
scription ; and you'll come and dine with me, Sir Percy, won't you, when
I get to town ? "

" Are you going to town ? " said Trelyon quickly.

"Oh, yes, of course."

"When?"

The question was abrupt, and it made Roscorla look at the young
man as he answered. Trelyon seemed to him to be very much harassed
about something or other.

" Well, I suppose in a week or so ; I am only home for a holiday, you
know."

" Ob, you'll be here for a week ? " said the younger man, submissively.
"When do you think of returning to Jamaica ? "

" Probably at the beginning of next month. Fancy leaving England
in November— just at the most hideous time of the year — and in a week
or two getting out into summer again, with the most beautiful climate,
and foliage, and what not, all around you ! I can tell you a man makes
a great mistake who settles down to a sort of vegetable life anywhere —
you don't catch me at that again."

"There's some old women," observed the General, who was so

THREE FEATHERS. 625

anxious to show his profundity that he quite forgot the invidious character
of the comparison, "who are just like trees — as much below the ground
as above it — isn't that true, eh ? They're a deal more at home among
the people they have buried than among those that are alive. I don't
say that's your case, Roscorla. You're comparatively a young man yet —
you've got brisk health — I don't wonder at your liking to knock about.
As for you, young Trelyon, what do you mean to do ? "

Harry Trelyon started.

" Oh," said he, with some confusion, " I have no immediate plans.
Yes, I have — don't you know I have been cramming for the Civil Service
examinations for first commissions ? "

" And what the devil made the War Office go to those civilians ?"
muttered the General.

" And if I pull through, I shall want all your influence, to get me
gazetted to a good regiment. Don't they often shunt you on to the First
or Second West Indians ? "

" And you've enough money to back you too," said the General. " I
tell you what it is, gentlemen, if they abolish the purchase of commissions
in the army — and they're always talking about it — they don't know what
they'll bring about. They'll have two sets of officers in the army —
men with money, who like a good mess, and live far beyond their
pay, and men with no money at all, who've got to live on their pay, and
how can they afford the regimental mess out of that ? But Parliament
wont stand it you'll see. The War Minister '11 be beaten if he brings it
on — take my word for that."

The old General had probably never heard of a royal warrant and its
mighty powers.

11 So you're going to be one of us? " he said to Trelyon. " Well, you've
a smart figure for a uniform. You're the first of your side of the family
to go into the army, eh ? You had some naval men among you, eh ? "

"I think you'd better ask my grandmother," said young Trelyon,
with a laugh ; " she'll tell you stories about 'em by the hour together."

" She's a wonderful woman that— a wonderful old creature," said the
General, just as if he were a sprightly young fellow talking of the oldest
inhabitant of the district. " She's not one of them that are half buried ;
she's wide enough awake, I'll be bound. Gad, what a handsome woman
she was when I saw her first. Well, lads, let's join the ladies ; I'm none
of your steady-going old topers. Enough's as good's a feast — that's my
motto. And I can't write my name on a slate with my knuckles, either."

And so they went into the large, dimly-lit, red chamber, where the
women were having tea round the blazing fire. The men took various
chairs about ; the conversation became general ; old Lady Weekes feebly
endeavoured to keep up her eyelids. In about half-an-hour or so Mrs.
Trelyon happened to glance round the room.

" Where's Harry ? " said she.

No one apparently had noticed that Master Harry had disappeared.

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 185. 30.

626 THREE FEATHERS.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
A DARK CONSPIRACY.

Now, when Harry Trelyon drove up to the Hall, after leaving Wenna.
Eosewarne in the road, he could not .tell why he was vexed with her. He
imagined somehow that she should not have allowed Mr. Eoscorla to come"
home — and to come home just at this moment, when he, Trelyon, had
stolen down for a couple of days to have a shy look at the sweetheart
who was so far out of his reach. She ought to have been alone. Then
she ought not to have looked so calm and complacent on going away to
meet Mr. Eoscorla ; she ought to have been afraid. She ought to have —
in short everything was wrong, and Wenna was largely to blame.

"Well, grandmother," said he, as they drove through the avenue,
" don't you expect every minute to flush a covey of parsons ? "

He was angry with Wenna ; and so he broke out once more in his
old vein.

"There are worse men than the parsons, Harry," the old lady said.
" I'll bet you a sovereign there are two on the doorstep."
He would have lost. There was not a clergyman of any sort in or
about the house.

" Isn't Mr. Barnes here ? " said he to his mother.
Mrs. Trelyon flushed slightly, as she said —

" No, Harry, Mr. Barnes is not here. Nor is he likely to visit here
again."

Now Mr. Eoscorla would at once have perceived what a strange little
story lay behind that simple speech ; but Mr. Harry, paying no attention
to it, merely said he was heartily glad to hear of it, and showed his
gratitude by being unusually polite to his mother during the rest of
his stay.

" And so Mr. Eoscorla has come back," his mother said. " General
Weekes was asking about him only yesterday. We must see if he will

come up to dinner the night after to-morrow and Miss Eosewarne

also."

"You may ask her — you ought to ask her — but she won't come,"
said he.

" How do you know ? " Mrs. Trelyon said, with a gentle wonder.
" She has been here very often of late."
" Have you let her walk up ? "

" No, I have generally driven down for her when I wanted to see her ;
and the way she has been working for these people is extraordinary — never
tired, always cheerful, ready to be bothered by anybody, and patient with
their suspicions and simplicity,' beyond belief. I am sure Mr. Eoscorla
will have an excellent wife."

"I am not at all sure that he will," said her son, goaded past endu-
rance.

THREE FEATHERS. 627

" Why,' Harry," said his mother, with her eyes wide open, " I thought
you had a great respect for Miss Rosewarne."

"I have," he said, abruptly, — " far too great a respect to like the
notion of her marrying that old fool."

" Would you rather not have him to dinner ? "

" Oh, I should like to have him to dinner."

For one evening, at least, this young man considered, these two
would be separated. He was pretty sure that Roscorla would come to
meet General Weekes ; he was positive that Wenna would not come to the
house while he himself was in it.

But the notion that, except during this one evening, his rival would have
free access to the inn, and would spend pleasant hours there, and would take
Wenna with him for walks along the coast, maddened him. He dared not
go down to the village, for fear of seeing these two together. He walked
about the grounds, or went away over to the cliffs, torturing his heart with
imagining Roscorla's opportunities. And once or twice he was on the
point of going straight down to Eglosilyan, and calling on Wenna, before
Roscorla's face, to be true to her own heart, and declare herself free from
this old and hateful entanglement.

In these circumstances, his grandmother was not a good companion
for him. In her continual glorification of the self-will of the Trelyons, and
her stories of the wild deeds she had done, she was unconsciously
driving him to some desperate thing, against his better judgment.

"Why, grandmother," he said, one day, " you hint that I am a nin-
compoop because I don't go and carry off that girl and marry her against
her will. Is that what you mean by telling me of what the men did
in former days ? Well, I can tell you this, that it would be a deal easier
for me to try that than not to try it. The difficulty is in holding
your hand. But what good would you do, after all? The time has
gone by for that sort of thing. I shouldn't like to have on my hands
a woman sulking because she was married by force — besides, you can't
do these mad freaks now — there are too many police-courts about."

" By force ? No ! " the old lady said. " The girls I speak of were as
glad to run away as the men, I can tell you, and they did it, too, when
their relations were against the match."

" Of course, if both he and she are agreed, the way is as smooth now
as it was then ; you don't need to care much for relations."

"But Harry, you don't know what a girl thinks," this dangerous old
lady said. " She has her notions of duty, and her respect for her parents,
and all that ; and if the man only went and reasoned with her, he would
never carry the day ; but just as she comes out of a ball-room some night,
when she is all aglow with fun and pleasure, and ready to become romantic
with the stars, you see, and the darkness, then just show her a carriage, a
pair of horses, a marriage licence, and her own maid to accompany her,
and see what will happen ! Why, she'll hop into the carriage like a dicky-
bird ; then she'll have a bit of a cry ; and then she'll recover, and be mad

80—2

628 THREE FEATHERS.

with the delight of escaping from those behind her. That's how to win a
girl, man ! The sweethearts of these days think too much, that's about
it : it's all done by argument between them."

" You're a wicked old woman, grandmother," said Trelyon, with a
laugh. "You oughtn't to put such notions into the head of a well-con-
ducted young man like me."

" Well, you're not such a booby as you used to be, Harry," the old
lady admitted. " Your manners are considerably improved, and there was
much room for improvement. You're growing a good deal like your
grandfather."

" But there's no Gretna Green now-a-days," said Trelyon, as he went
outside, " so you can't expect me to be perfect, grandmother."

On the first night of his arrival at Eglosilyan he stole away in the
darkness, down to the inn. There were no lamps in the steep road, which
was rendered all the darker by the high rocky bank with its rough masses
of foliage ; he feared that by accident some one might be out and meet
him. But in the absolute silence, under the stars, he made his way
down until he was hear the inn ; and there in the black shadow of the
road, he stood and looked at the lighted windows. Roscorla was doubt-
less within — lying in an easy-chair, probably, by the fire, while Wenna
sang her old-fashioned songs to him. He would assume the air of being one
of the family now — only holding himself a little above the family. Perhaps
he was talking of the house he meant to take when he and Wenna married.

That was no wholesome food for reflection on which this young man's
mind was now feeding. He stood there in the darkness, himself white as a
ghost, while all the vague imaginings of what might be going on within
the house seemed to be eating at his heart. This, then, was the comfort
he had found, by secretly stealing away from London for a day or two ; he
had arrived just in time to find his rival triumphant.

The private door of the inn was at this moment opened; a warm
glow of yellow streamed out into the darkness.

" Good-night," said some one : was it Wenna ?

" Good-night," was the answer; and then the figure of a man passed
down the road.

Trelyon breathed more freely ; at last his rival was out of the house.
Wenna was now alone ; would she go up into her own room, and think
over all the events of the day ? And would she remember that he had
come to Eglosilyan ; and that she could, if any such feeling arose in her
heart, summon him at need ?

It was very late that night before Trelyon returned — he had gone
all round by the harbour, and the cliffs, and the high-lying church on
the hill. All in the house had gone to bed ; but there was a fire
burning in his study ; and there were biscuits and wine on the table.
A box of cigars stood on the mantelpiece.

Apparently he was in no mood for the indolent comfort thus sug-
gested. He stood for a minute or two before the fire, staring into it,

THREE FEATHERS. 629

and seeing other things than the flaming coals there ; then he moved
about the room, in an impatient and excited fashion ; finally, with his
hand trembling a little bit, he sat down and wrote this note : —

" DEAR MOTHEK, — The horses and carriage will be at Launceston sta-
tion by the first train on Saturday morning. Will you please send Jakes

over for them ? And bid him take the horses up to Mr. 's stables,

and have them fed, watered, and properly rested before he drives them
over. Your affectionate son, HARRY TRELYON."

Next morning, as Mabyn Rosewarne was coming briskly up the Tre-
venna road, carrying in her arms a pretty big parcel, she was startled by the
appearance of a young man, who suddenly showed himself overhead, and
then scrambled down the rocky bank until he stood beside her.

" I've been watching for you all the morning, Mabyn," said Trelyon.
" I 1 want to speak to you. Where are you going ? "

" Up to Mr. Trewhella's. You know his granddaughter is very nearly
quite well again ; and there is to be a great gathering of children there to-
night to celebrate her recovery. This is a cake I am carrying that Wenna
has made herself."

" Is Wenna to be there ? " Trelyon said, eagerly.

" Why, of course," said Mabyn, petulantly. " What do you think the
children could do without her ? "

" Look here, Mabyn," he said. "I want to speak to you very particu-
larly. Couldn't you just as well go round by the farm road ? Let me
carry your cake for you."

Mabyn guessed what he wanted to speak about, and willingly made
the circuit by a more private road leading by one of the upland farms.
At a certain point they came to a stile ; and here they rested. So far
Trelyon had said nothing of consequence.

" Oh, do you know, Mr. Trelyon," Mabyn remarked, quite innocently,
." I have been reading such a nice book — all about Jamaica."

" So you're interested about Jamaica, too ? " said he, rather bitterly.

" Yes, much. Do you know that it is the most fearful place for
storms in the whole world — the most awful hurricanes that come smash-
ing down everything and killing people. You can't escape if you're in the
way of the hurricane. It whirls the roofs off the houses, and twists out
the plantain- trees just like straws. The rivers wash away whole acres of
canes and swamp the farms. Sometimes the sea rages so that boats are
carried right up into the streets of Kingston. There !" "

" But why does that please you ? "

" Why," she said, with proud indignation, " the notion of people talk-
ing as if they could go out to Jamaica and live for ever, and come back
just when they please — it is too ridiculous ! Many accidents may happen.
And isn't November a very bad time for storms ? Ships often get
wrecked going out to the West Indies, don't they ? "

At another time Trelyon would have laughed at this bloodthirsty
young woman ; at this moment he was too serious.

630 THREE FEATHERS.

"Mabyn," said he, " I can't bear this any longer — standing by like
a fool and looking on while another man is doing his best to rnarry
Wenna; I can't go on like this any longer. Mabyn, when did you say
she would leave Mr. Trewhella's house to-night ? "

"I did not say anything about it. I suppose we shall leave about
ten ; the young ones leave at nine."

" You will be there ?"

" Yes, Wenna and I are to keep order."

" Nobody else with you ? "

"No."

He looked at her rather hesitatingly.

" And supposing, Mabyn," he said slowly, " supposing you and Wenna
were to leave at ten, and that it is a beautiful clear night, you might
walk down by the wood instead of by the road ; and then, supposing that
you came out on the road down at the foot, and you found there a carriage
and pair of horses "

Mabyn began to look alarmed.

" And if I was there," he continued, more rapidly, " and I said to
Wenna suddenly, « Now, WTenna, think nothing, but come and save your-
self from this marriage ! There is your sister will come with you— and
I will drive you to Plymouth •-' "

" Oh, Mr. Trelyon! " Mabyn cried, with a sudden joy in her face,
" she would do it ! She would do it ! "

" And you, would you come too ? " he demanded.

" Yes ! " the girl cried, full of excitement. " And then, Mr. Trelyon,
and then ? "

" Why ? " he cried boldly, "up to London at once — twenty-four
hours' start of everybody — and in London we are safe ! Then, you know,
Mabyn "

"Yes, yes, Mr. Trelyon!"

"Don't you think now that we two could persuade her to a quick
marriage — with a special licence, you know — you could persuade her, I
am sure, Mabyn "

In the gladness of her heart Mabyn felt herself at this moment ready
to fall on the young man's neck and kiss him. But she was a properly
conducted young person ; and so she rose from the big block of slate on
which she had been sitting and managed to suppress any great intimation
of her abounding joy. But she was very proud, all the same ; and there
was a great firmness about her lips as she said : —

" We will do it, Mr. Trelyon ; we will do it. Do you know why
Wenna submits to this engagement ? Because she reasons with her con-
science, and persuades herself that it is right. When you meet her like
that, she will have no time to consider "

" That is precisely what my grandmother says," Trelyon said, with
a triumphant laugh.

" Yes, she was a girl once," Mabyn replied, sagely. "Well, well, tell

THREE FEATHERS. 631

me all about it ! What arrangements have you made ? You haven't got
the special licence ? "

" No," said he, " I didn't make up my mind to try this on till last night.
But the difference of a day is nothing, when you are with her. We shall
be able to hide ourselves away pretty well in London, don't you think? "

"Of course!" cried Mabyn, confidently. "But tell me more, Mr.
Trelyon ! What have you arranged ? What have you done ? "

" What could I do until I knew whether you'd help me ? "

" You must bring a fearful amount of wraps with you."

" Certainly — more than you'll want, I know. And I shan't light the
lamps until I hear you coming .along ; for they would attract attention
•down in the valley. I should like to wait for you elsewhere ; but if I did
that, you couldn't get Wenna to come with you. Do you think you will
«ven then ? "

" Oh, yes," said Mabyn, cheerfully. "Nothing easier! I shall tell
her she's afraid ; and then she would walk down the face of Black Cliff.
B}7 the way, Mr. Trelyon, I must bring something to eat with me, and
some wine — she will be so nervous — and the long journey will tire her."

" You will be at Mr. Trewhella's, Mabyn ; you can't go carrying things
•about with you ! "

" I could bring a bit of cake in my pocket," Mabyn suggested ; but
this seemed even to her so ludicrous that she blushed and laughed and
agreed that Mr. Harry should bring the necessary provisions for the wild
night-ride to Plymouth.

" Oh, it does so please me to think of it ! " she said with a curious
anxious excitement as well as gladness in her face ; "I hope I have not
forgotten to arrange anything. Let me see — we start at ten ; then down
through the wood to the road in the hollow — oh, I hope there will be
nobody coming along just then ! — then you light the lamps — then you
come forward to persuade Wenna — by the way, Mr. Trelyon, where must
I go ? Shall I not be dreadfully in the way ? "

" You ? You must stand by the horses' heads ! I shan't have my
man with me. And yet they're not very fiery animals— they'll be less
.fiery, the unfortunate wretches, when they get to Plymouth."

"At what time?"

" About half-past three in the morning, if we go straight on," said he.

" Do you know a good hotel there ? " said the practical Mabyn.

" The best one is by the station ; but if you sleep in the front of the
house, you have the whistling of engines all night long, and if you sleep
in the back, you overlook a barracks, and the confounded trumpeting
begins about four o'clock, I believe."

" Wenna and I won't mind that — we shall be too tired," Mabyn said.
" Do you think they could give us a little hot coffee when we arrive ? "

" Oh, yes ! I'll give the night-porter a sovereign a cup — then he'll
offer to bring it to you in buckets. Now don't you think the whole
thing is beautifully arranged, Mabyn ? "

632 THREE FEATHERS.

" It is quite lovely ! " the girl said joyously, "for we shall be off with
the morning train to London, while Mr. Roscorla is pottering about
Launceston station at mid- day ! Then we must send a telegram from
Plymouth, a fine, dramatic telegram; and my father, he will swear a
little, but be quite content, and my mother — do you know, Mr. Trelyon,
I believe my mother will be as glad as anybody ! What shall we say ? —
'To Mr. Eosewarne, Eglosilyan. IVe have fled. Not the least good pur-
suing us. May as well make vp your mind to the inevitable. Will write
to-morrow.' Is that more than the twenty words for a shilling?"

" We shan't grudge the other shilling if it is," the young man said.
" Now you must go on with your cake, Mabyn ! I am off to see after
the horses' shoes. Mind, as soon after ten as you can — just where the
path from the wood comes into the main road."

Then she hesitated, and for a minute or two she remained thoughtful
and silent ; while he was inwardly hoping that she was not going to draw
back. Suddenly she looked up at him, with earnest and anxious eyes.

" Oh, Mr. Trelyon," she said, " this is a very serious thing. You —
you will be kind to our Wenna after she is married to you ! "

" You will see, Mabyn," he answered gently.

"You don't know how sensitive she is," she continued, apparently
thinking over all the possibilities of the future in a much graver fashion
than she had done. " If you were unkind to her, it would kill her. Are
you quite sure you won't regret it ? "

" Yes, I am quite sure of that," said he, " as sure as a man may be.
I don't think you need fear my being unkind to Wenna. Why, what has
put such thoughts into your head ? "

" If you were to be cruel to her or indifferent," she said, slowly and
absently, " I know that would kill her. But I know more than that. I
would kill you."

" Mabyn," he said, quite startled, "whatever has put such thoughts
into your head ? "

" Why," she said, passionately, " haven't I seen already how a man
can treat her ? Haven't I read the insolent letters he has sent her ?
Haven't I seen her throw herself on her bed, beside herself with grief ?
And — and — these are things I don't forget, Mr, Trelyon. No, I have got
a word to say to Mr. Roscorla yet for his treatment of my sister — and I
will say it. And then "

The proud lips were beginning to quiver.

" Come, come, Mabyn," said Trelyon, gently, " don't imagine all men
are the same. And perhaps Roscorla will have been paid out quite suffi-
ciently when he hears of to-night's work. I shan't bear him any malice
after that, I know. Already, I confess, I feel a good deal of compunction
as regards him."

11 1 don't at all — I don't a bit," said Mabyn, who very quickly recovered
herself whenever Mr. Roscorla's name was mentioned. " If you only can
get her to go away with you, Mr. Trelyon, it will serve him just right.

THEEE FEATHERS. 633

Indeed, it is on his account that I hope you will be successful. I — I
don't quite like Wenna running away with you, to tell you the truth — I
would rather have her left to a quiet decision, and to a marriage with
everybody approving. But there is no chance of that. This is the only
thing that will save her."

" That is precisely what I said to you," Trelyon said, eagerly, for he
was afraid of losing so invaluable an ally.

" And you will be very, very kind to her ? "

" I'm not good at fine words, Mabyn. You'll see."

She held out her hand to him, and pressed his warmly.

" I believe you will be a good husband to her ; and I know you will
get the best wife in the whole world ! "

She was going away when he suddenly said —

" Mabyn ! "

She turned.

" Do you know," said he rather shamefacedly, "how much I am grate-
ful to you for all your frank straightforward kindness — and your help
— and your courage "

"No, no!" said the young girl, good-humouredly. "You make
Wenna happy, and don't consider me ! "

CHAPTER XXXV.

UNDER THE WHITE STARS.

DUEING the whole glad evening Wenna had been Queen of the Feast, and
her subjects had obeyed her with a joyous submission. They did not
take quite so kindly to Mabyn , for she was sharp of tongue and imperious
in her ways ; but they knew that they could tease her elder sister with
impunity — always up to the well-understood line at which her authority
began. That was never questioned.

Then, at nine o'clock, the servants came, some on foot and some on
dog-carts ; and presently there was a bundling up of tiny figures in rugs
and wraps, and Wenna stood at the door to kiss each of them and say
good-bye. It was half-past nine when that performance was over.

" Now, my dear Miss Wenna," said the old clergyman, " you must
be quite tired out with your labours. Come into the study — I believe
the tray has been taken in there."

"Do you know, Mr. Trewhella," said Mabyn boldly, "that Wenna
hadn't time to eat a single bit when all those children were gobbling up
cake. Couldn't you let her have a little bit — a little bit of cold meat
now "

" Dear, dear me ! " said the kind old gentleman, in the deepest dis-
tress, " that I should not have remembered ! "

There was no use in Wenna protesting. In the snug little study she
was made to eat some supper; and if she got off with drinking one

634 THREE FEATHERS.

glass of sherry it was not through the intervention of her sister, who
apparently would have had her drink a tumbler-full.

It was not until a quarter past ten that the girls could get away.

" Now I must see you young ladies down to the village, lest some one
should run away with you," the old clergyman said, taking down his
top coat.

"Oh no, you must not — you must not, indeed, Mr. Trewhella ! "
Mabyn said, anxiously. " Wenna and I always go about by ourselves —
and far later than this too. It is a beautiful, clear night ! Why "

Her impetuosity made her sister smile.

"You talk as if you would rather like to be run away with, Mabyn,"
ehe said. " But indeed, Mr. Trewhella, you must not think of coming with
us. It is quite true what Mabyn says."

And so they went out into the clear darkness together ; and the door
was shut ; and they found themselves in the silent world of the night-
time, with the white stars throbbing overhead. Far away in the distance
they could hear the murmur of the sea.

" Are you cold, Mabyn, that you tremble so ? " said the elder sister.

" No — only a sort of shiver in coming out into the night air."

Whatever it was it was soon over. Mabyn seemed to be unusually
cheerful.

" Wenna," she said, " you're afraid of ghosts ! "

" No, I'm not."

" I know you are."

" I'm not half as much afraid of ghosts as you are, that's quite
certain."

" I'll bet you you won't walk down through the wood."

" Just now ? "

"Yes."

" Why, I'll not only go down through the wood, but 111 undertake to
be home before you, though you've a broad road to guide you."

" But I did not mean you to go alone."

" Oh," said Wenna, "you propose to come with me ? Then it is you
who are afraid to go down by yourself? Oh, Mabyn ! "

"Never mind, Wenna, — let's go down through the wood just for
fun."

So the two sisters set out, arm-in-arm ; and through some spirit of
mischief Wenna would not speak a word. Mabyn was gradually over-
awed by the silence, the night, the loneliness of the road, and the solemn
presence of the great living vault above them. Moreover, before getting
into the wood, they had to skirt a curious little dingle, in the hollow of
which are both a church and church-yard. Many a time the sisters had
-come up to this romantic dell in the spring-time, to gather splendid prim-
roses, sweet violets, the yellow celandine, and other wild-flowers that grow
luxuriantly on its steep banks ; and very pretty the old church looked
then, with the clear sunshine of April streaming down through the scan-

THREE FEATHERS. 635

tily-leaved trees into this sequestered spot. Now the deep hole was black
as night ; and they could only make out a bit of the spire of the church as
it appeared against the dark sky. Nay, was there not a sound among the
fallen leaves and underwood down there, in the direction of the unseen
graves ?

" Some cow has strayed in there, I believe," said Mabyn, in a some-
what low voice, and she walked rather quickly until they got past the
place and out on to the hill over the wooded valley.

" Now," said Wenna, cheerfully, not wishing to have Mabyn put in a
real fright, "as we go down I am going to tell you something, Mabyn.
How would you like to have to prepare for a wedding in a fortnight ? "

" Not at all ! " said Mabyn promptly, even fiercely.

" Not if it was your own ? "

" No — why, the insult of such a request ! "

According to Mabyn's way of thinking it was an insult to ask a girl to
marry you in a fortnight, but none to insist on her marrying you the day
after to-morrow.

" You think that a girl could fairly plead that as an excuse — the mere
time to get one's dresses and things ready ? "

"Certainly !"

" Oh, Mabyn," said Wenna, far more seriously, "it is not of dresses
I am thinking at all ; but I shudder to think of getting married
just now. I could not do it. I have not had enough time to forget what
is past — and until that is done, how could I marry any man ? "

"Wenna, I do love you when you talk like that ! " her sister cried.
" You can be so wise and reasonable when you choose ! Of course you
are quite right, dear. But you don't mean to say he wants you to get
married before he goes to Jamaica, and then to leave you alone ? "

" Oh, no. He wants me to go with him to Jamaica."

Mabyn uttered a short cry of alarm.

" To Jamaica ! To take you away from the whole of us — why —
oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so — for you're not allowed to swear
—if I were a man now ! To Jamaica ! Why, don't you know that
there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the most
frightful hurricanes, and earthquakes, and large serpents in the woods ?
To Jamaica? — no, you are not going to Jamaica just yet! I don't
think you are going to Jamaica just yet ! "

"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna, with a quiet decision. "Nor
could I think of getting married in any case at present. But then — don't
you see, Mabyn — Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways

"Yes, certainly! "

" and he likes to have a definite reason for what you do. If

I were to tell him of the repugnance I have to the notion of getting
married just now, he would call it mere sentiment, and try to argue
me out of it — then we should have a quarrel. But if, as you say, a
girl may fairly refuse in .point of time "

636 THREE FEATHERS.

" Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn, plainly; " no girl can get married
properly, who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in
three or four months, for a man she was particularly fond of ; but if it is a
mere stranger — and a disagreeable person — and one who ought not to
marry her at all — then six months is the very shortest time. Just you
send Mr. Koscorla to me, and I'll tell him all about it."

Wenna laughed.

" Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think he's more afraid of you than
of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica."

" Yes, and he'll have more cause to be before he's much older," said
Mabyn, confidently.

They could not continue their conversation just then, for they were
going down the side of the hill, between short trees and bushes ; and the
path was broad enough only for one, while there were many dark places
demanding caution.

" Seen any ghosts yet?" Wenna called out to Mabyn, who was behind
her.

" Ghosts, sir ? Ay, ay, sir ! Heave away on the larboard beam ! I
say, Wenna, isn't it uncommon dark ? "

" It is uncommonly dark."

* * Gentlemen always say uncommon ; and all the grammars are written
by gentlemen. Oh, Wenna, wait a bit; I've lost my brooch ! "

It was no ruse, for a wonder; the brooch had, indeed, dropped out of her
shawl. She felt all over the dark ground for it, but her search was in vain.

" Well, here's a nice thing ! Upon my "

"Mabyn!"

" Upon my trotting pony ; that was all I was going to say.

Wenna, will you stay here for a minute ; and I'll run down to the foot of
the hill, and get a match ? "

" How can you get a match at the foot of the hill ? You'll have to go
on to the inn. No, tie your handkerchief round the foot of one of the
trees, and come up early in the morning to look."

( l Early in the morning?" said Mabyn. "I hope to be in 1

mean asleep then."

Twice she had nearly blurted out the secret ; and, it is highly probable
that her refusal to adopt Wenna' s suggestion would have led her sister to
suspect something, had not Wenna herself, by accident, kicked against
the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was
grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along
through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated wan-
derers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to the other
side of the valley ; but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to be un-
nerved.

" Keeping a look out a-head ? " Wenna called.

"Ay, ay, sir! No ghosts on the weather quarter! Ship drawing
twenty fathoms, and the mate fast asleep. Oh, Wenna, my hat ! "

THKEE FEATHERS. 637

It had been twitched off her head by one of the branches of the young
trees through which she was passing, and the pliant bit of wood, being re-
leased from the strain, had thrown it down into the dark bushes and
briers.

" Well I'm — no, I'm not ! " said Mabyn, as she picked out the hat
from among the thorns, and straightened the twisted feather. Then she
set out again, impatient over these delays ; and yet determined not to let
her courage sink.

" Land ahead yet ? " called out Wenna.

"Ay, ay, sir; and the Lizard on our lea! Wind S.S.W., and the
cargo shifting a point to the east. Hurrah ! "

" Mabyn, they'll hear you a mile off ! "

It was certainly Mabyn's intention that she should be heard at least
a quarter of a mile off, for now they had got down to the open, and they
could hear the stream some way ahead of them, which they would have to
cross. At this point Mabyn paused for a second to let her sister overtake
her ; then they went on arm-in-arm.

" Oh, Wenna," she said, " do you remember ' young Lochinvar ? ' "

" Of course ! "

" Didn't you fall in love with him when you read about him ? Now,
there was somebody to fall in love with ! Don't you remember when he
came into Netherby Hall, that

The bride-maidens whispered, ' 'Twere better by far

To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar ! '

And then you know, Wenna —

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,

When they reached the hall- door, and the charger stood near ;

So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,

So light to the saddle before her he sprung !

* She is won ! we are gone — over bank, bush, and scaur !

They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.

That was a lover now ! "

"I think he was a most impertinent young man," said Wenna.

" I rather like a young man to be impertinent," said Mabyn, boldly.

" Then there won't be any difficulty about fitting you with a hus-
band," said Wenna, with a light laugh.

Here Mabyn once more went on ahead, picking her steps through
the damp grass as she made her way down to the stream. Wenna was
still in the highest of spirits.

" Walking the plank yet, boatswain ? " she called out.

" Not yet, sir," Mabyn called in return. " Ship wearing round a
point to the west, and the waves running mountains high. Don't you
hear 'em, captain ? "

" Look out for the breakers, boatswain ! "

' ' Ay, ay, sir. All hands on deck to man the captain's gig ! Belay
away there ! Avast ! Mind, Wenna ; here's the bridge ! "

638 THEEE FEATHEKS.

Crossing over that single plank, in the dead of night, was a suffi-
ciently dangerous experiment; but both these young ladies had had
plenty of experience in keeping their wits about them in more perilous
places.

" Why are you in such a hurry, Mabyn ? " Wenna said, when they
had crossed.

Mabyn did not know what to answer, she was very much excited ;
and inclined to talk at random merely to cover her anxiety. She was
now very late for the appointment, and who could tell what unfortunate
misadventure Harry Trelyon might have met with ?

" Oh, I don't know," she said. " Why don't you admire young
Lochinvar ? Wenna, you're like the Laced&mons."

"Like the what?"

" Like the Lacedaemons, that were neither cold nor hot. Why don't
you admire young Lochinvar ? "

" Because he was interfering with another man's property."

" That man had no right to her," said Mabyn, talking rather wildly,
and looking on ahead, to the point at which the path through the meadows
went up to the road ; " he was a wretched animal, I know; I believe he
was a sugar-broker, and had just come home from Jamaica."

"I believe," said Wenna, " I believe that young Lochinvar "

She stopped.

" What's that ! " she said. " What are those two lights up there ? "

"They're not ghosts : come along, Wenna ! " said Mabyn, hurriedly.

Let us go up to this road, where Harry Trelyon, tortured with anxiety
and impatience, is waiting. He had slipped away from the house, pretty
nearly as soon as the gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room after
dinner ; and on some excuse or other had got the horses put to a light
and yet roomy Stanhope phaeton. From the stable-yard he drove by a
back way into the main road without passing in front of the Hall ; then
he quietly walked the horses down the steep hill, and round the foot of
the valley to the point at which Mabyn was to make her appearance.

But he dared not stop there ; for now and again some passer-by came
along the road ; and even in the darkness Mrs. Trelyon's grey horses
would be recognised by any of the inhabitants of Eglosilyan, who would
naturally wonder what Master Harry was waiting for. He walked them a
few hundred yards one way, then a few hundred yards the other ; and ever,
as it seemed to him, the danger was growing greater of some one from the
inn or from the Hall suddenly appearing and spoiling the whole plan.

Half-past ten arrived ; and nothing could be heard of the girls. Then
a horrible thought struck him that Koscorla might by this time have left
the Hall ; and would he not be coming down to this very road on his
way up to Bassett Cottage ? This was no idle fear; it was almost a matter
of certainty.

The minutes rolled themselves out into ages ; he kept looking at his

THREE FEATHERS. 639

watch every few seconds ; yet he could hear nothing from the wood or the
valley of Mabyn's approach. Then he got down into the road, walked a
few yards this way and that, apparently to stamp the nervousness out of
his system, patted the horses, and, finally, occupied himself in lighting
the lamps. Ho was driven by the delay into a sort of desperation. Even
if Wenna and Mabyn did appear now, and if he was successful in his
prayer, there was every chance of their being interrupted by Eoscorla,
who had without doubt left the Hall some time before.

Suddenly he stopped in his excited walking up and down. Was that
a faint * Hurrah ! ' that he heard in the distance. He went down to the
stile at the junction of the path and the road ; and listened attentively.
Yes, ho could hear at least one voice, as yet a long way off; but now
he had no more doubt. He walked quickly back to the carriage.

" Ho, ho, my hearties! " he said, stroking the heads of the horses,
" you'll have a Dick Turpin's ride to-night."

All the nervousness had gone from him now ; he was full of a strange
sort of exultation — the joy of a man who feels that the crisis in his life
has come, and that he has the power and courage to face it.

He heard them come up through the meadow to the stile ; it was
Wenna who was talking ; Mabyn was quite silent. They came along the
road.

"What is this carriage doing here ? " Wenna said.

They drew still nearer.

" They are Mrs. Trelyon's horses — and there is no driver "

At this moment Harry Trelyon came quickly forward and stood in the
road before her ; while Mabyn as quickly went on and disappeared. The
girl was startled, bewildered, but not frightened ; for in a second he had
taken her by the hand, and then she heard him say to her, in an anxious,
low, imploring voice : —

" Wenna, my darling, don't be alarmed ! See here, I have got every-
thing ready to take you away — and Mabyn is coming with us — and you
know I love you so that I can't bear the notion of your falling into that
man's hands. Now, Wenna, don't think about it ! Come with me ! We
shall be married in London — Mabyn is coming with you "

For one brief second or two she seemed stunned and bewildered ;
then, looking at the carriage, and the earnest suppliant before her, the
whole truth appeared to flash in upon her. She looked wildly round.

" Mabyn " she was about to say, when he guessed the meaning

of her rapid look.

" Mabyn is here. She is quite close by — she is coming with us. My
darling, won't you let me save you ! This indeed is our last chance.
Wenna! "

She was trembling so that he thought she would fall ; and he would
have put his arms round her, but that she drew back, and in so doing,
she got into the light, and then he saw the immeasurable pity and sad-
ness of her eyes.

640 THKEB FEATHERS.

" Oh, my love," she said, with the tears running down her face, "I
love you ! I will tell you that now, when we speak for the last time.
See, I will kiss you — and then you will go away "

" I will not go away — not without you — this night. Wenna, dearest,
you have let your heart speak at last — now let it tell you what to do ! "

"Oh, must I go ? Must I go ? " she said; and then she looked
wildly round again.

"Mabyn!" called out Trelyon, half mad with joy and triumph,
" Mabyn, come along ! Look sharp, jump in ! This way, my darling ! "

And he took the trembling girl, and half lifted her into the carriage.

" Oh, my love, what am I doing for you this night ! " she said to
him, with her eyes swimming in tears.

But what was the matter with Mabyn ? She was just putting her foot
on the iron step when a rapidly approaching figure caused her to utter
a cry of alarm, and she stumbled back into the road again. The very
accident that Trelyon had been anticipating had occurred ; here was Mr.
Eoscorla, bewildered at first, and then blind with rage when he saw
what was happening before his eyes. In his desperation and anger he
was about to lay hold of Mabyn by the arm when he was sent staggering
backwards half-a-dozen yards.

" Don't interfere with me now, or by God I will kill you ! " Trelyon
said, between his teeth ; and then he hurried Mabyn into the carriage.

What was the sound then that the still woods heard, under the throb-
bing stars, through the darkness that lay over the land ? Only the sound
of horses' feet, monotonous and regular, and not a word of joy or sorrow
uttered by any one of the party thus hurrying on through the night.

THE

COENHILL MAGAZINE.

JUNE, 1875.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

INTO CAPTIVITY.

AWARDS eleven o'clock
that night, Mrs. Rose-
warne became a little
anxious about her girls,
and asked her husband
to go and meet them, or
to fetch them away if
they were still at Mr.
Trewhella's house.

" Can't they look
after themselves?" said
George Rosewarne. "I'll
be bound Mabyn can
any way. Let her alone
to come back when she
pleases."

Then his wife began
to fret ; and, as this
made him uncomfortable,
he said he would walk up the road and meet them. He had no inten-
tion of doiug so, of course ; but it was a good excuse for getting away
from a fidgety wife. He went outside into the clear starlight, and lounged
down to the small bridge beside the mill, contentedly smoking his pipe.

There he encountered a farmer who was riding home a cob he had
bought that day at Launceston ; and the farmer and he began to have a
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 186. 81.

642 THREE FEATHERS.

chat about horses suggested by that circumstance. Oddly enough, their
random talk came round to young Trelyon.

"Your thoroughbreds won't do for this county," George Rosewarne
was saying, "to go flying a stone wall and breaking your neck. No,
sir ! I'll tell you what sort of hunter I should like to have for these parts.
I'd have him half-bred, short in the leg, short in the pastern, short in
the back, a good sloping shoulder, broad in the chest and the forehead,
long in the belly, and just the least bit over fifteen hands — eh ! Mr.
Thorns ? I don't think beauty 's of much consequence when your neck's
in question. Let him be as angular and ragged in the hips as you like,
so long's his ribs are well up to the hip-bone. Have you seen that black
horse that young Trelyon rides ? "

" 'Tis a noble beast, sir — a noble beast," the farmer said; and he
would probably have gone on to state what ideal animal had been con-
structed by his lavish imagination had not a man come running up at this
moment, breathless and almost speechless.

" Rosewarne," stammered Mr. Roscorla, "a — a word with you! I
want to say "

The farmer, seeing he was in the way, called out a careless good-
night, and rode on.

" Well, what's the matter ? " said George Rosewarne a little snap-
pishly : he did not like being worried by excitable people.

"Your daughters!" gasped Mr. Roscorla. "They've both run
away — both of them — this minute — with Trelyon ! You'll have to ride
after them. They're straight away along the high road."

" Both of them ? The infernal young fools ! " said Rosewarne.
" Why the devil didn't you stop them yourself? "

" How could I ? " Roscorla said, amazed that the father took the
flight of his daughters with apparent equanimity. "You must make
haste, Mr. Rosewarne, or you'll never catch them."

"I've a good mind to let 'em go," said he sulkily, as he walked over
to the stables of the inn. "The notion of a man having to set out on
this wild-goose chase at this time o' night ! Run away, have they ; an<i
what in all the world have they run away for ? "

It occurred to him, however, that the sooner he got a horse saddled
and set out, the less distance he would have to go in pursuit ; and that
consideration quickened his movements.

" What's it all about ? " said he to Roscorla, who had followed him
into the stable.

" I suppose they mean a runaway match," said Mr. Roscorla, helping
to saddle George Rosewarne's cob, a famous trotter.

" It's that young devil's limb, Mabyn, I'll be bound," said the father.
" I wish to heaven somebody would rcarry her — I don't cure who. She's
al.vays up to some confounded mischief."

" No, no, no I " Roscorla said ; " it's Wenna he means to marry."

" Why, you were to have married Wtnna "

THREE FEATHERS. 643

" Yes, but "

" Then why didn't you ? So she's run away, has she ? "

George Rosewarne grinned : he saw how the matter lay.

