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MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


VOL.  II. 


PRINTED     BY     B.     CLAY,     LONDON. 


MACMILLAN'S 


EDITED  BY  DAVID  MASSOff 


VOL.  II. 

MAY— OCTOBER,  1860 


MACMILLAtf  AND  CO. 
AND  28,  HENRIETTA  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN 


The  Right  of  Reproduction  and  Translation  w  reserved.'] 


•'-'"3 


AP 


CONTENTS. 


All's  Well' 215 

American  College  Reminiscences.    By  the  Author  of  "FiVE  YEARS  AT  AN  ENGLISH 

UNIVERSITY."    Part  1 218 

Ammergau  Mystery,  The;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860 ,  463 

A rran,  Three  Weeks'  "Loafing"  in.    By  CORNWALL  SIMEON 496 

Artisan's  Saturday  Night.    By  PERCY  GREG 285 

Boot,  The,  from  the  Italian  of  GIUSTI 244 

Boundaries  of  Science :  A  Dialogue 134 

Budgets  of  186.0,  The  Two.    ByW.  A.  PORTER 416 

Cambridge  University  Boat  of  1860.    By  Q.  0.  TBEVELYAN 19 

Cardross  Case  and  The  Free  Church  of  Scotland 293 

Co-Operative  Societies ;  their  Social  and  Economical  Aspects.    By  HENRY  FAWCETT  .  434 

Dungeon  Key,  The 452 

Eastern  Legend  Versified  from  Lamartine.    By  the  REV.  C.  (TENNYSON)  TURNEB  .    .  226 

Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain.    By  PROFESSOR  POLE. 406 

Elder's  Daughter,  The.    By  ORWELL 154 

English  Classical  Literature,  The  use  of  in  the  Work  of  Education.     By  the  REV. 

H.  G.  ROBINSON 425 

Europe,  The  Future  of,  foretold  in  History.    By  T.  E.  CLIFPE  LESLIE 329 

Fair  at  Keady.    BY  ALEXANDER  SMITH 179 

Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson.    By  the  REV.  F.  D.  MAURICE 227 

Froude's  History.    Vols.  V.  and  VI.    By  the  REV.  P.  D.  MAURICE 276 

Fusilier's  Dog,  The.    By  SIB  F.  H.  DOYLE,  BART 71 

Garibaldi  and  The  Sicilian  Revolution.    By  AUBELIO  SAFFI. 235 

Garibaldi's  Legion,  The  Youth  of  England  to.    By  SYDNEY  DOBELL 324 

Gold,  Social  and  Economical  Influence  of  the  New.    By  HENRY  FAWCETT 186 

Hints  on  Proposals.    By  AN  EXPERIENCBD  CHAPBRONE 403 

History  and  Casuistry.    BY  the  REV.  F.  D.  MAURICE 505 

Holman  Hunt's  "  Finding  of  Christ  in  the  Temple." 3* 

Hood,  Thomas.    By  The  EDITOR 315 

Industrial  School,  Annals  of  an.    By  DR.  GOODWIN,  DEAN  OF  ELY 13 

Kyloe-Jock,  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton  Walls.   By  GEORGE  CUPPLES.— 

Chapters  i.  n. 372 

Chapters  m.  iv , 441 


VI 


Contents. 