"This is Mabyn's work, I know," said he, as he put his foot in
the stirrup, and .sprang into the saddle. " You'd better go home,
Roscorla. Don't you say a word to anybody. You don't want the girl
made a fool of all through the place."

So George Rosewarne set out to bring back his daughters ; not
galloping as an anxious parent might, but going ahead with a long, steady-
going trot, which he knew would soon tell on Mrs. Trelyon's over-fed and
under-exercised horses.

"If they mean Plymouth," he was thinking, " as is most likely from
their taking the high road, he'll give it them gently at first. AM so that
young man wants to marry our Wenna. 'Twould be a fine match for
her ; and yet she's worth all the money he's got — she's worth it every
farthing. I'd give him the other one cheap enough."

Pounding along a dark road, with the consciousness that the further
you go the further you've got to get back, and that the distance still to
be done is an indeterminate quantity, is agreeable to no one ; but it was
especially vexatious to George Rosewarne, who liked to take things
quietly, and could not understand what all the fuss was about. Why
should he be sent on this mad chase at midnight ? If anybody wanted
to marry either of the girls, why didn't he do so, and say no more about
it ? Rosewarne had been merely impatient and annoyed when he set out ;
but the longer he rode, and the more he communed with himself, the
deeper grew his sense of the personal injury that had been done him by
this act of folly.

It was a very lonely ride indeed. There was not a human being
abroad at that hour. When he passed a few cottages from time to time,
the windows were dark. Then they had just been putting down a
lot of loose stones at several parts of the road, which caused Mr. Rose-
warne to swear.

"I'll bet a sovereign," said he to himself, "that old Job kept
them a quarter of an hour before he opened Paddock's Gate. I believe
the old fool goes to bed. Well, they've waked him up for me any
way."

There was some consolation in this surmise, which was well founded.
When Rosewarne reached the toll-bar, there was at least a light in the
small house. He struck on the door with the handle of his riding- whip,
and called out —

" Hi, hi ! Job ! Come out, you old fool ! "

An old man, with very bandy legs, came hobbling out of the toll-
house, and went to open the gate, talking and muttering to himself —

" Ay, ay 1 so yii be agwoin' after the young uns, Maister Rosewarne ?
Ay, ay I yii'll go up many a lane, and by many a fuzzy 'ill, and acrass a
bridge or two afore yii come up wi' 'en, Maister Rosewarne."

81—2

644 THREE FEATHERS.

" Look sharp, Job ! " said Kosewarne. " Carriage been through here
lately?"

" Ay, ay, Maister Rosewarne ! 'tis a good halMiour agone."

41 A half-hour, you idiot ? " said Rosewarne, now in a thoroughly
bad temper. " You've been asleep and dreaming. Here, take your con-
founded money I "

So he rode on again, not believing, of course, old Job's malicious
fabrication, but being rendered all the same a little uncomfortable by it.
Fortunately, the cob had not been out before that day.

More deep lanes, more high, open, windy spaces, more silent cottages,
more rough stones ; and always the measured fall of the cob's feet and
the continued shining and throbbing of the stars overhead. At last, far
away ahead, on the top of a high incline, he caught sight of a solitary
point of ruddy fire, which presently disappeared. That, he concluded,
was the carriage he was pursuing going round a corner, and showing only
the one lamp as it turned into the lane. They were not so far in front of
him as he had supposed.

But how to overtake them ? So soon as they heard the sound of his
horse would they dash onward at all risks, and have a race for it all
through the night ? In that case, George Rosewarne inwardly resolved
that they might go to Plymouth, or into the deep sea beyond, before he
would injure his favourite cob.

On the other hand, he could not bring them to a standstill by threat-
ening to shoot at his own daughters, even if he had had anything with
him that would look like a pistol. Should he have to rely, then, on the
moral terrors of a parent's authority ? George Rosewarne was inclined
to laugh when he thought of his overawing in this fashion the high
spirit of his younger daughter.

By slow and sure degrees he gained on the fugitives ; and as he could
now catch some sound of the rattling of the carriage-wheels, they must
also hear his horse's footfall. Were they trying to get away from him ?
On the contrary, the carriage stopped altogether.

That was Harry Trelyon's decision. For some time back he had been
listening attentively. At length he said —

" Don't you hear some one riding back there ? "

" Yes, I do ! " said Wenna, beginning to tremble.

" I suppose it is Mr. Roscorla coming after us," the young man said
coolly. " Now I think it would be a shame to drag the old gentleman
halfway down to Plymouth. He must have had a good spell already.
Shall I stop, and persuade him to go back home to bed ? "

" Oh, no ! " said Mabyn, who was all for getting on at any risk.

" Oh, no ! " Wenna said, fearing the result of an encounter between
the two men.

•' I must stop," Trelyon said. " It's such precious hard lines on
him. I shall easily persuade him that he would be better at home."

So he pulled up the horses, and quietly waited by the roadside for a
few minutes. The unknown rider drew nearer and more near.

THKEE FEATHERS. 645

" That isn't Roscorla's pony," said Trelyon, listening. " That's more
like your father's cob."

" My father ! " said Wenna in a low voice.

"My darling, you needn't be afraid, whoever it is," Trelyon said.
" Certainly not," added Mabyn, who was far more uncomfortable
than she chose to appear. " Who can prevent us going on ? They don't
lock you up in convents nowadays. If it is Mr. Roscorla, you just let
me talk to him."

Their doubt on that head was soon set at rest. White Charley, with
his long swinging trot, soon brought George Rosewarne up to the side of
the phaeton, and the girls, long ere he had arrived, had recognised in the
gloom the tall figure of their father. Even Mabyn was a trifle nervous.

But George Rosewarne — perhaps because he was a little pacified by
their having stopped — did not rage and fame as a father is expected to do
whose daughter has run away from him. As soon as he had pulled up
his horse, he called out in a petulant tone —
" " Well ! what the devil is all this about ? "
" I'll tell you, sir," said Trelyon, quite respectfully and quite firmly.

" I wished to marry your daughter Wenna "

"And why couldn't j'ou do that in Eglosilyan, instead of making a
fool of everybody all round? '* Rosewarne said, still talking in an angry
and vexed way, as of one who had been personally injured.

" Oh, dada ! " Mabyn cried, " you don't know how it happened ; but
they couldn't have got married there. There's that horrid old wretch,
Mr. Roscorla — and Wenna was quite a slave to him, and afraid of him —

and the only way was to carry her away from him — and so "

" Hold your tongue, Mabyn ! " her father said. " You'd drive a
windmill with your talk ! "

" But what she says is true enough," Trelyon said. " Roscorla has a

claim on her — this was my only chance, and I took it. Now look here,

Mr. Rosewarne ; you've a right to be angry and all that — perhaps you

are ; but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry Roscorla ? "

" What good wilf it do me ? " said George Rosewarne pettishty. "I

don't care which of you she marries "

" Then you'll let us go on, dada ? " Mabyn cried. " Will }rou come
with us ? Oh, do come with us ! We're only going to Plymouth."

Even the angry father could not withstand the absurdity of this appeal.
He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter.

"I like that ! " he cried. " Asking a man to help his daughter to
run away from his own house ! It's my impression, my young mistress,
that you're at the bottom of all this nonsense. Come, come ! enough of
it, Trelyon ! be a sensible fellow, and turn your horses round — why, the
notion of going to Plymouth at this time o' night ! "

Trelyon looked to his companion. She put her hand on his arm, and
said, in a trembling whisper —

" Oh, yes ! pray let us go back."

646 THREE FEATHERS;

" You know what you are going to, then ? " said he coldly.

She tremhled still more.

" Come, come ! " said her father, " you mustn't stop here all night.
You may thank me for preventing your becoming the talk of the whole
country."

"I shouldn't have minded that much," Mabyn said ruefully, and
very like to cry, indeed, as the horses set out upon their journey back to
Eglosilyan.

It was not a pleasant journey for any of them — least of all for Wenna
Rosewarne, who, having been bewildered by one wild glimpse of liberty,
felt with terror and infinite sadness and despair the old manacles closing
round her life again. And what although the neighbours might remain in
ignorance of what she had done ? She herself knew, and that was
enough.

" You think no one will know ? " Mabyn called out spitefully to her
father. " Do you think old Job at the gate has lost either his tongue or
his nasty temper ? "

" Leave Job to me," the father replied.

When they got to Paddock's Gate the old man had again to be roused,
and he came out grumbling.

"Well, you discontented old sinner!" Rosewarne called to him,
" don't you like having to earn a living ? "

" A fine livin' to wait on folks that don't knaw their own mind, and
keep comin' and goin' along the road o' nights like a weaver's shuttle.
Hm!"

"Well, Job, you shan't suffer for it this time," Rosewarne said.
" I've won my bet. If you made fifty pounds by riding a few miles out,
what would you give the gatekeeper ? "

Even that suggestion failed to inveigle Job into a better humour.

" Here's a sovereign for you, Job. Now go to bed. Good night ! "

How long the distance seemed to be ere they saw the lights of Eglosi-
lyan again ! There were only one or two small points of red fire, indeed,
where the inn stood. The rest of the village was buried in darkness.

" Oh ! what will mother say ? " Wenna said in a low voice to her
sister.

" She will be very sorry we did not get away altogether," Mabyn
answered. • " And of course it was Mr. Roscorla who spoiled it. Nobody
knew anything about it but himself. He must have run on to the inn
and told some one. Wasn't it mean, Wenna ? Couldn't he see that he
wasn't wanted ? "

" Are you talking of Mr. Roscorla ? " Trelyon said — George Rose-
warne was a bit ahead at this moment. " I wish tov goodness I had gagged
him and slung him below the phaeton. I knew he would be coming down
there- I expected him every moment. Why were you so late, Mabyn ? "
" Oh ! you needn't blame me, Mr. Trelyon," said Mabyn, rather hurt.
" You know I did everything I could for you."

THKEE FEATHERS. 647

" I know you did, Mabyn : I wish it had turned out better."
What was this, then, that Wenna heard, as she sate there, bewildered,
apprehensive, and sad-hearted ? Had her own sister joined in this league
to carry her off? It was not merely the audacity of young Trelyon that
had led to their meeting ? But she was altogether too frightened and
wretched to be angry.

As they got down into Eglosilyan, and turned the sharp corner over
the bridge, they did not notice the figure of a man who had been con-
cealing himself in the darkness of a shed belonging to a slate-yard. So
soon as they had passed, he went some little way after them until, from
the bridge, he could see them stop at the door of the inn. Was it Mrs.
Rosewarne who came out of the glare, and with something like a cry of
delight caught her daughter in her arms ? He watched the figures go
inside, and the phaeton drive away up the hill ; then, in the perfect
silence of the night, he turned and slowly made his way towards Basset
Cottage.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
AN ANGRY INTERVIEW.

NEST morning George Rosewarne was seated on the old oak bench in
front of the inn, reading a newspaper. Happening to look up, he saw
Mr. Roscorla hurrying towards him over the bridge, with no very pleasant
expression on his face. As he came nearer, he saw that the man was
strangely excited.

" I want to see your daughter alone," he said.

" You needn't speak as if I had tried to run away with her," Rose-
warne answered, with more good nature than was his wont. " Well, go
indoors. Ask for her mother."

As Roscorla passed him there was a look in his eyes which rather
startled George Rosewarne.

" Is it possible," he asked himself, " that this elderly chap is really
badly in love with our Wenna ? "

But another thought struck him. He suddenly jumped up, followed
Roscorla into the passage, where the latter was standing, and said to
him —

" Don't you be too harsli with Wenna. She's only a girl ; and they're
all alike." This hint, however discourteous in its terms, had some signi-
ficance as coming from a man who was six inches taller than Mr.
Roscorla.

Mr. Roscorla was shown into an empty room. He marched up and
down looking at nothing. He was simply in an ungovernable rage.

Wenna came, and shut the door behind her ; and for a second or so
he stared at her as if expecting her to burst into passionate professions of
remorse. On the contrary, there was something more than calmness in

THREE FEATHERS.

her appearance — there was the desperation of a hunted animal that is
driven to turn upon its pursuer in the mere agony of helplessness.

"Well!" said he — for, indeed, his passion almost deprived him of
his power of speech — " what have you to say? Perhaps nothing ? It is
nothing, perhaps, to a woman to be treacherous — to tell smooth lies to
your face, and to go plotting against you behind your back? You have
nothing to say ? You have nothing to say ? "

" I have nothing to say," she said, with some little sadness in her
voice, " that would excuse me, either to you or to myself — yes ! I know
that. But — but I did not intentionally deceive you "

He turned away with an angry gesture.

" Indeed, indeed I did not," she said piteously. " I had mistaken
my own feelings — the temptation was too great. Oh, Mr. Roscorla ! you
need not say harsh things of me, for indeed I think worse of myself than
you can do."

" And I suppose you want forgiveness now ? " he added bitterly.
" But I have had enough of that. A woman pledges you her affection,
promises to marry you, professes to have no doubts as to the future ; and
all the while she is secretly encouraging the attentions of a young
jackanapes who is playing with her and making a fool of her "

Wenna Rosewarne's cheeks began to burn red : a less angry man would
have taken warning.

" Yes — playing with her and making a fool of her. And for what ?
To pass an idle time, and make her the bye- word of her neighbours."

" It is not true ! it is not true ! " she said indignantly ; and there was
a dangerous light in her eyes. " If he were here, you would not dare to
say such things to me — no, you would not dare ! "

" Perhaps you expect him to call after the pretty exploit of last night? "
asked Roscorla, with a sneer.

" I do not," she said. " I hope I shall never see him again. It is —
it is only misery to every one "

And here she broke down, in spite of herself. Her anger gave way to
a burst of tears.

"But what madness is this ? " Roscorla cried. " You wish never to
meet him again ; yet you are ready at a moment's notice to run away with
him, disgracing yourself and your family. You make promises about
never seeing him ; you break them the instant you get the opportunity.
You profess that your girlish fancy for a barber's block of a fellow has
been got over ; and then, as soon as one's back is turned, you reveal your
hypocrisy "

"Indeed I did not mean to deceive you," she said imploringly.
" I did believe that all that was over and gone. I thought it was a foolish
fancy "

" And now ? " said he hotly.

" Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you ought to pity me instead of being angry with
me. I do love him — I cannot help it. You will not ask me to many

THREE FEATHERS. 649

you! See, I will undertake not to marry him — I will undertake never
to see him again — if only you will not ask me to keep my promise to you.
How can I ! How can I ? "

" Pity you ! and these are the confessions you make ! " he ex-
claimed. " Why, are you not ashamed of yourself to say such things to
me ? And so you would undertake not to marry him ? I know what
your undertakings are worth ! "

He had struck her hard — his very hardest indeed ; but she would not
suffer herself to reply, for she believed she deserved far more punishment
than he could inflict. All that she could hope for — all that her whole
nature cried out for — was that he should not think her treacherous. She
had not intentionally deceived him. She had not planned that effort at
escape. But when, in a hurried and pathetic fashion, she endeavoured to
explain all this to him, he would not listen. He angrily told her he knew
well how women could gloss over such matters. He was no schoolboy to
be hoodwinked. It was not as if she had had no warning ; her conduct
before had been bad enough, when it was possible to overlook it on the
score of carelessness, but now it was such as would disgrace any woman
who knew her honour was concerned in holding to the word she had
spoken.

" And what is he ? " he cried, mad with wrath and jealousy. " An
ignorant booby 1 a ploughboy ! a lout who has neither the manners of a
gentleman nor the education of a day-labourer "

"Yes, you may well say such things of him now," said she, with her
eyes flashing, " when his back is turned. You would not say so if he
were here. But he — yes, if he were here — he would tell you what he
thinks of you ; for he is a gentleman and not a coward."

Angry as he was, Mr. Boscorla was astounded. The fire in her eyes,
the flush in her cheeks, the impetuosity of her voice — were these the
patient Wenna of old ? But a girl betrays herself sometimes, if she
happens to have to defend her lover.

" Oh! it is shameful of you to say such things!" she said. "And
you know they are not true. There is not any one I have ever seen who
is so manly, and frank, and unselfish as Mr. Trelyon — not any one ;
and if I have seen that — if I have admired too much — well, that is a great
misfortune, and I have to suffer for it."

" To suffer ?— yes," said he, bitterly. " That is a pretty form of
suffering that makes you plan a runaway marriage — a marriage that would
bring into your possession the largest estates in the North of Cornwall.
A very pretty form of suffering ! May I ask when the experiment is to be
repeated? "

" You may insult me as you like — I am only a woman," she said.

"Insult you?" he cried, with fresh vehemence. "Is it insult to
speak the truth ? Yesterday forenoon, when I saw you, you were all
smiles and smoothness. When I spoke of our marriage, you made no

objection. But all the same you knew that at night "

81—5

650 THEEE FEATHEES.

"I did not know — I did not know!" she said. "You ought to
believe me when I tell you I knew no more about it than you did. When
I met him there at night — it was all so sudden, so unexpected — I scarcely
knew what I said ; but now — but now I have time to think — Oh, Mr.
Roscorla, don't think that I do not regret it ! I will do anything you ask
me — I will promise what you please — indeed, I will undertake never to see
him again as long as I live in this world — only, you won't ask me to keep
my promise to you "

He made no reply to this offer ; for a step outside the door caused
him to mutter something very like an oath between his teeth. The door
was thrown open ; Mabyn marched in — a little pale, but very erect.

" Mabyn, leave us alone for a moment or two," said Wenna, turning
away so as to hide the tears on her face.

" I will not. I want to speak a word or two to Mr. Roscorla."

" Mabyn, I want you to go away just now."

Mabyn went over to her sister, and took her by the hand.

" Wenna, dear, go away to your own room. "You've had quite
enough — you are trembling all over. I suppose he'll make me tremble
next."

" Keally, I think your interference is rather extraordinary, Miss
Mabyn," said Mr. Roscorla, striving to contain his rage.

" I beg your pardon," said Mabyn, meekly. "I only want to say a
word or two. Wouldn't it be better here than before the servants ? "

With that she led Wenna away. In a minute or two she returned. Mr.
Roscorla would rather have been shut up in a den with a hungry tigress.

"I am quite at your service," he said with a bitter irony. " I
suppose you have some very important communication to make, consider-
ing the way in which you "

" Interfered ? Yes, it is time that I interfered," Mabyn said, still
quite calm and a trifle pale. " Mr. Roscorla, to be frank, I don't like
you, and perhaps I am not quite fair to you. I am only a young girl,
and don't know what the world would say about your relations with
Wenna. But Wenna is my sister, and I see she is wretched ; and her
wretchedness — well, that comes of her engagement to you."

She was standing before him, with her eyes cast down, apparently
determined to be very moderate in her speech. But there was a cruel
frankness in her words which hurt Mr. Roscorla a good deal more than
any tempest of passion into which she might have worked herself.

"Is that all?" said he. "You have not startled me with any
revelations."

" I was going to say," continued Mabyn, " that a gentleman who has
really a regard for a girl would not insist on her keeping a promise which
only rendered her unhappy. I don't see what you are to gam by it. I
suppose you — you expect Wenna to marry you ? Well, I dare say if you
called on her to punish herself that way, she might do it. But what
good would that do you ? * Would you like to have a wife who was in
love with another man ? "

THREE FEATHERS. 651

" You have become quite logical, Miss Mabyn," said he, " and argu-
ment suits you better than getting into a imge. And much of what you
say is quite true. You are a very young girl. You don't know much of
what the world would say about anything. But being furnished with these
admirable convictions, did it never occur to you that you might not be
acting wisely in blundering into an affair of which you know nothing ? "

The coldly sarcastic fashion in which he spoke threatened to disturb
Mabyn's forced equanimity.

" Know nothing ?" she said. "I know everything about it; and I
can see that my sister is miserable — that is sufficient reason for my inter-
ference. Mr. Roscorla, you won't ask her to marry you ! "

Had the proud and passionate Mabyn condescended to make an appeal
to her ancient enemy ? At last she raised her eyes ; and they seemed to
plead for mercy.

" Come, come," he said, roughly. " I've had enough of all this sham
beseeching. I know what it means. Trelyon is a richer man than I am ;
she has let her idle girlish notions go dreaming daydreams ; and so I am
expected to stand aside. There has been enough of this nonsense. She
is not a child ; she knows what she undertook of her own free will ; and
she knows she can get rid of this schoolgirl fancy directly if she chooses.
I for one won't help her to disgrace herself."

Mabyn began to breathe a little more quickly. She had tried to be
reasonable ; she had even humbled herself and begged from him ; now
there was a sensation in her chest as of some rising emotion that
demanded expression in quick words.

" You will try to make her marry you ? " said she, looking him in the
face.

" I will try to do nothing of the sort," said he. " She can do as she
likes. But she knows what an honourable woman would do."

" And I," said Mabyn, her temper at length quite getting the better of
her, " I know whafc an honourable man would do. He would refuse to
bind a girl to a promise) which she fears. He would consider her happi-
ness to be of more importance than his comfort. Why, I don't believe
you care at all whether Wenna marries you or not — it is only you can't
bear her being married to the man she really does love — it is only envy,
that's what it is. Oh ! I am ashamed to think there is a man alive who
would force a girl into becoming his wife on such terms "

" There is certainly one considerable objection to my marrying your
sister," said he, with great politeness. " The manners of some of her
relatives might prove embarrassing."

" Yes, that is true enough," Mabyn said, with hot cheeks. " If
ever I became a relative of yours, my manners no doubt would embarrass
you very considerably. But I am not a relative of yours as yet, nor is
my sister."

" May I consider that you have 'said what you had to say ? " said he,
Baking up his fiat,

652 THREE FEATHERS.

Proud and angry, and at the same time mortified by her defeat,
Mabyn found herself speechlaes. He did not offer to shake hands with
her. He bowed to her in passing out. She made the least possible
acknowledgment, and then she was alone. Of course, a hearty cry
followed. She felt she had done no good. She had determined to be
calm ; whereas all the calmness had been on his side, and she had been
led into speaking in a manner which a discreet and well-bred young lady
would have shrunk from in horror. Mabyn sat still and sobbed, partly in
anger and partly in disappointment ; she dared not even go to tell her
sister.

But Mr. Roscorla, as he went over the bridge again, and went up to
Basset Cottage, had lost all his assumed coolness of judgment and
demeanour. He felt he had been tricked by Wenna and insulted by
Mabyn, while his rival had established a hold which it would be in vain
for him to seek to remove. He was in a passion of rage. He would not
go near Wenna again. He would at once set off for London and enjoy
himself there while his holiday lasted ; he would not write a word to her ;
then, when the time arrived, he would set sail for Jamaica, leaving her to
her own conscience. He was suffering a good deal from anger, envy, and
jealousy ; but he was consoled by the thought that she was suffering
more. And he reflected, with some comfort to himself, that she would
scarcely so far demean herself as to marry Harry Trelyon, so long as she
knew in her heart what he, Roscorla, would think of her for so doing.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE OLD HALF-FORGOTTEN JOKE.

" HAS he gone ? " Wenna asked of her sister, the next day.

" Yes, he has," Mabyn answered, with a proud and revengeful face.
" It was quite true what Mrs. Cornish told me — I've no doubt she had her
instructions. He has just driven away to Launceston, on his way to
London."

" Without a word ! "

" Would you like to have had another string of arguments ? " Mabyn
said, impatiently. " Oh, Wenna, you don't know what mischief all this
is doing. You are awake all night ; you cry half the day ; what is to be
the end of it ? You will work yourself into a fever."

" Yes, there must be an end of it," Weuna said, with decision, " not
for myself alone, but for others. That is all the reparation I can make
now. No girl in all this country has ever acted so badly as I have done
— just look at the misery I have caused ; but now -

" There is one who is miserable, because he loves you," Mabyn said.

" Do you think that Mr. Roscorla has no feelings ? You are so unjust
to him. Well, it does not matter now : all this must come to an end.
Mabyn, I should like to see Mr. Trelyon, just for one minute."

THREE FEATHERS. 658

" What will you say to him, Wenna ? " her sister said, with a sudden
fear.

" Something that it is necessary to say to him, and the sooner it is
over the better."

Mabyn rather dreaded the result of this interview ; and yet, she
reflected to herself, here was an opportunity for Harry Trelyon to try to
win some promise from her sister. Better, in any case, that they should
meet than that Wenna should simply drive him away into banishment
without a word of explanation.

The meeting was easily arranged. On the next morning, long before
Wenna's daily round of duties had commenced, the two sisters left the
inn, and went over the bridge, and out to the bold promontory of black
rock at the mouth of the harbour. There was nobody about. This
October morning was more like a summer-day; the air was mild and
still : the blue sky without a cloud ; the shining sea plashed around the
rocks with the soft murmuring noise of a July calm. It was on these
rocks, long ago, that Wenna Kosewarne had pledged herself to become the
wife of Mr. Roscorla ; and at that time life had seemed to her, if not
brilliant and beautiful, at least grateful and peaceful. Now all the peace
had gone out of it.

" Oh, my darling ! " Trelyon said when she advanced alone towards
him — for Mabyn had withdrawn. "It is so good of you to come.
Wenna, what has frightened you ? "

He had seized both her hands in his ; but she took them away again.
For one brief second her eyes had met his, and there was a sort of wistful
and despairing kindliness in them ; then she stood before him, with her
face turned away from him, and her voice low and tremulous.

" I did wish to see you — for once — for the last time," she said. " If
you had gone away, you would have carried with you cruel thoughts of
me. I wish to ask your forgiveness "

" My forgiveness ? "

" Yes, for all that you may have suffered ; and — for all that may
trouble you in the future — not in the future, but for the little time you
will remember what has taken place here. Mr. Trelyon, I — I did not
know ! Indeed, it is all a mystery to me now — and a great misery "

Her lips began to quiver ; but she controlled herself.

" And surely it will only be for a short time, if you think of it at all.
You are young — you have all the world before you. When you go away
among other people and see all the different things that interest* a young
man, you will soon forget whatever has happened here."

"And you say that to me," he said, " and you said the other night
that you loved me. It is nothing, then, for people who love each other to
go away, and be consoled, and never see each other again ? "

Again the lips quivered : lie had no idea of the terrible effort that was
needed to keep this girl calm.

" I did say that " she said.

" And it was true ? " he broke in.

654 THREE FEATHERS.

" It was true then — it is true now — that is all the misery of it ! " she
exclaimed, with tears starting to her eyes.

" And you talk of our being separated for ever ! " he cried. " No ! —
not if I can help it ! Mabyn has told me of all your scruples — they are
not worth looking at. I tell you you are no more bound to that man than
Mabyn is ; and that isn't much. If he is such a mean hound as to insist
on your marrying him, then I will appeal to your father and mother, and
they must prevent him. Or I will go to him myself, and settle the matter
in a shorter way "

"You cannot now," she said; " he has gone away. And what good
would that have done ? I would never marry any man unless I could do
so with a"clear and happy conscience ; and if you — if you and Mabyn — see
nothing in my treatment of him that is wrong, then that is very strange ;
but I cannot acquit myself. No ; I hope no woman will ever treat you as
I have treated him. Look at his position — an elderly man, with few
friends — he has not all the best of his life before him as you have — or the
good spirits of youth — and after he had gone away to Jamaica, taking my
promise with him — oh ! I am ashamed of myself when I think on all that
has happened."

"Then you've no right to be," said he, hotly. "It was the most
natural thing in the world, and he ought to have known it, that a young
girl who has been argued into engaging herself to an old man should con-
sider her being in love with another man as something of rather more
importance — of a good deal more importance, I should say. And his
suffering ? He suffers no more than this lump of rock does. That is
not his way of thinking — to be bothered about anything. He may be
angry, yes ! — and vexed for the moment, as is natural ; but if you think
he is going about the world with a load of agony on him, then you're
quite mistaken. And if he were, what good could you do by making
yourself miserable as well ? Wenna, do be reasonable, now."

Had not another, on this very spot, prayed her to be reasonable ?
She had yielded then. Mr. Roscorla's arguments were incontrovertible,
and she had shrinkingly accepted the conclusion. Now, young Trelyon's
representations and pleadings were far less cogent ; but how strongly her
heart went with them !

" No ! " she said, as if she were shaking off the influence of the
tempter, " I must not listen to you. Yet you don't seem to think that it
costs me anything to ask you to bid me good-bye once and for all. It
should be less to you than- to me. A girl thinks of these things more than
a man — she has little else to think of— he goes out into the world and
forgets. And you — you will go away, and you will become such a man
as all who know you will love to speak of and be proud of ; and some day
you will come back, and if you like to come down to the inn, then there
will be one or two there glad to see you. Mr. Trelyon, don't ask me to
tell you why this should be so. I know it to be right ; my heart tells me.
Now I will say good-bye to you."

THEEE FEATHERS. 656

" And when I como back to the inn, will you be there ? " said he,
becoming rather pale. " No ; you will be married to a man whom you
will hate."

" Indeed no," she said, with her face flushing and her eyes cast
down. " How can that be after what has taken place ? He could not
ask me. All that I begged of him before he went away was this — that
he would not ask me to marry him ; and if only he would do that, I
promised never to see you again — after bidding you good-bye as I do
now."

" And is that the arrangement ? " said he, rather roughly. " Are we
to play at clog in the manger ? He is not to marry you himself; but he
will not let any other man marry you ? "

" Surely he has some right to consideration," she said.

" Well, Wenna," said he, " if you've made up your mind, there's no
more to be said. I think you are needlessly cruel "

"You won't say that, just as we are parting," she said, in a low
voice. " Do you think it is nothing to me ? "

He looked at her for a moment with a great sadness and compunction
in his eyes ; then, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, he caught her in his
arms, and kissed her on the lips.

" Now," said he, with his face white as death, " tell me that you will
never marry any other man as long as you live ! "

" Yes, I will say that," she said to him, in a low voice, and with a
face as white as his own.

" Swear it, then ! "

" I have said that I will never marry any other man than you," she
said, " and that is enough — for me. But as for you — why must you go
away thinking of such things ? You will see some day what madness it
would have been — you will come some day and thank me for having told
you so— and then — and then — if anything should be mentioned about
what I said just now, you will laugh at the old, half-forgotten joke "

Well, there was no laughing #t the joke just then ; for the girl burst
into tears, and in the midst of that she hastily pressed his hand, and
hurried away. He watched her go round the rocks, to the cleft leading
down to the harbour. There she was rejoined by her sister ; and the two
of them went slowly along the path of broken slate, with the green hill
above, the blue water below, and the fair sunshine all around them.
Many a time he recalled afterwards — and always with an increasing
weight at his heart — how sombre seemed to him that bright October day
and the picturesque opening of the coast leading in to Eglosilyan. For it
was the last glimpse of Wenna Kosewarne that he was to have for many
a day ; and a sadder picture was never treasured up in a man's memory.

" Oh, Wenna, what have you said to him that you tremble so ? "
Mabyn asked.

" I have bid him good-bye — that is all."

"Not for always?"

656 THBEE FEATHERS.

" Yes, for always."

" And he is going away again, then ? "

" Yes, as a young man should. Why should he stop here to make
himself wretched over impossible fancies ? He will go out into the world ;
and he has splendid health and spirits ; and he will forget all this."
" And you — you are anxious to forgst it all too ? "
" Would it not be better ? What good can come of dreaming ? Well,
I've plenty of work to do ; that is well."

Mabyn was very much inclined to cry : all her beautiful visions of the
future happiness of her sister had been rudely dispelled. All her schemes
and machinations had gone for nothing. There only remained to her, in
the way of consolation, the fact that Wenna still wore the sapphire ring
that Harry Trelyon had sent her.

"And what will his mother think of you ? " said Mabyn, as a last
argument, " when she finds you have sent him away altogether — to go
into the army, and go abroad, and perhaps die of yellow fever, or be shot
by the Sepoys and the Caffres ? "

" She would have hated me if I had married him," said Wenna, simply.
"Oh, Wenna, how dare you say such a thing ! " Mabyn cried.
" What do you mean by it ? "

" Would a lady in her position like her only son to marry the daughter
of an innkeeper ? " Wenna asked, rather indifferently : indeed, her
thoughts were elsewhere.

" I tell you there's no one in the world she loves like you — I can see
it every time she comes down for you — and she believes, and I believe
too, that you have changed Mr. Trelyon's way of talking and his manner
of treating people in such a fashion as no one would have considered
possible. Po you think she hasn't eyes ? He is scarcely ever imperti-
nent now — when he is it is always in good-nature, and never in sulkiness.
Look at his kindness to Mr. Trewhella's granddaughter ; and Mr. Trewhella
a clergyman too. Did he ever use to take his mother out for a drive ?
No, never ! And of course she knows whom it's all owing to ; and if you
would marry Mr. Trelyon, Wenna, I believe she would worship you and
think nothing good enough for you — — "

" Mabyn, I am going to ask something of you."
" Oh, yes, I know what it is," her sister said. "I am not to speak
any more about your marriage with Mr. Trelyon. But I won't give you
any such promise, Wenna. I don't consider that that old man has any
hold on you."

Wenna said nothing ; for at this moment they entered the house.
Mabyn went up with her sister to her room ; then she stood undecided
for a moment ; finally she said —

" Wenna, if I've vexed you, I'm very sorry. I won't speak of Mr.
Trelyon if you don't wish it. But indeed, indeed you don't know how
many people are anxious that you should be happy — and you can't expect
your own sister not to be as anxious as any one else "

THKEE FEATHERS. 657

" Mabyn, you're a good girl," Wenna said, kissing her. " But I am
rather tired to-day — I think I shall lie down for a little while "

Mabyn uttered a sharp cry, for her sister had fallen back on a chair,
white and insensible. She hastily bathed her forehead with cold water ;
she chafed her hands ; she got hold of some smelling-salts. It was only a
faint, after all ; and Wenna, having come to, said she would lie down on
the sofa for a few minutes. Mabyn said nothing to her mother about all
this, for it would have driven Mrs. Rosewarne wild with anxiety ; but she
herself was rather disquieted with Wenna's appearance, and she said to
herself, with great bitterness of heart —

" If my sister falls ill, I know who has done that."

CHAPTER XXX'X.

NEW AMBITIONS.

MR. ROSCORLA, having had few friends throughout his life, had developed
a most methodical habit of communing with himself on all possible sub-
jects, but more particularly, of course, upon his own affairs. He used up
his idle hours in denning his position with regard to the people and
things around him, and he was never afraid to convince himself of the
exact truth. He never tried to cheat himself into the belief that he was
more unselfish than might appear ; if other people thought so, good and
well. He, at least, was not a hypocrite to himself.

Now, he had not been gone above a couple of hours or so from Eglo-
silyan when he discovered that he was not weighted with terrible woes ;
on the contrary, he experienced a feeling of austere satisfaction that he
was leaving a good deal of trouble behind him. He had been badly used ;
he had been. righteously angry. It was right that they who had thus used
him badly should be punished. As for him, if his grief did not trouble
him much, that was a happy peculiarity of his temperament which did
not lessen their offence against him.

Most certainly he was not weighted with woe. He had a pleasant
drive in the morning over to Launceston ; he smoked a cigarette or two
in the train. When he arrived at Plymouth, he ordered a very nice
luncheon at the nearest hotel, and treated himself to a bottle of the best
Burgundy the waiter could recommend him. After that he got into
a smoking carriage in the London express ; he lit a large cigar ; he
wrapped a thick rug round his legs, and settled himself down in peace for
the long journey. Now was an excellent time to find out exactly how his
affairs stood.

He was indeed very comfortable. Leaving Eglosilyan had not troubled
him. There was something in the knowledge that he was at last free
from all those exciting scenes which a quiet middle-aged man, not believing
in romance, found trying to his nervous system. This brief holiday in

658 THEEE FEATHERS.

Eglosilyan had been anything but a pleasant one ; was he not, on the
whole, glad to get away ?

Then he recollected that the long-expected meeting with his betrothed
had not been so full of delight as he had anticipated. Was there not
just a trace of disappointment in the first shock of feeling at their meet-
ing ? She was certainly not a handsome woman — such a one as he
might have preferred to introduce to his friends about Kensington, in the
event of his going back to live in London.

Then he thought of old General Weekes. He felt a little ashamed of
himself for not having had the courage to tell the General and his wife that
he meant to marry one of the young ladies who had interested them.
Would it not be awkward, too, to have to introduce Wenna Rosewarne to
them in her new capacity ?

That speculation carried him on to the question of his marriage.
There could be no doubt that his betrothed had become a little too fond
of the handsomest young man in the neighbourhood. Perhaps that was
natural ; but at all events she was now very much ashamed of what had
happened, and he might trust her to avoid Harry Trelyon in the future.
That having been secured, would not her thoughts naturally drift back to
the man to whom she had plighted a troth which was still formally bind-
ing on her ? Time was on his side. She would forget that young man ;
she would be anxious, as soon as these temporary disturbances of her
affections were over, to atone for the past by her conduct in the future.
Girls had very strong notions about duty.

Well, he drove to his club, and finding one of the bedrooms free, he
engaged it for a week, the longest time possible. He washed, dressed,
and went down to dinner. To his great delight, the first man he saw was
old Sir Percy himself, who was writing out a very elaborate menu,
considering that he was ordering dinner for himself only. He and Mr.
Roscorla agreed to dine together.

Now, for some years back Mr. Roscorla, in visiting his club, had
found himself in a very isolated and uncomfortable position. Long ago
he had belonged to the younger set — to those reckless young fellows who
were not afraid to eat a hasty dinner, and then rush off to take a mother
and a couple of daughters to the theatre, returning at midnight to some
anchovy toast and a glass of Burgundy, followed by a couple of hours of
brandy-and-soda, cigars, and billiards. But he had drifted away from
that set; indeed, they had disappeared, and he knew none of their suc-
cessors. On the other hand, he had never got into the ways of the old-
fogey set. Those stout old gentlemen who carefully drank nothing but
claret and seltzer, who took a quarter of an hour to write out their dinner-
bill, who .spent the evening in playing whist, kept very much to them-
selves. It was into this set that the old General now introduced him.
Mr. Roscorla had quite the air of a bashful young man when he made one
of a party of those ancients, who dined at the same table each evening.
He was almost ashamed to order a pint of champagne for himself — it

THREE FEATHERS. 659

savoured so much of youth. He was silent in the presence of his
seniors; and indeed they were garrulous enough to cover his silence.
Their talk was mostly of politics — not the politics of the country, but the
politics of office ; of under- secretaries and candidates for place. They
seemed to look on the Government of the country as a sort of mechanical
clock, which from time to time sent out a few small figures, and from
time to time took them in again ; and they showed an astonishing
acquaintance with the internal and intricate mechanism which produced
these changes. Perhaps it was because they were so busy in watching
for changes on the face of the clock that they seemed to forget the
swinging onward of the great world outside, and the solemn march of
the stars.

Most of those old gentlemen had lived their life— had done their share
of heavy dining and reckless drinking many years ago — and thus it was
they had come to drink seltzer and claret. But it appeared that it was
their custom, after dinner, to have the table-cover removed, and some
port wine placed on the mahogany. Mr. Roscorla, who had felt as yet no
ugly sensations about his finger-joints, regarded this ceremony with equa-
nimity ; but it was made the subject of some ominous joking on the part
of his companions. Then joking led to joking. There were no more
politics. Some very funny stories were told. Occasionally one or two names
were introduced, as of persons well known in London society, though not
of it ; and Mr. Roscorla was surprised that he had never heard these
names before — you see how one becomes ignorant of the world if one
buries oneself down in Cornwall. Mr. Roscorla began to take quite an
interest in these celebrated people, in the price of their ponies, and the
diamonds they were understood to have worn at a certain very singular
ball. He was pleased to hear, too, of the manner in which the aristocracy
of England were resuming their ancient patronage of the arts ; for he was
given to understand that a young earl or baron could scarcely be con-
sidered a man of fashion unless he owned a theatre.

On their way up to the card-room, Mr. Roscorla and one of his
venerable companions went into the hall to get their cigar-case from their
top-coat pocket. This elderly gentleman had been the governor of an
island in the Pacific. He had now been resident for many years in Eng-
land. He was on the directorate of one or two well-known commercial
companies ; he had spoken at several meetings on the danger of disso-
ciating religion from education in the training of the young ; in short, he
was a tower of respectability. On the present occasion he had to pull out
a muffler to get at his cigar-case ; and with the muftier came a small
parcel tied up in tissue-paper.

" Neat, aren't they?" said he, with a senile grin, showing Mr. Roscorla
the tips of a pair of pink satin slippers.

" Yes," said Mr. Roscorla ; "I suppose they're for your daughter."

They went up to the card-room.

" I expect you'll teach us a lesson, Roscorla," said the old General.

CCO THREE FEATHERS.

"Gad, some of you West-Indian fellows know the difference between a
ten and an ace."

"Last time I played cards," Roscorla said, modestly, "I was lucky
enough to win 48/."

" Whew ! We can't afford that sort of thing on this side of the water
— not if you happen to serve Her Majesty any way. Come, let's cut for
partners 1 "

There was but little talking, of course, during the card-playing ; at the
end of it Mr. Roscorla found he had only lost half».a-sovereign. Then
everybody adjourned to a snug little smoking-room, to which only mem-
bers were admitted. This, to the neophyte, was the pleasantest part of
the evening. He seemed to hear of everything that was going on in Lon-
don— and a good deal more besides. He was behind the scenes of all the
commercial, social, political performances which were causing the vulgar
crowd to gape. He discovered the true history of the hostility shown by
So-and-so to the Premier ; he was told the little scandal which caused
Her Majesty to refuse to knight a certain gentleman who had claims on the
Government ; he heard what the Duke really did offer to the gamekeeper
whose eye he had shot out, and the language used by the keeper on the
occasion ; and he received such information about the financial affairs of
many a company as made him wonder whether the final collapse of the
commercial world were at hand. He forgot that he had heard quite simi-
lar stories twenty years before. Then they had been told by ingenuous
youths full of the importance of the information they had just acquired ;
now they were told by garrulous old gentlemen, with a cynical laugh
which was more amusing than the hot-headed asseveration of the juniors.
It was, on the whole, a delightful evening — this first evening of his return
to club-life ; and then it was so convenient to go upstairs to bed instead
of having to walk from the inn of Eglosilyan to Basset Cottage.

Just before leaving, the old General took Roscorla aside, and said to
him —

" Monstrous amusing fellows, eh ? "

"Very."

" Just a word. Don't you let old Lewis lug you into any of his com-
panies— you understand ? "

" There's not much fear of that ! " Mr. Roscorla said, with a laugh.
" I haven't a brass farthing to invest."

" All you West-Indians say that ; however, so much the better. And
there's old Strafford, too ; he's got some infernal india-rubber patent.
Gad, sir, he knows no more about those commercial fellows than the man
in the moon ; and they'll ruin him — mark my words, they'll ruin him."

Roscorla was quite pleased to be advised. It made him feel young
and ingenuous. After all, the disparity in years between him and his late
companions was most obvious.

" And when are you coming to dine with us, eh ? " the General said,
lighting a last cigar and getting his hat. " To-morrow night ?— quiet

THREE FEATHERS. 061

family party, you know ; her ladyship '11 be awfully glad to see you. Is
it a bargain ? All right — seven ; we're early'folks. I say — you needn't
mention I dined here to-night ; to tell you the truth, I'm supposed to be
looking after a company too, and precious busy about it. Mum's the word ;
d'ye see?"

Really this plunge into a new sort of life was quite delightful. When
he went down to breakfast next morning, he was charmed with the order
and cleanliness of everything around him ; the sunlight was shining in at
the large windows ; ^there was a bright fire, in front of which he stood and
read the paper until his cutlets came. There was no croaking of an old
Cornish housekeeper over her bills ; no necessity for seeing if the grocer
had been correct in his addition. Then there was a slight difference
between the cooking here and that which prevailed in Basset Cottage.

In a comfortable frame of mind he leisurely walked down to Cannon
Street, and announced himself to his partners. He sat for an hour or so
in a snug little parlour, talking over their joint venture, and describing all
that had been done. There was, indeed, every ground for hope ; and he
was pleased to hear them say that they were especially obliged to him for
having gone out to verify the reports that had been sent home, and for
his personal supervision while there. They hoped he would draw on the
joint association for a certain sum which should represent the value of
that supervision.

Now, if Mr. Roscorla had really been possessed at this moment of
the wealth to which he looked forward, he would not have taken so much
interest in it. He would have said to himself —

" What is the life I am to lead, now that I have this money ? Having
luncheon at the club ; walking in the Park in the afternoon ; dining with
a friend in the evening, and playing whist or billiards, with the cheerless
return to a bachelor's chambers at night ? Is that all that my money
can give me ? "

But he had not the money. He looked forward to it ; and it seemed
to him that it contained all the possibilities of happiness. Then he would
be free. No more stationary dragging out of existence in that Cornish
cottage. He would move about ; he would enjoy life. He was still
younger than those jovial old fellows who seemed to be happy enough.
When he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, it was with the notion that
marriage very considerably hampers a man's freedom of action.

If a man were married, could he have a choice of thirty dishes for
luncheon ? Could he have the first edition of the evening papers brought
him almost damp from the press ? Then how pleasant it was to be able
to smoke a cigar and to wiite one or two letters at the same time — in a
large and well-ventilated room. Mr. Roscorla did not fail to draw on
his partners for the sum they had mentioned ; he was not short of money,
but he might as well gather the first few drops of the coming shower.

He did not go up to walk in the Park, for he knew there would be
almost nobody there at that time of the year ; but he walked up to Bond

662 THREE FEATHERS.

Street and bought a pair of dress-boots, after which he returned to the
club, and played billiards with one of his companions of the previous
evening, until it was time to dress for dinner.

The party at the General's was a sufficiently small one ; for you cannot
ask any one to dinner at a few hours' notice, except it be a merry and
marriageable widow who has been told that she will meet an elderly and
marriageable bachelor. This complaisant lady was present ; and Mr. Ros-
corla found himself on his entrance being introduced to a good-looking,
buxom dame, who had a healthy, merry, roseate face, very black eyes and
hair, and a somewhat gorgeous dress. She was a trifle demure at first,
but her amiable shyness soon wore off, and she was most kind to Mr. Ros-
corla. He, of course, had to take in Lady Weekes ; but Mrs. Seton-
Willoughby sate opposite him, and, while keeping the whole table amused
with an account of her adventures in Galway, appeared to address the
narrative principally to the stranger.

" Oh, my dear Lady Weekes," she said, " I was so glad to get back
to Brighton ! I thought I should have forgotten my own language, and
taken to war-paint and feathers, if I had remained much longer. And
Brighton is so delightful just now — just comfortably filled, without the
November crush having set in. Now, couldn't you persuade the General
to take you down for a few days ? I am going down on Friday ; and you
know how dreadful it is for a poor lone woman to be in an hotel, especially
with a maid who spends all her time in flirting with the first-floor waiters.
Now wont you, dear ? I assure you the Hotel is most charming-
such freedom, and the pleasant parties they make up in the drawing-
room ; I believe they have a ball two or three nights a week just
now "

" I should have thought you would have found the rather

quieter," said Mr. Roscorla, naming a good, old-fashioned house.

"Rather quieter ?" said the widow, raising her eyebrows. "Yes, a
good deal quieter ! About as quiet as a dissenting chapel. No, no ; if
one means to have a little pleasure, why go to such a place as that ?
Now, will you come and prove the truth of what I have told you ? "

Mr. Roscorla looked alarmed ; and even the solemn Lady Weekes had
to conceal a smile.

"Of course I mean you to persuade our friends here to come too,"
the widow explained. " What a delightful frolic it would be — for a few
days, you know, to break away from London ! Now, my dear, what
do you say ? "

She turned to her hostess. That small and sombre person referred
her to the General. The General, on being appealed to, said he thought
it would be a capital joke ; and would Mr. Roscorla go with them ?
Mr. Roscorla, not seeing why he should not have a little frolic of this sort
just like any one else, said he would. So they agreed to meet at Vic-
toria Station on the following Friday.

" Struck, eh? " said the old General, when the two gentlemen were

THREE FEATHERS. 663

alone after dinner. " Has she wounded you, eh ? Gad, sir, that woman
has 8,000/. a year in the India Four per Cents. Would you believe it ?
Would you believe that any man could hav£ been such a fool as to put
such a fortune into India Four per Cents. ? — with mortgages going
a-begging at six, and the marine insurance companies paying thirteen !
Well, my boy, what do you think of her ? She was most uncommonly
attentive to you, that I'll swear — don't deny it — now, don't deny it.
Bless my soul, you marrying men are so sly there's no getting at you.
Well, what was I sayicg ? Yes, yes — will she do ? 8,000/. a year, as
I'm a living sinner."

Mr. Roscorla was intensely flattered to have it even supposed that the
refusal of such a fortune was within his power.

" Well," said he, modestly and yet critically, " she's not quite my
style. I'm rather afraid of three-deckers. But she seems a very good-
natured sort of woman."

" Good-natured ! Is that all you say ? I can tell you, in my time,
men were nothing so particular when there was 8,000/. a year going
a-begging."

"Well, well," said Mr. Roscorla, with a smile. "It is a very good
joke. When she marries, she'll marry a younger man than I am "

" Don't you be mistaken — don't you be mistaken ! " the old General
cried. "You've made an impression — I'll swear you have; and I told
her ladyship you would."

" And what did Lady Weekes say ? "

" Gad, sir, she said it would be a deuced good thing for both of
you."

" She is very kind," said Mr. Roscorla, pleased at the notion of
having such a prize within reach, and yet not pleased that Lady Weekes
should have fancied this the sort of woman he would care to marry.

They went to Brighton, and a very pleasant time of it they had at the
big, noisy hotel. The weather was delightful. Mrs. Seton-Willoughby
was excessively fond of riding ; forenoon and afternoon they had their
excursions, with the pleasant little dinner of the evening to follow. Was
not this a charmed land into which the former hermit of Basset Cottage
was straying ? Of course, he never dreamed for a moment of marrying
this widow ; that was out of the question. She was just a little too
demonstrative — very clever and amusing for half-an-hour or so, but too
gigantic a blessing to be taken through life. It was the mere possibility
of marrying her, however, which attracted Mr. Roscorla. He honestly
believed, judging by her kindness to him, that, if he seriously tried, he
could get her to marry him ; in other words, that he might become
possessed of 8,000/. a year. This money, so to speak, was within his
reach ; and it was only now that he was beginning to see that money
could purchase many pleasures even for the middle-aged. He made a
great mistake in imagining, down in Cornwall, that he had lived his life ;
and that he had but to look forward to mild enjoyments, a peaceful

664 THREE FEATttEKS.

wandering onwards to the grave, and the continual study of economy in
domestic affairs. He was only now beginning to live.

" And when are you coming back? " said the widow to him, one even-
ing, when they were all talking of his leaving England.

" That I don't know," he said.

" Of course," she said, " you don't mean to remain in the West
Indies. I suppose lots of people have to go there for some object or other,
but they always come back when it is attained."

" They come back to attain some other object here," said Mr. Ros-
corla.

" Then we'll soon find you that," the General burst in. " No man
lives out of England who can help it. Don't you find in this country
enough to satisfy you ? "

"Indeed I do," Mr. Roscorla said, "especially within the last few
days. I have enjoyed myself enormously. I shall always have a friendly
recollection of Brighton."

"Are you going down to Cornwall before you leave?" Sir Percy
asked.

" No," said he, slowly.

" That isn't quite so cheerful as Brighton, eh ? "

" Not quite."

He kept his word. He did not go back to Cornwall before leaving
England, nor did he send a single line or message to any one there. It
was with something of a proud indifference that he set sail, and also with
some notion that he was being amply revenged. For the rest, he hated
"scenes;" and he had encountered quite enough of these during his
brief visit to Eglosilyan.

CHAPTER XL.
AN OLD LADY'S APOLOGY.

WHEN Wenna heard that Mr. Roscorla had left England without even
bidding her good-bye by letter, she accepted the rebuke with submission,
and kept her own counsel. She went about her daily duties with an
unceasing industry ; Mrs. Trelyon was astonished to see how she
seemed to find time for everything. The winter was coming on, and the
Sewing Club was in full activity ; but even apart from the affairs of that
enterprise, Wenna Rosewarne seemed to be everywhere throughout the
village, to know everything, to be doing everything that prudent help and
friendly counsel could do. Mrs. Trelyon grew to love the girl — in her
vague, wondering, simple fashion.

So the days, and the weeks, and the months went by ; and the course
of life ran smoothly and quietly in the remote Cornish village. Apparently
there was nothing to indicate the presence of bitter regrets, of crushed

THEEE FEATHEBS. 665

hopes, of patient despair ; only Mabyn used to watch her sister at times,
and she fancied that Wenna's face was growing thinner.

The Christmas festivities came on, and Mrs. Trelyon was pleased to
lend her proteg'e a helping hand in decorating the church. One evening
she said —

" My dear Miss Wenna, I am going to ask you an impertinent question.
Could your family spare you on Christmas evening ? Harry is coming
down from London ; I am sure he would be so pleased to see you."

" Oh, thank you, Mrs. Trelyon," Wenna said, with just a little
nervousness. " You are very kind, but indeed I must be at home on
Christmas evening."

" Perhaps some other evening while he is here you will be able to
come up," said Mrs. Trelyon, in her gentle way. " You know you ought
to come and see how your pupil is getting on. He writes me such nice
letters now; and I fancy he is working very hard at his studies, though
he says nothing about it."

" I am very glad to hear that," Wenna said, in a low voice.

Trelyon did come to the Hall for a few days, but he kept away from
the village, and was seen by no one of the Rosewarnes. But on the
Christmas morning, Mabyn Rosewarne, being early about, was told that
Mrs. Trelyon's groom wished to see her ; and going down, she found the
man, with a basket before him.

" Please, miss, Mr. Trelyon's compliments, and would you take the
flowers out of the cotton- wool, and give them to Miss Rosewarne ? "

" Ob, won't I ! " said Mabyn, opening the basket at once, and care-
fully getting out a bouquet of camellias, snowdrops, and sweet violets.
" Just you wait a minute, Jakep, for I've got a Christmas-box for you."

Mabyn went upstairs as rapidly as was consistent with the safety of
the flowers, and burst into her sister's room.

" Oh, Wenna, look at this ! Do you know who sent them ? Did you
ever see anything so lovely ? "

For a second the girl seemed almost frightened ; then her eyes grew
troubled and moist, and she turned her head away. Mabyn put them
gently down, and left the room without a word.

The Christmas and the new year passed without any message from
Mr. Roscorla ; and Mabyn, though she rebelled against the bondage in
which her sister was placed, was glad that she was not disturbed by
angry letters. About the middle of January, however, a brief note arrived
from Jamaica.

"I cannot let such a time go by," Mr. Roscorla wrote, "whatever
may be our relations, without sending you a friendly word. I do hope
the new year will bring you health and happiness, and that we shall in
If time forget the angry manner in which we parted, and all the circum-
stances leading to it."

She wrote as brief a note in reply, at the end of which she hoped he
would forgive her for any pain he had suffered through her, Mabyn was

VOL. xxxi.— NO. 186. 82.

666 THBEE FEATHERS.

rejoiced to find that the correspondence — whether it was or was not
meant on his part to be an offer of reconciliation — stopped there.

And again the slow days went by, until the world began to stir with
the new spring-time — the saddest time of the year to those who live much
in the past. Wenna was out and about a great deal, being continually
busy ; but she no longer took those long walks by herself in which she
used to chat to the butterflies, and the young lambs, and the sea-gulls.
The fresh western breezes no longer caused her spirits to flow over in
careless gaiety ; she saw the new flowers springing out of the earth, but
it was of another spring-time she was thinking.

One day, later on in the year, Mrs. Trelyon sent down the wagonnette
for her, with the request that she would come up to the Hall for a few
minutes. Wenna obeyed the summons, imagining that some business
connected with the Sewing Club claimed her attention. When she arrived,
she found Mrs. Trelyon unable to express the gladness and gratitude that
filled Her heart ; for before her were certain London newspapers, and
behold ! Harry Trelyon's name was recorded there in certain lists as
having scored a sufficient number of marks in the examination to entitle
him to a first commission. It was no concern of hers that his name was
pretty far down in the list — enough that he had succeeded somehow.
And who was the worker of this miracle — who but the shy, sad- eyed girl
standing beside her, whose face wore now a happier expression than it
had worn for many a day ?

" And this is what he says," the proud mother continued, showing
Wenna a letter. " 'It isn't much to boast of, for indeed you'll see by the
numbers that it was rather a narrow squeak ; anyhow, I pulled through.
My old tutor is rather a speculative fellow, and he offered to bet me
fifty pounds his coaching would carry me through, which I took ; so I
shall have to pay him that besides his fees. I must say he has earned
both ; I don't think a more ignorant person than myself ever went to a man
to get crammed. I send you two newspapers ; you might drop one at the
inn for Miss Rosewarne any time you are passing ; or if you could see her
and tell her, perhaps that would be better.' '

Wenna was about as pleased and proud as Mrs. Trelyon was.

" I knew he could do it if he tried," she said, quietly.

" And then," the mother went on to say, " when he has once joined,
there will be no money wanting to help him to his promotion ; and when
he comes back to settle down here, he will have some recognised rank
and profession such as a man ought to have. Not that he will remain in
the army — for, of course, I should not like to part with him ; and he
might be sent to Africa, or Canada, or the West Indies. You know," she
added, with a smile, "that it is not pleasant to have any one you care
for in the West Indies." *

When Wenna got home again, she told Mabyn. Strange to say,
Mabyn did not clap her hands for joy, as might have been expected.

" Wenna," said she, " what made him go into the army ? Was it to

THKEE FEATHERS. 667

show you that he could pass an examination ? or was it because he means
to leave England ? "

"I do not know," said Wenna, looking down. " I hope he does not
mean to leave England." That was all she said.

Harry Trelyon was, however, about to leave England, though not
because he had been gazetted to a colonial regiment. He came down to
inform his mother that, on the fifteenth of the month, he would sail for
Jamaica ; and then and there, for the first time, he told her the whole
story of his love for Wenna Rosewarne, of his determination to free her
somehow from the bonds that bound her, and, failing that, of the revenge
he meant to take. Mrs. Trelyon was amazed, angry, and beseeching in
turns. At one moment she protested that it was madness of her son to
think of marrying Wenna Eosewarne ; at another, she would admit all
that he said in praise of her, and would only implore him not to leave
England ; or again she would hint that she would almost herself go down
to Wenna and beg her to marry him if only he gave up this wild intention
of his. He had never seen his mother so agitated; but he reasoned
gently with her, and remained firm to his purpose. Was there half as
much danger in taking a fortnight's trip in a mail-steamer as in going
from Southampton to Malta in a yacht, which he had twice done with her
consent ?

" Why, if I had been ordered to join a regiment in China, you might
have some reason to complain," he said. "And I shall be as anxious as
you, mother, to get back again, for I mean to get up my drill thoroughly
as soon as I am attached. I have plenty of work before me."

" You're not looking well, Harry," said the mother.

" Of course not," said he, cheerfully. " You don't catch one of these
geese at Strassburg looking specially lively when they tie it by the leg and
cram it — and that's what I've been going through of late. But what
better cure can there be than a sea- voyage ? "

And so it came about that, on a pleasant evening in October, Mr. Bos-
corla received a visit. He saw the young man come riding up the
acacia path, and he instantaneously guessed his mission. His own resolve
was taken as quickly.

" Bless my soul, is it you, Trelyon? " he cried, with apparent delight.
" You mayn't believe it, but I am really glad to see you. I have been
going to write to you for many a day back. I'll send somebody for your
horse ; come into the house."

The young man, having fastened up the bridle, followed his host.
There was a calm and business-like rather than a holiday look on his
face.

" And what were you going to write to me about ? " he asked.

" Oh, you know," said Roscorla, good-naturedly. " You see, a man
takes very different views of life when he knocks about a bit. For . my
part, I am more interested in my business now than in anything else of a

82—2

CG8 trUREE FEATHERS.

more tender character ; and I may say that I hope to pay you back a part
of the money you lent me as soon as our accounts for this year are made
up. Well, about that other point — I don't see how I could well return
to England, to live permanently there, for a year or two at the soonest ;
and — and, in fact — I have often wondered, now, whether it wouldn't be
better if I asked Miss Rosewarne to consider herself finally free from
that — from that engagement "

"Yes, I think it would be a great deal better," said Trelyon, coldly.
" And perhaps you would kindly put your resolve into writing. I shall
take it back to Miss Rosewarne. Will you kindly do so now ? "

" Why ! " said Roscorla, rather sharply, "you don't take my pro-
posal in a very friendly way. I imagine I am doing you a good turn too.
It is not every man would do so in my position ; for, after all, she treated
me very badly. However, we needn't go into that. I will write her a
letter, if you like — now, indeed, if you like ; and wont you stop a day or
two here before going back to Kingston ? "

Mr. Trelyon intimated that he would like to have the letter at once,
and that he would consider the invitation afterwards. Roscorla, with a
good-humoured shrug, sate down and wrote it, and then handed it to
Trelyon, open. As he did so, he noticed that the young man was coolly
abstracting the cartridge from a small breech-loading pistol he held in
his hand. He put the cartridge in his waistcoat-pocket and the pistol in
his coat-pocket.

"Did you think we were savages out here, that you came armed ? "
said Roscorla, rather pale, but smiling.

" I didn't know," said Trelyon.

One morning there was a marriage in Eglosilyan, up there at the
small church on the bleak downs, overlooking the wide sea. The spring-
time had come round again ; there was a May-like mildness in the air ;
the skies overhead were as blue as the great plain of the sea ; and all the
beautiful green world was throbbing with the upspringing life of the
flowers. It was just like any other wedding, but for one little incident.
When the bride came out into the bewildering glare of the sun, she
vaguely knew that the path through the churchyard was lined on both
sides with children. Now she was rather well known to the children about,
and they had come in a great number ; and when she passed down between
them, it appeared that the little folks had brought vast heaps of primroses
and violets in their aprons and in tiny baskets, and they strewed her path
•with these flowers of the new Spring. Well, she burst into tears at this ;
and, hastily leaving her husband's arm for a moment, she caught up one
of the least of the children — a small, golden-haired girl of four — and
kissed her. Then she turned to her husband again, and was glad that he
led her down to the gate, for her eyes were so blinded with tears that she
could not see her way.

Nor did anything very remarkable occur at the wedding-breakfast.

THREE FEATHER?. 609

But there was a garrulous old lady there, with bright, pink cheeks and
silvery hair ; and she did not cease to prattle to the clergyman who
had officiated in the church, and who was seated next her.

"Indeed, Mr. Trewhella," she said, confidentially, " I always said this
is what would come of it. Never any one of those Trelyons set their
heart on a girl but he got her ; and what was the use of friends or rela-
tives fighting against it ? Nay, I don't think there's any cause of com-
plaint— not I ! She's a modest, nice, ladylike girl — she is indeed —
although she isn't so handsome as her sister. Dear, dear me, look at that
girl now ! Won't she be a prize for some man ! I declare I haven't seen
so handsome a girl for many a day. And as I tell you, Mr. Trewhella,
it's no use trying to prevent it ; if one of the Trelyons falls in love with a
girl, the girl's done for — she may as well give in "

"If I may say so," observed the old clergyman, with a sly gallantry,
"you do not give the gentlemen of your family credit for the most
remarkable feature of their marriage connections. They seem to have had
always a -very good idea of making an excellent choice."

The old lady was vastly pleased.

" Ah, well," she said, with a shrewd smile, " there were two or three
who thought George Trelyon — that was this young man's grandfather, you
know — lucky enough, if one might judge by the noise they made. Dear,
dear, what a to-do there was when we ran away ! Why, don't you know,
Mr. Trewhella, that I ran away from a ball with him — and drove to
Gretna Green with my ball-dress on, as I'm a living woman ! Such a
ride it was ! — why, when we got up to Carlisle "

But that story has been told before.

THE END.

670

Spanish €amt |Urf»I : " l^imlhr fa

IT is not easy to say precisely how far the theory of evolution can be
applied to the growth of literature. The difficulty is that in literature we
are compelled to admit the possibility of creation ; and the creative force
of genius, with its unlimited power of producing new forms, is a disturb-
ing agency which interferes again and again with the attempt to trace the
connection between the thought or imagination of one age or country
with that of another. In the main, however, it is evident that the growth
of literature is governed by a process analogous to that which regulates
other growths. One form tends to produce other forms, which, in their
turn, throw out fresh variations ; and survival, as elsewhere, depends on
fitness to survive, those forms which are, upon the whole, best qualified
to give pleasure to the mind being those which in the end succeed in the
struggle for existence. Almost any well established variety of modern
literature will show the working of some such process as this, but it may
be seen very distinctly in the modern novel, and especially in a species of
novel we are apt to consider an indigenous product of British soil — the
novel of real life as distinguished from the novel of romance, the novel
that deals with character and manners rather than with incident, and
aims at gaming the sympathy rather than exciting the interest of the
reader. To many the tastes and habits of the English people will appear
a sufficiently satisfactory origin for this species of fiction. Those who
look for a more definite parentage will see in Fielding and Smollett the
founders of the realistic novel, and others, going a stage farther, will
detect in it the unmistakable influence of Le Sage. But Le Sage is
hardly the right man to stop short at. He was the most brilliant of manipu-
lators, but he was by no means an originator ; nor does he himself care
to conceal the fact that he was an adapter, working up materials that he
found ready to his hand. The mine from which he drew these materials
was no discovery of his. Scarron, Corneille, Moliere, Sir Philip Sidney,
Beaumont and Fletcher, and many more had, before him, proved the
wealth that lay in the Spanish literature of the times of the Philips. But
it was Le Sage's merit to have discovered a vein that had been overlooked
by all his predecessors, which in his hands yielded a result more lasting
than any extracted from the writings of Montemayor, Lope de Vega,
Guillen de Castro, or Tirso de Molina. Gil Bias is so distinctly a work
of genius that there need be no hesitation in speaking of its obligations
to other works. We do not think the less of Hamlet or of Othello because

"LAZAEILLO DE TOBMES." 671

it is indebted to the History of Saxo Grammaticus, or the novels of
Giraldi Cinthio ; nor does it imply any depreciation of Gil Bias to acknow-
ledge that it owes its existence to that curious group of fictions, com-
monly known as the picaresque novels of Spain.

The origin of the " gusto picaresco," as the style in question is called
by the Spaniards themselves, is not so easily traced. " Picaro " is one of
the many words which the Spanish language, in its almost tropical
luxuriance of expression, employs to distinguish the various delicate
shades and variations of moral obliquity. The common English transla-
tion " rogue " is, perhaps, the nearest our less abundant northern idiom
can furnish to express the idea, but " picaro " and " rogue " are by no
means interchangeable terms. A philological sense will perceive that the
notion of " sharpness " predominates, and that, so far, a comparison may
be instituted with the American "'cute;" but "picaro," whether as
adjective or substantive, involves in addition ideas of utter unscrupulous-
ness and absolute freedom from all inconvenient restraints of conscience.
Thus, the picaro is not necessarily a thief or a cheat or an impostor, as
English translators generally make him, but one who has no scruple
whatever about lying, cheating, or stealing under the slightest possible
pressure of circumstances. The picaresque novels, then, are pictures of
life seen through the medium of some such character as this. They are,
with hardly an exception, autobiographical in form. The hero, a crafty,
shifty vagabond, entirely devoid of either shame or scruple, tells the story
of his life, recounting with matter of fact naivete his rogueries, his mean-
nesses, his schemes, his scrapes, the kicks and cuffs which he received —
everything, in fact, that self-respect, if he had any, would have prompted
him to conceal. It is this air of impudent candour, hovering between
simplicity and effrontery, that gives to the picaresque novels a flavour as
peculiar as that of Amontillado sherry, and marks them as a distinct
variety of fiction. This is their distinguishing characteristic, but they are
besides remarkable as pictures of life — low life chiefly, but not exclusively
— which, allowing for occasional satirical handling and a certain infusion
of caricature, are evidently true pictures. Indeed, it is obvious from the
very nature of the tales themselves that they must have been lifelike
representations, for their raison d'etre lay in the recognition of their truth,
and we know, as a matter of fact, that the great popularity they enjoyed
in their own day was mainly owing to the fidelity with which they sketched
certain familiar phrases of life. They are, in fact, in the history of litera
ture, very much what the paintings of Teniers and Ostade are in the history
of Art.

But the question arises, how did Spain come to possess a literature
of this kind, and how does it happen that Spain is the only country
which has produced a distinct school of rogue romance ? Ticknor (and
there can be no higher authority on any subject connected with the litera-
ture or life of Spain) finds an explanation in the demoralising effects of the
long struggle with the Moors, followed almost immediately by the wars of

672 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL3:

Charles V., for the support of which Spain was treated as a recruiting-
ground as well as a treasury. Military service was put above all other
occupations ; consequently productive industry of every kind was held in
contempt, and when peace came it let loose upon the country a swarm of
idlers who, even if they did not despise labour, had been totally unfitted
for it by a campaigning life. Among these there were two classes who
figure prominently in the picaresque romances ; the poor, proud hidalgos,
who could find no employment that was not derogatory to their hidalguia,
and whose shifts and straits and pretensions were the unfailing theme of
the Spanish humorists ; and the lower and more unamiable type, the
crafty, unprincipled scamps who trusted to their knavery and cunning for
a livelihood. The period during which these tales appeared certainly
suits this view. It was precisely that period, from the middle of the six-
teenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, during which Spain, from
her highest point of glory and power, fell to the level at which she has
remained to this day ; a fall too deep and too rapid to have taken place
without great social disorganisation. But whether it is to be attributed
to the habits and ideas engendered by protracted warfare or to some more
remote cause, there can be no doubt that the trait which all these tales
illustrate — the hatred of work in every form — had, as a common trait, a
very real existence. Every traveller, from Navagiero to Madame d'Aulnoy,
noticed it ; but there is no need to refer to foreigners, for the testimony
of Spaniards themselves is clear enough on the point. The laws passed
about the time we speak of for the protection of native idleness read
almost like satires on protection, or specimens of the legislation of a comic
Utopia. All the exports were raw materials, all the imports manufactured
goods. Spain produced the fine wool, but the cloth came from England.
The silk that went out raw from Murcia came back woven from Italy.
The constant cry was that the Spaniard was being ousted by foreigners
from trades he had no idea of embarking in, and manufactures he never
tried to put a hand to. " They have," says one, " eompletel}7 excluded
the Spaniards from the pursuits of industry, since their productions are
more suited to the tastes of purchasers, or are cheaper than those of the
native workmen. We cannot dress without them, for we have neither
linen nor cloth ; we cannot write without them, for we have no paper but
what they furnish us with. They gain twenty-five millions yearly." This
was Professor Moncada, the same who addressed a tract to Philip III.,
proposing a short way with the gipsies, " one which Nature^herself indi
cates in the curious political system of the bees, in whose well-governed
republic they kill the drones in April, when the working season begins."
And there were other causes tending to swell the piearo class which
Ticknor ignores. For those who will not dig and to beg are not ashamed
there is no country like Spain. The climate in most parts is just the one
for a tramping life, and political economy is nowhere rigorous ; food is
cheap and society charitable. " Giving alms never lightens the purse "
("el dar lirnosna nunca mengua la bolsa "), says the popular proverb,

"LAZARILLO DE TORMES." 673

and the people have always acted up to it. But three hundred years ago
it must have been a Paradise for vagabonds. The Church was wealthy,
and by precept and example favoured the non-working members of the
community. Flourishing monasteries — the only things that flourished —
overspread the land, and we may well suppose the monks were not without
a fellow-feeling for vagrant lay brethren who so faithfully observed the
principle to toil not, neither to spin. Indeed, it is expressly stated that
monastic charity was a great comfort to the picaro ; it relieved his one
anxiety, the one care that clouded his otherwise sunny existence. " If
all fails," says a master of the craft, instructing a neophyte in the art of
dining, " if all fails, there is always soup for us at some convent."

There were, of course, minor causes of vagabondage, but among
them was one which ought not to be passed over here, as it is especially
germane to the matter. There can be no doubt that scandalous neglect
of children was one of the great social evils of the period. It was not
merely that new-born infants were deserted, or, to use the expressive
Spanish phrase, left " hijos de la piedra ; " but children were turned
adrift by their parents with the utmost coolness if it became at all burden-
some to support them, and to such a pitch had the mischief reached in 1552
that the Cortes made it the subject of a petition to the Government, sug-
gesting the appointment of an officer in every town to collect these little
outcasts, " running wild because there was no one to take care of them,"
and set them to work. Just such a little vagabond as we get a glimpse of
here, " andando perdido mal vestido y mal tradado," was the hero of the
first of the picaresque tales, the -founder of a long and distinguished
family of fictions. This was the little novel of Lazarilh de Tormes,
published the year after this petition was presented, but written at least
twenty years earlier. A more unpretending book never was printed, and
very few that have had such a marked effect on literature. Nothing could
possibly be simpler in construction ; there is absolutely no plot, and no
story except that of a youth who begins life at the lowest imaginable
round of the social ladder and gets very little higher. In most countries
the table of dignities ends with the beggar. He is, as Lamb says, " the
just antipode to your king ; " there can be nobody below him. But there
are few general rules to which Spain will not furnish an exception, and in
Spain there is yet a lower grade, the beggar's fag, in which capacity
Lazarillo serves his apprenticeship to life, subsequently enlargiog his
experiences under a variety of masters whom he describes seriatim. By
means of this simple machinery the author contrives to make a selection
of typical characters from Spanish society pass before the eye of his
reader like figures in a magic lantern ; while " Little Lazarus " stands by
as showman and points out the humours of the procession. The whole
thing is so natural, so artless, and so easy, that at first one scarcely per-
ceives the genius that inspires the conception and execution ; for a -\\ork of
genius it is, and of no mean order, this little novel of Lazarillo de Tonnes.
It is a pity that there should be any uncertainty about the anthor-

82-5

674 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL :

ship of such a book, but all that can be said on this point is that for
nearly three centuries Spaniards, who have the best right to give an
opinion, have been almost unanimous in attributing it to the poet and
statesman Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Only one counter claim has ever
been set up, that made by Siguenza, in his History of the Order of St.
Jerome, on behalf of the prior Juan de Ortega. This is not supported
by any satisfactory evidence, but it must be owned that Ticlmor's argu-
ment against it, that the book could not have been written by a Church-
man, falls to the ground, for Ortega is expressly stated to have been a
youth (mancebo) and a student at Salamanca when he wrote it.* On the
other hand, it is no argument against Mendoza' s authorship that it was
never acknowledged by him or by anyone connected with him. A man
in Mendoza's position could not possibly have acknowledged such a book
at such a time. The Mendozas were in the very front rank of the Spanish
nobility. There were few — Lope de Vega says none — of the historical
houses of Spain that could even compare pedigrees with them, and certainly
none that could show so long a list of men who had won distinction in so
many different fields. To anyone curious in investigating the phenomena
of hereditary ability the annals of the Mendoza family will furnish an
interesting study, for wherever ability could raise a man above his fellows,
in war, statesmanship, diplomacy, the Church, or letters, a Mendoza will
almost always be found among the foremost. Diego Hurtado, if not the
most able, was the most brilliant of the name, except perhaps his great-
grandfather, the Marquis of Santillana, the poet of the reign of John II.
He was the fifth son of the Marquis of JMondejar, the governor of Granada,
where he was born about 1503, and passed his early youth. The Church
was the profession chosen for him, and to prepare for it he was sent as a
student to Salamanca ; but his instincts proved too strong for the family
choice, and, like his kinsman Garcilasso de la Vega, and perhaps with him,
he took service in the army of the Emperor in Italy. Much of what was
called " the star of Austria," the marvellous success which attended the
enterprises and schemes of Charles V. before he became a hypochondriac,
lay in his gift of judging men and selecting the fittest for the work he had
in hand, a gift in which, more than any other perhaps, he differed from
his successors. A man chosen and trusted by Charles is not necessarily
stamped as an exceptionally virtuous or moral character, but for his
exceptional ability there is the same sort of guarantee as that which
attaches to a picture from the gallery of a well-known connoisseur, or a
volume from the library of an eminent bibliophile. Mendoza is one of
the men vouched for in this way. All through the tortuous course of the
Emperor's Italian policy he was employed wherever a strong head and a
firm hand were wanted. In 1538 he was sent as ambassador to Venice,

* But Ticknor's argument stands against the absurd story told by Dean Lockier
in Spencer's Anecdotes, that " it was written by some Spanish bishops on their journey
to the Council of Trent."

"LAZABILLO DE TORMES." 675

the angulus ille which disturbed the uniformity of Charles's influence
in Italy. He was afterwards his representative at the Council of Trent,
governor of Siena, and ambassador at the Papal Court ; and, finally, in
1553, he was despatched on a confidential mission into the Palatinate,
with instructions to intercept Cardinal Pole, then on his way to England
as legatee, and detain him until the match between Philip and Mary was
arranged. This was Mendoza's last service. He seems to have been
treated with coldness by Philip II., and at last, in consequence of a quarrel
at Court, was forced to retire to Granada, where, besides some of the
poetry which has placed him by the side of Garcilasso and Boscan, he
wrote that masterpiece of Castilian, his history of the war with the
insurgent [Moriscoes of Granada. The Lazarillo is said to have been
written while he was a student at Salamanca, but this can hardly have
been the case, for the tale concludes with mentioning " the year when our
victorious Emperor entered Toledo with great rejoicings, and held Cortes
there." This can only refer to the Cortes at Toledo in the autumn of
1525, after the battle of Pavia, when Francis I. was a prisoner at Madrid.
The Lazarillo, therefore, could not have been written earlier than 1526,
in which year Mendoza was probably a soldier at Milan, but, at any
rate, not a student at Salamanca. A student, indeed, in one sense of the
word, he never ceased to be. In Italy, when the army went into winter
quarters, it was his custom to betake himself to one of the universities,
Bologna, Padua, or Rome, and, like so many of his nation, Garcilasso,
Ercilla, Cervantes, he lived a divided life, " tomando ora la espada, ora la
pluma " (" now with the sword in hand, now with the pen "). The book,
however, did not appear till 1553, in which year it was published at
Antwerp by Martin Nucio, at that time the chief printer of Spanish books
in the Netherlands. This long interval of perhaps a quarter of a century
between the composition and the publication, which would be otherwise
unaccountable, is easily explained on the hypothesis of Mendoza's author-
ship. Although one of the lightest pieces of light literature, the Laza-
rilto has its intimate relations with the great events of a great time. As
may be seen, it was written just about the time when the struggle of the
Reformation had become a fight a entrance, and it was printed the year
after the Treaty of Passau, when the struggle was virtually at an end.
Now Lazarillo de Tonnes is essentially a Protestant book. It is
evident the author had no intention of aiding the movement by a pole-
mical tract in the disguise of a novel ; but it is equally evident that he had
a sympathy with it, and saw and felt the very abuses and scandals that had
stirred up Luther. One can hardly read the book now without a regret
that it should have lain unprinted till after the death of the champion of
Protestantism, for its treatment of the sale of indulgences would have
thoroughly harmonised with his sentiments as well as with his sense of
humour, and he would have been cheered by this one small gleam of sun-
shine breaking through the clouds in the south. A book of this sort
could not have been published at the time either in Italy or in Spain

676 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL :

without great difficulty and even risk. Charles and the Pope, however
much they differed on other points, were of one mind as to the line to be
taken with fhefons et origo malorum, the press. Macaulay gives an example
of the vigilance of the spiritual police in Italy against literature tainted
with Lutheranism ; and in the Inquisition, as improved and extended by
Ximenez, there existed in Spain a machinery for which no work of repres-
sion was too great or too small ; it was equally available for burning a
pamphlet or a prince, and since 1521 its powers had been specially
directed to the suppression of printed heresy. A private person would
not have found it an easy matter at that time to pass a book like the
Lazarillo through the press in Italy or Spain, but in Mendoza's case
there was the additional difficulty that he was the minister and represen-
tative of the great enemy of the Reformation. At Venice, where the
press retained some remains of freedom, and Protestant books were occa-
sionally printed, it would perhaps have been possible to print it ; but for
the Emperor's ambassador, surrounded as he was by enemies and spies,
the attempt would have been temerity in the highest degree. Mendoza,
in short, had he been ever so anxious to publish the Lazarillo, had no
opportunity of doing so until he was sent into Germany in 1553. That
he went to Antwerp we have no proof, but it is scarcely likely that he
would have returned to Spain, which it appears he did not do till 1554,
without visiting a country so closely connected with his own as the
Netherlands. At any rate he was within easy reach of Antwerp, and the
publication of the Lazarillo there in the same year is a strong piece of
circumstantial evidence in favour of his authorship. It took almost at
once. The next year a new edition was printed at Antwerp and another
at Burgos, which would imply that the censor of the Holy Office in Spain
nodded at times like other mortals. The imprint of " Burgos," however,
may be a falsification, for many Spanish books of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, that for trade reasons pretended to have been printed in
Spain, were in reality printed abroad.