Loch-Na-Diomhair— The  Lake  of  the  Secret.    By  GEORGE  CUPPLES 21 

Mystery,  The.    By  ORWELL 272 

Navies  of  France  and  England 249 

Our  Father  s  Business.    By  the  Author  of  "  JOHN  HALIFAX." 40 

Priam  and  Hecuba 383 

Prophecy,  On  Uninspired.    By  HERBERT  COLERIDGE 309 

Papal  Excommunication,  The  :  A  Dialogue   . 68 

Poet's  Corner :  or  an  English  Writer's  Tomb.    By  C.  A.  COLLINS 128 

Question  of  The  Age — Is  it  Peace  ?    By  T.  E.  CLIFFE  LESLIE 72 

Ramsgate  Life  Boat ;  A  Rescue Ill 

Revelation,  The.     By  ORWELL 850 

Royal  Academy,  The 155 

Seaside,  At  the.    By  the  Author  of  "  JOHN  HALIFAX  " 393 

Shelley's  Life  and  Poetry.     By  The  EDITOR  .......    .1 838 

Shelley  in  Pall  MalL    By  RICHARD  GARNETT  . 100 

Sleep  of  The  Hyacinth :  An  Egyptian  Poem.    By  the  late  DR.  GEOEOE  WILSON. 

Parts  IV.  and  V.  .. 120 

Sonnets.    By  the  REV.  C.  (TENNYSON)  TUBNER 98 

Spiritualistic  Materialism. — Michelet.    By  J.  M.  LUDLOW."  .    .  .  . !  41 

Sport  and  Natural  History,  New  Books  of.    By  HENRY  KINGSLEY 385 

Suffrage,  The.— The  Working  Class  and  the  Professional  Class.    By  the  REV.  F.  D. 

MAURICE 89 

Swiss-French  Literature. — Gasparin.     By  J.  M.  LUDLOW. 170 

Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature.    By  The  EDITOR. 1 

Tom  Brown  at  Oxford.    By  the  Author  of  "  TOM  BROWN'S  SCHOOL-DAYS  " — 

Chapters  xvn.  xvm. 52 

Chapters  xrx.  xx.  xxi 138 

Chapters  XXIL  XXIIL 199 

Chapters  xxiv.  xxv 258 

Chapters  xxn.  xxvn 855 

Chapters  xxvm.  xxix.  xxx 478 

Trevelyan,  Sir  Charles,  and  Mr.  Wilson.    By  J.  Mf  LUDLOW 164 

Turkey,  The  Christian  Subjects  of 452    ' 

Two  Love  Stories  .    .    .  • 292 

Volunteer's  Catechism,  The.    By  THOMAS  HUGHES.    With  a  few  Words  on  Butts. 

By  J.  C.  TEMPLER 191 

Volunteering,  Past  and  Present.    By  JOHN  MABTINEAT; [394 

Wimbledon  Rifle  Meeting,  1860.    By  J.  C.  TEMPLER ' 303 


to  ijns 


AUTHOR  OF  "JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

AUTHOR  OF  "TOM  BROWN'S  SCHOOL-DAYS." 

AUTHOR  OF  "FIVE  YEARS  AT  AN  ENGLISH  UNIVERSITY.' 

COLERIDGE,  HERBERT. 

COLLINS,  CHARLES  ALLSTON. 

CUPPLES,  GEORGE. 

DOBELL,  SYDNEY. 

DOYLE,  SIR  F.  H. 

FAWCETT,  HENRY. 

GARNETT,  RICHARD. 

GOODWIN,  DR.,  DEAN  OF  ELY. 

GREG,  PERCY. 

KINGSLEY,  HENRY. 

LESLIE,  T.  E.  CLIFFE.  '*. 

LUDLOW,  J.  M. 

MARTINEAU,  JOHN. 

MAURICE,  REV.  F.  D. 

MASSON,  PROFESSOR. 

POLE,  PROFESSOR,  F.R.A.S. 

PORTER,  W.  A. 

ROBINSON,  REV.  H.  G. 

SAFFI,  AURELIO. 

SIMEON,  CORNWALL. 

SMITH,  ALEXANDER. 

TEMPLER,  J.  C. 

TREVELYAN,  G.  0. 

TURNER,  REV.  C.  (TENNYSON.) 

WILSON,  PROFESSOR  GEORGE, 


MACMILLAN'S  MAGAZINE,  VOLUME  I. 

Handsomely  bound  in  cloth,  price  7s.  6</. 

to  001u:ntt 

ANSTED,  PROFESSOR,  F.R.S. 

AUTHOR  OF  "JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN.", 

AUTHOR  OF  "TOM  BROWN'S  SCHOOL-DAYS." 

BLAKESLEY,  REV.  J.  W. 

CAIRNS,  REV.  DOCTOR  JOHN. 

CHERMSIDE,  REV.  R.  S.  C. 

COLERIDGE,  HERBERT. 

COLLINS,  CHARLES  ALLSTON. 

DAVIES,  REV.  J.  LLEWELYN. 

DE  MORGAN,  PROFESSOR. 

DOUBLEDAY. 

DOVE,  P.  E. 

FORSTER,  W. 

GARNETT,  RICHARD. 

GREG,  PERCY. 

HUXLEY,  PROFESSOR,  F.R.S. 

LUDLOW,  J.  M. 

LUSHINGTON,  FRANKLIN. 

LUSHINGTON,  THE  LATE  JHENRY. 

MASSON,  PROFESSOR. 

MAURICE,  REV.  F.  D. 

MILNES,  R.  MONCKTON. 

NEALE,  E.   VANSITTART. 

PALGRAVE,  F.   T. 

PATON,  CAPTAIN  ROBERT. 

SMITH,  ALEXANDER. 

SPENCER,  HERBERT. 

STEPHENS,  F.   G. 

TENNYSON,  ALFRED.] 

VENABLES,  G.  S.| 

WILSON,  PROFESSOR  GEORGE. 


[The  Editor  of  MACMILLAN'S  MAGAZINE  cannot  undertake  to  return  Manuscripts  sent  to  him.] 


MACMILLAN'S   MAGAZINE 


MAY,  1860. 


THEEE  VICES  OF  CURRENT  LITEEATUEE. 


BY  THE  EDITOR. 


NATURAL  and  becoming  as  it  is  to  think 
modestly  of  the  literary  achievements 
of  our  own  time,  in  comparison  with 
certain  periods  of  ou^  past  literary  his- 
tory, it  may  yet  he  asserted  with  some 
confidence  that  in  no  age  has  there  heen 
so  large  an  amount  of  real  ability  en- 
gaged in  the  conduct  of  British  literature 
as  at  present.  Whether  our  topmost  men 
are  equal  in  stature  to  the  giants  of 
some  former  generations,  and  whether 
the  passing  age  is  depositing  on  the 
shelf  of  our  rare  national  classics  mas- 
terpieces of  matter  and  of  form  worthy 
to  rank  with  those  already  there,  are 
questions  which  need  not  be  discussed 
in  connexion  with  our  statement.  It  is 
enough  to  remember  that,  for  the  three 
hundred  publications  or  so  which  an- 
nually issued  from  the  British  press 
about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  we  now  produce  every  year 
some  five  thousand  publications  of  all 
sorts,  and,  probing  this  fleeting  mass  of 
contemporary  authorship  as  far  round 
us  and  in  as  many  directions  as  we  can, 
in  order  to  appraise  its  contents,  to  see, 
as  I  believe  we  should  see,  that  the  pro- 
digious increase  of  quantity  has  been  ac- 
companied by  no  deterioration  of  average 
quality.  Lamentations  are  indeed  com- 
mon over  the  increase  of  books  in  the 
world.  This,  it  is  said,  is  the  Mudiceval 
era.  Do  not  these  lamentations  proceed, 
however,  on  a  false  view  of  literature,  as 
if  its  due  limits  at  any  time  were  to  be 
No.  7. — VOL.  n. 