The Inquisition, however, was not long in awakening to the character
of the book, and it was promptly prohibited in Spain. But it had already
hit the fancy of the people — as early as 1559 Lazarillo de Tonnes is alluded
to in a comedy of Timoneda's as a character that everyone must know,
a sort of Spanish Pickwick or Sam Weller — foreign editions were smug-
gled into the country, and in 1573 it had to be formally licensed. Thus
one of the very few victories that have ever been scored against the
Spanish Inquisition was won by the venerable ancestor of our modern
novels of real life, and by the same qualities with which they win the
favour of their readers. " Although," says the license, " this little trea-
tise (este tratadillo) is not of the same consideration as the works of
Castillejo or Naharro, it is so lively and true a representation of what it
describes with such wit and grace that, in its way (en su lanto), it is esti-
mable ; it has been, therefore, always much relished by everybody, and,
though prohibited in these realms, was still read, and printed freely

" LAZARILLO DE TOEMES." 677

abroad." Of course, notwithstanding this admission, the " Consejo " of
the Holy Office had no idea of letting the book loose on Spanish society
without, as far as possible, pruning it of its heresy, or, to use its own phrase,
" emending some matters on account of which it had been prohibited."
In the emended edition the whole chapter containing the adventures of a
hawker of indulgences is cut out, as well as another giving a sketch of a
mendicant friar, and sundry passages which show a decided disrespect for
the Church and the Cloth are scored out ; but the Lazarillo so bristles
with disrespect that a thorough purification would have defeated its own
object, so the worthy censor of the Holy Office had to draw the line some-
where, and his distinctions are not uninstructive. There are some things
left in which to the untutored mind have a slight flavour of irreverence,
and it would appear that an imputation of personal immorality against a
dignitary of the Church did not constitute a case for interference with
freedom of language — possibly because that was such an old joke. Like
" old Grouse in the gun-room," it had been making people laugh for many
a year, and it might be considered toothless and harmless by this time.
But these newfangled gibes against matters of doctrine and authority
were quite another affair. In this form, and, in consequence of its dimi-
nutive proportions, often bound up with other books, such as Torres
Naharro's Propaladia, or Gracian Dantisco's Galateo, the Lazarillo
was given to the Spanish public from 1573 till comparatively modern
times. But even these expurgated editions are nearly as scarce as the
original ones. Spain, never at any- time a land of libraries, has had more
than its own share of those accidents by which books are destroyed ; but
over and above the ordinary chances of sack and pillage, the class of book
to which Lazarillo belongs had to encounter another kind of risk. Any-
one who has ever indulged the forlorn hope of book-hunting in Spain
knows what an intolerable deal of theological dry bread there is to the
halfpennyworth of sack on the shelves of an ordinary Spanish librero.
Those long rows of tomes in the shops of the Calle Jacometrezo, or the stalls
of the Calle de 4tocna> are a^ deceptive. They may look fruitful, but
their fruits are the dustiest of Dead Sea apples. The promising little
volume you take down, thinking it looks like Solas Barbadillo, hoping,
perhaps, it may turn out to be Timoneda, is, you find, the Vida y Milagros
de San Fulano, set down for the edification of the faithful by Jose Ven-
toso, Canonigo of Santa Maria de las Nieblas. Cervantes has, doubtless,
only given us an " owre true tale " in that sixth chapter of Don Quixote.
Many a corral in Spain has witnessed such an auto de fe as that which
purged the Don's library : or even a more complete one, for it was not
every euro who would have preserved Erdlla or resisted the entreaties of
the women to burn Montemayor. The priests were jealous of fiction and
fancy when employed on any other service than that of the Church, in the
history of its saints and the embellishment of its miracles ; and it was
an easy matter to persuade " the devout and honourable women," who,
Cervantes says, "liked burning books better than weaving linen," that

678 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL:

there was peril to the soul in the inventions of the romancer. To this
cause, no doubt, must be attributed, in a great degree, the curious dis-
proportion between the devotional and the entertaining among the books
surviving from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. No book was
more likely to be a sufferer in this way than the Lazarillo, and
besides the editions cited in Brunet and Salva we may be sure that there
were others of which not even a single copy now remains to give them a
place in bibliography.*

If the Lazaritto was not written with any polemical intention, still less
was it written, like Don Quixote, with a view to a reform in fiction. But
it is difficult to resist the conviction that, like Don Quixote, it must have
grown out of the peculiarities of the fiction in vogue when it was pro-
duce^. The romances of chivalry were then rapidly gaining the popu-
larity and influence they maintained until Cervantes rose to sweep them
away. The Amadis had been printed several times, and, to judge by the
references to it, seems to have been in almost everybody's hands ; and
Esplandians, Florisandos, and Palmerins were appearing in quick succes-
sion to compete with it. At the same time a new form of fiction had
sprung up, which a few years later developed into a potent rival of the
romances of chivalry. This was the pastoral romance, the first example
of which, Sannazaro's Arcadia, was imported into Spain early in the
century, and soon established a strong hold upon the popular taste.
Widely as these two differ, they are alike in one respect, that they are,
each in its own way, pictures of a life as unlike real life as can well be
imagined. It would be difficult to say which are more perfectly unreal,
the knights and ladies, or the shepherds and shepherdesses, though,
perhaps, of the two the personages of the pastoral present the bolder
violation of fact. Berganza, in Cervantes' Colloquy of the Dogs, points
out that the shepherd of real life, so far from passing his day on a
tree, piping complaints of his love's cruelty, employs his leisure practi-
cally "in ridding himself of his fleas (espulgandose) and mending his
brogues." Nothing could be more likely than that an incongruity of this
kind should have taken the fancy of any reader of romances who hap-
pened to have a strong sense of humour ; and Mendoza, it must be
admitted, complies with both of these conditions. Of his humour there
is abundant proof in some of the trifles he threw off from time to time,
especially in his letter to Pedro de Salazar, and of his lighter reading we
are told that the two books which were his constant travelling companions
in Italy were the Amadis and the Celestina. Lazarillo de Tormes is just
what might be expected to come of such a combination. It is just such
a reminiscence of the Plaza at Salamanca, or of the motley throng
passing before the eyes of a lounger on the old Roman bridge over the

*

* A kindred work, Guzman de Alfarache, furnishes a case in point. Twenty-six
editions of the first part were printed in five years, but all the libraries in the workl
probably could not now produce evidence of a third of them.

" LAZAEILLO DE TOBMES." 679

Tormes, as might be provoked by comparing the world of the romancers
with the world of inflexible fact, where, instead of Amadises, Galaors,
and Selvaggios, magicians, giants, and gentle shepherds, the dramatis
persona were prosaic figures, burly friars, shabby hidalgos, sanctimonious
priests, rogues, beggars, and impostors, and the like. Lazarillo himself
is one of those little brown, ragged urchins who look at us with their
roguish squirrel's eyes out of the canvas of Murillo, and all his surround-
ings are of the same unromantic type. His father is a miller on the
Tormes, near Salamanca, who is transported for "bleeding " the sacks of
his customers ; and his mother is a loose woman with so little natural
affection for her offspring that she disposes of Lazarillo by handing him
over to an old blind beggar-man who wants a boy to lead him about. It
is significant of the influence exercised by the little tale that the name of
its hero should have been incorporated into the language. It is used
generically by several of the seventeenth century writers, and even the
Dictionary of the Academy admits "Lazarillo" as the recognised word
for the boy who leads a blind man — a familiar figure in a Spanish crowd,
as most travellers will remember. The adventures of Lazarillo in this
capacity are rather farcical in themselves, but are told with genuine
drollery and fun. It was a case of diamond cut diamond between him
and his master, each striving to outwit the other in getting more than his
share of the victuals they picked up ; nor were they ill-matched, for, if
the boy had eyesight, the old man had vast experience in knavery. His
sagacity was remarkable. A vine-dresser gives them a. bunch of grapes
one day, and they sit down on the road-side to enjoy it. To share it
equally the old man proposes they shall each take but one grape at a time,
but Lazarillo soon detects him taking two, whereupon he, of course, helps
himself to three at a time. When the bunch is finished the old man
charges him with cheating. ll I can swear," he says, " you've been
eating those grapes by threes, because you saw me taking two and you
never said a word." Another time, as Lazarillo was toasting a black
pudding for his master's supper, the old man gave him a maravedi and
bade him go fetch some wine. " The Devil," he says, " put the oppor-
tunity before me, and that is what makes the thief." Lazarillo is senten-
tious like all Spaniards of the lower class, primed with proverbs, and
apt in applying them, especially in explanation of moral phenomena.
Seeing a rotten turnip among some rubbish hard by, he fixed it on
the spit in the place of the pudding, and went on his errand munching
the stolen morsel," leaving the blind man serenely toasting the turnip.
When the explosion which followed the first bite took place, Lazarillo
propounded the theory that some joker must have taken advantage
of his absence to play this cruel trick. But the old man was an ex-
perimental philosopher, not a theorist, > and taking him by the throat
ascertained by his breath where the pudding had gone to, and thrashed
him accordingly. In fact, he led a life of kicks, cuffs, and short commons ;
but he took a revenge thoroughly in accordance with boy- nature. Return-

680 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL I

ing from begging one wet night, they had to cross a street where a stream
ran : no uncommon thing in a Spanish town. Lazarillo led the old man
to a spot opposite a stone pillar, telling him the stream was narrow there,
and a good jump would bring him over dryshod. " The poor blind man,"
he says, feelingly, " taking a step back and butting with all his might,
like an old goat, came with his head against the pillar, making a bang as
if he had thrown a big pumpkin at it. * Ha ! ' said I, * you could smell
the pudding; why couldn't you smell the post?' He fell senseless," he
adds, philosophically, " and I don't know what became of him, and I
don't care to know." The editor of the excellent edition of the Lazarillo
in the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles thinks there is an allusion to
this in Much Ado about Nothing, where Benedick says, " You strike
like the blind man ; 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat
the post ; " but Benedick's remark apparently refers to some other story.
Lazarillo's next master was a priest who wanted a boy to serve at
mass ; " which," the hero says, " I could do ; for though the old sinner of a
blind man ill-treated me, he taught me some good things, and this was
one of them." But the priest was even a greater skinflint than the
beggar. " I don't know," says Lazarillo, in a passage, by the way, ex-
punged by the Inquisition, " whether he had it by nature or got it with his
priest's gown, but all the miserliness of the world was in him." The
picture of the priest's menage is full of graphic humour. The house was
a veritable starvation castle ; from top to bottom there was not an eatable
article to be seen, in it but a rope of onions. On feast days they used to
have a sheep's head, off which the priest picked all the meat, leaving the
bone to Lazarillo. Persons in the service of the Church, he said,
were bound to be very temperate in their eating and drinking, and for
his own part he never exceeded. "But he lied, the miserly rascal ! "
says Lazarillo; "for at any gatherings, funerals, or the like, where we
prayed at the expense of others, he ate like a wolf and drank like a fish.
God forgive me," he continues, " I never was an enemy of the human
race until then, but at a funeral they always gave me my fill, and so I
'used to pray that each day might be the death of some one." But
funerals did not come every day and hunger did, and he was driven to his
wits to meet it. His master had a chest in which he used to lock up
the offertory bread .from the church, and Lazarillo managed to get a key
for it from a wandering tinker, and for a while he contrived to stave off
starvation by nibbling pieces of the loaves as if mice had been at them.
The priest was always mending the chest, for as fast as he patched one
hole Lazarillo, to keep up the delusion, made another. He then got a
mouse-trap, which was a great comfort to Lazarillo, for it gave him cheese
to his bread. The priest was sorely puzzled ; mice of this sort were
something beyond his experience ; but one of his neighbours suggested
that perhaps it was not the work of mice, but of a snake which had been
formerly observed in the house. This idea greatly disquieted the priest,
who thenceforth always took a stick to bed with him, and was ever on the

"LAZARILLO DE TOKMES." 681

watch for the reptile. But Lazarillo, fearing that his precious key might
be found in one of his master's snake hunts, used to put it in his mouth
when he was going to sleep, and thus it happened that one night, as he
breathed heavily in his sleep, there came a whistling sound out of its pipe.
The priest, making sure that the snake was about, stole cautiously to the
corner whence the noise came, and, when he had made out the exact spot,
delivered a swashing blow, the result of which was that Lazarillo's head
was grievously broken, the secret of the key discovered, and the mystery
of the mice and snake cleared up. This, of course, ended his service with
the priest. By the help of charitable people he got to Toledo, where,
after a little, he found a new master. He is described in the book as an
" escudero," which we must perforce translate " squire," but it means, as
the Dictionary of the Academy says, the same as "hidalgo — generosus," one
of gentle though not noble blood. In him we have another typical cha-
racter from Spanish society in the sixteenth century, but the treatment is
very different from that of the preceding subjects. The Clerigo and the
Ciego are mere sketches, and the incidents and descriptions are inspired
by a spirit of something like farce. But all that relates to the Escudero is
pure comedy, and full of humour of the highest sort. He is the proto-
type of the starving cavalier of Spanish fiction, that queer combination of
punctiliousness and penury that has come to be regarded as one of the
characteristic products of the Iberian soil. At first Lazarillo was en-
chanted at the idea of serving such a master, who with his " decorous
and well-brushed garments, and orderly gait and demeanour," was a
strong contrast to the beggar and the priest ; but before the first day was
over he found he had not materially bettered himself. The squire asked
if he had dined. Lazarillo said "No." "Ah, well," said the squire,
" I have ; so you must do the best you can until supper- time." Lazarillo
had acquired a kind of rough and ready philosophy that served him
on such occasions ; eating, he said, was a thing that, thank God,
never troubled him much. "A true virtue that," said the squire,
" and I like you all the better for it ; pigs stuff themselves, but gentle-
men should eat sparingly." In obedience to the squire's bidding to do the
best he could, Lazarillo brought out some crusts which had been given
him in charity. " What have you got there ? " said the squire, taking
up one of the pieces. " My life ! what good bread this seems ; where
did you get it ? was it kneaded by clean hands ? " Lazarillo could only
tell him there was nothing in its flavour that went against his stomach.
"By the Lord, most savoury bread it is," said the squire, taking a
fierce mouthful (fiero bocado) ; and between them they soon made an end
of the crusts. When supper-time came the squire explained that it was a
long way to the Plaza and there were robbers about, and they must do
the best they could till morning. Morning come, he rose, brushed his
cloak and doublet scrupulously, put them on carefully, adjusted his sword
accurately, and bidding Lazarillo fill the pitcher and mind the house,
<< he walked away up the street with such a genteel air and gait that

682 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL!

anyone who did not know him would have taken him for a near relation of
the Count of Arcos, or at least his chamberlain ; at any rate no one would
have Suspected he had not supped well over-night, slept on a good bed,
nor eaten a hearty breakfast." Lazarillo perceived that, although he
was servant to a gentleman of quality, he must ply his old trade ; so he
went out a-begging, and came back with some scraps of bread and a piece
of cowheel. His master was before him, and commended his prudence.
" I waited for you," said he, " but as you did not come I dined alone.
You have done well, however ; only don't let them know you are living
with me, for that touches my honour." Lazarillo sat down to his dinner,
but he noticed that the poor squire could not keep his eyes off the bread
and cowheel. " May God have as much pity for me," he says, " as I had
for him at that moment ; well did I know what ailed him, for I had felt
it myself many a time." He wished to invite his master to share with
him, but how could he ask a man who said he had just dined ? The
squire himself, however, settled the matter. " Lazaro," said he, " do
you know I never saw anyone eat with such a good grace as you do ? To
look at you is enough to make a man hungry, even though he has no
appetite." " Good tackle, sir, makes a good workman," said Lazarillo;
" this bread is very toothsome, and this cowheel is well boiled and
seasoned." " What ? " said the squire, " cowheel ! why that's the very
best morsel in the world ! To my taste it's better than pheasant."
" Then try a bit, sir," said Lazarillo, putting a piece into his hands.
"Ah!" said the squire, gnawing at it, Lazarillo says, like a hungry
hound ; " now with a little garlic sauce this would be rare eating." In
fine, the dinner was such a success that it became a precedent, and every
morning the squire went forth " with his measured step and correct
carriage to take the air in the streets," while Lazarillo played the part of
jackal.

It is impossible to give here more than an outline, and an outline can
only suggest, not convey, the humour of this inimitable scene. Even a
full translation, however skilfully done, would probably fail ; for humour
of this sort is an evanescent quality which almost always escapes in the
attempt to transfer it from one idiom into another, and Spanish humour is
particularly liable to a loss of flavour in the process of decanting. The
language is so rich that there are many words which have no equivalent,
and which therefore cannot be translated at all in situations where terse-
ness is absolutely necessary ; and then much of the humour at times,
especially in Don Quixote and the Lazarillo, depends on the incongruity
between the subject and the grave stately sonorous Castilian in which it is
discussed. But as it stands in the original, the entire scene constitutes a
piece of humorous conception which is not surpassed in the whole range
of Spanish literature, except in the pages of Don Quixote, and rarely
there. As we read, the figures come before us with all the local colour of
tawny, hungry Spain, dura tellus Iberia ; the poor, starving hidalgo, in
all the bravery of capa, sayo, and sword, solemnly pacing up and down

" LAZARILLO DE TORMES." 683

the patio, hunger and dignity striving for the mastery as he wistfully eyes
the scraps in the lap of his ragged little henchman ; and the keen- faced
urchin in the corner, whose sharp sight has already penetrated the harm-
less hypocrisy of his poor master, watching him with a curiosity in which,
somewhat to his own surprise, he finds mingling the strange feeling of
compassion. Of the many touches in the picture which show the hand of
genius none, perhaps, is finer than this. The little rascal hates the
beggar-man, he detests and despises the priest ; they bring out all the
instincts of his boy-nature ; he delights in seeing them suffer, he revels in
tricking them ; stealing from them makes the stolen morsel doubly sweet.
But there is a something about the poor gentleman that softens him.
" Here I was," he says, " trying to better myself with a master who not
only couldn't keep me, but whom I had to keep. For all that, though, I
loved him well ; I saw he could not help it, and, so far from hating him, I
pitied him, and many a time I fared poorly myself that I might bring him
home something to carry on with. God knows to this day, when I come
across one of his cloth with that same pompous gait, I pity him, thinking
to myself he may be suffering what I used to see this one suffer ; still,
with all his poverty, I would rather have served him than others." This
is thoroughly in the vein of Cervantes, with the same gentle sub-current
of pathos that may be detected under his finest humour.

Another passage, equally Cervantesque, is where the squire one day,
as Lazarillo explains, " when we had fared pretty well, and he was in
rather good spirits," tells his story, and how he came to Toledo. He was
owner, it appeared, of an estate near Valladolid, part of it house
property (un solar de casas), which would be worth two hundred thousand
maravedis if the houses were only built ; to say nothing of a dovecot,
which, if it was not in ruins, would yield two hundred pigeons yearly.
All this he had quitted because of a difficulty about taking off his hat to
a neighbouring squire. He did not object to the salute; what he objected
to was that the other did not sometimes salute him first. Lazarillo suggested
that this was scarcely a good reason for expatriating oneself. " You are a
boy," said the squire, " and don't understand matters of honour, which
nowadays is about all that is left to a gentleman. I'm only a squire ;
but if I met the Count in the street, and he did not take his hat off —
and right off — the next time I'd take care to turn into some house or up
some street rather than cap to him. A gentleman owes homage to God,
and no one else, not even to the King, and must not bate a point in
maintaining his dignity. I was near laying hands on a workman in my
own country because he used to say « God keep your worship.' « You
scurvy rascal ! ' I said to him, ' have you no better manners than to say
' God keep you,' as if I were some common fellow ?' ' "And isn't it
good manners to say 'God keep you ?' " said Lazarillo. "Not to those
of my sort," said the squire. "You should say, 'I kiss your worship's
hands ;' or at least, ' I kiss your hands, senor,' if the speaker be a
caballero. I have never allowed, and never will allow, anyone, from the

684 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL :

King down, to say 'God keep you' to me." "That's why He takes so
little care to keep you," said Lazarillo ; " you won't allow anyone to pray
for it." There is something marvellously real in all this. It is impossible
to read it without feeling that we have here, in this picture of pride,
punctilio, and poverty, a bit of Castilian life and character rendered as
faithfully to nature as anything in the painting of Hogarth or the pages
of Fielding. It is worth noticing, too, that the situation is in a measure
an anticipation of that on which the humour in Don Quixote mainly
turns. Lazarillo and the squire are at cross purposes, precisely after the
fashion of Sancho and the Don. It is the same antagonism of sentiment
between the two great divisions of society, between the high-flown
notions of the cavalier and the shrewd, prosaic common sense of the
clown. It is not likely that Cervantes was indebted to the Lazarillo for
the idea : he was not the man to be beholden to the invention of any-
one ; nor, if he did borrow in this instance, does it follow that the
Lazarillo was the source, for the "simples" and "graciosos" of the
Spanish drama play very much the same part as Lazarillo and Sancho.
But the fact remains that what may be almost regarded as the leading
idea of Don Quixote figures also in the earliest work of the school to
which it belongs.

Lazarillo's service with the squire ended naturally. The landlord of
the house called one day for his rent, and the squire gave him "a very
fair answer ; he would just step out to the Plaza to change a doubloon."
The squire having taken this step, Lazarillo had to look for a new master,
and engaged himself for a while with a mendicant friar of the Order of
Mercy, of whom, in a few words, he manages to give a vigorous sketch,
describing him as a popular man among the women, an arrant gadabout,
with a strong objection to convent discipline and fare and a keen relish
for secular life. "But I could not keep up with his trot," he says; "and
for this, and for certain other little matters (otras cosillas) which I don't
mention, I left him." There is something here very suggestive of what
would be called in geological language "a fault" in the narrative. A
character sketched out in this way, and so tempting to a humorist of
the author's stamp, would scarcely have been abandoned so abruptly ;
and it seems by no means unlikely that the break is the handiwork of
Martin Nucio's judicious reader, who thought the cosillas rather too dis-
respectful to the Church to be printed even by the liberal press of
Antwerp. His moderation, however, did not save the fragment from the
Inquisition censors, who excised entirely both this and the next chapter,
describing a seller of indulgences, "the most impudent and shameless,"
says Lazarillo, "and the best hand at palming them off I ever saw."
This, from the historical, if not from the literary, point of view, is the
most interesting part of the book. In the first place, satire or criticism
aimed at abuses of the Church is of the greatest rarity in Spanish litera-
ture. Indeed, with the exception of a few lines in the poems of the
arch-priest of Hita, the Lazarillo is the only example until we come to

"LAZABILLO DE TORMES." 685

comparatively modern times. In this respect Spain presents a strong
contrast to Italy, where the leaders of thought, from the great trium-
virate Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, downwards, were nearly always
outspoken to the Church. In Spain, on the contrary, so far from
opposing, they went out of their way to support Church tyranny. Cer-
vantes applauds the bigotry that expelled the Moriscoes. Lope was not
only a eulogist of the Inquisition, but one of its officers, and assisted in
person at the burning of at least one heretic. Gongora has a sonnet on
an auto de fe. in which he laments that only one victim was burned alive.
Quevedo, who scoffed at everything else, is throughout a stanch supporter
of sacerdotalism. But what lends a deeper interest to this sketch is that
it furnishes contemporary evidence of the spirit of Protestantism which
at the time it was written was beginning to stir many of the more active
minds of Spain. It may be, indeed, too much, as Sir W. Stirling Max-
well in his Cloister Life suggests, to call it "Protestantism," for in
Spain it scarcely advanced beyond the preliminary stage of inquiry and
criticism ; but to that extent, at least, it was abroad several years before
the Lazarillo was written, for in 1521 a warning came from Home that
Lutheran books were being imported into Spain, and the Inquisition was
immediately set to work to check the mischief. The movement was
especially perceptible among the clergy ; and it is curious that while
Charles V. was combating Lutheranism abroad he was indirectly helping
to spread it in Spain, for foremost among the propagators were the
ecclesiastics of his own retinue — men like Cazalla and Ponce de la
Fuente, who had imbibed the new ideas while following in his train in
Germany. Llorente, Adolfo de Castro, and McCrie have told the story
of the struggle, if struggle it can be called. The machinery of the
Inquisition was perfect ; and the fanaticism of the people, which had
grown with the growth of the nation during its contest with the Moors,
was easily directed to a new object. The nascent heresy could not with-
stand such a combination, and it was speedily stamped out. The sale of
indulgences — the first article in the indictment against the Church of
Home — was attended with exactly the same sort of scandals in Spain as
were denounced from the pulpits of Germany; and these form the subject
of the sketch in the Lazarillo, which might well have been written by
Erasmus, and assuredly would have been chuckled over by Luther. As
we have the authority of the censor of the Inquisition for believing the
other parts of the book true to life, we may fairly accept the description
as a tolerably faithful picture of one of the bulderos, or indulgence-
hawkers, who infested Spain in the sixteenth century, and of the tricks
by which they used to force their wares upon the people. His first step
on coming to a village was always to bribe the cura, or priest, by some
trifling present — a couple of peaches or oranges, or a Murcian lettuce.
If he found the cura a man of education, he took care to address him
" in very neat and trim vernacular (bien cortado romance); but if he was
one of the ordinary " reverends," he would talk to him in Latin for two

686 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL:

hours on a stretch — " at least what seemed to be Latin,- but it was nothing
of the sort." He had endless devices for stimulating the sale of his
indulgences when it grew slack. For example, in one village, where after
three days' preaching he had done no business, he hit upon the following
plan. He and the alguacil of the village — the constable, as we should say —
managed to fall out one night over a game of cards, and in the course of the
quarrel the alguacil charged him with selling forged indulgences, and next
morning repeated the charge publicly in church, where the buldero was
preaching his usual sermon. As soon as he was silent, the latter dropped
on his knees in the pulpit and delivered a long and unctuous prayer that
truth might be supported and falsehood put to confusion, and that, if he
were guilty of what had been laid to his charge, the pulpit might sink
with him into the earth ; but if not, that his traducer might be punished
in some exemplary manner. No sooner had he spoken than down fell the
alguacil, groaning, foaming at the mouth, working with hands and feet,
and making horrible faces. The dismay and confusion were great ; but
the pious commissioner remained like one in a trance, with hands and
eyes raised to heaven, until some of the people implored him to have
compassion on the dying sinner. Whereupon, like one waking out of a
sweet dream, he came down, and standing over the sufferer, " with his
eyes so turned up that nothing but the white could be seen," he prayed
so devoutly that all the people were moved to tears. After which he laid
the indulgence on the head of the alguacil, who forthwith came to him-
self, and, kneeling at the buldero's feet, declared that he had spoken at
the instigation of the Devil, who had a great dread of the effects of the
indulgences. The consequence was such a brisk demand for them that
there was not a soul in the place, married or single, man-servant or
maid, but bought one ; and the story reaching the neighbouring villages,
there was no need when they went their rounds to go to the church or
preach a sermon, for the people used to flock to the posada for them
"just as if they were pears given away gratis."

" Lazarillo owns that he himself was taken in until he heard his
master and the alguacil laughing together over the stroke of business they
had done, and then it struck him that " tricks and tricksters of this sort
must be very common where the people are simple." We can easily
understand the feelings with which a popular literature in this vein would
be regarded by the Church while the battle of the Reformation was
raging.

After leaving the buldero Lazarillo became a colour- grinder to a sign-
board painter, then a water-carrier, then tipstaff to an alguacil, and
finally contrived to get himself made town-crier of Toledo, " having ob-
served," he says, " that no one prospers but those who hold some royal
office." Empleomania, it seems, is nothing new in Spain : verily it is an
unchanging country. Prosperity, as he considered it, came at any rate
to Lazarillo ; for, in the execution of his office, he found favour with a
Church dignitary, the arch-priest of San Salvador, who conferred many

"LAZARILLO DE TORMES." 687

benefits upon him — among others, his own housekeeper for a wife. It is
true that mischief-making neighbours endeavoured to persuade Lazarillo
that the latter was a very douhtful favour ; but he professes himself so
perfectly satisfied with the explanations of the priest and his wife that he
leaves the reader at the end more puzzled than ever as to his character,
whether he is an utterly brazen-faced rogue, or a queer compound of
roguery and simplicity. It may be observed that Bouterwek, Ticknor,
and others who have noticed the book, speak of it as a tale . left un-
finished by the author ; but this is not the case. It is, indeed, in one
sense unfinished, being an autobiography. " How can it be finished ? "
Gines de Pasamonte says to Don Quixote, a propos of his own story, " if
my life is not yet finished ?" But it is quite clear the author had no
intention of ever carrying the adventures of Lazarillo any further, for he
makes him use the present tense in speaking of his office of crier, as
" that by which I am living to-day ;" and of his marriage, as a step which
" up to the present I have not repented." These, and one or two other
expressions, show that the story is complete as far as the author's design
is concerned ; and, indeed, it is hard to see how it could have had a
more artistic or appropriate ending than that which leaves the light-
hearted scamp placidly contented with his equivocal position.*

From the first, however, it was treated as an unfinished work. Two
years after its appearance a continuation was printed at Antwerp, which for
many years was commonly published appended to the original. It is an
utterly worthless production, the author of which has entirely missed the
aim and purpose of the work he attempts to complete ; for, instead of a
picture of real life, he offers a dull extravagance, in which Lazarillo is
changed into a tunny-fish, and lives at the court of the king of the
tunnies, and marries one of them. It almost reconciles one to the
censor of the Inquisition to find him denouncing this "second part"
as " muy impertinente y desgraciada," and cutting it away remorse-
lessly from his emended edition of 1573. Another second part was
produced in Paris in 1620, by one Juan de Luna, which is better in so far
as it makes an attempt at treading in the footsteps of the original
Lazarillo, but it is very coarse and vulgar, and, though not without live-
liness, entirely wanting in the humour of its model. The best part of it,
that in which Lazarillo, captured by some fishermen, is exhibited about
the country as a sea-monster, was evidently suggested by the earlier con-
tinuation. It has, however, succeeded in attaching itself so closely to the

* Ticknor Bays of the Lazarillo that it seems impossible it could have been
written by a Churchman, " not indeed on account of its immoral tone, but on account
of its attack on the Church." Unless it is in the passage here referred to it is
difficult to see where the " immoral tone '' is to be detected, and if this is what he
was thinking of, we can only say we have seen worse in modern novels, written, as
Captain Shandon would have said, "by ladies for ladies." But Ticknor was more
familiar with the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than with
contemporary fiction.

688 THIJ SPANISH OOMIC NOVEL t

original that it has generally passed muster as a legitimate sequel ; the
learned Sismondi even treats it as the work of the same hand, and the
translators usually append it without a word of comment. The latter are,
as might be expected, numerous. Translations in Italian, German,
French, and English were speedily produced, but the book being essen-
tially a popular one, the translations have all been popular also in the
worst sense of the word ; versions the object of which is, not to transfer
the author's work from one language into another, but simply to adapt it to
the requirements and tastes of people who want to be amused. The
oldest English translation is that of David Rowlands, of Anglesea, which
was published as early as 1586 ; but the one through which the Lazarillo
is known to perhaps nine out of ten of the English readers who are
acquainted with it is one printed at the beginning of the last century, and
written with all the vulgarity of the Ned Ward school. It is, moreover,
not a translation from the original Spanish, as it pretends to be, but from
the French version of the Abba de Charnes, who, like a good many French
translators, has no scruple about shirking difficulties, or inserting touches
of his own when he thinks he can improve upon his author.*

It is no wonder, therefore, that Lazarillo de Tonnes has generally
ranked in this country among the " chap-books," and by the side of such
productions as the Life of Bamfylde Moore Carew. Nevertheless, there
are very few books which have had so great an influence on English
literature ; an influence indirect, it is true, but not the less "distinct for
that reason. The effect of the Lazarillo was, as we have already said, to
found a new school of fiction. Fifty years after it was first printed
Cervantes speaks of it as the progenitor and type of a distinct class of
romance. " Woe betide Lazarillo de Torrnes," says Gines de Pasamonte,
boasting of his own memoirs, " and all those of that sort (todos cuantos
de aqucl genero) that have been written or may be written." Of those
that had been then written, besides the Lazarillo, the only one that has
come down to us is Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache, which in Clemencin's
opinion is sneered at in this passage. But the words of Cervantes cer-
tainly imply that more than one tale of the sort was extant at the time,
and as upwards of a dozen editions of Guzman have entirely disappeared, it
is by no means improbable that some less fortunate works may have suffered
complete extinction. At any rate, from that time till the middle of the
seventeenth century there was an unbroken succession of tales of the same
family, including Marcos de Obreyon, Quevedo's GranTacano, Estebanillo
Gonzalez, and several others of less note. In fact, Don Quixote and
Lazarillo de Tormes were working together, each in its own way, towards
the same end. Cervantes was laughing out of court the unreality of the

* There is some confusion in Ticknor's note on these translations. The transla-
tion praised in the Retrospective Review is not David Rowland's, but the one from
the French ; and the translation " by James Blakeston," which Ticknor thinks
better, is in fact Rowland's, Blakeston being merely the editor of a new edition. It
certainly is better, but that is all that can be said for it.

"LAZARILLO DE TORMES." 689

old romances, and showing the practical anachronism involved in talking
high chivalry in a world which had become obstinately prosaic ; while the
example of the Lazarillo was demonstrating how needless it was to go in
search of outlandish knights and impossible shepherds when there were
far more entertaining heroes to be picked up in any market-place in Spain.

It may, perhaps, seem bordering on irreverence to speak of any other
book in the language as in any way a rival of Don Quixote, but in this
case the rivalry does not go far. If Don Quixote had no other excellence,
it would still tower above all Spanish literature in virtue of being the one
work of imagination in which the characters are individual and not merely
representative. In the whole range of the Spanish drama, for example (and
Lope alone wrote more plays than all our dramatists put together, from
Shakespeare to Sheridan), there is not an instance of an individualised cha-
racter. It is not merely that there are no Lears, or Hamlets, or Falstaffs, but
there is no Mercutio, or Benedick, or lago, though the comedies of the capa y
espala abound with witty, gallant gentlemen and consummate villains. All
are either representatives of a class, or personifications of a passion. As
it is in the drama so it is in the novels, Don Quixote excepted, and hence
Don Quixote is the one cosmopolitan work Spain has produced. Not only
Sancho and his master, but the minor personages, the Cura, Samson
Carrasco, even Maritornes, are creations that live, move, and have their
being, wherever translated, and however clumsy the translation. The
Lazarillo is no exception to the general rule in this respect. The squire
is an admirable figure, and obviously true to life, but the figure the
reader has before him is the starving Spanish hidalgo, not this particular
hidalgo ; and though Lazarillo is a nearer approach to individuality, and
might have developed into a character if the art of novel- writing had not
been in its infancy, he is, as he stands, only a typical young vagabond.
But if LGzarillo de Tonnes cannot rank by the side of Don Quixote, it
comes next to it — longo intervallo, no doubt, but still next — among the
works of genius in Spanish literature. Lope, Quevedo, Calderon, and
Gongora may claim precedence over the author of the "little treatise"
on the score of the volume of their productions, but there is no single pro-
duction of theirs, or of any other Spanish writer except Cervantes, marked
with the same originality, invention, and truth to nature. These were
the qualities by which it mainly acquired its popularity and influence ; of
its other merits, those which probably contributed most to its success
were its genuine humour, which must have brought a new sensation to the
Spanish romance readers of the day, and its delightful, easy, natural
style. Mendoza's War of Granada is deservedly esteemed as a model of
stately Castilian, and the Lazarillo is in its way a model also, but of
racy, colloquial Castilian, terse, idiomatic, and unconstrained, and as free
from slang and vulgarity as from the pedantry and affectation which dis-
figure so many of the tales of the same sort written at a later period. In
fact, the book answers precisely to Don Diego de Miranda's description of
the books he loved, of which he complained there were too few in Spain,

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 186. 83.

690 THE SPANISH COMIC NOVEL.

" books of honest entertainment, which charm by their language and in-
terest by their invention." * It is not surprising, therefore, that, coming
as it did when the choice for light reading lay between the inflated
romances of chivalry and the somewhat insipid prose pastorals, the
Lazarillo should have created a new taste, which in process of time bore
fruit in a new species of fiction. This was in every respect the opposite
of its predecessors. The romances of chivalry, as well as the pastorals,
were of foreign origin, but became thoroughly naturalised and nationalised
in Spain ; the new fiction was of pure Spanish birth, but it reached its
highest development beyond the Pyrenees. The former grew out of the
imagination and sentiment of the Middle Ages, the latter out of the move-
ment of thought at the period of the Reformation. In the former the aim
was to lead the reader into scenes as remote; as possible from the expe-
riences of everyday life ; in the latter to bring everyday life as vividly as
possible before his eyes.

Such was the genesis of the picaresque novel of Spain, a variety of
romance which has exercised, and may be said even still to exercise, a
considerable influence on imaginative literature. The most popular fiction
of modern times will furnish an illustration in point. We know from
sundry hints and admissions of his own (for instance, in that delightful
visit to Dullborough in the Uncommercial Traveller] that the favourite
romance of Charles Dickens's boyhood was Roderick Random ; and even
if he had not told us, there is abundant evidence in Pickwick to show
that its author was an affectionate reader of Smollett. To say that
Dickens could not have written Pickwick without the influence of Smollett
would be absurd, but assuredly Pickwick would not have been the Pickwick
we know but for that influence. Now, Roderick Random is a picaresque
novel pure and simple, which undoubtedly owes its existence in that shape
and form to Le Sage. We can easily conceive Smollett writing as good a
Roderick Random if Le Sage had never existed, but that Roderick Random
would have been something quite different from our old friend. In the
same way Gil Bias is related to the Spanish picaresque tales. An oak
does not owe its high head and spreading limbs to the acorn from which
it sprang ; these are owing to circumstances — soil, situation, shelter, and
the like. But it owes its existence to the acorn, and Gil Bias is indebted
for existence to the picaresque novels just as the oak is to the acorn.
They, as we have already said, sprang from the gusto picaresco, the taste
created by Lazarillo de Tonnes. As for the Lazarillo itself, all we know
is that we find it coming out of that great fermentation of thought at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, out of which so many ideas have
grown : and so, wide as the gulf may be between Martin Luther and the
genial old Cockney philosopher of Goswell Street, it is bridged over by the
freemasonry of genius.

* Don Quixote, part ii. C. 16.

691

ast anb |«te«, iit 0%r Morltrs.

DURING the summer months of this year two planets will be conspicu-
ous which illustrate strikingly the varieties of condition distinguishing
the members of the solar system from each other. One is the planet
Jupiter, at his nearest and brightest in the middle of April, but conspicu-
ous as an evening star for several months thereafter ; the other is the
planet Mars, shining with chief splendour towards the end of June, but
distinguishable by his brightness and colour for several weeks before and
after that time. We have had occasion to consider these two planets in
three essays in these pages. The first, called "Life in Mars," in the
CORNHILL MAGAZINE for May 1871, dealt with the theory that life pro-
bably exists in Mars. This theory, which may be called the Brewsterian
theory, was not viewed unfavourably in the essay ; for in fact the writer
at that time regarded the theory as on 'the whole more probable than
Whewell's. The second essay, which related to the planet Jupiter, bore
the title " A Giant Planet," and appeared in the CORNHILL MAGAZINE
for May 1872. In this essay, the largest of all the planets was certainly
not presented as the probable abode of life, though, on the other hand,
the theory advanced respecting Jupiter could hardly be called a Whewel-
lite theory. For Whewell, as our readers doubtless remember, advanced
the theory that the globe of Jupiter probably consists in the main of water,
with perhaps a cindery nucleus, and maintained that if any kind of life
exists at all in this planet, its inhabitants must be pulpy, gelatinous creatures,
living in a dismal world of water and ice ; whereas we pointed to evi-
dence showing that an intense heat pervades the whole globe of Jupiter,
and causes disturbances so tremendous that life would be impossible there
even if we could conceive the existence of creatures capable of enduring
the planet's fiery heat. Yet a year later there appeared in the CORNHILL
MAGAZINE for July 1878, a Whewellite essay on Mars, in which we dealt
with certain considerations opposed to the Brewsterian theory that life
probably exists on the ruddy planet. Without absolutely adopting Whe-
well's view, we discussed those facts which " would certainly not be left
untouched by Whewell if he now lived and sought to maintain his position
against the believers in * more worlds than one.' "

Those three essays illustrate, but do not strictly synchronize with, the
gradual change in the writer's ideas respecting the subject of life in other
worlds. In fact, so far back as the close of the year 1869, he had begun
to regard doubtfully the theory of Brewster, which until then had ap-
peared on the whole the most reasonable way of viewing the celestial

88—2

692 LIFE, PAST AND FUTUKE, IN OTHEK WORLDS.

bodies. The careful study of the planets Jupiter and Saturn had shown
that the theory of their being the abode of life (that is, of any kind of life
in the least resembling the forms we are familiar with) is altogether un-
tenable. The great difference between those planets and the members of
the smaller planetary family of which our earth is the chief, suggested that
in truth the major planets belong to another order of orbs altogether, and
that we have as much or as little reason for comparing them to the sun as
for comparing them to the earth on which we live. Nevertheless, in the
case of Venus and Mars, the features of resemblance to our earth pre-
dominate over those of dissimilarity ; and it was natural that the writer,
while rejecting the theory of life in Jupiter or Saturn as opposed to all
the available evidence, should still consider the theory of life in Mars or
Venus as at least plausible. Ideas on such subjects are not less tenacious
than theories on matters more strictly scientific. Not only so, but the
bearing of newly recognised facts on long- entertained theories is not at
once recognised even by those most careful to square their opinions accord-
ing to the evidence they are acquainted with. Again and again it has
happened that students of science (in which term we include the leaders
of scientific opinions) have been found recording and explaining in one
chapter some newly recognised fact, while in another chapter they have
described with approval some old theory, in total forgetfulness of the fact
that with the new discovery the old theory has become altogether untenable.
Sometimes the incongruity is not recognised until it has been pointed out
by others. Sometimes, so thoroughly do our prepossessions become " bone
of our bone and flesh of our flesh " that even the clearest reasoning does
not prevent the student of science from combining the acceptance of a newly-
discovered fact with continued belief in a theory which that fact entirely
disproves. Let the matter be explained as it may, it was only gradually
that both the Brewsterian and Whewellite theories of life in other worlds
gave place in the writer's mind to a theory in one sense intermediate to
them, in another sense opposed to both, which seems to accord better than
either with what we know about our own earth, about the other members
of the solar system, and about other suns which people space. What
we now propose to do is' to present this theory as specially illustrated by
the two planets which adorn our evening skies during the summer months
of the present year.

But it may be asked at the outset, whether the question of life in other
worlds is worthy of the attention thus directed to it. Seeing that we have
not and can never have positive knowledge on the subject, is it to be re-
garded as, in the scientific sense, worthy of discussion at all ? Can the
astronomer or the geologist, the physicist or the biologist, know more on
this subject than those who have no special knowledge of astronomy, or
geology, or physics, or biology ? The astronomer can say how large such
and such a planet is, its average density, the length of its day and its year,
the light-reflecting qualities of its surface, even (with the physicist's aid)
the nature of the atmosphere surrounding it, and so on ; the geologist can
tell much about the past history of our own earth, whence we may infer

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 693

the variations of condition which other earths in the universe probably
undergo ; the physicist, besides aiding the astronomer in his inquiries into
the condition of other orbs, can determine somewhat respecting the physi-
cal requirements of living creatures ; and the • biologist can show how the
races inhabiting our earth have gradually become modified in accordance
with the varying conditions surrounding them, how certain ill-adapted
races have died out while well-adapted races have thriven and multiplied,
and how matters have so proceeded that during the whole time since life
began upon our earth there has been no danger of the disappearance of
any of the leading orders of living creatures. But no astronomer, or
geologist, or physicist, or biologist, can tell us anything certain about life
in other worlds. If a man possessed the fullest knowledge of all the lead-
ing branches of scientific research, he would remain perfectly ignorant as
to the actual state of affairs in the planets even of our own system. His
ideas about other worlds must still be speculative ; and the most ignorant
can speculate on such matters as freely as the most learned. Indeed the
ignorant can speculate a great deal more freely. And it is here, precisely,
that knowledge has the advantage. The student of science feels that
in such matters he must be guided by the analogies which have been
already brought to his knowledge. If he rejects the Brewsterian or the
Whewellite theory, it is not because either theory is a mere speculation
for which he feels free to substitute a speculation of his own ; but because,
on a careful consideration of the facts, he finds that the analogies on which
each theory was based were either insufficient, or were not correctly dealt
with, and that other analogies, or these when rightly viewed, point to a
different conclusion as more probable.

Nor need we be concerned by the consideration that there can be no
scientific value in any conclusion to which we may be led on the sub-
ject of life in other worlds, even though our method of reasoning be so
far scientific that the argument from analogy is correctly dealt with. If
we look closely into the matter, we shall find that as respects the great
purposes for which science is studied, it is as instructive to think over
the question of life in other worlds as to reason about matters which
are commonly regarded as purely scientific. It is scientific to infer from
observations of a planet that it has such and such a diameter, or such and
such a mass ; and thence to infer that its surface contains so many mil-
lions of square miles, its volume so many millions of cubic miles, its mass
so many billions or trillions of tons ; yet these facts are not impressive
in themselves. It is only when we consider them in connection with
what we know about our own earth that they acquire meaning, or at least
that they have any real interest for us. For then alone do we recognise
their bearing on the great problem which underlies all science, — the ques-
tion of the meaning of the wonderful machinery at work around us ; ma-
chinery of which we are ourselves a portion. *

* It has often seemed to us that a description, by the close observer Dickens, of the
fancies of a brain distempered by fever, corresponds with feelings which the student

694 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHEE WORLDS.

In suggesting views respecting Jupiter and Mars unlike those which
have been commonly received with favour, it is not by any means our
purpose, as the reader might anticipate, to depart from the usual course of
judging the unknown by the known. Although that course is fraught with
difficulties, and has often led the student of science astray, it is in such
inquiries as the present the proper, one may almost say the only, course.
The exception we take to the ordinary views is not- based on the fact
that too much reliance has been placed on the argument from analogy,
but that the argument has been incorrectly employed. A just use of the
argument leads to conclusions very different from those commonly accepted,
but not less different from that theory of the universe to which Whewell
seems to have felt himself driven by his recognition of the illogical nature
of the ordinary theory respecting the plurality of worlds.

Let us consider what the argument from analogy really teaches us in
this case.

The just use of the argument from analogy requires that we should
form our opinion respecting the other planets, chiefly by considering the
lessons taught us by our own earth, the only planet we are acquainted
with. Indeed, it has been thus that the belief in many inhabited worlds
has been supported ; so that if we employ the evidence given by our
own earth, we cannot be said to adopt a novel method of reasoning, though
we may be led to novel conclusions.

The fact that the earth is inhabited, affords, of course, an argument
in favour of the theory that the other planets are also inhabited. In
other words, a certain degree of probability is given to this theory.
But we must look somewhat more closely into the matter to ascertain
what that probability may amount to. For there are all orders of
probability, from uncertainty down to a degree of probability so low
that it approaches closely to that extremest form of improbability
which we call impossibility. It is well at once to take this logical
basis ; for there are few mistakes more mischievous than the suppo-
sition that a theory supported by certain evidence derives from that
evidence a probability equal to that of the evidence itself. It is absolutely
certain that the one planet we know is inhabited ; but it by no means follows
certainly that planets like the earth support life, still less that planets un-
like the earth do so, and least of all that every planet is now the abode
of life.

of science is apt to experience as the sense of the awful mystery of the universe
impresses itself on his soul: — "The time seemed interminable. I confounded im-
possible existences with my own identity. . . I was as a steel beam of a vast engine,
clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet I implored in my own person to have the
engine stopped and my part in it hammered off." Of all the wonders that the stu-
dent of science deals with, of all the mysteries that perplex him, is there aught more
wonderful, more perplexing, than the thought that he, a part of the mighty machinery
of the universe, should anxiously inquire into its nature and motions, should seek to
interpret the design of its Maker, and should be concerned as to his own share in the
working of the mysterious mechanism?

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 695

A higher degree of probability in favour of the theory that there are
many inhabited worlds arises from a consideration of the manner in which
life exists on the earth. If one could judge of a purpose (according to
our way of thinking) in all that is going on around us, our earth might
teach us to regard the support of life as Nature's great purpose. Earth,
water, and air, alike teem with life. No peculiarities of climate seem able
to banish life. As we have said elsewhere, " in the bitter cold within the
Arctic regions, with their strange alternations of long summer days and
long winter nights, their frozen seas, perennial ice, and scanty vegetation,
life flourishes in a hundred different forms. On the other hand, the torrid
zone, with its blazing heat, its long-continued droughts, its strange ab-
sence of true seasonal changes, and its trying alternations of oppressive
calms and fiercely raging hurricanes, nourishes even more numerous and
varied forms of life than the great temperate zones. Around mountain
summits as in the depths of the most secluded valleys, in mid-ocean as
in the arid desert, in the air as beneath the surface of the earth, we find
a myriad forms of life." Nor is the scene changed when, with the mind's
eye, we contemplate the earth during past ages of her history, even to
the most remote stage of her existence, as a planet fit to be the abode of
life. Whenever there was life at all, there was abundant life. For though
no traces remain of a million forms of life which co- existed with the few
forms recognised as belonging to this or that geologic era, yet we can infer
from the forms of which traces remain that others must have been present
which have left no trace of their existence. The skeletons of mighty car-
nivora assure us that multitudes of creatures existed on which those mon-
sters fed. The great sea creatures whose remains have been found attest
the existence of many races of small fish. The mighty Pterodactyl did
not range through desert aerial regions, for he could exist only where
many orders of aerial creatures also existed. Of minute creatures inha-
biting the water we have records in the strata formed as generation aftet*
generation sank to the sea-bottom after death, whereas the correspond-
ingly minute inhabitants of the land and of the air have left no trace of
their existence ; yet we can feel no reasonable doubt that in every geolo-
gic age forms of minute life were as rich in air and on the land as in the
sea, or as they now are in all three. Of insect life all but a few traces
have passed away, though occasionally, by some rare accident, even so
delicate a structure as a butterfly's wing has left its record, not only attest-
ing the existence of hosts of insects, but showing that delicate flowers
with all the charms of sweet perfume and variegated colour existed in
those times as in ours. It is no mere speculation, then, but the direct and
unquestionable teaching of geology, that throughout the whole time repre-
sented by the fossiliferous rocks, life of all kinds was most abundant on
our earth.

And while we thus recognise throughout our earth's history as a planet,
Nature's apparent purpose of providing infinitely varied forms of life at
all times and under the most varied conditions, we also perceive that

696 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

Nature possesses a power of modifying the different types in accordance with
the varying conditions under which they subsist. Without entering here
into the vexed question of the actual extent to which the principle of selec-
tion operates, we must admit that it does operate largely, and that it must
necessarily cause gradual change of every type of living creature towards
the most suitable form. This particular operation of Nature must certainly
be regarded as an apparent carrying out of the purpose attributed to
her by our manner of speaking when we say that Nature's one great
object is the support of life. If types were unchangeable, life would come
to an end upon a globe whose condition is not only not unchangeable,
but changes largely in the course of long periods of time. But types of
life change, or can change when required, at least as quickly as the sur-
rounding conditions — save in the case of certain catastrophes, which, how-
ever, never affect any considerable proportion of the earth's surface.

Nor is it easy to assign any limits to this power of adaptation, though
we can scarcely doubt that limits exist. The earth may so change in the
course of hundreds of thousands of years to come that none of the chief
forms of life, animal or vegetable, at present existing, could live even for a
single year under the changed conditions of those distant times, while yet
the descendants of creatures now living (including man) may be as well
fitted to the circumstances around them as the most favoured races of our
own time. Still there must be a limit beyond which the change of the
earth's condition, whether through the cooling of her own globe or the
diminution of the sun's heat, will be such that no conceivable modification
of the types of life now existing could render life possible. It must not be
forgotten that Nature's power of adaptation is known to be finite in many
cases, and, therefore, must be presumed to be finite in all cases. The
very process of selection by which adaptation is secured implies the con-
tinual failure of preceding adaptations. The struggle for life involves the
repeated victory of death. The individuals which perish in the struggle
(that is, which perish untimely) far outnumber those which survive. And
what is true of individuals is true of types. Nature is as wasteful of types
as she is of life —

So careful of the type ; but no,

From scarped cliff and quarried stone

She cries, " a thousand types are gone ;
I care for nothing, all shall go."

This is, in truth, what we must believe, if, reasoning by analogy, we
pass but one step higher in the scheme of creation. We know that
Nature, wasteful of individual life, is equally wasteful of types of life.
Must we not infer that she is no less wasteful of those aggregations of
types which constitute the populations of worlds ? Watching her opera-
tions a few brief minutes, we might (setting experience aside) suppose her
careful of individual life. Watching during a few generations, we should
pronounce her careful of the type, though careless of life. But we per-
ceive, when we extend the range of time through which we look, that she

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 6(J7

is careless no less of the type than of life. Why should this extension of
the range of view he the last we should permit ourselves ? If we pro-
nounce Nature careful of the planetary populations, though careless of the
types of life which make up such populations, we are simply declining to
take a further step in the course pointed out for us by the teachings of
analogy.

Let us go over the ground afresh. Individual creatures, even the
most favoured, perish after a time, though the balance may long oscillate
between life and death. Weak at first, each creature which is to live
grows at length to its full strength, not without vicissitudes which
threaten its existence. As its life progresses the struggle continues. At
one time the causes tending to decay seem to prevail awhile ; at another,
those which restore the vital powers. Disease is resisted again and again ;
at first easily, gradually with greater difficulty, until at length death wins
the day. So it is with types or orders of living creatures. A favoured
type, weak at first, begins after awhile to thrive, and eventually attains its
fullest development. But from time to time the type is threatened by
dangers. Surrounding conditions become less favourable. It ceases to
thrive, or, perhaps, passes through successive alternation* of decay and
restoration. At length the time comes when the struggle for existence
can manifestly have but one end ; and then, though the type may linger
long before it actually disappears, its disappearance is only a question
of time. Now, it is true that each type thus flourishing for awhile springs
from other types which have disappeared. The favoured types of our age
are but varieties of past types. Yet this does not show that types will
continue to succeed each other in endless succession. For if we consider
the matter rightly, we perceive that the analogue of this circumstance is,
in the case of individual life, the succession of living creatures generation
after generation. And as we know that each family, however large, dies
out in the long run unless recruited from without, so we are to infer that
the various types peopling this earth, since they cannot be recruited from
without, must at length die out, though to our conceptions the time neces-
sary for this process may appear infinite.

To the student of science who recognises the true meaning of the doc-
trine that force can be neither annihilated nor created, it will indeed
appear manifest that life must eventually perish from the face of the
earth ; for he perceives that the earth possesses now a certain fund or
store of force in her inherent heat, which is continually though slowly
passing away. The sun also, which is a store -house whence certain forms
of force are distributed to the earth, has only a finite amount of energy
(though probably the inhabitants of earth are less directly concerned in
this than in the finiteness of terrestrial forces). Life of all kinds on the
earth depends on both these stores of force, and when either store is
exhausted life must disappear from the earth. But each store is in it-s
nature limited, and must one day, therefore, be exhausted.

We have also only to consider that life on the earth necessarily had a

698 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

beginning, to infer that it must necessarily have an end. Clearest evi-
dence shows how our earth was once " a fluid haze of light," and how for
countless aeons afterwards her globe was instinct with fiery heat, amidst
which no form of life could be conceived to exist, after the manner of life
known to us, though the germs of life may have been present " in the
midst of the fire." Then followed ages in which the earth's glowing crust
was drenched by showers of muriatic, nitric, and sulphuric acid, not only
intensely hot, but fiercely burning through their chemical activity. Only
after periods infinite to our conceptions could life such as we know it,
or even in the remotest degree like what is now known to us, have begun
to exist upon the earth.

The reader, doubtless, perceives whither these considerations tend,
and how they bear in an especial manner on the opinion we are to form
respecting the two planets Mars and Jupiter. We see our earth passing
through a vast period, from its first existence as a separate member of the
solar system, to the time when life appeared upon its surface ; then began
a comparatively short period, now in progress, during which the earth has
been and will be the abode of life ; and after that must follow a period
infinite to our conceptions when the cold and inert globe of the earth will
circle as lifelessly round the sun as the moon now does. We may, if we
please, infer this from analogy, seeing that the duration of life is always
infinitely small by comparison with the duration of the region where life
appears ; so that, by analogy, the duration of life on the earth would be
infinitely short compared with the duration of the earth itself. But we
are brought to the same conclusion independently of analogy, perceiving
that the fire of the earth's youth and the deathly cold of her old age must
alike be infinite in duration compared with her period of vital life-pre-
serving warmth. And what is true of the earth is true of every member
of the solar system, major planet, minor planet, asteroid, or satellite ;
probably of every orb in space, from the minutest meteorite to suns ex-
ceeding our sun a thousandfold in volume.

Now, if we had any reason to suppose that all the planets sprang
simultaneously into being, that each stage of each planet's existence
synchronized with the same stage for every other planet, and that life
appeared and disappeared at corresponding stages in the existence of every
planet, we should perforce accept the theory that at this moment every
planet is the abode of life. Not only, however, have we no reason to sup-
pose that any one of these conditions exists (and not one but all these
conditions must exist before that theory can be accepted), but we have the
strongest possible evidence, short of actual demonstration, that the births
of the different planets occurred at widely remote periods, and that the
several stages of the different planets' growth differed enormously in dura-
tion ; while analogy, the only available evidence on the third point, assures
us that little resemblance can be supposed to exist between the conditions
and requirements of life in different members of the solar system.

On any reasonable hypothesis of the evolution of the solar system, the

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 699

eight primary planets must have begun to exist as independent bodies at
very different periods. If we adopt Laplace's theory of the gradual con-
traction of a mighty nebula, then we should infer that the planets were
formed in the order of their distances from the sun, the remoter planets
being those formed first. And according to the conditions of Laplace's
hypothesis, the interval separating the' formation of one planet from that
of its next neighbour on either side must have been of enormous duration.
If we prefer the theory of the gradual growth of each planet by processes
of accretion, we should infer perhaps that the larger planets took longest in
growing to maturity, or preferably that (according to the doctrine of pro-
babilities) a process which for the whole system must have been of incon-
ceivably enormous length, and in which the formation of one planet was
in no sort connected with the formation of any other, could not have re-
sulted in bringing any two planets to maturity at the same or nearly the sama
time, save by so improbable a combination of fortuitous circumstances as
may justly be considered impossible. If we consider that the solar system
was evolved by a combination of both processes (the most probable theory
of the three in our opinion), we must still conclude that the epochs of the
formation of the different planets were separated by time intervals so
enormous that the duration of life upon our earth is, by comparison, as a
mere second compared with a thousand years.

Again, if we compare any two members of the solar system, except
perhaps Venus and the Earth, we cannot doubt that the duration of any
given stage of the existence of one must be very different from that of the
corresponding stage in the other. If we compare, for instance, Mars with
the Earth, or the Earth with Jupiter, and still more, if we compare Mars
with Jupiter, we cannot doubt that the smaller orb of each pair must pass
much more rapidly through the different stages of its existence than the
larger. The laws of physics assure us of this, apart from all evidence
afforded by actual observation ; but the results of observation confirm the
theoretical conclusions deduced from physical laws. We cannot, indeed,
study Mars in such sort as to ascertain his actual physical condition. We
know that his surface is divided into lands and seas, and that he possesses
an atmosphere ; we know that the vapour of water is at times present in
this atmosphere ; we can see that snows gather over his polar regions in
winter and diminish in summer : but we cannot certainly determine whether
his oceans are like our own or for the most part frozen ; the whitish light
which spreads at times over land or sea may be due to clouds or to light
snow-falls, for aught that observation shows us ; the atmosphere may be
as dense as our own or exceedingly rare ; the polar regions of the planet
may resemble the earth's polar regions, or may be whitened by snows
relatively quite insignificant in quantity. In fine, so far as observation
extends, the physical condition of Mars may closely resemble that of the
earth, or be utterly dissimilar. But we have indirect observational means
of determining the probable condition of a planet smaller than the earth,
and presumably older — that is, at a later stage of its existence. For the

700 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

moon is such a planet, and the telescope shows us that the moon in her
decrepitude is oceanless, and is either wholly without atmosphere or pos-
sesses an atmosphere of exceeding tenuity. Hence we infer that Mars, which,
as an exterior planet and much smaller than the earth, is probably at a
far later stage of its existence, has passed far on his way towards the same
state of decrepitude as the moon. As to Jupiter, though he is so much
farther from us than Mars, we have direct observational evidence, because
of the vast scale on which all the processes in progress on his mighty
globe are taking place. We see that his whole surface is enwrapped in
cloud layers of enormous depth, and undergoing changes which imply an
intense activity (or, in other words, an intense heat) throughout the whole
mass of Jupiter. We recognise in the planet's appearance the signs of as
near an approach to the condition of the earth, when as yet the greater
part of her mass was vaporous, as is consistent with the vast difference
necessarily existing between two orbs containing such unequal quantities
of matter.

Mars, on the one hand, differs from the earth in being a far older
planet, — probably, as respects the actual time which has elapsed since the
planet was formed, and certainly, as respects the stage of its career which
it has now reached. Jupiter, on the other hand, differs from the earth in
being a far younger planet, not in years perhaps, but in condition. As to
the actual age of Jupiter we cannot form so probable an opinion as in the
case of Mars. Mars being an exterior planet, must have begun to be
formed long before the earth, and, being a much smaller planet, was
probably a shorter time in attaining his mature growth : on both ac-
counts, therefore, he would be much older than the earth in years ;
while, as we have seen, his relative smallness would cause the successive
stages of his career subsequent to his existence as an independent
and mature planet to be much shorter. Jupiter, being exterior to
Mars, presumably began to be formed millions of centuries before that
planet, but his bulk and mass so enormously exceed those of Mars that
his growth must have required a far longer time ; so that it is not at all
certain that even in point of years Jupiter (dating from his maturity) may
not be the youngest member of the solar system. But even if not, it is
practically certain that, as regards development, Jupiter is far younger
than any member of the solar system, save perhaps his brother giant
Saturn, whose greater antiquity and inferior mass (both suggesting a later
stage of development) may have been counterbalanced by a comparative
sluggishness of growth in the outer parts of the solar domain.

It is manifest from observed facts, in the case of Jupiter, that he is
as yet far removed from the life-bearing stage of planetary existence, and
theoretical considerations point to the same conclusion. In the case of
Mars, theoretical considerations render it extremely probable that he has
long since passed the life-bearing stage, and observed facts, though they
do not afford strong evidence in favour of this conclusion, suggest nothing
which, rightly considered, is opposed to it. It is true that, as we have

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 701

shown in former essays on this planet, Mars presents many features of
resemblance to our earth. The planet rotates in a period not differing
much from our day ; his year does not exceed ours so greatly as to suggest
relations unpleasantly affecting living creatures ; it has been shown that
there are oceans in Mars, though it is not quite so clear that they are
not for the most part frozen ; he has an atmosphere, and the vapour of
water is at times present in that atmosphere as in ours ; clouds form
there ; snow falls, and perhaps rain from time to time ; ice and snow
gather at the poles in winter, and are partially melted in summer ; the
land surface must necessarily be uneven, seeing that the very existence of
continents and oceans implies that once, at any rate, the globe of Mars
was subjected to forces resembling those which have produced the irre-
gularities of the earth's surface ; glacial action must still be going on
there, even if there is no rainfall, and therefore no denuding action
corresponding to that which results from the fall of rain on our terrestrial
continents. But it is a mistake (and a mistake too commonly made) to
suppose that the continuance of those natural processes which are advan-
tageous to living creatures, implies the existence of such creatures. The
assumption is that the beneficent processes of nature are never wasted
according to our conceptions. Yet we see over and over again in nature
not merely what resembles waste, what in fact is waste according to our
ideas, but an enormous excess of wasted over utilized processes. The
sun pours forth on all sides the supplies of light and heat which, where
received as on our earth, sustain vegetable and animal life ; but the por-
tion received by our earth is less than the 2000 millionth, the portion re-
ceived by all the planets less than the 230 millionth part, of the total
force thus continually expended. And this is typical of nature's opera-
tions everywhere. The earth on which we live illustrates the truth as
clearly as the sun. We are apt to say that it teems with life, forgetting
that the region occupied by living creatures of all orders is a mere shell,
while the whole interior mass of the earth, far larger in volume, and
undergoing far more active processes of change — teeming in fact with
energy — contains no living creature, or at least can only be supposed to
contain living creatures by imagining conditions of life utterly different
from those we are familiar with.

The mere continuance therefore on Mars of processes which on the
earth we associate with the existence of life, in reality proves nothing as
to the continued existence of life on Mars. The surface of the moon, for
example, must undergo disturbances, — mighty throes, as the great wave of
sun-distributed heat circles round her orb once in each lunation, — yet few
suppose that there is life, or has been for untold ages, on the once teeming
surface of our companion planet. The formation of Mars as a planet
must so long have preceded that of our earth, his original heat must have
been so much less, his small globe must have parted with such heat as it
once had so much more rapidly, Mars lies so nmch farther from the sun
than our earth does, his atmosphere is so much rarer, his supply of water

702 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

(the temperature-conserving element) is relatively as well as absolutely so
much smaller, that his surface must be utterly unfit to support life in the
remotest degree resembling the forms of life known on earth (save, of
course, those lower forms which from the outset we have left out of con-
sideration). Yet at one time, a period infinitely remote according to our
conceptions of time, the globe of Mars must have resembled our earth's
in warmth, and in being disturbed by the internal forces which cause that
continual remodelling of a planet's surface without which life must soon
pass away. Again, in that remote period the sun himself was appreciably
younger ; for we must remember that although, measured by ordinary
time-intervals, the sun seems to give forth an unvarying supply of heat
day by day, a real process of exhaustion is in progress there also. At one
time there must have existed on Mars as near an approach to the present
condition of our earth, or rather to her general condition during this life-
supporting era of her existence, as is consistent with the difference in the
surface gravity of the planets, and with other differences inherent as it
were in their nature. Since Mars must also have passed through the
fiery stage of planetary life and through that intermediate period when,
as it would seem, life springs spontaneously into being under the opera-
tion of natural laws not as yet understood by us, we cannot doubt that
when his globe was thus fit for the support of life, life existed upon it.
Thus for a season, — enormously long compared with our ordinary time-
measures, but very short compared with the life-supporting era of our
earth's career, — Mars was a world like our own, filled with various forms of
life. Doubtless, these forms changed as the conditions around them
changed, advancing or retrograding as the conditions were favourable or
the reverse, perhaps developing into forms corresponding to the various
races of men in the possession of reasoning powers, but possibly only
attaining to the lower attributes of consciousness when the development of
life on Mars was at its highest, thenceforth passing by slow degrees into
lower types as the old age of Mars approached, and finally perishing as
cold and death seized the planet for their prey.

In the case of Jupiter, we are guided by observed facts to the conclu-
sion that ages must elapse before life can be possible. Theory only tells
us that this mighty planet, exceeding the earth three hundred times in
mass, and containing five-sevenths of the mass of the whole system of
bodies travelling around the sun, must still retain a large -proportion of its
original heat, even if we suppose its giant orb took no longer in fashion-
ing than the small globe of our earth. Theory tells us moreover that so
vast a globe could not possibly have so small a density (less than one-
fourth the earth's) under the mighty compressing force of its own gravity,
unless some still more potent cause were at work to resist that tremendous
compression — and this force can be looked for nowhere but in the intense
heat of the planet's whole mass. But observation shows us also that
Jupiter is thus heated. For we see that the planet is surrounded by great
cloud belts such as our own sun would be incompetent to raise, — far more

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 703

so the small sun which would be seen in the skies of Jupiter if already a
firmament had been set " in the midst of the waters." We see that these
belts undergo marvellous changes of shape and colour, implying the action
of exceedingly energetic forces. We know from observation that the
region in which the cloud-bands form is exceedingly deep, even if the
innermost region to which the telescope penetrates is the true surface of
the planet — while there is reason for doubting whether there may not be
cloud-layer within cloud-layer, to a depth of many thousand miles, — or
even whether the planet has any real surface at all. And, knowing from
the study of the earth's crust that for long ages the whole mass of our
globe was in a state of fiery heat, while a yet longer period preceded this
when the earth's globe was vaporous, we infer from analogy that Jupiter
is passing, though far more slowly, through stages of his existence corre-
sponding with terrestrial eras long anterior to the appearance of life upon
the scene.

We must, then, in the case of Jupiter, look to a far distant future
for the period of the planet's existence as a life-sustainer. The intense
heat of the planet must in the course of time be gradually radiated
away into space, until at length the time will come when life will be pos-
sible. Then, doubtless, will follow a period (far longer than the life-
sustaining portion of the earth's existence) during which Jupiter will in
his turn be the abode of life. It may be that long before then the sun
will have lost so large a proportion of his heat that life on Jupiter will
be mainly sustained by the planet's inherent heat. But more probably
the changes in the sun's heat take place far more slowly relatively than
changes in the condition of any planet, even the largest. Possibly, even,
the epoch when Jupiter will have so far cooled as to be a fit abode for life,
will be so remote that the sun's fires will have been recruited by the
indrawing of the inferior family of planets, including our own earth. For
it must be remembered that the periods we have to deal with in con-
sidering the cooling of such an orb as Jupiter are so enormous, that not
merely the ordinary time-measures, but even the vast periods dealt with
by geologists must be insignificant by comparison. Yonder is Jupiter
still enwrapped in clouds of vapour raised by his internal heat, still
seething, as it were, in his primeval fires, though the earth has passed
through all the first stages of her existence, and has even long since passed
the time of her maturity as a life-sustaining globe. It is no mere fancy
to say that all the eras of Jupiter's existence must be far longer than the
corresponding terrestrial eras, since we actually see Jupiter in that early
stage of his existence, and know that the earth has passed through many
stages towards the final eras of decay and death. It is indeed impossible
to form any opinion as to the probable condition of the sun or of the solar
system when Jupiter shall become fit to support life, seeing that, for
aught we know, far higher cycles than those measured by the planetary
motions may have passed ere that time arrives. The sun may not be a
solitary star, but a member of a star- system, and before Jupiter has cooled

704 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

down to the life -sustaining condition, the sun's relation to other suns of
his own system may have altered materially, although no perceptible
changes have occurred during the relatively minute period (a trifle of
four thousand years or so) since astronomy began.

And as, in considering the case of Mars, we suggested the possibility
that owing to the relative shortness of that planet's life-sustaining era,
the development of the higher forms of life may have been less complete
than on our earth thus far (still less than the development of those forms
on the earth in coming ages), so we may well believe that during the long
period of Jupiter's existence as a life- supporting planet, creatures far
higher in the scale of being than any that, have inhabited, or may here-
after inhabit, the earth, will be brought into existence. As the rule of
nature on earth has been to advance from simple to more complex forms,
from lower types to higher, so (following the argument from analogy) we
must suppose the law of nature to be elsewhere. And time being a
necessary element in any process of natural development, it follows that
where nature is allowed a longer time to operate, higher forms, nobler
types, will be developed. If this be so, then in Jupiter, the prince of
planets, higher forms of animated conscious being will doubtless be de-
veloped than in any other planet. We need not indeed point out that the
supposition on which this conclusion rests is merely speculative, and that
now, when the laws of natural development have so recently begun to be
recognised, and are still so imperfectly known, the argument from analogy
is (in this particular case) necessarily weak. Nevertheless, analogy points
in the direction we have indicated, and it is well to look outwards and
onwards in that direction, even though the objects within the field of view
are too remote or us to perceive their real forms.

But, limiting our conclusions to those which may be justly inferred
from known facts, let us inquire how the subject of life in other worlds
presents itself when dealt with according to the relations above considered.

It is manifest at once that whether our new ideas respecting the
present condition of Mars or Jupiter be correct or not, the general argu-
ment deducible from the analogy of our own earth remains unaffected.
If Mars and Jupiter be at this moment inhabited by living creatures, it
can only be because these orbs happen to be passing through the life-
supporting period of their existence. We have shown that there is strong
reason for believing this not to be the case ; but if it is the case, this
can only be regarded as a strange chance. For we have learned from
the study of our earth, that the life-supporting era of a planet is short
compared with the duration of the planet's existence. It follows that
any time selected at random in the history of a planet is far more
Jikely to belong to one or other of the two lifeless eras, one preceding,
the other following the life- supporting era, than to belong to this short
era itself. And this present time is time selected at random with
reference to any other orb in the universe than our own earth. We are
so apt to measure all the operations of nature by our own conceptions of

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 705

them, as well in space as in time, that as the solar system presents itself
(even now) as the centre of the universe, so this present time, the era of
our own life, or of our nation's life, or of the life of man, or of the exist-
ence of organic beings on the earth, or, passing yet a grade higher, the
era of our earth's existence as a planet, presents itself to us as the central
era of all time. But what has been shown to be false with respect to
space is equally false with respect to time. Men of old thought that the
petty region in which they lived was the central spot of all the earth,
and the earth the centre of the universe. After this was shown to be
false by Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, men clung in turn to the
conception that the solar system is central within the universe. The
elder Herschel showed that this conception also is false. Even he,
however, assigned to the sun a position whence the galaxy might be
measured. But it begins to be recognised that this is not so. Nay,
not only is the sun no suitable centre whence to measure the stellar
system, but the stellar system is for us immeasurable. The galaxy
has no centre and no limits ; or rather we may say of it what Blaise
Pascal said of the universe of space — its centre is everywhere and
its circumference nowhere. The whole progress of modern science
tends to show that we must similarly extend our estimate of time.
In former ages each generation was apt to regard its own era as critical
in the earth's history, that is, according to their ideas, in the history of
the universe itself. Gradually men perceived that no generation of men,
no nation, no group of nations, occupies a critical or central position in
the history of even the human race upon earth, far less in the history of
organic life. We may now pass a step higher, and contemplating the
infinity of time, admit that the whole duration of this earth's existence
is but as a single pulsation in the mighty life of the universe. Nay, the
duration of the solar system is scarcely more. Countless other such
systems have passed through all their stages, and have died out, untold
ages before the sun and his family began to be formed out of their
mighty nebula ; countless others will come into being after the life has
departed from our system. Nor need we stop at solar systems, since
within the infinite universe, without beginning and without end, not suns
only, but systems of suns, galaxies of such systems, to higher and higher
orders endlessly, have long since passed through all the stages of their
existence as systems, or have all those stages yet to pass through. In
the presence of time-intervals thus seen to be at once infinitely great and
infinitely little — infinitely great compared with the duration of our earth,
infinitely little by comparison with the eternities amidst which they are
lost — what reason can we have for viewing any orb in space from our
little earth, and saying now is the time when that orb is, like our earth,
the abode of life ? Why should life on that orb synchronise with life on
the earth ? Are not, on the contrary, the chances infinitely great against
such a coincidence ? If, as Helmholtz has well said, the duration of life
on our earth is but the minutest " ripple in the infinite ocean of time,"
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 186. 84.

706 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

and the duration of life on any other planet of like minuteness, what
reason can we have for supposing that those remote, minute, and no way
associated waves of life must needs be abreast of each other on the infinite
ocean whose surface they scarcely ripple ?

But let us consider the consequences to which we are thus led. Apart
from theoretical considerations or observed facts, it is antecedently impro-
bable that any planet selected at random, whether planet of our own
system or planet attending on another sun than ours, is at this present
time the abode of life. The degree of improbability corresponds to the
proportion between the duration of life on a planet, and the duration of
the planet's independent existence. We may compare this proportion to
that existing between the average lifetime of a man and the duration of
the human race. If one person were to select at random the period of a
man's life, whether in historic, prehistoric, or future time, and another
were to select an epoch equally at random, save only that it fell someichere
within the period of the duration of the human race, we know how
exceedingly minute would be the probability that the epoch selected by the
second person would fall within the period selected by the first. Cor-
respondingly minute is the a priori probability that at this present epoch
any planet selected at random is the abode of life. This is not a mere
speculation, but an absolute certainty, if we admit as certain the fact,
which scarcely any man of science now questions, that the period during
which organic existence is possible on any planet is altogether minute
compared with that planet's existence.

The same relation is probably true when we pass to higher systems.
Regarding the suns we call " the stars" as members of a sidereal
system of unknown extent (but one of innumerable systems of the same
order), the chance that any sun selected at random is, like our own sun
at the present time, attended by a planetary system in one member of
which at least life exists, is exceedingly small, if, as is probable, the life-
supporting era of a solar system's existence is very short compared with
the independent existence of the system. If the disproportion is of the
same order as in the case of a single planet, the probability is of the same
order of minuteness. In other words, if we select any star at random, it
is as unlikely that the system attending on that sun is at present in the
life-bearing stage as a system, as it is that any planet selected at random
is at present in the life-bearing stage as a planet. This conclusion, indeed,
may be regarded as scarcely less certain than the former, seeing that men
of. science as little doubt the relative vastness of the periods of our sun's
history antecedent to and following has present form of existence as a
supporter of life, as they doubt the relative vastness of the periods pre-
ceding and following the life -supporting era of any given planet. There
is, however, just this element of doubt in the case of the star, that the
very fact of the star's existence as a steady source of light and heat implies
that the star is in a stage in some degree resembling that through which
our own sun is now passing. It may be for instance that the prior stages
of solar life are indicated by some degree of nebulosity, and the later

LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS. 707

stages by irregular variations, or by such rapid dying out in brightness as
has been observed in many stars. Yet a sun must be very nebulous
indeed — that is, must be at a very early stage in its history — for astrono-
mers to be able to detect its nebulosity ; and again, a sun may long have
ceased to be a life-supporter, before any signs of decadence measurable at
our remote station, and with our insignificant available time-intervals for
comparison, are manifested.

As to higher orders than systems of suns we cannot speculate, because
we have no means of determining the nature of such orders. For instance
the arrangement and motions of the only system of suns we know of, the
galaxy, are utterly unlike the arrangement and motions of the only system
of planets we know of. Quite possibly systems of sun-systems are unlike
either galaxies or solar systems in arrangement and motions. But if by
some wonderful extension of our perceptive powers, we could recognise
the countless millions of systems of galaxies doubtless existing in infinite
space, without however being able to ascertain whether the stage through
which any one of those systems was passing corresponded to the stage
through which our galaxy is at present passing, the probability of life
existing anywhere within the limits of a galaxy so selected at random
would be of the same order as the probability that life exists either in a
planet taken at random, or in a solar system taken at random. For
though the number of suns is enormously increased, and still more the
number of subordinate orbs like planets (in posse or in esse), the magnitude
of the time-intervals concerned is correspondingly increased. One chance
out of a thousand is as good as a thousand chances out of a million, or
as a million out of a thousand millions. Whether we turn our thoughts
to planet, sun, or galaxy, the law of nature (recognised as universal within
the domain as yet examined), that the duration of life in the individual is
indefinitely short compared with the duration of the type to which the
individual belongs, assures us, or at least renders it highly probable, that
in any member of any of these orders taken at random, it is more probable
that life is wanting than that life exists at this present time. Nevertheless
it is at least as probable that every member of every order — planet, sun,
galaxy, systems of galaxy, and so omcards to higher and higher orders end-
lessly— has been, is now, or will hereafter be, life-supporting " after
its kind."

In what degree life-supporting worlds, or suns, or systems are at this
or any other epoch surpassed in number by those which as yet fulfil no
such functions or have long since ceased to fulfil them, it would only be
possible to pronounce if we could determine the average degree in which
the life- sustaining era of given orbs or systems is surpassed in length by
the preceding or following stages. The life- sustaining orbs or systems
may be surpassed many thousandfold or many millionfold in number by
those as yet lifeless or long since dead, or the disproportion may be much
less or much greater. As yet we only know that it must be very great
indeed.

84—2

708 LIFE, PAST AND FUTURE, IN OTHER WORLDS.

But at first sight the views here advanced may appear as repugnant to
our ordinary ideas as Wliewell's belief that perhaps our earth is the only
inhabited orb in the universe. Millions of uninhabited worlds for each
orb which sustains life ! surely that implies incredible waste ! If not
waste of matter, since according to the theory every orb sustains life in
its turn, yet still a fearful waste of time. To this it may be replied, first
that we must take facts as we find them. And, secondly, whether space
or matter or time or energy appears to be wasted, we must consider that,
after all, space and matter and time and energy are necessarily infinite, so
that the portion utilized (according to our conceptions) being a finite
portion of the infinite is itself also infinite. Speaking, however, of the
subject we are upon, if one only of each million of the orbs in the universe
is inhabited, the number of inhabited orbs is nevertheless infinite. More-
over, it must be remembered that our knowledge is far too imperfect for
us to be able to assert confidently that space, time, matter, and force,
though not utilized according to our conceptions, are therefore necessarily
wasted. To the ignorant savage, grain which is planted in a field,
instead of being used for food, seems wasted, the wide field seems
wasted, the time wasted during which the grain is growing and ripening
into harvest; but wiser men know that what looks like waste is in
reality a wise economy. In like manner the sun's rays poured on all
sides into space so that his circling family receives but the 280 millionth
portion, seem, to our imperfect conceptions, almost wholly wasted ; but,
if our knowledge were increased, we should perhaps form a far different
opinion. So it may well be with the questions which perplex us when we
contemplate the short duration of the life -sustaining condition of each
world and sun and galaxy compared with the whole existence of these
several orders. The arrangement which seems so wasteful of space and
time and matter and force, may in reality involve the most perfect possible
use and employment of every portion of space, every instant of time, every
p article of matter, every form of force.

709

gallafc

No student of our poetry can afford to neglect the Ballad, which is at
once the earliest and most popular form of singing. The ballad is a
lyrical narrative, and the tale told in it, sometimes humorous and lively,
but far offcener tragical, is of a direct character and appeals to popular
sentiment. The singer, or the reciter (and we must remember that all the
old ballads were recited or sung long years before they appeared in print),
deals with the primary feelings of the race, with the passions, hopes, and
fears in which all can more or less sympathize. Everybody can understand
a ballad, and everybody whose taste has not been perverted by training
in a false school will enjoy it. The roughness and coarseness — and worse
still, the repetition and prolixity- sins common to ballad-mongers—will
be tolerated for the sake of the genuine feeling of the singer. The old
ballad is the simplest style of poetry we possess, and the charm of it to
modern ears lies in its directness, its pathos, its arch quaintness of ex-
pression, in the occasional sweetness of the music, in the manly strength
of the thought. It has been said that the ballad is the true spring-head
of history ; with greater truth it may be said that it is the source from
whence spring the Drama and the Epic, and it is impossible to study the
works of the great English poets without seeing how much they stand
indebted to their predecessors the balladists.