measured  by  such  a  petty  standard  as 
the  faculty  of  any  one  man  to  keep  up 
with  it  as  a  reader,  or  even  to  survey  it 
as  a  critic  ?  There  is  surely  a  larger 
view  of  literature  than  this — according 
to  which  the  expression  of  passing 
thought  in  preservable  forms  is  one  of 
the  growing  functions  of  the  race  ;  so 
that,  as  the  world  goes  on,  more  and 
ever  more  of  what  is  remembered, 
reasoned,  imagined,  or  desired  on  its 
surface,  must  necessarily  be  booked  or 
otherwise  registered  for  momentary 
needs  and  uses,  and  for  farther  action, 
over  long  arcs  of  time,  upon  the  spirit 
of  the  future.  According  to  this  view, 
the  notion  of  the  perseverance  of  our 
earth  on  its  voyage  ages  hereafter  with 
a  freight  of  books  increased,  by  suc- 
cessive additions,  incalculably  beyond 
that  which  already  seems  an  overweight, 
loses  much  of  its  discomfort;  nay,  in 
this  very  vision  of  our  earth  as  it  shall 
be,  carrying  at  length  so  huge  a  regis- 
tration of  all  that  has  transpired  upon 
it,  have  we  not  a  kind  of  pledge  that 
the  registration  shall  not  have  been  in 
vain,  and  that,  whatever  catastrophe 
may  await  our  orb  in  the  farther  chances 
of  being,  the  lore  it  has  accumulated 
shall  not  perish,  but  shall  survive  or 
detach  itself,  a  heritage  beyond  the 
shipwreck?  In  plainer  argument;  al- 
though in  the  immense  diffusion  of 
literary  capability  in  these  days,  there 
may  be  causes  tending  to  lower  the 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


highest  individual  efforts,  is  not  the 
diffusion  itself  a  gain,  and  is  it  after  all 
consistent  with  fact  that  the  supposed 
causes  are  producing  the  alleged  effect  1 
That  .there  is  a  law  of  vicissitude  in  the 
intellectual  power  of  a  nation  ;  that,  as 
there  are  years  of  good  crop  and  years  of 
bad  crop  .in  the  vegetable  world,  so 
there  are  ages  in  a  nation's  life  of  super-  - 
excellent  nerve  and  faculty,  and  again 
ages  intellectually  feeble,  seems  as 
satisfactory  a  generalization  as  any  of 
the  rough  historical  generalizations  we 
yet  have  in  stock ;  but  that  this  law 
of  vicissitude  implies  diminished  ca- 
pacity in  the  highest  individuals  accord- 
ing as  the  crowd  increases,  does  not 
appear.  The  present  era  of  British 
literature,  counting  from  the  year  1789, 
is  as  rich,  as  brilliant  with  lustrous 
names,  as  any  since  the  Elizabethan  era 
and  its  continuation,  from  1580  to  1660  ; 
nay,  if  we  strike  out  from  the  Elizabe- 
than firmament  its  majestic  twin-lumi- 
naries, Shakespeare  and  Bacon,  our 
firmament  is  the  more  brilliantly  studded 
— studded  with  the  larger  stars.  Nothing 
but  a  morose  spirit  of  disregard  for  what 
is  round  us,  or  an  excess  of  the  com- 
mendable spirit  of  affection  for  the  past, 
or,  lastly,  an  utter  ignorance  of  the  actual 
books  of  the  past  which  we  do  praise, 
prevents  us  from  seeing  that  many  of 
the  poets  and  other  authors  even  of  the 
great  Elizabethan  age,  who  retain  their 
places  in  our  collections,  or  that,  still 
more  decidedly,  many  of  the  celebrities 
of  that  later  age  which  is  spanned  by 
Johnson's  "Lives  of  the  Poets,"  were 
but  poetasters  and  poor  creatures,  com- 
pared with  relative  authors  of  the  last 
seventy  years.  Test  the  matter  roughly 
in  what  is  called  our  current  literature. 
What  an  everlasting  fuss  we  do  make 
about  Junius  and  his  letters  !  And  yet 
there  is  no  competent  person  but  will 
admit  that  these  letters  will  not  stand  a 
comparison,  in  any  respect  of  real  in- 
tellectual merit,  with  many  of  the  lead- 
ing articles  which  are  written  overnight 
at  present  by  contributors  to  our  daily 
newspapers,  and  skimmed  by  us  at 
breakfast  next  morning. 