It is curious to note how recently the ballads of which we are now
so proud came to be regarded as things of worth that merited preservation
in a printed form. Many of the ballads of Denmark were collected
towards the close of the sixteenth century ; the larger number of English
ballads lived on without the security of print until the middle of the
eighteenth century. That was the age of brilliant satire, of town poetry
written 'Jby town wits : an age in which polish of expression and an
epigrammatic turn of thought were esteemed more highly than the im-
passioned utterance of natural feeling. The literary fare provided was so
richly spiced and so daintily served that men turned with indifference, or
even with disgust from homely food served upon plain trenchers. Addison,
whose sagacity preserved him (excepting in his own poetry) from the
critical errors of the period, ventured indeed to comment on and to praise
the fine ballads of " Chevy -Chase" and the "Babes in the Wood," and got
laughed at for his pains. Dr. Johnson, who at a later period of the
century gave laws to the poetasters of the age, spared no opportunity, as
Boswell tells us, to decry the old ballads generally. Bishop Percy, between
whom and Johnson, by the way, there was ever a warm friendship, had

710 BALLAD POETRY.

too fine a perception of the charm of ballad poetry to have his faith
greatly injured by the current belief ; but there are indications that even
Percy, exquisite though his taste was, did sometimes yield to the pressure
of his critical opponents. Nevertheless the work done by Percy is of
inestimable value. Not only did he himself possess a genius for this kind
of poetry superior in Wordsworth's judgment to that of any other man by
whom in modern times it has been cultivated, but he was the first to bring
together in a readable form the finest of our English ballads. The result
was far more splendid than Percy could have anticipated. Slowly but
surely the Eeliques produced a revolution in English poetry, and the effect
of the work upon Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Scott was so great that it
is scarcely an exaggeration to call Percy their poetical father. Walter
Scott was a schoolboy when the work fell into his hands. The influence
it exercised was magical and it was permanent : —

"I remember well,", he writes, " the spot where I read these volumes
for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus-tree, the ruins of
what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbour. The summer-day
sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen,
I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety and was
found entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember
was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my
school-fellows and all who would hearken to me with tragical recitations
from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time too I could scrape a
few shillings together, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved
volumes ; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently or with
half the enthusiasm."

As we go on we shall meet with other instances of indebtedness to
Percy, who may be said to have influenced, as no other man of his
century has done, the spirit of modern poetry. The literary history of
the eighteenth century contains many chapters of singular interest, but
there is scarcely a point in it more significant or more strange than the
fact that it was, as Mr. Allingham has observed, the epoch of ballad-
editing. This return to the old and artless singers of a simpler age
was the strongest and wisest protest that could be raised against the
artificial style of verse at that time so popular.

No editor can pretend to fix a date for the production of what may
justly be called the people's poetry. And not only are the dates generally
unknown, but the authors' names are unknown also. Moreover, the fact
that the ballads, up to a recent date, had been preserved by oral trans-
mission, accounts for a variety of readings and gives to the modern editor
an opportunity for the exercise of his craft. We can trace several of the
ballads back to the fifteenth century, but there is every likelihood that
they were old ballads then ; nor is it possible to discover the origin of a
large number of the romantic ballads, since the same subjects have been
treated in popular verse by the early poets of Scandinavia and Germany.
It has been justly observed that this strong family likeness to ancient

BALLAD POETRY 711

foreign ballads is in itself no bad testimony to the age of ours. Other
evidence may be found in incidental allusions to manners and customs,
to religious rites and ceremonies which passed away many centuries ago ;
in statements made by early authors — Sir Philip Sidney, for instance, wrote
of " Chevy- Chace " as an old ballad in his day — and sometimes the use
of a ballad by an old poet shows to some extent its antiquity. Scattered
through the plays of Shakspeare are many lines or stanzas from popular
ballads. It was in all probability the ballad of Gernutus that suggested
to the dramatist the plot of the Merchant of Venice ; it was apparently
from a ballad also that he gained important hints with regard to the
plot of Kiny Lear. Three hundred years, however, is comparatively
a short life for a ballad, and we may be sure that many of our best pieces
of this kind date from an earlier age. But we are as unable to fix the
period of these compositions as the Spaniards are to assign a date to their
famous ballads. On the introduction of the printing press a few ballads
were published, and there is reason to believe that the " Lytell Geste of
BobynHode" appeared in 1489, and the "Nut-browne May de," which has
been modernised and spoilt by Prior, in 1502 : these, however, are
exceptions to an almost universal rule, and while the poetical ballads were
neglected, a number of very inferior productions bearing the name of
ballads were issued from the press.

The Old English ballad may be said, therefore, as we have before
observed, to have first assumed a place in literature in the eighteenth
century. Allan Ramsay — a good though somewhat artificial song-writer,
and the well-known author of that delicious pastoral, " The Gentle
Shepherd," — was one of the first to print several ballads in his Evergreen
and in his Tea-table Miscellany. The Miscellany, which is by far the
more important of the two selections, is, however, chiefly remarkable as
a repertory of songs, which Ramsay, in good faith no doubt, dedicates
to the ladies, observing that the pieces he has chosen are free from all
impropriety. Possibly this might have been true in 1724, for we must
not forget that much later in the century refined and modest women read
Afra Behn's novels, and that Dr. Johnson called Prior a lady's book —
but it is certainly not true in 1875 ; and there are many pieces in Bam-
say 's volume which could not be read aloud in any mixed company, and
a few which belong to the literature of Holywell Street.

The Ecliques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765, was of far
higher account ; but having already expressed the obligation due to Percy
from all lovers of the ballad, we will merely add that, in spite of the
defects of the plan, which are obvious enough, Professor Aytoun — an
admirable judge — does not scruple to rank Percy above his famous country-
man, Sir Walter Scott, as an editor of ancient minstrelsy, believing that,
" without the same advantages in point of accumulated information, he
transcended him in skill." Scott's own famous work, the Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border, appeared at the beginniag of this century ; and it
must never be forgotten that, in the compilation of it, he owed much to

712 BALLAD POETRY.

the exhaustless energy of John Leyden — a man who combined with great
originality of mind a power of acquisition well-nigh unparalleled. An anec-
dote told by Scott may be inserted here. It shows what Leyden might
have achieved as a ballad-collector, if he had not turned his energy into
other channels : —

" An interesting fragment," says Scott, " had been obtained of an
ancient historical ballad, but the remainder, to the great disturbance of
the editor and his coadjutor, was not to be recovered. Two days after-
wards, while the editor was sitting with some company after dinner, a
sound was heard at a distance like the whistling of a tempest through the
torn rigging of the vessel which scuds before it. The sounds increased
as they approached more near, and Leyden (to the great astonishment of
such of the guests as did not know him) burst into the room, chanting
the desiderated ballad with the most enthusiastic gesture, and all the
energy of what he used to call the saw-tones of his voice. It turned out
that he had walked between forty and fifty miles and back again, for the
sole purpose of visiting an old person who possessed this precious rem-
nant of antiquity." In the progress of his work, Scott obtained assistance
from several persons, among others, from Herd, who had himself pub-
lished an indifferent selection of Scottish songs and ballads about thirty
years previously. Everybody was willing to help Scott, and no one felt
a grudge at the literary success of a man so entirely free from vanity, and
so modest in his estimate of his own powers. The Minstrelsy may be ac-
counted a splendid success, for it contained, in addition to a large amount
of interesting information, a great number of ballads never before published,
some of these being perhaps among the most valuable we possess. " As to
where and how," observes Mr. Allingham, " Scott got, those ballads and
versions which were not before in print, and still more in regard to his
manipulations, we are generally left in fog." Yet it would seem that
Scott states clearly enough, in his Introduction, the sources from whence
he gained his ballad prizes, though he does not give the special history
of each separate acquisition. Moreover, he states definitely that " No
liberties have been taken, either with the recited or written copies of these
ballads, further than that, where they disagree — which is by no means
unusual— the editor, in justice to the author, has uniformly preserved
what seemed to him the best or most poetical leading of the passage."
He adds, too, that " the utmost care has been taken never to reject a
word or phrase i:s3d by a reciter, however uncouth or antiquated," and in
spite cf the " fog " Mr. Allingham is ready to allow that the ballads have
gained very much on the whole from Scott's treatment, and lost nothing
of the least substantial consequence.

Passing over some inferior, although not uninteresting selections made
by Buchan, Motherwell, Jamieson, and others, we come to Professor
Aytoun's Ballads of Scotland — a book which shows in large measure the
judgment and taste of the distinguished editor. The notes are full of

BALLAD POETRY. 718

interest, and the reader who wishes to gain a good deal of information
about ballad literature, clearly and pertinently expressed, will do well to
read them, and also the introduction. If any one have an insatiable
appetite for ballads, whether they be good or bad, and wishes to learn
everything that can be said about them, we advise him to obtain a
copy of the vast collection made in 1857 by Professor Child, and pub-
lished in eight volumes at Boston. It is an extraordinary work, the fruit
of unwearied toil, and of enthusiastic interest ; and so completely has the
editor achieved his purpose of producing all the old ballads extant that
the honour he has gained is not likely to be snatched from him in the
future. The latest selection with which we are acquainted, and one which,
since it is published in Messrs. Macmillan & Co.'s " Golden Treasury "
Series, is likely to attain the widest popularity, is entitled The Ballad
Book, and is edited by Mr. Allingham, whose poetical fame is established
as the author of several charming lyrics. In this little volume the
editor has brought together about eighty old ballads, which he has pre-
ceded by an elaborate preface, explaining the system on which he has
worked. We cannot altogether commend the style of this preface,
which contains, as it seems to us, some expressions which might have
been advantageously omitted ; but Mr. Allingham writes on a subject
with which he is thoroughly acquainted, and has much to say which
will be new to many readers. His plan has been to leave out modern
interpolations, confessed or obvious, and so to collate existing versions
as to produce the ballads in a complete and consistent form. In
order to do this, however, he has had " to view them by the light of
imaginative truth," which we should regard as a rather dangerous process,
were it not for the assurance that the stories are essentially unchanged.
As far as we have compared these ballads with former versions, we think
that in his manipulation Mr. Allingham has exhibited taste and judgment
— qualities without which no editor of old ballads can have a chance of
success. For there is no perfect text of these poems which can be safely
followed, but the editor is generally forced to compare several versions,
and to gather from each the stanzas which seem most worthy of pre-
servation.

And now, having made these cursory remarks about English and
Scottish ballads and ballad editors, let us turn to the poems themselves,
and note a few characteristics that belong to them as a class. One strik-
ing feature is the tragic character of many of the pieces. The ballad-
writer delighted in horrors, and it may be said, without much exaggeration,
that a track of blood is visible over the wide field of ballad poetry. In
the most popular and in the least known ballads this red line is visible.
In the admirable poem, " The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow/' a quarrel over the
wine leads to a challenge between a man and his brothers-in-law. At the
meeting place, on the bonnie banks o' Yarrow, nine armed men attack
him, and he declares that, however unequal the contest, he will fight them
all—

714 BALLAD POETRY.

Two has he hurt and three has slain

On the bloody hraes o' Yarrow,
But the stubborn knight crept in behind

And pierced his body thorough.

His wife, meanwhile, has dreamt an ominous dream, and her brother
gives as the reading of it that her husband is killed on Yarrow : —

She's torn the ribbons frae her head,

That were baith braid and narrow ;
She's kilted up her lang claithing,

And she's awa to Yarrow.

She's ta'en him in her armcs twa,

And gi'en him kisses thorough,
And wi' her tears has washed his wounds

On the dowie banks o* Yarrow.

She kiss'd his lips, she kaim'd his hair,

As aft she had dune before, O ;
And there wi' grief her heart did break,

Upon the banks o' Yarrow.

Here, as elsewhere, whatever is done is done completely ; there are no
half measures. The wound is thorough, so are the kisses, and so is the
wife's grief, for it breaks her heart. In " Binnorie," a singularly striking
ballad, two sisters are courted by one knight, and the eldest, jealous of his
love for her sister, calling her to the river-side, suddenly pushes her in,
and she is drowned by the bonnie mill-dams o' Binnorie. A harper
passing by sees the sweet pale face, makes a harp of her breast-bone and
strings of her yellow hair, and bringing the harp to her father's hall, lays
it upon a stone, whereupon, after the fashion of certain modern instru-
ments, it begins playing alone, and concludes with singing, " as plain as

plain could be,"

There sits my sister who drowned me
By the bonnie mill-dams o' Binnorie.

The story of Edom O'Gordon gives a vivid picture of domestic warfare
in a barbarous age. Edom attacks a castle in the absence of its lord,
wishing to gain the lady for his prize, and in his rage at her resistance sets
fire to the place, and burns up all the people in it, excepting one young
girl, who is let down over the wall only to fall on the point of Gordon's

spear : —

O, bonnie, bonnie was her mouth,

And cherry were her cheeks,
And clear, clear was her yellow hair,

Whereon the red blood dreeps.

Then wi' his spear he turns her owre ;

0 gin her face was wan !

He said, " Ye are the first that e'er

1 wished alive again."

BALLAD POETRY. 715

He cam, and lookit again at her ;

O gin her face was white !
" J might hae spared that bonnie face

To hae been some man's delight.

* Busk and boun, my merry men a',

For ill dooms, I do guess ; —
I cannot look on that bonnie face

As it lies on the grass.' "

Sad, too, and beautiful as sad, is the ballad of " Fair Annie of Loch-
roran," who sails to her lover's castle, and is refused admittance by his
mother, speaking as in her son's name, upon which fair Annie, setting sail
again, is drowned, and her body brought across the foam to Lord Gregory,
who, having learnt his mother's treachery, had hastened, but too late, to

the shore : —

And syne he kissed her on the cheek,

And kissed her on the chin ;
And syne he kissed her on the mouth,
But there was nae breath within.

" O, wae betide my mother !

An ill death may she dee !
She" turned my true love frae my door,

Who cam sae far to me ! "

The ballad of "Willie and May Margaret" has a like tale to tell of
a mother's treachery, but in this story the tragic incident is reversed ; the
young man comes to seek his love, and on her refusing, as he supposes,
to open the door, he rides back again through the stormy flood and is
drowned, just as May Margaret, having dreamed her lover was at the
gate, wakes out of her heavy sleep, and calls to her mother to read her
dream. The mother confesses that Willie had been at the gates half an
hour before. Out runs Margaret into the night towards Clyde's water, the
strength of which would drown five hundred men ; in she steps, free and
bold, but not until she has waded to the chin does she find the dead body

of her lover : —

'Twas a whirlin' pot of Clyde's water
She got sweet Willie in.

" O, ye've had a cruel mither, Willie !

And I have had anither ;
But we shall sleep in Clyde's water,

Like sister and like brither."

When the water o' Clyde left roaring,

And the sun shone warm and fair,
They found these two in each ither's arms

Like lovers true as they were.

Mothers, by the way, are generally evil-doers in the eyes of ballad-
writers, and terrible are the pains said to await them in consequence.
Women, too, in many cases, are far from possessing the gentler virtues of

716 BALLAD POETRY.

their sex. Robin Hood, it will be remembered, owed his death to an act as
treacherous as that ascribed to Jael. It was a Jew's daughter who wiled little
Sir Hugh of Lincoln into her chamber, tied his hands and feet, pierced him
with a knife, caught his heart's blood in a golden cup, and cast his body
into a well. It was a woman — she is known as fair Catherine in the bal-
lad— who invited her fickle lover, young Redin, to spend the night with
her, "birled " him with ale and wine, and killed him in his sleep. It was
a woman who let Lammikin into the castle, in order that he might kill Lord
Weare's wife and infant son ; and we read with the highest satisfaction
that she suffered at the stake for her crime. One might wish the same
punishment had been inflicted on the Baroness of Brackley, who urges her
husband to fight, knowing he must be killed, and afterwards welcomes the
men who had slain him ; and on Lord Ronald's lady love, who poisoned
him at dinner : —

Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Ronald, my son ?
Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man ?
1 dined wi' my love ; mither, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain would lie doun.

O, I fear ye are poison'd, Lord llonald, my son !
(), I fear ye are poison'd, my handsome young man !
O, yes ! I am poison'd ! Mither, make my bed soon !
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain would lie doun.*

The old ballads, in short, abound in acts of barbarous cruelty, in
unnatural crimes, and pitiful positions. Some of the plots are indeed so
repulsive that an editor, who, like Mr. Allingham, caters for general
readers, is forced to omit several pieces altogether, which would otherwise
be worthy of a place in his selection. The nature exhibited in these
poems is the nature belonging to a turbulent, unsettled time, when lust
knew no refinements, and warfare no moderation ; when brutal passions
and brutal cruelty were unrestrained by law, and when the people's poets
uttered what they had to say in the plainest language they could use. Ifc
may be true, as Mr. Matthew Arnold observes, that ballad metres are
unfitted to express the higher tones of poetical thought and feeling ; but
they are exactly fitted for verse that is intended to be recited or sung
before an audience unaccustomed to suppress emotion or to conceal the
coarse and painful facts of life behind ambiguous phrases.

The late Alexander Smith declared that it was impossible to imitate
the ancient ballad. " There is no modern attempt," he writes, " which
could by any chance or possibility be mistaken for an original. You read
the date upon it as legibly as upon the letter you received yesterday.
However dexterous the workman, he is discovered — a word blabs, the turn

* The poisoning art was but too familiar in those rude days, and is frequently
referred to by the ballad-writers. In that delightful collection of ancient German
songs and ballads, Des Knabcn Wunderhorn, there is a significant poem of this kind,
entitled, " Grossmutter Schlangenkochin."

BALLAD rOETRY. 717

of a phrase betrays him." This is expressed a little too strongly, for
imitations of old ballads have deceived before now men of high cultivation,
if not of fine critical discernment ; and it is a remarkable proof of this
that the Lord President Forbes, and Sir Gilbert Eliot of Minto, testified
to their belief in the antiquity of " Hardy knute " by contributing to the
expense of publishing the first edition in folio. The deception practised
by Lady Wardlaw led Dr. Robert Chambers, in his old age, to suspect
that that lady, who died in 1727, "was the author of a large number of our
finest ballads ; but his argument will not bear examination : not only is
" Hardyknute," Lady Wardlaw's acknowledged production, a feeble poem,
and as inferior to the ballads ascribed to her as Mr. Tupper's proverbial
sayings are inferior to Solomon's, but when the ballad is carefully ex-
amined, several marks will be found that distinguish it from the simpler
and more powerful workmanship of an earlier age. Indeed, the " Lady
Wardlaw Heresy," as it has been called, has been so thoroughly exposed
by Mr. Clyne and other writers, that it will suffice to have alluded to it
thus briefly. The temporary interest caused by the controversy fifteen
years ago is not likely to be revived.

But if it be well nigh impossible so to imitate the old ballad as to
escape detection, the spirit that inspired the minstrels who sang or recited
their verses several centuries ago, and touched the people's heart in doing
so, has survived to these modern days.

One of the worst instances we remember of a fine old ballad being
transformed into a modern shape, is the version of the "Nut-browne
Mayde," produced by Prior under the title of "Henry and Emma."
Prior is a splendid epigrammatist, his occasional verses sparkle with
wit, he is the Tom Moore of the eighteenth century, and much of his
poetry is delightful for its ease and abandon ; but Prior, like most of the
poets of his time, was too much of the town wit to appreciate the natural
charms of ballad poetry. Therefore, in his poem " written upon the
Model of the Nut-browne Mayde," Venus and Cupid, Cynthia and Mars,
play their part, as in most of the artificial poetry of that age : Henry in-
vokes Jove, and Emma calls upon "potent Venus" and her son, to attest
the fervency of her affection. The whole piece is written in a stilted, grandi-
loquent style, and we agree heartily with the verdict of Dr. Johnson, that
it is "a dull and tedious dialogue, which excites neither esteem for the
man, nor tenderness for the woman." Goldsmith's nature was more fitted
for appreciating the simplicity and directness of ballad poetry, and his
"Hermit," published in the same year with the Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry, will compare not unfavourably with Percy's ' ' Friar of Orders
Grey." Mallet's ballad of " Margaret's Ghost," which was published in
1724 in the Plain Dealer, and translated into Latin verse by Vincent
Bourne, is called by Ritson one of the finest ballads that was ever written.
We cannot accept this criticism. The artificial character of some of
the lines is ill adapted to the simplicity of ballad poetry : in the following
stanza, for instance —

718 BALLAD POETRY.

This is the dark and dreary hour,

When injured ghosts complain,
Now yawning graves give up their dead

To haunt the faithless swain,

a commonplace thought is expressed in the conventional diction of
the period. The modern poem was probably suggested by the fine old
ballad, " Sweet William's Ghost," but we do not think it can be compared
with the original. In that " terrific old Scottish tale," as Walter Scott
termed it, Margaret follows the restless spirit through the long winter
night until she reaches the churchyard. Her question, on arriving there,
and the answer she received, are strangely pathetic :

la there any room at your head, Willy ?

Or any room at your feet ?
Or any room at your side, Willy,

Wherein that I may creep ?

There's no room at my head, Marg'ret,

There's no room at my feet,
There's no room at my side, Marg'ret,

My coffin is made so meet.

Mickle, the translator of the Lusictd, was a young man when Percy's
book appeared, and like many of the poetasters of the day tried his hand
at the ballad. One of his pieces is still remembered, since it delighted
the "immature taste" of Sir Walter Scott, and suggested, in all pro-
bability, the noble romance of Kenil worth. Scott wished to call the novel,
like the ballad, Cumnor Hall, but in deference to the wishes of his
publisher substituted the present title. The first stanza, Scott wrote in
old age, had a peculiar species of enchantment for his youthful ear, " the
force of which is not even now entirely spent."

The dews of summer night did fall;

The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall,

And many an oak that grew thereby.

Grainger, who wrote a long and wearisome poem in blank verse on
" The Sugar Cane," was the intimate friend of Percy ; and to this friend-
ship we owe the " exquisite ballad," as Mr. Forster calls it, of ''Bryan
and Pereene." It is a mournful ditty enough, and so far is in strict
accordance with the tragic spirit which pervades our old ballad poetry.
Bryan, after being absent for more than a year from his lady love, a
West-Indian, leaps into the water as his ship approaches the land, in
order to reach her arms the sooner. The lady displays a handkerchief he
had left her on parting, and as he approaches the shore —

Then through the white surf did she haste,

To clasp her lovely swain ;
When, ah ! a shark bit through his waist ;

His heart's blood dyed the main.

At seeing which the lady of course gives up the ghost also, as is but
fitting under such circumstances. The ballad is no doubt intended to be

BALLAD POETRY. 719

infinitely affecting, but we confess that it does not affect us, which is
owing perhaps to the commonplace diction in which the pitiful event is
recounted. The lady with her raven hair, her cheeks decked with dewy
rosebuds, her eyes shining like diamonds, and dressed in her best array
of sea-green silk, seems to us scarcely more lifelike than one of the lady
dummies which may be seen sitting in the windows of a West-End tailor,
and the "lovely swain" himself, although too good perhaps to make a
meal for a shark, is but a poor hero for a ballad.

But the most popular ballad produced in the last century — a ballad
still familiar to every schoolboy — is Cowper's " John Gilpin." There
never was a more successful production. It attained its reputation at a
stride. Henderson, the actor, recited it to a crowded audience at Free-
masons' Hall ; it was printed in ballad form to be sold or sung in the
streets ; artists innumerable illustrated Gilpin's doughty deeds of horse-
manship ; and wherever the English language is spoken, that poem is
still the delight of all readers, young or old. " The ballad," wrote Cowper,
" is a sort of composition I was ever fond of, and if graver matters had
not called me another way, I should have addicted myself to it more than
to any other." Some of his earliest attempts at verse-making were in
this direction, for when quite a young man he produced, as he tells us,
" several halfpenny ballads, two or three of which had the honour to be
popular." And here we may remind the reader, in passing, that Cow-
per's German contemporary, Gottfried Burger, catching his inspiration
from the study of Percy's Reliques, which were published when he was a
youth of seventeen, gained the best part of his fame as a ballad- writer,
and that some of the most exquisite productions of Germany's principal
poets, Schiller and Goethe, appear in the ballad form.

Contemporaneously in England and in Germany there was a revolt
against the artificial school of poetry and a return to the simplicity of
earlier times, and it would be interesting to point out, if we had space for
such an exposition, how the poets of the two countries acted and re- acted
upon each other. This, at least, may be said with truth, that almost
every poet, whether English or German, who flourished at the close of
last century, or in the early years of this century, shows a profound
sympathy with the feeling that gives life to the old ballads. In our
country this sympathy directed the poetical course of Scott, dominated the
genius of Coleridge and of Wordsworth, influenced in a considerable
measure the rhythmical efforts of Southey, and moved with a secret but
irresistible force many a smaller poet, who, if there were still, as in days
of the troubadours, a minstrel college, would be entitled to a certificate of
merit.

Of all modern writers, Scott retains, we think, in the largest degree,
the force and picturesqueness of style which distinguish the old minstrels.
His description of Flodden Field, while exhibiting an artistic skill unknown
in earlier times, has the spirit and movement, the directness and heartiness,
which delight us in the balladists, and, as a writer in the Times has

720 BALLAD POETRY.

lately remarked, his " Bonnie Dundee " is, of all Jacobite ballads, " one
of the most spirited and soul- stirring." In " Young Lochinvar," a modern
version of an old story, Ssott gives another fine specimen of rapid and
vigorous narrative which would have delighted the wandering singers of
an earlier age. Lord Macaulay too, caught with singular felicity the
strain of the ballad singers, and there is not a schoolboy in England who
has not read, we had almost said who cannot recite, " The Battle of
Naseby," or the glorious story of

How well Horatius kept the bridge

In the brave days of old.

And in some of the poets who have lately passed away, as well as
in others who are happily still able to receive our love and homage, there
are similar signs of affection for the ballad. Mrs. Browning displays them
frequently, although it must be acknowledged that the high effort ex-
hibited in her verse is generally opposed to the directness and simplicity
demanded from the balladist. Mr. Browning is never more picturesque,
more vigorous, more able to stir the pulses, than when he surrenders
himself to the emotion of the ballad. Truly says a writer in the Spectator,
that Mr. Browning's ballads are among his most spirited poems. " They
throb with a keen, sharp pulse of tense energy and excitement, which
makes the eye and heart of his readers converge on the one point of sight
of his narrative, and never dare to withdraw themselves till that point is
reached." These ballads are by no means the finest works produced by
the poet, but they are the most popular, and even persons who obstinately
refuse to admire Mr. Browning's poetry will do justice to " The Ride from
Ghent to Aix," and to the noble story of "The Breton Pirate, Herve
Kiel," which appeared in the CORNHILL about four years ago. The Poet
Laureate, too, has given us some charming examples of what a writer of
the highest culture and of exquisite taste can produce in this direction.
So have Mr. Rossetti, Mr. Kingsley, the late Sidney Dobell, and other
poets, who are all more or less indebted to the ballad-singers of earlier
days.

There is a mighty difference, of course, between the ballad of literary
culture and the ballad produced in an untutored period, but the " one
touch of nature" makes the resemblance stronger than the. diversity ; and
no one who reads Lady Anne Lindsay's "Auld Robin Gray," or Mr.
Rossetti's " Stratton Water," can doubt that the inspiration which gave
birth to the rude minstrelsy of a rude age is as potent as 'ever. Indeed, it
would be possible to make a charming selection of ballads — Mr. Palgrave
would call them " ballads in court dress " — dating from the beginning of
the century, and among them might be included a number of humorous
pieces from the pen of Mr. Thackeray and other well-known writers, which
would impart a racy flavour to the volume. The element of humour is
rarely perceptible in the old ballad, but in the ballad produced by men of
letters it is a frequent characteristic, and many an admirable specimen is
to be met with in the recent literature both of England and of America.

J. D.

721

Wffiara

THERE is a too Common impression even
among those who wish to admire Blake's powers
of imagination that he proceeded in his work
without the practical knowledge and training
which even less inspired artists are supposed
to possess. The fruitless question as to
whether he was or was not mad has been
thrust into such undeserved prominence that
little thought has been bestowed upon the
strong element of common sense in his nature,
and the fact that he combined with a great
invention remarkable critical powers has not
been widely recognised. Blake, in his life-
time, was always specially resentful of any
imputation against his fame as a practical
workman, or his judgment as a student of art.
In one of his marginal notes to Eeynolds's
Discourses he lays down the rule that " Execu-
tion is the chariot of genius," and again he
says: "Invention depends altogether upon
execution or organisation. As that is right
or wrong, so is the invention perfect or im-
perfect. Michael Angelo's art depends on

VOL. xxxi. — NO. 186.

722 WILLIAM BLAKE.

Michael Angelo's execution altogether." And in the public address
which Blake intended to accompany the engraving of the Canterbury
Pilgrims, he declares, in reply to those who would admit the excellence
of his ideas in art, but deny his powers of expression : " I am, like
others, just equal in invention and execution, as my works show;"
and further he adds, "A man who pretends to improve fine art does
not know what fine art is. Ye English engravers must come down
from your high flights ; ye must condescend to study Marc Antonio and
Albert Diirer ; ye must begin before ye attempt to finish or improve, and
when you have begun you will know better than to think of improving
what cannot be improved." To any student of Blake there is, however,
need of no quotation from his written opinions to establish the conclusion
that he laboured with a constant reference to the possibilities and the
means of expression. As an artist, no man's vision was ever more de-
finite in its form ; and if there is one specialjgift which distinguishes him
clearly from other and lesser men, it is his power of finding for every sublime
thought a corresponding and precise image in the language of art. Of
this gift, in so far as it affected his invention, more remains to be said,
but it is noticeable here for the sternly practical direction given by it to
all his thought and all his work. Blake was from the beginning as close
a student of the technical parts of his craft as of its imaginative capa-
bilities. He was a keen and even a severe critic of excellence in work-
manship, a diligent observer of all forms of executive mastery in which he
had any belief, and his fiercest onslaughts on the works of other painters,
ancient or modern, are commonly grounded upon defects of expressional
power.

There is good cause for insisting upon Blake's powers as a practical
artist, and for testing his work by the severe rules he himself laid down.
In the first place, this is the only test by which a painter can be finally
adjudged worthy of enduring fame. The gift of vision divorced from
adequate means of expression may perhaps be proved satisfactorily to
the friends of a poet or a painter, but it can have but small significance
for posterity. Those who have never known the man can only care to
know of his name in connection with an achievement of worth in itself, and
therefore Blake's place among painters or among poets must be just what
his work now proves him to be. This truth seems obvious enough, but
there nevertheless remains the fact that English art, if not English poetry,
has repeatedly suffered by its neglect. Men have been admitted to a
certain reputation in their craft merely from the accepted belief in their
gifts, without sufficient practical evidence ; and in English painting espe-
cially, there has been a most unfortunate tendency to award the prize
of merit for all other qualities than those which are special and indispen-
sable to a painter. It would be very unfortunate if the unhappy rule
should be followed in the case of Blake, and the misfortune would be
the greater, seeing that he possessed in a high degree the very qualities
which so many English painters have been without.

WILLIAM BLAKE. 723

I have said that Blake himself was always fully alive to the kind of
skill and training needed for a painter, and it may be worth while to con-
sider for a moment the opinions he held in relation to this subject, in
order that we may see how far he practically satisfied the stringent rules
there laid down. In whatever else he may lie open to the charge of ob-
scurity, Blake was certainly no vague theorist in the matter of art. His
criticisms are always precise, and expressed in terms of assurance. They
are never the views of a man who has merely reasoned about art as a
philosophical abstraction, or who has stated conclusions without reference
to positive examples. The general principles, when they appear, are
borne directly from the contemplation of actual masterpieces, and when
there is found an obvious fallacy in expression, it is for the most part to
be explained from the fact that the painter has substituted an image for
an argument. He has made an individual truth, intensely perceived, do
duty for a universal law, and has transported the results of experience and
actual study into the language of criticism, without taking full account of
special and modifying circumstances. This merit and defect of Blake's
philosophy can nowhere be so clearly seen as in his marginal notes to
Reynolds's Discourses. The sum of Blake's opposition to the opinions of
Reynolds may be stated as a protest of a practical artist against the vagae
generalisations of a philosopher. Putting aside the vices of violent phrase-
ology, which do not destroy, although they often darken, the commen-
tator's counsel, this is the effect of his criticism. If Reynolds had written in
the same spirit as Blake criticised, if he had spoken of his own creed and
practice as an artist, and not of a kind of art beyond his experience, the
Discourses would have been considerably limited in scope, but perhaps
increased in value. As it was, he spoke as a philosopher, and his critic
as a painter ; and if the judge of both is to decide with candour, it must
be confessed that the amiable generalities of the President of the Academy
are very often shattered by Blake's simple record of practical study. Truth
is, that in dealing with such men as Michael Angelo and Raphael, Blake
touched a theme wherein he had something more than admiration to offer.
He had not approached these men as his rival has done, only for distant
praise and rather solemn worship. He had been a student as well as a wor-
shipper, and to him their art was an object of imitation as well as a subject
of praise. Blake not only confessed their grandeur of style, but had also
something to say of the source of the beauty that Reynolds was content
to perceive and then let go. The latter carried away a splendid impression
of power, but Blake bore in his mind the entire image of their art, with
outline firmly stamped, and individual character clearly recorded. He knew
that these men were not only, good for what Reynolds had allowed them,
but for much more besides ; that they were not only -great inventors in art,
but great executants ; and that they possessed subtlety and refinement in
workmanship, as well as nobility in imagination. Feeling these truths in-
tensely, the bland impartiality with which Reynolds distributes prizes for
different qualities among the various schools is altogether intolerable to

35—2

724 WILLIAM BLAKE.

Blake. " Why," he exclaims indignantly in one place, " are We to Be told
that masters who could think had not the judgment to perform the inferior1
parts of art ? (as Reynolds artfully calls them) ; that we are to learn to
think from great masters and to perform from underlings — to learn
to design from Raphael and to execute from Rubens ? " And when
Reynolds implies that Michael Angelo was without " the lesser elegancies
and graces in the art," Blake is still more indignant. " Can any man be
such a fool," he asks, " as to believe that Raphael and Michael Angelo
were incapable of the mere language of art, and that such idiots as Rubens,
Correggio, and Titian knew how to execute what they could not think or
invent ? " In other places we find that Blake is equally intolerant of praise
given for imagination in art without executive power, as of any depreciation
of the executive excellence of great inventors. When Reynolds declares it
to be the duty of the painter, " instead of amusing mankind with the
minute neatness of his imitations," to improve them by the grandeur
of his ideas, Blake breaks in with the practical criticism, " Without
minute neatness of execution, the sublime cannot exist ; grandeur of ideas
is founded on precision of ideas."

If then these often fiercely worded comments are accepted as the pro-
test of a practical artist vexed by amiable generalities, their meaning will
appear more consistent and their violence more accountable. Art and
imagination were things of such reality and certainty to Blake, that all
vapid philosophy upon them seemed to him idle and mischievous. The
whole duty of a painter, whether in invention or workmanship, was a
matter of deeply practical moment to him ; sublime designs had an exist-
ence in his eyes more real than the commonest reality ; the character and
expression of ideal figures were familiar as the faces of friends, and
therefore any attempt to transport these distinct images into abstract pro-
positions was what he could neither pardon nor understand. But the
notes to the Discourses are not the only material out of which we may
construct Blake's artistic creed. The Descriptive Catalogue and the
Public Address already referred to contain much penetrating criticism,
and scattered through the few letters that remain to us are some stray
sentences on art which help to an understanding of Blake's position.
The whole of Blake's faith in art depends on two propositions apparently
contradictory. By the first article of his creed he clearly separates art
from nature, and by the second he gives to the images of art a perfect and
precise reality. But the antagonism between these propositions does not
go very deep. To Blake the creatures of imagination were often nearer
than the people of the actual world. When he conceived a design, it was
in completeness ; the faces possessed individuality, the forms a distinct
outline, and the scene thus impressed upon his vision was in truth the
reality from which he copied. Other artists may transport the figures of
actual men and women into the world of art, giving at each step the
necessary beauty for the higher life of the imagination ; but Blake
faithfully copied his inventions. The observation and imitation of

WILLIAM BLAKE. 725

nature was with him a foregone and unconscious process, and when
natural forms reappeared in his brain they were already endowed with
the added qualities of beauty. A less intense vision could not have
held the shadow fixed and stable, but Blake dwelt always among his
own inventions, and was able to keep them before him as another man
might keep a model in his painting room. Remembering this, we may
understand the second article of Blake's creed, in which he so strongly
insists upon clearness and decision in execution. In a memorable passage
of the Descriptive Catalogue he says : " The great and golden rule of art,
as well as of life, is this : That the more distinct, sharp, and wiry the
bounding line, the more perfect the work of art ; and the less keen and
sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and
bungling. Great inventors in all ages knew this ; Protogenes and Apelles
knew each other by this line. Eaphael and Michael Angelo and Albert
Diirer are known by this and this alone. The want of this determinate and
bounding form evidences the idea of want in the artist's mind, and the pre-
tence of the plagiary in all its branches." And side by side with this
demand for precise expression must bo remarked Blake's constant claim
for minute distinction as well as for force of character in ideal art.
"Passion and expression," he says in one place, "is Beauty itself; the
face that is incapable of passion and expression is deformity itself. Let
it be painted and patched and praised and advertised for ever, it will only
be admired by fools." These opinions of Blake, his belief in the superi-
ority of vision over reality, and his contention that the objects of imagina-
tion could be copied with the fidelity and the minuteness of actual nature,
are constantly repeated in his writings with the strongest emphasis and
the deepest conviction. As a canon of art criticism, Blake's belief suggests
one remark ; it is fitted to judge of only one, and that the highest, style
in painting. His study here, as in poetry, was never directed to anything
but the highest, and his criticism as well as his practice must be tested by
a reference to the noblest examples of human invention. And this fact
that his taste and his judgment were concerned only with the sublime
forms of art, or with the simplicity which is at once companion and com-
plement to what is sublime, explains in great part his unconditional con-
demnation of men outside of either category. His criticism of the
Venetians and of Rubens has just this value and no more. It is not an
appreciation of the art of these men on its merits, but a bare indication
that neither Venetian nor Flemish painters aspired to the highest kind of
invention in art, or the noblest and most severe style in execution.

Having set forth at the outset Blake's belief about painting, we shall
be in a better position to judge of his own achievement. Blake had no
double identity. The truths he held as a critic, he also sought to embody
in practice : they were in fact the direct results of practice and study, and
for this reason they form the fairest as well as the highest standard by
which to judge of his work. But before proceeding to a consideration of
the designs, it may be worth whil§ to §ee how far Blake was fitted by early

726 WILLIAM BLAKE.

training for the noble artistic duties be afterwards undertook. For tbe
facts of bis life all later students are of course deeply indebted to Mr.
Gilcbrist, but for tbe beginnings of tbe artist's career Mr. Gilcbrist bimself
is indebted to a little book called "A Father's Memoirs of a -Child,"
written by Mr. Malkin, and published in 1806. Blake designed and en-
graved a very beautiful frontispiece to the volume, and, in the Introduction,
the author sets down some account of the painter's early life, gleaned as
he tells us from Blake's own lips. In very many respects the circum-
stances of his boyhood were certainly favourable to his artistic education.
His father seems to have both recognised, and, by every means in his
power, encouraged the boy's quickly pronounced talent, and in 1767,
when he was just ten years of age, William Blake was sent to a drawing
school in the Strand, kept by a certain Mr. Pars. This was the accepted
preparatory school of the time, and the fact that Pars had been a chaser,
and the son of a chaser, probably so far influenced his teaching as to en-
courage in Blake that love of precision and exactness in workmanship which
is a constant quality of his designs. The intelligent hosier, whom Malkin
not unjustly terms an " indulgent parent," was not content with merely
supplying his boy with the rudiments of his craft. He purchased for him
several casts of the masterpieces of antique sculpture for home study, and
supplied him with money, with which Blake made for himself a collection
of rare prints. The boy from the earliest years was wont to frequent the
art sale rooms, and to choose out for himself, according to his own taste,
the engravings of Marc Antonio and Albert Diirer, and such prints after
Michael Angelo as he could obtain. Many men have been driven to acquire
in late life the technical knowledge of their craft; but Blake was confronted
with the practical problems of art almost before his invention had time to
shape itself. He got into close contact with the great works of style at once,
and it is probable that with such a vigorous imagination as he possessed
nothing could have been better than this early imitation of Italian art and
antique sculpture. " Servile copying," as he himself has said, "is the great
merit of copying," and we may imagine with what conscientious fidelity
he drew and copied the plaster figures in Mr. Pars's school. This prelimi-
nary study of drawing lasted for four years. At the end of that time
Blake entered upon the study of another important branch of his craft,
and was apprenticed to the engraver Basire, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mr.
Gilchrist seems to speak with some regret of this step in the artist's pro-
gress, as if the study of engraving were partly degrading to Blake's high
genius, and as if bis dreams of greatness in his art were thus at the out-
set checked and thwarted by untoward circumstances. " Thus it was
decided," he B&JB, " for the future designer that he should enter the,
to him, enchanted domain of art by a back-door as it were." There is
more than a doubt whether Blake himself would have appreciated any such
feeling on his behalf, or whether the regret is really well founded. It is
necessary to repeat that Blake was at no time inclined to regard art as a
sort of fairy palace to be entered by way of the affections ; to him it wa,s

WILLIAM BLAKE. 727

always a severely practical realm requiring practical effort and knowledge ;
and from the splendid uso which he made of engraving in later life, it is
very evident that he was far from holding the craft of inferior dignity.

Apprenticeship with Basire having ended, Blake at the age of twenty-
one proceeded to the Royal Academy. The young artist did not enter
the newly formed school without a full understanding of what he wanted
to learn. We have an anecdote from his own lips proving that the taste
he had previously formed for himself here stood him in good stead, for the
fashion of the time had set towards a style of execution that was alto-
gether unfitted for Blake's great gifts of imaginative invention. " I was
once," he tells us in his notes to Reynolds, " looking over the prints from
Raffaelle and Michael Angelo in the Library of the Royal Academy.
Moser (the keeper of the Academy) came to me and said — ' You should
not study these old hard, stiff, and dry, unfinished works of art ; stay a
little and I will show you what you should study.' He then went and
took down Le Brun and Rubens' Galleries. How did I secretly rage !
I also spoke my mind ! I said to Moser, * These things that you call finished
are not even begun : how then can they be finished ? The man who does
not know the beginning cannot know the end of art.' " Here the critic
who seeks such an opportunity may possibly enter a reproof against Blake'a
confident and sometimes arrogant mode of expressing himself; and to
those who feel the necessity of this reproof, the opportunity may often
recur. But it must be remembered that Blake's arrogance is not by any
means the blustering of a man uncertain of his faith. In that strange
and remarkable poem called the " Everlasting Gospel," he says, " Hu-
mility is only doubt," and of this kind of humility Blake certainly possessed
very little. About art in particular he held no opinion that could be in-
terpreted as mere conjecture. For right or wrong he was always quite
clear to himself as to the kind of excellence he wished to praise or the
sort of fault he deemed intolerable ; and for us who have to consider Blake
chiefly as a practising artist, it is more important to discover whether his
judgment was in itself valuable than to dwell overmuch upon a want of
suavity in verbal expression. Mr. Dante Rossetti, one of Blake's admirers,
who has combined in the highest degree sympathetic understanding with
impartial judgment, has ranked some of Blake's comments on painting and
poetry " among the very best things ever said on either subject," and it
would be difficult for anyone who has carefully studied this side of Blake's
genius to dispute the conclusion. But in his studies at the Academy
Blake was employed in more important labour than arguing points of taste
with his " superiors." There, for the first time in a systematic way, he
studied from the life. I say in a systematic way, because there can be
little doubt that from the first Blake copied diligently whatever came in
his way. In his notes to Reynolds we are told that " no one can ever
design till he has learned the language of art by making many finished
copies both of nature and art, and of whatever comes in his way from
earliest childhood," But in the Academy school he had, for the first

728 WILLIAM BLAKE.

time, an opportunity of studying from the living model, and this fact
therefore deserves to be noted as of importance in the progress of his
artistic training.

With his attendance at the Academy, Blake's education in the nar-
rower sense of the term is to be considered complete. Henceforth he is
left to the direction of his own genius, with such influences as necessity or
individual study might chance to bring. Necessity, because Blake, during
his life, was compelled to earn his livelihood by engraving from the works
of others, and it must have been that contact with their inferior style ex-
ercised a certain effect upon the artist, an effect for the most part taking
shape in violent and uncompromising revolt. We pass now, however,
from this brief record of his technical resources to the designs that gave
them exercise ; and here at the outset we must tako notice of the com-
paratively small extent of the material that has hitherto been accessible to
the student. It has often been urged by way of complaint that the public
is insensible to the grandeur and the charm of his design, but as a fact
the public has had very little opportunity of expressing itself upon the
matter, either for good or evil. It would be very interesting if some
body of influence, — say for instance, the Burlington Fine Arts Club, —
were to do for Blake what has been done for other men of genius, and
what Blake could not at any time do for himself. A selection of Blake's
works carefully made would establish the existence in English art of un-
suspected gifts, both of imagination and executive power, and would take
the artist at once out of the category of petted and pampered genius, and
firmly establish his fame as a great workman endowed with superior skill
as well as divine ideas. At the present time perhaps the best known of
Blake's works are the designs to the Book of Job, and the illustrations to
Blair's Grave. In the British Museum we find also a fine collection of the
printed books, the engravings to Dante, and a few isolated drawings of
rare merit. But two volumes have lately come to light which must in
some respects take rank as the most important existing witness to Blake's
extraordinary powers in art. Last year an advertisement appeared in the
Atlienaum for the sale of a copy of " Young's Night Thoughts," with
illustrations by William Blake. The announcement was not prominently
made, and attracted at the time little attention, even among the admirers
of the painter. The book was in Yorkshire, and was difficult of access,
and for a little while the matter dropped almost out of sight. Sub-
sequently, however, the owner brought his treasure to London, and for
some weeks it was lodged in the shop of a bookseller in Oxford Street, and
its existence, as an interesting relic of Blake's manner of illustration, was
duly noted in one of the weekly journals. We may add that the work is
still in London, and its contents are already familiar to a few lovers of
Blake's art.

In the fifteenth chapter of the Life Mr. Gilchrist refers to the illustrations
to Young's poem, but only to the engraved and published plates. These
were forty-three in number, extending only to the fourth night of the tedious

WILLIAM BLAKE. 729

series, and they were published by Edwards, of New Bond Street, in 1797.
But neither the biographer nor Mr. William Rossetti, who compiled the
catalogue of Blake's works, appears to have been aware of the existence
of the designs to which we now draw attention. In place of the in-
complete series of forty-three engravings, somewhat cold and thin in
effect, we have now five hundred and thirty- seven original designs, drawn
and coloured by Blake's own hand. The whole poem is here passed
under the artist's strange process of interpretation ; and it was from this
complete work, executed about 1794 for Edwards, that the published
selection was afterwards made. A uniform method of illustration is
observed throughout the whole poem. In the centre of a large sheet of
drawing paper, 16£ in. by 13, the text of a folio edition of Young is
inlaid, and around the text the design is distributed according to the
fancy and judgment of the painter. As a sample of Blake's genius the
work is for several reasons of unique importance. It gives expression to
his gift of colour as well as to his powers of design, and it retains the
purely decorative quality which from the first had always had a fascination
for the painter. In the Songs of Innocence and Experience the text
and the illustration unite for a single effect ; both are the work of the
painter's hand, and by many a skilful and delicate touch the engraved
words are linked with the flowers and figures that surround them, until
they too appear a growth of art, and not merely an intellectual symbol.
The process, as it was followed in these songs, was appropriate only in
dealing with small spaces, and where the imaginative sense of the designs
could be made subordinate to their decorative character. The delicate
elaboration by which every corner of the page left unoccupied by the
writing is filled at once with curving flame that branches inwards from the
margin, or by some floating form of angel broken away from a graceful tree
that shoots up by the side of the text, and whose boughs are still populous
with angel forms, would not serve and would not be possible on a larger scale,
where the illustration itself becomes a thing of independent intellectual
effort working in obedience to its own laws of design. But although this
earlier and richly ornamental system was not practicable in the case of the
" Night Thoughts," Blake still managed to satisfy his constant desire for
decorative effect. The text is not linked with the drawing, but the space
occupied by the text forms a part of the scheme of illustration. In every
.case the design is conceived and conducted in relation to this space, and
both in the distribution of the figures and in the arrangement of colour
the effect of this square island of print is duly considered. Thus it will be
seen that Blake did set himself really to illustrate these two folio volumes,
and the way in which he proceeded was to make each page a thing of
beauty in itself. Before we have time to consider the fitness of the picture
in an intellectual sense, we are forced to acknowledge the harmonious
effect of the page. And judging the work only from this point of view,
taking it merely as an attempt to render the leaves of a volume lovely with
varied colour and intricate pattern, there is another distinction to be

85—5

730 WILLIAM BLAKE.

noted which separates the illustrations from the earlier efforts of the
artist. In the Songs the page is full ; the hand of the artist has
travelled all over it, enriching every corner with ornament, and leaving the
whole surface brilliantly enamelled. But in the larger spaces of the
" Night Thoughts " a different and a bolder system has been adopted.
A great part of the page is very often left untouched, and clear both of
colour and drawing. With the perfect fearlessness of power, the artist
will break across the vacant space, leaving an undulating or broken line
as the limit of his design, and balancicg the illustration against the
untouched whiteness with faultless instinct and complete success. In this
gift of painting upon a part of the space at his disposal in such a way as
to leave the impression that he has painted upon the whole, this work of
Blake's shows the decorative power of Japanese art. There is the same
refined and sensitive judgment as to relation of masses, the same confident
taste as to the required strength of colour. It would be impossible to
give by description any notion of this particular quality in the designs.
As we turn over leaf after leaf of the extraordinary volumes, new patterns
of colour and fresh inventions of line surprise and satisfy our sense of
decorative beauty. The colouring is often no more than a delicate
distribution of even tints, but even in the least finished of the drawings
there is always evident the artist's desire to render his work admirable in
the first and most simple sense. Other and deeper qualities follow, but
this one condition of the art is seldom disturbed or sacrificed ; and if the
designs themselves were not worth comprehension, or were not compre-
hensible, the book would still remain an achievement of wonder in the
realm of decorative art.

In considering the higher significance of the work, a dominant quality
of Blake's imagination at once asserts itself. Perhaps no man has ever
combined in the same degree the impulse towards abstract speculation
with the painter's power of giving to every thought its precise image.
Blake was for ever translating the supersensual into the language of sense,
and this he did at all times with so much directness and simplicity that
the result is left dependent upon the fitness of the subject for the particular
means of interpretation. Sometimes the perfect faith of the painter fails
to communicate itself to the spectator, and the design becomes partly
inadequate by reason of its uncompromising fidelity and the serious and
evident conviction of its author. But although constant companionship
with sublime thought may sometimes lead the artist into themes which
painting cannot completely interpret, his gift of certain and precise vision
always secures a result artistic in itself. Thus we find in some of these
pictures that the effect is more potent before we learn the motive that has
suggested the design ; and sometimes it happens that when the poetical
intention is taken in connection with its artistic presentment, the very
simplicity of the work begets involuntarily something of ludicrous
suggestion. But this same quality of directness in vision is also the
source of the profoundest beauty over which art has control. The larger

WILLIAM BLAKE. 731

and more sublime the theme the more necessary becomes its presence ; for
nothing that belongs to a distant and ideal world can ever make itself
credible to us unless the form of its appearance is distinct and clear. All
that is most mysterious and unfathomable in the things of beauty, whether
it be some divine Greek marble whose untroubled fairness defeats all
terms of praise, or one of Michael Angelo's figures in whom the ideals of
energy and sadness strangely conflict, owns this individual shape and
sharply outlined form. This gift, which no student of Blake can have
missed, seems to us to render him before all things a painter. In poetry
the tendency to give sensuous form to every thought is sometimes a
hindrance to comprehension ; and in such of Blake's poems as strike at
high themes, much of the confusion, which not even Mr. Swinburne would
deny, springs from the constant effort of the author to deal with the
intellectual material of verse in the spirit of art rather than of literature.
The simpler poems of Blake are not affected by this difficulty ; there the
artistic element only helps the presentment of a theme of no intellectual
intricacy ; but there comes a point where symbolism cannot keep pace
with abstract thought, and here the attempt to thrust ideas into sentient
shape leads certainly to the confusion to be found in the Prophetic
books. So much is said not in order to suggest that Blake is undeserving
of high consideration as a poet : so long as his poems exist, that would be
a futile and blundering attempt, easy to defeat and perilous to make ; but
in order to record an opinion that his poetical faculty stops far short of
the magnificent scope of his artistic powers, and that the very gift which
gave him success in art often proved misleading in the realm of verse.

It is likely that no book could have served much better for the display
of Blake's genius than Young's Night Thoughts. The poet says so much
and means so little that the artist is left with a wide range of selection,
and without the harassing restrictions that a coherent text might have
brought. It is interesting to note with what facility Blake transports the
vague metaphors of the poet into the certain dialect of art. A less
independent and confident genius would have taken no account of Young's
audacious personifications, or would have rendered their image in art
absurd. But Blake both obeys the text and rises above it. Sometimes
he turns the artifice of the poem into grandeur by simple acceptance of its
terms. He realises the scene which to the poet had only been vaguely
shadowed, and gives to the large words, used without weight in the verse,
the splendour and dignity which belong to them by right. At other
times he escapes altogether from the text through the loophole of a stray
simile. When Young introduces the comparison of Eve gazing on the
Lake, Blake at once presents the kneeling and nude figure of a lovely
woman looking into the depths of a quiet pool, with long loosened hair
flowing down her back, and hands brought together in a gesture of soft
and rapt surprise ; and when the poet, innocent of any terrible suggestion,
speaks of " clustered woes," the painter seizes the words as the text of
one of his grandest inventions. He actually presents the image of woes

732 WILLIAM BLAKE.

in human form. Through the darkened air float strange islands, com-
posed of men and women, locked together in an agony of despair. This
is a good instance of the way in which Blake accepts the facts stated in
the text without sacrifice of grand imaginative effect. In the tangled
mass of human beings, writhing in every attitude of pain and yet compactly
bound together, we get the physical image of " clustering woes." The
idea is presented in its simplest and yet most potent form, and in that
strange way known only to great genius the deeper poetic truth is thus
enclosed in the commoner reality of physical fact. This union of physical
truth and profound poetic meaning has been the mark of great art of all
times. It is the sign whereby we know that the strength of the craftsman
is working in harmony with the vision of the poet, for in the highest
product as much scope is given to the one quality as to the other, and
when we meet with efforts to express sentiment and passion without
including this natural truth, then we may be assured that the art is either
immature or in decay.

There are instances in these volumes where absolute fidelity to the
poet's description leads the artist to very beautiful results. In one pas-
sage Young, who was never at all afraid of elaborate metaphors, presents
Thought as a murderer led through the desert of the Past, and there meet-
ing with the ghosts of departed joys. It is very probable that the gifted
author never gave himself the trouble to realise with any clearness the
image he had coined, but in Blake's mind, where the artistic sense was
always supreme, every image at once struck itself into outline, and took a
form as certain as the commonest reality. In the illustration he has set
to the verse the thought loses its fantastic extravagance, and becomes a
grave and solemn vision. The painter's strength and sureness of sight
have forced the loose sense into grand design, and yet no part of the meta-
phor is sacrificed or omitted. The picture becomes in the largest sense
representative of Murder and Eemorse. In the midst of a barren land-
scape of desert hills outlined against the dull sky lies the murdered body,
and by its side is the murderer. He stands, the right hand still grasping
the knife, with head turned away, and remorseful face thrown up despair-
ingly into the night ; and there above him, and meeting his gaze, are the
wailing and pitiful ghosts of past hopes and joys, little weeping figures
circled in the sky. Both the principal figures are nude, and that of the
murderer is drawn with fine choice of attitude and forcible expression.
And here again we must remark how perfectly the illustration fulfils its
first purpose of decorating the page upon which it is set ; how the flesh
tints against the deep-toned hills, and the faintly hued robes of the little
figures who inhabit the night, make up a perfect harmony of colour, and
how moreover the lines and masses of the composition are so disposed as
to keep the whole space balanced.

But Blake does not draw his inspiration only from words or passages
that suggest terror. Some of the most impressive designs in these volumes
are also the sweetest. He could touch things of innocence without losing

WILLIAM BLAKE. 733

strength, and could give the full impression of gladness and delight with-
out loss of seventy in style. One of the most perfect of these illustrations
represents Christ as the father of all children, sitting enthroned in the.
sky. On every side the golden heavens are peopled with childish forms,
flying with glad faces towards the form of Christ. Already one little nude
boy has reached the bosom of Jesus, and others circle close around, borne,
in, as it were, on the radiating lines of light that spring from the central
figure. It is a vision of all the world become as little children and making
their way to heaven. The glad, untroubled faces, with an expression of
happiness too easily begotten to be over intense, are lit with a light of
freer and more innocent worship than any painter has imaged in religious
art. And it may be remarked in this picture, as in many others, with
what perfect reality Blake renders the truth of flying forms. These little
figures, the boys nude and the girls demurely draped in close fitting gar-
ments, have not even wings to assist the impression of aerial support, and
yet their presence in the air is perfectly credible to us ; their confident
flight through the sky suggests no doubt or question as to its means. This
power of dealing with supernatural effects in a natural way is a part of
Blake's strong imaginative gift. He did not merely think of boys and
girls flying through the sky : he saw them ; and to his intense vision,
always gazing familiarly on what to other men is distant or uncertain, the
attitude of flying was as natural as any other. Thus we find in all cases,
that his floating or flying figures, whether winged or wingless, have an ex-
traordinary impression of physical reality as well as ideal beauty. With
that strong impulse towards purely natural truth which controls all his
inventions, he reconciles us at once to the merely practical difficulties
of the theme, and leaves us in quiet possession of all its higher meaning,
untroubled by the doubts that a less gifted workman would arouse. And
this same familiarity of Blake with the circumstances of an ideal world
tells with equal effect in his treatment of nude form. Other painters may
be, and surely have been, more correct in the drawing of the figure, but
no painter has ever given in a higher degree the perfect unconscious free-
dom that Blake gives to his nude figures. This impression, altogether in-
valuable in imaginative art, cannot be gained by any amount of copying
from the model : it springs only from the painter's power of vividly realis-
ing an existing world of nude figures. That is the only way in which the
figures of art can be made to look as if their nakedness was natural to
them. The nude female forms to be found in these illustrations to Young
are often of surprising beauty. We have already referred to the figure of
Eve bending over the water of the lake, and those who know the published
engravings will remember the symbolic representation of Sense running
wild with the dark pall of death spread above her. But the coloured
drawing of this subject very far surpasses the engraving. It is difficult to
imagine anything more beautiful than the wild freedom of this youthful
woman with long yellow hair blown about her shoulders, racing heedlessly
over the green hills, while above &e pall of death is fast descending.

784 WILLIAM BLAKE,

Another instance of graceful management of nude form, and an example
of the artist's method of illustration, is to be found in the drawing which
accompanies the following lines. The poet is speaking of Heaven, and he

says —

Song, Beauty, Youth, Love, Virtue, Joy,— this group
Of bright ideas, flowers of Paradise
As yet imperfect, in one blaze we bind,
Kneel and present it to the skies as all
We guess of Heaven.

Here Blake has literally followed the poet's image. Against a sky of in-
tense blue the scroll of flame is set, and within the flame the floating
figures of the heavenly virtues which a kneeling figure presents to the
skies. The forms of Song, Beauty, and Youth, and the rest each with some
appropriate emblem, are exquisitely disposed in the space of flame, and
they have that peculiar quality of freedom in their nakedness that Blake
always knew how to gain. Another illustration presents a symbolic figure
of the soul mounting to heaven. With folded arms the naked man
ascends, a sky of blue towards the yellow light that streams downward
from the opening clouds above him. The attitude is severely graceful, and
it is, moreover, directly suggestive of the idea of upward movement. Still
keeping to examples of nude form, we come upon a design showing with
what perfect independence Blake sometimes saw fit to treat the text of his
author. Young enlarging upon the qualities of friendship thus enquires : —

Know'st thou, Lorenzo, what a friend contains ?
As bees mixed nectar draw from fragrant flowers,
So men from Friendship, Wisdom, and Delight,
Tw ins ty'd by nature, if they part they die.

Blake in this design realizes, not friendship, but the two qualities which,
according to the poet, friendship yields. Wisdom, a learned shepherd
with crook and book, advances in close company with the more youthful
figure of Delight, whose more alert look and younger face is skilfully con-
trasted with the sober countenance of his companion. In the background
is Blake's favourite symbol of a peaceful and happy life — ranks of sheep
with bent heads quietly cropping the short grass. The figures in this
design, both nude, are of statuesque grace and dignity. They bear them-
selves as men long used to the ways of the ideal world they inhabit, and
their unconscious beauty brings to the spectator a conviction of such a,
world's existence.

A noticeable feature of these illustrations, and the last to which we,
shall call attention, is the artist's consistent treatment of the physical
image of Death. Neither here, nor indeed anywhere in Brake's, art, is
there found any faltering or doubt as to the individual Dualities with which
these abstract creations are to be endowed, ^ke great form that does
duty for Death has not been created out rj ^ series of tentative efforts.
There is no trace of experiment in the Result. It has the perfect precision
and distinct character of a portrait* ^ reality as of a form absolutely seen

WILLIAM BLAKE. 735

by the painter, if by no one else. But side by side with this impression of
strong portraiture, there is a sense of a supernatural and terrible presence.
Blake has not permitted the exactness of the representation to take from
the awful character of the subject. The vision is confident, but it is like
the vision of Sleep, which brings things near to us without rendering them
familiar. Thus about these images of death that are frequent throughout
the series, even where the action is most energetic and most relentless, we
feel that it is fatal rather than malicious, and that Death himself is like a
blind actor in a drama without purpose. The ancient face with closed
eyes and mouth buried in the long white hair that appears in the front of
the first volume is typical of the character given to Death in these designs.
We may note too the labour he performs as, with one colossal hand, he
sweeps an innocent family beneath his shadow, while upon the other, calmly
out- stretched upon the great knees and unconscious of its use, a naked
and enfranchised soul is gazing up to the angels imaged in the sky, her
loosened hair already caught by the winds of heaven.

In treating of a series of upwards of five hundred designs, it is impos-
sible, by a few examples, to give any idea of the endless fertility of the
painter's invention. In this respect alone these volumes form a most re-
markable witness to Blake's powers. No other work is of the same extent ;
and as this was executed when the painter was of a ripe age and still
young, we may suppose that no other work received a larger share of
energy and patient labour. Certainly it seems, as we turn over the richly
adorned leaves, that at no time could Blake have been more aptly disposed
for setting his thoughts in design. On the side of execution, though very
much is beautiful, there are faults that further experience availed to cor-
rect ; and for perfection in this respect, so far at least as drawing is con-
cerned, the illustrations to Job, put forward many years later, must always
hold the highest place. But these marvellous drawings for the " Night
Thoughts " have a special interest, as in some sense the store-house from
which future inventions were to be drawn. At this time perhaps more
than any other the artist's brain was ready to create, and so it happens
that we find here the first germs of ideas employed afterwards in other
works. The designs for Blair's " Grave " borrow largely from this source ;
and one of the most beautiful ideas in the plates to Job, the rank of angels
singing together with crossed hands and ordered wings, is to be found
partly expressed in the second volume of Young.

In this review of his work Blake has been spoken of only as an artist.
It would have been easy to have discussed at equal length his qualities as
a poet, and to have found not less of beauty in his work in verse. But in
the first place both praise and criticism of Blake's poetry have been
amply anticipated. Mr. Swinburne's examination into the mysteries of
the Prophetic Books remains a performance of extraordinary power
which no after efforts could readily rival ; and quite recently Mr. William
Bossetti has done for the more easily intelligible of Blake's poems all that
needs to be done in order to render them acceptable to the public. And

736 WILLIAM BLAKE.

if this were not so, it would still remain in our judgment true that Blake's
art is the greater of his achievements, and the one most powerfully
claiming recognition. His poetry takes its place with equal and greater
English verse ; but in certain qualities of his art, the qualities that our
painters have most often needed, and most often missed, Blake as an
Englishman stands almost alone. We have striven to make it understood
that Blake was no mere visionary speaking a language strange to
painting. Where he was greatest he was most in sympathy with the
greatest art of earlier times, and his gifts of design and his powers of
expression in drawing are certainly not less remarkable than the qualities
of his imagination. We tried to show in the beginning of our notice of
Blake how severe and technically searching was the standard by which
he judged of the works of other men, and no higher praise can be given in
parting than by saying that he better than others is able to bear the
severity of his own test. It is chiefly due to English art that these great
qualities should be fully recognised. To Blake himself it now matters
nothing, nor would it at any time have mattered very greatly. He suffered
from want of fame, but he was not rendered miserable. He had throughout
his life the praise of men whose praise was best worth having at the time,
and towards the close of his career he said himself about this very subject of
fame, " I wish to do nothing for profit : I want nothing : I am quite happy."

J. C. C.

HE PUT HIS ARM ROUXD HER AS HE SPOKE, AND SHE LKT HER HAND FALL INTO HIS.

737

CHAPTER XXIX.

SORROW'S KEENEST WIND.

NE by ono, the spectators
of this strange little tragedy
took their leave as specta-
tors do. The play being
over, they returned to
their own interests. All
that evening Angel and her
father sat by the fire in the
studio silent, but not un-
mindful of each other's
presence. Little Rosa was
quietly playing in a corner
alone. Angel held her
father's horned old hand
in her sofc fingers.

They had had a long
talk together ; she had
been quite open to him.
and without disguise.

Those well-meant de-
ceits, those agonizing suppressions by which people try to save others
from pain — are they worth the grief they occasion ? Very often the
sense of confidence and security far outbalances any pain of frankness
and even of condemnation expressed.

A father does not utterly resent any misfortune, however greatly to bo
explored, by which his daughter is doomed to remain at his side.
John Joseph held the pretty hand with its pointed fingers and looked at it
with fatherly eyes.

" This is a painter's hand," he said, with a kind little caressing tap.
"Where is thy cameo ring, Angel, that the Lady Ambassadress gave
thee ? "

" How can I tell you where it is ? " said Angel, with a sudden burst
of jfeeling. " De Horn took it away ; he did not give it back to me.
How can I tell you where he is ? How shall I ever know where he ia
Her voice rang sadly shrill as she spoke.

738 MISS ANGEL.

The old roan knew not what to say to comfort her ; he could only
mutely caress the poor little trembling hand.

Angelica felt that the truth had now been owned. Now there was no
longer anything to conceal, and any truth faithfully faced is strength in
itself.

She told herself, and she told the old man simply, that her life was
spoiled, that she could not feel that vows spoken with all sincerity and
seriousness were broken because circumstances had changed. She
regretted it all, but there could be no change.

" If I had not been sincere in my feeling for that man, what excuse
should I have had, father ? " said she. " It came to me suddenly ; but
it was no imagination. While he lives I shall ever feel bound to him.
What excuse had I but my sincerity ?"

So she spoke, but nevertheless Angel fell into a strange indescribable
state of morbid despair. Her nobler nature was no longer called upon
to act ; her commonplace, every-day self failed to endure the daily pricks
and the stings of pity, of officious sympathy and half concealed curiosity ;
she knew not how to bear it all.

If she had not prayed with all her heart for direction, she once said
to herself, she could have better borne to be disgraced, to be ashamed of
her actions, to be branded, so it seemed to her, for life.

And yet she had only prayed to be helped to do right. She had not
asked to be spared suffering.

Her prayer had not been so fruitless as she imagined. That for which
they all blamed and pitied her, for which she blamed herself, reflecting the
minds of those she trusted, was not perhaps all in her conduct which
most deserved condemnation.

Her whole nature seemed changed. She who had once courted atten-
tion now shrank from notice with sensitive terror.

In after days she used to look back with strange pity and wonder at
these sad and miserable times ; but, seen by the light of a brighter future,
these old days looked different, nor could she ever quite remember their
full depth of bitter dulness. Even to remember is scarcely possible, to
put oneself back is sometimes a feat almost as difficult as to put oneself
forward. Some one once showed me a drawing of Mendelssohn's. He
had sketched his friend's house in loving remembrance of the hours he
had spent there. ' It is wonderfully accurate,' said the lady who had
preserved the picture ; ' but one window is misplaced, it is strange that,
remembering it all so exactly, he should have been mistaken on this point.'

The windows of the past have a curious way of shifting. We look
back at the stone walls which have enclosed our lives, and they seem one
day to open. Perhaps after-lights break through and make a way. Per-
haps the angels break in, as in that picture of Tintoretto's where the
heavenly company bursts triumphant through the massive walls and
becomes suddenly revealed to the astounded Mary, The angels of the past
do sometimes reveal themselves.

MISS ANGEL. 739

Although Angelica shrunk from any allusion to her troubles, old
Kauffmann scarcely spoke on any other subject. He would return to it
again and again, entreat her with tears and snuff to dissolve her mar-
riage.

Then her agitation grew excessive. " No, no," she would say, " sho
had no power to break such a tie."

" But the marriage is no marriage," old Kauffmann would cry, ex-
asperated, and appealing to Mr. Reynolds, their constant friend. " Some
one reads a service, there are no bans, no witnesses. The man had been
married before. I, her father, am not consulted — the man disappears."

" There was a license," said Mr. Reynolds, slowly, " I have taken
counsel's opinion. The previous marriage could not be proved. With
you, Catholics, the law is strict ; but I have no doubt that by an appeal
to Rome "

" I entreat you, dear father, dear Mr. Reynolds," interrupted Angelica,
with passionate emphasis, " leave it, take no steps ; you only give me
more pain. I only ask to be left alone to bear my own burden, to injure
no one else. Forget it all, father; I shall speak of it no more."

And she kept her word ; but though she did not speak she drooped, the
blithe spirit was gone. Her friends were full of anxiety and solicitude.
Lady Diana used to come day by day. Little Miss Reynolds used to
arrive on tiptoe, slowly creaking the door-handle, as if a click of the latch
would add or detract from poor Angelica's barrenness of heart. Every-
body had a different prescription, but none reached her.

For some months Angelica Kauffmann seemed strangely altered : she
had no word to utter, nothing to feel or to express. Such times come to all :
night falls, the winter of our discontent covers and hushes the songs and
perfumes and blooming garlands of summer-time. She had nothing more
to say to anybody. She had said so much in so few words, felt so much
in so few minutes, that now there seemed nothing left. She kept silence
with her father ; she would endure his solicitude in a dogged, stupid sort
of way. One day Lady Diana folded her in her arms in a sudden burst
of indignation. " My poor, poor friend ! " she said. " Yes," Angel
answered, " and this is only the beginning : it gets worse and worse."

" The low-born, knavish, insolent wretch ! " cried Lady Diana, whose
own pride had been curiously touched by the remembrance cf past
occurrences.

" You have a right to be angry," said Angelica, blushing up angrily ;
" but he did love me. I am not his superior in birth, he loved me ; not
you," she repeated, with a strange bitter laugh. The laugh went on and
then changed into a great flood of tears.

" You will see it differently some day," said Lady Di ; "you do not
remember how you have been insulted. Have you no dignity, no pride,
to resent such treatment ? "

" I think not," said Angel, hanging her head and speaking in a hard
nd dogged tone. " I am utterly and hopelessly disgraced. I see it in

740 MISS ANGEL.

every face I meet. What use is there in speaking of it all ? Nobody can
understand me, and even you will not understand that I can have some
sincerity of fjeling in my heart."

Her sorrow made her quite reckless of what she owed to other people,
though not indifferent to their blame. It seemed to her as if all eyes
were upon her.

It was not all imagination on Angelica's part when she thought that
people were looking at her, counting her poor heart throbs, scanning her
lonely tears. She was a well-known character. This curious romance
crept abroad from one source and another. Gossip was better managed in
those days lhan now, and persons of a larger mind were interested in the
private details which then took the place of those piblic facts in which
persons are now absorbed.

Mr. Reynolds was discreet in vain ; it provoked him to hear the poor
girl's name in every mouth. Wherever he went he was cross-questioned
and re-cross-questioned. Some blamed, some laughed, all talked.

Lady Diana used to bite her lips with vexation. What cannot one or
two good friends accomplish ? The influence of this man and this woman
worked wonders in Angel's behalf. Their steady friendship saved her
from the ill opinion of many who were ready to accept the first version
that was given to them, and who felt it incumbent upon them to judge,
with or without facts to go upon. Angel refused all invitations ; she could
scarcely be persuaded to go out into the street. Lady Diana was most
anxious to carry her away then and there to her own country-house in
Hampshire, of which mention has been made. But Angelica seemed to
have a nervous horror of any change, any effort.

One day, a long time before, a Mr. St. Leu, a barrister and art critic,
had been speaking of some of Angelica's work to Mr. Reynolds. " It is
graceful," the critic had said, "but over- strained and affected. Every-
thing is too couleur de roseate-rose for my plain common sense. I know the
old father ; a friend of his, M. Zucchi, an Italian, gave him a letter to
me. The fair Angelica I have not seen ; but her work does not attract
me."

" You have scarcely entered into her intention," Mr. Reynolds had said,
gravely. ' ' To her charming nature the whole world is a garden of hap-
piness. She knows that sorrow exists. The wickedness of life — to us
older people it is, perhaps, the only real sorrow — does not seem to occur
to her. Perhaps it might be better for her pictures if she had less con-
fidence, but for herself it would not be so well," said the painter.

One day, after poor Angel's tragedy, the two men met again by
chance. " How is your friend Miss Kauffmann ? " the critic asked, quite
kindly. " Poor lady ! I fear her experience has been bitter enough to take
the roses out of her garland for a long time to come. I am expecting a
visit from her and her father at my chambers," he continued ; " they arc
coming this afternoon, on business connected with tlie house they
live in."

MISS ANGEL. 741

M. St. Leu's staircase led from under the covered way that crosses
from Inner Temple Lane. The staircase abuts upon a quaint old wig-shop,
that cannot be much altered since the days when Angelica looked in
through the narrow panes at the blocks and the horse -hair curls perched
upon their shining cranes.

" I will wait for you here, father," said she ; " it is out of the wind.
I do not care to go up." The nervous terror of meeting strangers was
still upon her. She smiled to her father and went and stood in the ore
sheltered corner of this windy place, waiting by the wig-shop and leaning
against the brick wall.

The colonnade divides two pretty old courts, with many lawyers and
bricks and memories, with blue bags issuing from old door-ways ; red, and
brown, and grey aro the tints ; quaint and slight the arches and peristyles,
to some minds as quaint and graceful in their mists and wreathing fogs as
any flaunting marble or triumphant Pompeian vista. For a long time
Angel watched the passers-by ; listened to the sound trf the footsteps.
It was a bitter day for all its spring promise : a fog hung over the streets,
the wind came dry and dusty, piercing through the damp mist. Angelica
waited, indifferent to it all ; the weather made little difference to her in
her strange depression.

Would anything ever touch her again ? she wondered. It seemed to
her as if even trouble could not come near her any more. It is true that
interest itself fails at times, and that life is then very saltless and ashy to
the taste ; but even this is a part of life's experience, if honestly accepted.
Angel waited, listlessly watching two children descending and climbing
the steps of a piled brown house with an arched doonvay. She felt forlorn
and out of place ; other people were living on, progressing, and working
to some end. She had no end, nothing to wish for. Feeling the utter
hopelessness of it all, she could see no way out of it, no possible
issue.

She had never taken into consideration that tide which flows and ebbs,
that alternate waking and sleeping which belong to all living emotion.
If our hearts did not beat with alternate pulses, they would not be alive.

The children were gone, a lawyer's clerk had paced the court and
dwindled away. (I don't know if lawyers' clerks looked as old and worn a
hundred years .ago as they do now.)

One big old man dressed in loose untidy clothes went slowly past,
blinking at her from beneath a small scratch wig that scarce covered his
big head ; he rolled as he walked along, portly, unsightly. There was a
certain stamp of arbitrary dignity about him for all his shabby clothes
and uncouth gestures. Angelica recognised the face and strange actions,
for she had seen Mr. Johnson one evening at the play ; that evening when
Garrick acted Hamlet.

She shrunk away from his steady gaze. He passed on, and went up
the staircase by which her father had just climbed. Then more smoke-
coloured figures went by with the misty minutes. Then by degrees the

742 MISS ANGEL.

place became quite silent and deserted, except for certain ghosts of her own
fancy, and drifts of smoke and soot, and an odd jumble of recollections.

Angel sighed, from present chill depression as much as from any
other cause. Some stir of pain seemed awakened suddenly ; a sort of
unreasonable retrospective sense of shame and grief came over her, and
caused her to hide her face in her two hands for an instant.

CHAPTER XXX.

IN PATIENCE POSSESS YE YOUR SOULS.

IT was in that instant that a heavy step creaked down the narrow stair-
case, fell on the stones, came to her side, and stopped.

" Yes, father ! " she said, without looking up.

" Your father is above with Mr. St. Leu," said a voice.

It was not John Joseph's vibrating tenor, but a deep and measured
tone she did not know ; and then Angelica raised her eyes, and met the
full and steady look of two bleared heavy orbs, from which, nevertheless,
a whole flooding light of sympathy and kindness seemed to flow. The
ugly seamed face was tender with its great looks of pity.

" You are Mrs. Kauffmann," said the man in this voice, with a sort of
echo. " I told your father I would stay with you, my dear, until he had
finished his business. I have wished to make your acquaintance," he
continued, after a moment's pause. "I know to what straits we poor
human creatures can be brought, and I confess that the recital of your
story has moved me greatly."

There he stood still looking at her, and she timidly glanced at the
lazy well-known figure, at the heavy face with the indomitable fire of light
in it, the lamp burning through the bushel and darting its light into one
heart and another ; Johnson's looks no less than his words carried that
conviction which is the special gift of some people.

Angelica, who had of late so shrunk from strangers, felt as if this was
a friend to whom she could complain ; to whom it was possible to speak.

"What do you mean?" she cried impetuously (her tongue seemed
suddenly unloosed). "Who do you take me for? Do you know my
story ? It is only foolery and disgrace. People look at me — not, as
you do, with kindness — no, I see their scorn ; I feel their importunate
curiosity, and know not how to escape from it all, from myself, my
miserable life "

" Hush, my dear ; hush ! " said this stranger. " There is no wisdom
in useless and hopeless sorrow ; although, somehow, it is so like virtue at
times that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved by me, at least.
To be ill thought of in another person's mind is in itself no wrong-doing,
although it may signify some discomfort to yourself. But believe me, my
dear young lady," said the wise old man, "the world is not so scornful
as you imagine ; so unjust as it is peevishly represented. For my own

MISS ANGEL. 743

part," he went on, "I love and respect you, disgraced, as you call it;
whereas before, there was a time when my sympathy was less. You have
done no wrong ; you have injured yourself, but no other person. In some
ways disappointment is as good as success, for it does not prevent the
sincerity of your good intentions, nor alter the truth of your feelings. To
be mistaken is no crime. Many things turn out differently from our
wishes. Can you follow me, my dear ? Nay, you must not cry ; you
must not lose courage. A lifetime is still before you, and much hope for
the future."

He took her languid hand, and held it between his big palms. He
comforted her strangely, though she scarcely owned it to herself, or knew
how this strange help reached her.

" Hope ! " cried poor Angel. " What hope can there be for me ? I
know not how to escape my thoughts. I know not whom to trust, whom
to love, what to do."

" Love your enemies ; do good to them that ill use you," said the old
man, solemnly. "Follow your own sense of right. Fear not to love,
my dear. Fear hate and mistrustful feelings. Fear the idleness of grief;
accept the merciful dispensation of Providence, which, by the necessity of
present attention, diverts us from being lacerated by the past. It is a
most mortifying reflection for any of us to consider what we have done
in comparison with what we might have done. It still remains for you to
contemplate the future without undue confidence, but without unnecessary
alarm, and with humble trust in your own efforts for right doing, to
determine upon the best, the most reasonable course for a Christian to
pursue, and to follow that course with courage and humility."

Some people have a gift of magnetism, of personal influence, which is
quite indescribable, which belongs partly to the interest they take in the
concerns of others, partly to some [natural simplicity and elevation of
soul.

Johnson's personality and great-hearted instinct reaches us still across
the century that divides us from its convincing strength. What must that
tender, dogmatic, loving help have been to poor little Angelica in her per-
plexity, as she found herself face to face with this human being, so devout
and wise and tender in his sympathy.

Now at last she seemed to have found an ark, a standing-place in her
sea of trouble. She looked up into the heavy face. She seemed to
breathe more fully ; the load upon her heart was suddenly lightened, and
with a burst of tears she stooped and kissed the great brown hand.

" Oh ! " she said, " you have spoken words that I shall never forget.
Heaven sent you to me. Now I feel as if I could face my life again."

The poor little thing's nerves had been over- wrought, over- strung all
this long time. It seemed to her now, as if this man had taken her hand,
and led her calmly to the encounter of terrors and alarms which she had
not dared to face alone, and which vanished as she met them.

When John Joseph came down after his long conference with Mr. St.

744 MISS ANGEL.

Leu he found Angelica brightened, smiling through tears. His old Angel
was come back, with a softened light in her eyes and a sweetened tone in
her voice.

" Father, how long you have been ! " she said. " Not too long, not
one moment too long ! If you could know what this half hour has done
for me ! "

It had done this — it had restored her self-respect, her confidence in
others.

John Joseph rubbed his hands, seeing her look of life renewed. The
slight figure drifted less languid, more erect. There was hope in her
steps. They passed out into the busy street, under Temple Bar, into
the noisy haunts of men.

Angel's friend rolled off on his ungainly way. He was grateful and
cheered himself, for to bless is in itself the blessing of some generous
hearts.

As she went along Angelica once more remembered the priest and the
text carved upon the stone in the cloister at Verona. But this was nd
stony oracle carved to order ; this was a living word, one spoken for her
alone, one that came home to her and kindled her sad heart.

When Angelica reached home that day everything seemed to be
changed. So much can one person sometimes do for another. Mr.
Johnson's confidence seemed to have touched some secret spring. She
set to work again with renewed courage. Kesolve and patient endeavour
came to her aid. Everything seemed possible again, even without the
spring of hope.

Some days, utterly dry and parched, she worked on from habit, hoping
that the sap of interest was not quite crushed within her heart. At
others, strung to happier measure, she seemed to be uplifted, to be able to
put her care away. She had never painted better in her life than now ;
orders came in, and she was obliged to defer a long-promised visit to
Lowdenham Manor, Lady Diana's house in Hampshire.

People are made up of so many contradictory feelings, that when a
person's conduct surprises us we forget how much circumstances have to
do with the outward aspect of life. As the material facts change, the
motive forces seem to turn into fresh channels ; but it is the same force or
weakness of character that drives the impulse. Angelica Kauffmann was
a woman born to be a slave, easily influenced by stronger wills, but still
more by her stubborn ideas of sentiment.

One trying ordeal was still before her ; it was but meeting with an
old tried friend. We mortals are very impatient beings, and we seem to
have some instinct by which we often make bad matters worse, far worse
than they need be. Aatonio -added to poor Angelica's troubles by his
return, by his utter and Indignant sympathy. When he saw her looking
unhappy, his grief for her trouble seemed to turn against her in its very
intensity. They met in the street one day ; he was on his way to see her.
She had been listlessly strolling in the sunshine with little Rosa, and they

MISS ANGEL.

Were standing by the railings at the corner of the square, when they saw
him crossing the street. He, too, looked worn and harassed, although he
had come straight from sweet golden groves and perfumed skies. He had
received a strange summons to Windsor immediately on his return, and
was just come hack from thence. Ha had found bad news enough waiting
his return to put out perfumes and southern lights for days to come.

He did not speak at first when Angel gave him her languid hand : she
was frightened by his manner.

" When did you come ? " she faltered.

He was silent for a little bit, trying to span the gulph which had opened
between them. He was unreasonable, indignant, angry with her, with
fate.

She looked at him at last with her steady eyes. The look made him
speak, though at one time in his anger against her he had thought all
words were over between them for ever.

"I came yesterday," he said. "I found a letter calling me to
Windsor. There is sad news there. I must return thither. I scarcely
thought of seeing you, but I could not keep away."

" Why should you keep away because I am in trouble," said Angel,
leading the way across the street to her house, of which the door was on
the latch, and flitting upstairs before him into her studio. She went up
to her easel from habit, untied her hood ; it fell upon the floor at her feet.
She waited for her friend to speak.

Angelica for once seemed crushed, made dull somehow. She did not
hold up her head, but stood looking before her with vacant eyes. Angelica !
was this Angelica ? It was not so much that she looked ill and changed ;
but some sharpness had come into her face, some dull cloud into her
glancing blue eyes, some expression of distaste and weariness, that Antonio
had never seen before. It cut him to the heart. His grief made him
unjust. He began to pace the room in a sort of fury, then turned and
came straight back to her.

" Unhappy girl ! " he cried, " what have you done ? "
His melting voice, restrained by his grief for her trouble, seemed to
pass over her as a wave of salt bitterness, and as he reproached her the
two seemed drawn together more nearly again.

"What madness befell you?" he cried. "Did you forget your
father and all who love you ? Oh ! Angelica, what have you done ? "

" What did you mean by it ? " he cried again. "Had you no sense
of honour left ? no instinct of your own dignity ? "

And his eyes brimmed over with tears, and he stooped and took her
hand and kissed it with a tender respect which belied his words.

"You would have done better if you had married me," said Antonio
with a sort of groan. " I who went away because I thought it hopeless,
and, fool that I was, could not consent to follow in your train as so
many others had done. I had rather you had died. 0 Angelica ! " he
cried, in a tone of such true sorrowful part in her sorrow that Angel, who
VOL. xxxi. — NO. 185. 36.

746 MISS ANGEL.

had been angry and cold and indignant, now suddenly began to cry ; and
the tears did them both good, and washed away their bitterness of heart.

" You know I did love him, Antonio, and sometimes I think I do love
him still," she said.

He might have raged again, but for her tears and sorrow of heart.

" Perhaps I am not married," she said, wiping her tears, "but when
I took those vows upon me I was sincere. Now let me at least fulfil
that which I engaged to do. I should not know one moment's peace if I
went against my feeling. As it is, I have a certain peace — a feeling of
self-respect, which helps me. I must make up to my father for all I
have made him suffer, and I must accept my life as it comes to me. Not
the happiest lot, indeed, but a tolerable one compared to some," said
Angel, taking Antonio's hand. "I have the blessing of constant occu-
pation. It wearies me at times, and I have sometimes envied those
whose life did not depend upon their toil ; but on the whole I would
not have it otherwise. We are friends, are we not ? " she added, in
her old girlish voice ; " I want my friend Antonio more than I ever did.
I think I shall know better how to value him."

But all the same, they were parted for a long long time. Antonio
felt too deeply to be able to look on calmly, to meet John Joseph with
patience. He could do no good ; he seemed to re-open her wounds by his
sympathy. It was no use that he should stay, so he felt. One day he
went to Mr. Reynolds. It was some comfort to rail at fate in the company
of another who had suffered also in some measure. He asked Mr.
Reynolds question upon question. Once he lost his temper, and flew out
with a burst of anger at the calm demeanour of the unruffled master.

" Forgive my importunity," he said, recollecting himself with an
effort ; " she is my dearest, oldest friend. I have been almost beside
myself, and I ask myself, as if in a cruel dream, whether it can be true."

" I am afraid it is too true," said Mr. Reynolds, gravely. " It is most
unfortunate, most distressing."

Antonio turned pale and faint. His nerves were not of the same
equal poise as the great painter's, and he could not face the ruin of his
friend's life without the acutest physical suffering.

Mr. Reynolds continued calmly : " You may rely on me for leaving no
stone unturned to release her ; only her consent is necessary, and this she
absolutely refuses."

" She is mad ! " cried Zucchi. " What does she mean ? "

11 No one can deplore her strange infatuation more than I do," said
Mr. Reynolds, gravely. " She considers herself married, and refuses to
be set free. I myself have tried in vain to convince her of her mistake."

Antonio gave an odd Hashing glance at his companion ; then he
hastily took leave and hurried away.

MISS ANGEL. 74?

CHAPTER XXXI.
AT LOWDENHAM MANOR.

WE have seen Angelica in such saddened straits of late that it is a
satisfaction to turn a page and find her in pleasant pastures again, and by
still waters.

It was evening, and they had all been sitting silent in the drawing
room : Miss Reynolds in her corner by the window ; Lady Diana was
working at the table ; and Angelica — poor Angelica ! — she, too, had been
at work, but her hands had fallen listless into her lap, and she sat watch-
ing the drops, the green lawn, with its little furnaces of geraniums.
The water did not seem to extinguish these flames ; it seemed, on the
contrary, to feed and stimulate their fires. The room was faded and
becalineted ; but Lady Diana had been content to leave it as she had
found it, with the great china pots of last summer's rose leaves, and other
relics of its late possessors. It was Angelica who had plucked two jars
full of china roses, and who had brought in a great burning gladiola
bursting from its stem. Its red head was reflected in the convex looking-
glass.

I don't know how long they had sat silent. The silence seemed to
grow heavier and heavier as the minutes went by. Everything seemed
to make it worse. It had begun, as most silences do, by a word best left
unsaid.

" I hoped Lord Henry would have ridden over again to see us before
this," said Miss Reynolds. "I don't know that we ladies are not better
without him ; but hetalked to Angelica of coming to see how we were all
getting on."

" I am sure he will come," said Angelica, " for he prom for he told

me the last time "

" What should he come for ? " said Lady Diana, quickly. She looked
up so stern and so abruptly that Angelica gave a little start. " Why did
you make him promise to come again ? "

"It was his own proposal, not mine,' said Angelica, wearily. "I
want no company but that which I have," she said.

Angelica could hardly have told you herself how the days went by at
Lowdenham Manor. The distant murmur of the sea reached them from
time to time, the days were green and still and even in their progress.
Twilights lengthened into dawns, dawns into mid- day ; but even the mid-
day glares came shadowed and softened through the clouding branches.
On most sides rose green hills, fringed and heaped with green bushes.
Here a cow would be grazing high in the air, it seemed, climbing over
the top of the elm trees. The blue smoke of some cottage chimney would
be spiring from some deeper hollow, spreading, melting, vanishing deli-
cately away. Everything seemed subdued and mellowed. The very

86—2

748 MISS ANGEL.

tree stems Mere softly wound with ivy sprays. The old orchard walls
were lined with lichen, as were the branches of the heavy fruit trees.
The ponds lay clear, reflecting the greens and gentle blues and lilacs of
the landscape. The bushes were overflowing with convolvuluses flowering
white. It seemed to Angelica, like a place hidden in the heart of a
labyrinth to which they had come winding by green lanes.

Angelica felt so safe, so peaceful here, far away from the world of
doubt and sorrow in which she had been living so long. Did such a
world still exist ? Yes, perhaps ; but not for her to-day.

This place .to her was but complete with beauty, with peace and
comfort. Anything more startlingly beautiful might have been too diffi-
cult in her worn and exhausted state. Here by degrees a silent under-
standing seemed to havo arisen between the poor tired woman and the
sweet inanimate world to which a kind fate had brought her for sympathy
and comfort. In proportion to the very pain she had suffered now came
ease and peace, and a sense of it and of unspoken beauty. Alone here
was not alone ; everything seemed too sweet and full of life, of natural
affinities, of utter and completing loveliness. De Horn, as she still called
him to herself, had travelled far out of her life. Angelica had no interest
or part in his world, and yet — it was difficult to explain, nor did she
attempt to do so— she believed that with all his wrong and his lies,
his cruel deceit, he had loved her truly; and thinking of this, she felt as
if she had no need to forgive.

Lady Diana's friend, Mrs. Darner, came over while Angelica was at
the manor house ; and it was here that the Kauffmann painted that
charming portrait which is in Miss Johnston's possession, of a person
whose name has since become more famous than it deserved. Anne
Conway was now the wife of Mr. Dawson Darner, the man of the hundred
waistcoats.

Angelica finished the picture in London, and the Kauffmann and her
model used to have many a discussion as they sate over their work. One
day Reynolds came in, and found them in hot debate.

" Surely," cried Mrs. Darner, "surely an impression, however con-
veyed, is more valuable to the artist than mere imitation. I can often
work better and more rapidly from my own mental recollections than by
merely copying something which does not after all represent my idea."

Here the painter overcame the man of the world. " My dear young
lady, that is precisely what I must ask leave to contradict (if you will
forgive the liberty). With all your great gifts, your sweet impulsive in-
dustry, and admirable feeling, it is • only the study of Nature that can
give any of us that mastery which we must all desire. Kules are no
trammels to those who are working in the right direction."

" You mean that in Art, as in other things," said Angelica blushing,
" it is by submitting most completely to the laws of truth that we best
discover her intentions ? Do you know," she went on, "I seem some-
times to have found out of late that obedience is best ? Now as I paint,"

MISS ANGEL. 749

she said, smiling to her model, " the more completely I can obey the
colour of your beautiful brown hair, the better my likeness will be."

And in truth Angelica never painted a better picture than this charm-
ing figure, languid and delicate, with clasped hands full of flowers, of
that young lady in her white dress, with her dark hair piled above
her pale high-bred face. Mr. Reynolds praised the portrait heartily. He
had a special reason for being anxious that Angelica should do credit
to herself and her talent at this time.

" But surely," cried Mrs. Darner, persisting, " there are two ways of
seeing things. If you only copied the signs without interpreting them,
I am certain your pictures, Mr. Reynolds, would-be vastly different
to what they are — deficient in the grand air which so especially belongs to
them."

" Sometimes we are happy in our subjects, and they inspire us," said
the painter, courteously. " But I fear, madam, that I must hold to my
guiding principle, and seek for a calm and even pursuit of facts as they
appear to mo."

"Ah, you are right," said Angelica, with some emotion. "Let us
be calm," she cried, excitedly. "Let us work and live tranquil and un-
shaken by the storms of passionate endeavour, thankful that we have
true friends to guide us, to help us on the right way."

Mr. Reynolds was greatly touched by her sudden appeal.

"You, of all people," he said, "have the right to count upon your
friends ! and it is not only upon friendship," he said, very kindly. " Are
you prepared for distinction ? " he asked, smiling.

" What do you mean, Mr. Reynolds ? " said Angel.

" I mean that never was there an age in which art flourished under
more enlightened patrons or with more charming disciples," said Mr.
Reynolds, with a bow to the two wondering ladies. But he would not say
more, nor could they guess to what he was alluding.

CHAPTER XXXII.

To snow FALSE ART WHAT BEAUTY WAS OF YORE.

THE Society of Amalgamated Artists had existed for many years ; but
its spirit was not that to which the tranquil Reynolds inclined. Anger,
jealousies, depressions seemed to him as blasphemies against the creed
they all professed. With all his quietness of nature, Reynolds could ill
brook opposition. Noisy dissension was to him intolerable. The society
had a way of selecting first one and then another victim for suspicion and
persecution. At one of their annual meetings they deliberately excluded
sixteen of their best members from the council. A certain number of
those who remained immediately resigned their posts. Ill-feeling was

750 MISS ANGEL.

great on each side. Mr. Moser was accused by some ; others defended
him. It resulted in the proposal for instituting a new society, and during
Reynolds's absence in Paris this autumn the scheme grew and gained
ground. Moser, Chambers, and West waited on the King, with proposi-
tions and outlines for new academies of arts to be instituted in London.

When Mr. Reynolds returned from abroad he found the whole thing in
train. The officers were named, a great meeting was convened. West came
to request his presence at Mr. Wilton's house, where a certain number of
painters were then assembled. Reynolds, it is said, hesitated and delayed.
Whether from accident or purpose tea was served an hour later than usual,
and when he and his young companion reached the house at last, the
meeting was on the point of dispersing. When the door opened and iho
two came in, they were received (says Northcote) with a sudden burst of
acclamation, and Reynolds was with one voice proclaimed President of the
New Academy. Cannot one picture the scene ? These bursts with which
those who have the generous gift of divination hail the rulers among the
people have always seemed to me among the most affecting incidents in
life. Reynolds was touched and overcome by this sudden revelation of
good will and good sympathy. From the Court he had received but small
token of praise hitherto, but this was worth far more than any flare of
fashionable adulation or passing success. This was the genuine tribute of
the workers like himself who knew and understood the value of the laurels
they bestowed from their own store.

Mr. Reynolds walked into Angelica's studio that night after the meet-
ing. Little Rosa had fallen asleep in one of the big chairs. The faithful
lamp was burning dim, the log was smouldering on the hearth, the room
was warm and silent, the atmosphere serene. Angelica had opened her
instrument and had been singing some snatches of Mozart, to whose music
her German soul responded. That tender melody between tears and
laughter seemed at times to speak all the doubts and certainties of her
indefinite life.

The song ended not in a chord, but in Mr. Reynolds, who came in to
her music, breaking into the last few notes. " I have been very much
moved to-night," he said, " so much so that I came over here, dear lady,
to see if your windows were a-light, and if you had not a gleam of
sympathy for a friend in your kind heart ; " and then he told her in
a few words what had happened to him.

It was a happiness to Angelica to listen to his story, and she made
him tell her again and again what had been done, promising absolute
secrecy for tfye moment. But there are hours when sympathy is not
always at command for those who can claim no hand to grasp their
fortunes, no special ear to listen to their story. In the midst of their
tete-a-t'te the door opened, and old John Joseph came in, ushering another
belated visitor — no less a person than Lord Henry, of whom mention has
been made.

"Here is a gentleman who wants to consult you, my Angelica," said

MISS ANGEL. 751

old Kauffmann, without seeing Mr. Reynolds ; and Lord Henry, with his
conquering airs, advanced in all his usual confidence.

Mr. Reynolds soon took his leave. He had wanted her to hear what
had befallen him, and she had listened with sweet looks and interest.
Now he must give up his place in turn.

"Pass on, pass on," says Fate to Mr. Reynolds. " This was your
will ; pass on, pass on."

The next time when Mr. Reynolds called upon Angelica, Lord Henry
was also there ; hut the painter left him to Lady Diana, who was sitting
for her picture, dressed in blue satin on a supposed lawn with a parrot, a
puppy, and all the little W.'s in a group round her chair. (There is a
charming picture by Angelica of the Duchess of Argyll of those days,
so depicted, in a family group. It belongs to the lady, the possessor of
the Darner portrait, and is in the style which Zoffany has made famous.)

Angelica came forward wondering what new honour had come to her
friend. He looked pleased and greatly excited, held a list in his hand,
the list of the names of the new Academicians.

" See! " said he, smiling and pointing with his finger. " Can you
read the list of new Academicians ? " And she read "President, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Knt." and looked up with bright congratulation: then the finger
travelled on. " William Hoare, Nathaniel Hone,' Angelica read ; and then
with a pleased exclamation and blush, she came to her own name and that
of Mary Mozer to which the friendly finger was pointing. It travelled
steadily to the very bottom of the page. " Here is also your friend Mr.
Zucchi's name," said Mr. Reynolds. It was a moment of unalloyed
delight. Angelica clapped her hands ; Lady Diana came down from her
perch ; Lord Henry advanced from the other end of the room, affable' and
radiant (he had also won an unexpected prize that day), and he asked to
see the list, which he perused with deep interest. I believe some vague
hope had suddenly occurred that his own name might have been included
in it, and that this additional honour might have been laid by him at Lady
Diana's feet.

In Zoffany's picture we can see the Academicians as they were in life ;
can see them all with their wigs and their tights and their dignities. Sir
Joshua with his sword, the model in his place upon the steps, the earnest
faces of the groups standing in conclave. Here is art. Here is cere-
mony and nature too. Two very forbidding ladies also present are hanging
in effigy on the wall, These are the female Academicians, in one of whom
it is difficult to recognise the lovely original of Sir Joshua's portrait of
Angelica Kauffmann. In 1768 women's rights were a willing concession
to their desert, not, as in later years, an extortion and graceless boon.

The figures of the men of those days, as Zoffany has left them, impress
one somehow by a certain appearance of manly self-respect. The military
costume of the age may have given a martial air to these peaceful warriors.
There is a little drawing of Stothard's, fanciful, vivid, and delicate, in
which we can peep at tjie Academy for that year, with the people who are

752 MISS ANGEL.

looking at the pictures as they hang in their places on the walls. There is
the beautiful Duchess of Manchester fresh from the artist's studio.*

There are landscapes smiling, ships sailing, big wigs, and bands gracing
the walls. There is a traveller bearded and turbaned, perhaps out of com-
pliment to the great Lady Hester of that time. The pretty dainty figures
of the visitors trip across the floor, high nod their plumed head gears,
brightly sparkle the buckled shoes. The young King gazes through his
glass. The court lady holds her slim fan. The old cocked-hat gentleman
is absorbed in his own portrait, perhaps painted by young Lawrence — or
by the great Gainsborough of Bath.

Angelica sends her work : she clings to her classical models. Her
Hector and Andromache are much admired, so is a composition represent-
ing Venus directing JEneas and Achates. The gods and the Greeks and
Komans continue to rule in Golden Square. Lempriere comes to life as
we read the list. West's Regulus is a royal command.

In many and many an Academy did Angelica exhibit the works of her
unremitting hands, her designs and her portraits. Gods and heroes,
Olympus in every attitude, in good work, in bad work, and indifferent — still
she laboured on.

The woman lived year by year, her youth passed, neither prosperity,
sunshine, nor the winter storms of lonely regret could change her nature.
She was happy and sorrowful, as others are. She responded to the calls
of the children piping in the market, to the cry of the mourner, to the
song of those who rejoice. She was no mighty heroine, but she tried to
be true to herself! what more can we ask of any human being ? She was
tender to her father, faithful to her convictions, loving to her friends, and
ready to their call.

Antonio heard of her at one time in the constant company of Lord
Henry, that artistic soul, and he uttered some biting sarcasms, for which
he was sorry almost as he spoke. He had seen but little of her all
these years. For his own peace of mind he felt it best to keep away.
He lived much alone, occupied with his art, esteemed and respected by
those few with whom he consorted. His health was delicate, and a
strange and sad vexation, which has no place here, but which concerned

* " The arts unrivalled shall remain, while George protects the polished train,"
seems to have been the chorus of those days. There are some curious details of
George the Third and his patronage of literature and the arts in the Lectures upon
the Georges from which I am quoting. He wished to establish an " Order of
Minerva, for literary and scientific characters. The knights were to take rank after
the Knights of the Bath, and wear a straw-coloured ribbon and star of sixteen points.
There was such an outcry among the literati as to who should be appointed that the
plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down among us." Another
note tells us that the king objected to painting St. Paul's as Popish practice.
" Accordingly," says the note, " the most clumsy heathen sculptures only decorate
that edifice at present. It is fortunate that the paintings were spared, for never was
painting and drawing so unsound as at that time. It is far better for our eyes to
contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from the parson) than to look at
Opie's patchy canvases or Fuseli's livid monsters."

MISS ANGEL. 753

one of the kind young ladies he had known so intimately (poor Kitty,
who died of some secret grief, people said), made him morbidly averse to
all women's society.

One day Lord Henry's marriage was announced. It took the town
by surprise. Lady W. had become more and more complicated, her
sensibilities were almost unendurable, and she had discovered at last that
even Lord Henry could not understand them. They quarrelled, and poor
Diana bore the brunt, and tried in vain to explain the mysterious mis-
understanding. Lord Henry, in his distress, found in her unselfish nature
and warm kind heart a clue to the shadowy tangle. Her tenderness
touched some genuine feeling in the little Maccaroni, who chose to confide
in Angelica, and to be encouraged by her to hope. The romance had
begun at Lowdenham, but it was not until that very day when Angelica
read her name upon the scroll, that Lady Diana accepted Lord Henry's
offer.

Meanwhile Angelica lived on alone and at work, not unhappy, as I
have said, although days and hours came when life seemed long to her as
to most people.

Eossi, who loses no opportunity of praising his friend, tells us that
Angelica, besides her various accomplishments, was also a woman of literary
tastes and wide experience. Klopstock and Gessner were among her cor-
respondents. Later in life we know how Goethe wrote of " that tender
soul." When she read any noble historical anecdote, says her biogra-
pher, her face would brighten, her placid eyes would acquire a surprising
vivacity. You could read in her speaking countenance all the passion, all
the sublimity of the author.

Angelica had saved some money in all these long years. She had
paid two visits to Ireland, and come back cheered and enriched. There
is a mention of her dining in good company at Dr. Baker's house. The
Hornecks and Eeynolds are there, and Goldsmith writes of

" The Kauffmann beside,
And the jessamy bride . . ."

There are troubles in all estates, and Angel did not escape hers, notwith-
standing all the help of friends and the sympathy which came to her. One
painful incident we read of, which vexed her father greatly at the time. He
felt the circumstance even more keenly for her than she did for herself. " /
would have answered yours immediately, but I was engaged^in business," she
writes to some one who was accused of having libelled her. " I cannot
~ conceive ichy several gentlemen, who have never deceived me, should conspire
to do so at this time, and if they themselves were deceived, you cannot
wonder that others should be deceived also, and take for satire that which
you say was not intended. I ivas actuated not only by my particular
feelings, but a respect for the art and artists, and persuade myself that yon
cannot think it a great sacrifice to remove a picture that had even raised
suspicion of disrespect to any person who never wished to offend you,"

754 MISS ANGEL.

Old John Joseph was indignant almost beyond words. This incident
added to his old trouble about leaving her unprotected and alone. Even
little Bosa was gone now, for she married at seventeen, and the father
and daughter were alone in the old house.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

AND so FAREWELL.

TEN years pass very slowly, very quickly too. The horizon widens,
our hopes grow fainter and more fixed, our possessions increase, diffuse
into distant points — possessions that have waxed and grown and filled our
hearts. Some have extinguished hope in a reality far dearer than any
visions, others die away. As time goes on we find out our narrow fetters,
we discover our gifts, we learn how much we can bear, how long we can
wait, how much we can forgive, how much forgiveness we need from
others.

Angelica was coming back to Lowdenham Court once more. Coming
back the same woman indeed, with the same preoccupations that she had
brought ten years before. She was older — that was all. She had been
sorry and faithful and at work a little longer. Her pictures, alas ! were
not wonderfully better, though now and then some happy chance, some
fortunate subject, resulted in a charming work that did the worker credit.
She had her father still. He wore his old cloak, that scarce looked
shabbier. Want was no longer at their door. Long, long ago she had
repaid the money Lady Diana lent her. Lady Diana was now a poor
woman, comparatively speaking, for her husband had many expensive
tastes and long- accumulated debts, which however did not greatly affect
the happiness of a very united home. It was a real happiness to Angelica
to see her friend in her home with her children round her. Some look of
peaceful animation had come into Lady Di's dull face, some brightening
of maternal pride into those two pale eyes.

It had been an old promise that the Kauffmanns should spend some
days with Lord Henry and Lady Diana. Angelica had been detained in
London by one thing and another, and she and her father found themselves
belated on the way. The coach had set them down at the nearest market
town, and now they came driving through the darkness, scarcely knowing
whither they were going, through dim fragrances and lights vanishing and
murmurs of over-arching trees. The horses went slowly, stumbling up
the steep lanes blazing with stars. The great stars that night seemed
dropping heavily from the high heavens, and flashing to meet the cool
dark earth ; then from the lanes they came into chillier regions, wild
commons, shivering with invigorating breezes. Angelica sat, half asleep,
upon her coach -box, watching the horses' drowsy progress, dimly absorb-

MISS ANGEL. 755

ing the suggestions of the new country — the visions passing by. Those
of her brain seemed almost more vivid than the realities, now that the
last lights of sunset had died away beyond the hills. She was gone back
to the past in some vague half-defined way ; some vague call seemed to
reach her now and then. When they stopped at last, they could hear the
cool roar of a torrent below ; and then Angelica woke up, and John
Joseph shivered and sighed. "Father, are you ill?" she said. "Is
anything amiss ?"

"What should be amiss," said he hastily, and as he spoke he patted
her hand. Angelica thought his tone was strange ; but they had started off
once more, and once more came visions mingling with the indistinct
charm of the present, voices that she had heard long ago seemod speaking
and awakening her from one dim delicious dream to another.

They seemed to be journeying under the great torrent of stars, that
swept the heavens. Once or twice Angelica thought she could hear the
distant note of the sea sounding through all these vague night perfumes and
mysteries.

" Are you asleep, Angelica ? " said old Kauffmann, suddenly. " Are
you warm/ my child — will you share my cloak ? I have — I have been
dreaming," he said; "give me your hand. Ah! I can still hold it.
Some day there will be only the old cloak left to shield my child. An-
gelica, I often long to be back in the tranquil old places, to hear the horns
of the goatherds at Morbegno. I think I could live a little longer there ;
and, my child, I dread death. Thou, who art so easily led, so ill able to
judge — ah ! it breaks my heart to leave thee alone."

He was changed and broken, as he had said. He began talking again
rather excitedly about Italy, about his longing for warmth, for a little
peace and ease before the end.

"Let us go, father," said Angelica, absently, " Why should we
not go ? "

" How can you and I, an old man and^a weak woman, go alone all
that long way ? " cried John Joseph, pettishly.

" Dearest," said Angelica, " do not talk in this sad way. Do not fear
me. I know life now ; I know myself," she said, a little shrilly.
" There is Bonomi, that good fellow, to advise."

" Bonomi," said old Kauffmann, " he only dreams of Rosa from six in
the morning until sixteen at night. Bonomi is no companion for my
Angelica. You need a wiser, older man to rely upon ; one mature in
spirit, tried in affliction, my child. Cannot you think of some one whom
we have known for long years and tried and proved an honourable upright
man?"

"Are you speaking of Antonio?" said Angelica, quietly. They had
reached the end of the hill ; a great sight of stars and purple blackness
seemed to overflood beyond the line of the horizon. The driver climbed
his seat and cracked his whip ; the horses started at a swift gallop.

Again old Kauffmann sighs and shifts uneasily ; something has been

756 MISS ANGEL.

in his mind all day which he has not yet had the courage to break to his
daughter.

" I am afraid you are tired, father," said she.

"They will find me changed, greatly changed, Angelica," he answered,
very dolefully ; " broken in body, ill in mind. Time was when a little
journey such as this would not have wearied me. Time passes ; quick
comes an end to strength: who will take care of you, my child?" he
repeated, wistfully.

" Hush, hush, dearest," said Angelica, putting her own arms round
him. " We shall soon be at our journey's end."

" We are travelling to different places, Angelica," the old man said
solemnly. " I think I could go to my rest in peace, if I could leave you in
some good man's care." Otherwise I know not how to die — that is the
truth. How to leave you alone in this great world;" and he looked about
him, at the night, the mysterious valley, the lights twinkling in the
distance.

"0 father," said Angelica, faltering; "would it make you happy?

how can I marry ? You know it is impossible. You, who know ' she

clung closer and closer to him. The thought of parting from him camo
for the first time with a bitter piercing pang that she could not escape.

Old Kauffmann had worked himself up into one of his nervous states
of agitation ; he had not yet said all that was in his mind. " My child, I
had not meant to tell you to-night what I have heard," he said; "but
why should I delay ? sooner or later you must face a terrible memory."
He took her hand. " You think yourself still bound," he said solemnly.
" But you are free. That unfortunate man is no more. As I left home
a letter came to me from the village doctor who attended his last moments.
It is signed by the priest. He is dead. A gastrite complicated by
symptoms of heart disease carried him off after a few weeks' illness."
Then the old man's voice failed, and he began to cry.

He scarcely knew what he was saying, or what his daughter answered.
All the stars were sinking in the black sky, the shadows passing like
ghosts. All her past was pressing upon her, suffocating her, with strange
reaction rolling up from the shadowy plains, resounding with the far-away
moan of the sea.

It seemed but that minute that she had parted from De Horn, from
the man whose ring she wore. " Dead, father ? " she repeated.

" Yes, he is dead at last, my child," John Joseph answered.

" Ah ! hush," she screamed so strangely that the driver looked back,
thinking she had called him. It was not grief she felt, it was not relief,
it was scarcely emotion, it was a vivid awe- stricken sense of the man's
presence. Time was not. She heard the voice, saw the dark cut face
with its rigid lines. It was a recognition — not a death, but a sudden
life, after this long and unbroken separation. It was wonder and emotion,
and then a great burst of tears came at last to recall her to herself.
They flowed as prayer unspoken for a little while.

MISS ANGEL. 757

A few minutes more and they were passing through the old gates and
pine avenues that led to Lowdenham Manor. Then came the dazzle of
lights in the hall, and the cordial voice of Lady Diana greeting the
travellers ; hands to help them from their high perch ; wine, warmth,
exclamations, how wearied they looked, what had happened ?

" My dear creatures, you seem half dead, both of you," cries Lady
Di. " Angelica, is anything the matter ? "

" I have just had some bad news,'" said Angelica, " which has
moved me very much."

Lady Diana asked no more ; led her friend to her own room, kissed
her, and left her in quiet ; and then Angel shut the door, fastened it close,
and once more tears came to her relief, and she sobbed as if her heart
would break. Some of her tears were grief, but others also flowed be-
cause grief was not. Grief was dead. It had died years before.

Coming back across the field next day, with Lady Diana and her
children, Angelica met her father pottering in the autumn sunshine, and
limping slowly along the stubble path. He seemed in some excitement :
he told Angelica that Antonio had been with him at the manor.

" He has come, do you hear ? He is staying at the village inn, my
lady," said John Joseph ; " he has brought our letters. He has seen the
Bonomis," continued the old man : " Rosa is well and happy. Her
husband has a good order. 0 my lady, what a loss little Kosa is in our
house. Some day you will have to part with your darlings ; but to part
is happiness compared to leaving one's children alone unsheltered from the
storm."

They had reached a little sunny bench arched with hawthorn sticks, and
midday shadows, where bronzed leaves and autumnal berries made a
canopy against the rays. They all sat down to rest, facing wide fields and
breathing the sunny and corn- scented air. The water sparkled, there
came a lowing of Alderney cows. A little baby bull was pawing the
ground, and sending flying clouds of dust into the air. The sunny lights
were on the river (it flows into the sea hard by). The little houses and
gables gleamed across the waters.

" My child," said the old man, " Antonio has brought us more letters
from Sweden ; he says there is a packet for you." He took her hand in his
trembling brown grasp, and looked wistfully from beneath his shaggy eye-
brows. Angelica looked away, and her heart began to beat. The corn
was reaped, the wheat was being housed, and Death, the reaper, was at
work among the sunny fields.

Angelica was very silent all the day ; in the evening after dinner she
wandered out into the garden. She went on beyond the fields that led sea-
wards. It was a west wind evening, wide with twilight the trees seemed to
be throbbing with quivering shadow. The birds up in black labyrinth of
twigs sang no longer, but still chirpped to the faint skies. The water
streaked across the twilight. Some lamp burning in a distant village

758 MISS ANGEL.

mingled its light with the evening rainbows. Wide, unrestful and yet
tranquil were her thoughts, longing yet quiescent ; grateful after the beating
storm for a calm that was not indifference. Was it possible ? Could it be
that hope had not died with her happiness ? Could a new tender tranquillity
reach her still growing out of the many winters and summers of her life, as
naturally as autumnal tints fall upon the heavy dusty foliage ? She went
pacing on and on among shadows and twilights, past the black stems of the
trees, across the soft dim turfy fields. She went and came, and came and
went again : a lonely spirit, unrestful, unquiet, and yet grasping the calm
of hope not fulfilled perhaps, but realised, of love, not exclusively her own,
but love nevertheless. To-night the possibility came to her of a friend-
ship more intimate, more tender than that which had always subsisted
between herself and Zucchi. This was what her father had meant. This
was what perhaps Antonio meant. It seemed strange and wayward now
to refuse and to turn away from this home that seemed to open to her
wandering spirit. And then, by the pathway leading from the house
came Antonio, looking for her, for his old -playfellow and the companion
of his youth.

" Angelica, where are you ? " said Antonio, gravely. " They told me
I might find you here. I have brought you a packet from home," he
went on slowly. " With your father's letters from home came this one,
addressed to you;" he put it into her hand, looking at her anxiously. He
need not have been anxious. She was very pale, but no longer agitated.
The parting was over with its uneasy suspense ; dissolved into a strange
evening peace, into a tranquillity that was tender, sorrowful, and full of
reconciliation. The feeling seemed to spread and to grow more and more
indefinite and intense. A star came out over the heads of these two
weary people who had waited half their lives, and whose happiness was
not over yet.

As Angelica opened the packet, Antonio stood by her side. Inside the
paper was a small silken case and inside the case a cameo ring wrapped
in a silver paper, upon which was written the word " Farewell." That
was all ; but she knew the writing, and she knew the ring. How well she
remembered it ; two or three great tears fell from her eyes upon the little
head smiling unmoved in its diamond setting.

" It is the ring he took from me at the ball. They have sent it back,"
she said. " 0 Antonio, what a strange sad wasted dream of a life it has
all been!"

" It has been no dream," said Antonio, in his husky passionate voice,
and as he spoke he took the little ring out of her hand. " Angelica, I
think the ring has come back to you," he said, " as a sign of your faith-
ful heart. Of that poor man's gratitude. Will you take it from me to-
day ? Will you let it be also a sign of love that is yours, that has never
changed ? " He put his arm round her as he spoke, and she let her hand
fall into his.

It all seemed part of that wondrous twilight, sad and harmonious as

MISS ANGEL, 759

when music plays on from one modulation to another. It was only Antonio
who was telling her that she was free, free to peaceful bondage, free to
accept his tender care and domination ; and so the twilight mellowed and
hushed and blessed two people who had passed the brightness of midday ;
but who were young still, for they could hope and trust each other.

CHAPTER THE LAST.

IN THE CHURCH -OF S. ANDREA BELLI: FRATE AT ROME.

I HAVE been trying to tell a little story, of which tho characters and in-
cidents have come to me through a winter's gloom so vividly, that as I
write now I can scarcely tell what is real and what is but my own ima-
gination in it all. The other day two good friends sent me a parcel
containing a gift — a strange realisation of all these dreams. As I opened
it, I thought of the stories one has read in which visions appear and
vanish with a warning, leaving signs that remain in the awakened sleeper's
hands. Here in my hands are worn papers, semi-faded parchments, con-
cerning the hero and the heroine of my little history ; lawyers' cramped
handwritings, involved sentences, and foolscap paper, in which Antony
Zucchi conveys his worldly goods to Angelica, the daughter of John
Joseph Kauffmann, of Golden Square, in which Angelica's four thousand
pounds are carefully tied away, wrapped in a parchment, put aside for
future need ; there are also law letters, written by Angelica at her husband's
dictation, full of clear business directions, others concerning her pictures,
which come and go, cross the sea from Italy, escape the French, and are
safely deposited in Mr. Bonomi's hands ; other papers tell of John
Joseph's death, her husband's peaceful end.

But before these last records closing their lives, many and many a
sun rose for these two people following the twilight of that autumnal
evening; many and many an after-day was blessed for them, as they
travelled on henceforth together. From town to town, from Italy to
Italy, from Rome to Rome again.

Is that Angelica, once more looking from some high terrace ? It is
early morning, a dawning city crowns the rising hill, night is still in the
valleys, and the country floats before her eyes. She sees the laden
bullocks slowly dragging the heavy waggon, and crawling the mountain
road into the light. The lamp still burns as it swings from the shaft, the
drover's long goafs-skin cloak flaps as he strides along. The great gates
of the city on the hill are open to the market ; the sunrise is growing in-
vincible, it flashes from the eastern plain, striking every bird, flower,
gable, every bronze-lit roof, every tendrilled garden, and slender shoot of
vine. What matters the name of the ancient city! Some Bible land
seems spread before Angelica's wistful eyes, with shrines and campaniles,

760 MISS ANGEL.

and bells swinging against the sky, and saintly figures passing in tHe
gentle glories that come illuminating and sanctifying one more day.
. Then Antonio calls her from below, the horses are harnessed, the
carriage is waiting which is to take them southwards. So they pass on
together, where work and pleasure call them, to Venice, to Rome, where,
after old John Joseph's peaceful death, Zucchi led his wife;

Rossi gives a pretty description of Antonio and Angelica in their after
life. They were united and yet unchanged, and true to their different
natures. "If you watch them before a picture," he say?, "you see
Antonio, gifted with eloquence, speaking with energy, judging, dissecting,
criticising ; Angelica, silent, with animated eyes, listens to her husband,
and gazes attentive at the canvas. You may read in her face, and see
her true opinion there. She speaks at last, but it is to praise, for impulse
inclines her to dwell on the beauty and charm of thf works before her.
Hers is the nature of the bee," continues her old biographer, "she only
sucks honey from the flowers." So she whom Goethe praised, lived on.
But when her husband died she did not long survive the protector she
had taken. "Poverty I do not fear," she writes after Zucchi's death,
" but this solitude is terrible." We may still read a touching farewell to
Antonio, written on the marble in the church of Andrea delle Frate, at
Rome. " To my sweetest kindest husband, not as I had prayed," Angelica
has carved upon his tomb. The parting is long since over. But beside
Antonio's Angelica's own name is there. Remembered, forgotten, she
passed away, not ungrateful for the life that had brought her so many
things.

One day not long ago, a little boy in a passion of tears asked for a
pencil and paper to draw something that he longed for and could not get.
The truth of that baby's philosophy is one which strikes us more and
more as we travel on upon our different ways. How many of us must
have dreamt of things along the road, sympathies and experiences that
may become us, soiae day not ours ; inward grace of love, perhaps, nqg
outward sign of it. This spiritual blessing of sentiment no realisation,'
no fulfilment alone can bring to us, it is the secret intangible gift tha*
belongs to the mystery of life, the diviner soul that touches us and shows
us a home in the desolate places, a silence in the midst of the storm.

AP The Cornhill magazine

4

C76

v.31

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