It  in,  therefore,  in  no  spirit  of  depre- 


ciation towards  our  current  literature, 
that  we  venture  to  point  out  certain  of 
its  wide-spread  vices.  The  vices  which 
we  select  are  not  those  which  might 
turn  out  to  be  the  deepest  and  most 
radical ;  they  are  simply  those  that  can- 
not fail  to  catch  the  eye  from  the  extent 
of  surface  which  they  cover. 

1.  There  is  the  vice  of  the  Slip-shod 
or  Slovenly.  In  popular  language  it 
may  be  described  as  the  vice  of  bad 
workmanship.  Its  forms  are  various. 
The  lowest  is  that  of  bad  syntax,  of  lax 
concatenation  of  clauses  and  sentences. 
It  would  be  easy  to  point  out  faults  of 
this  kind  which  reappear  in  shoals  in 
each  day's  supply  of  printed  matter — 
from  the  verbs  misnominatived,  and  the 
clumsy  "  whiches "  looking  back  rue- 
fully for  submerged  antecedents,  so 
common  in  the  columns  of  our  hasty 
writers,  up  to  the  unnecessarily  repeated 
"  that "  after  a  conditional  clause  which 
some  writers  insert  with  an  infatuated 
punctuality,  and  even  the  best  insert 
occasionally.  Should  the  notice  of  a 
matter  so  merely  mechanical  seem  too 
trivial,  there  is,  next,  that  form  of  the 
slip-shod  which  consists  in  stuffing  out 
sentences  with  certain  tags  and  shreds 
of  phraseology  lying  vague  about  society, 
as  bits  of  undistributed  type  may  lie 
about  a  printing-room.  "We  are  free 
to  confess,"  "we  candidly  acknow- 
ledge," "  will  well  repay  perusal,"  "  we 
should  heartily  rejoice,"  "  did  space  per- 
mit," "  causes  beyond  our  control,"  "  if 
we  may  be  allowed  the  expression," 
"  commence  hostilities" — what  are  these 
and  a  hundred  other  such  phrases  but 
undistributed  bits  of  old  speech,  like 
the  "  electric  fluid  "  and  the  "  launched 
into  eternity"  of  the  penny-a-liners, 
which  all  of  us  are  glad  to  clutch,  to  fill 
a  gap,  or  to  save  the  trouble  of  com- 
posing equivalents  from  the  letters] 
To  change  the  figure  (see,  I  am  at  it 
myself !),  what  are  such  phrases  but  a 
kind  of  rhetorical  putty  with  which 
cracks  in  the  sense  are  stopped,  and  pro- 
longations formed  where  the  sense  has 
broken  short?  Of  this  kind  of  slip- 
shod in  writing  no  writers  are  more 
guilty  than  those  who  have  formed  their 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


style  chiefly  by  public  speaking ;  and  it 
is  in  them  also  that  the  kindred  faults 
of  synonyms  strung  together  and  of  re- 
dundant expletives  are  most  commonly 
seen.  Perhaps,  indeed,  the  choicest 
specimens  of  continuous  slip-shod  in  the 
language  are  furnished  by  the  writings 
of  celebrated  orators.  How  dilute  the 
tincture,  what  bagginess  of  phraseology 
round  what  slender  shanks  of  meaning, 
what  absence  of  trained  muscle,  how 
seldom  the  nail  is  hit  on  the  head  !  It 
is  not  every  day  that  a  Burke  presents 
himself,  whose  every  sentence  is  charged 
with  an  exact  thought  proportioned  to 
it,  whether  he  stands  on  the  floor  and 
speaks,  or  takes  his  pen  in  hand*  And 
then,  not  only  in  the  writings  of  men 
rendered  diffuse,  by  much  speaking 
after  a  low  standard,  but  in  the  tide  of 
current  writing  besides,  who  shall  take 
account  of  the  daily  abundance  of  that 
more  startling  form  of  slip-shod  which 
rhetoricians  call  Confusion  of  Metaphor? 
Lord  Castlereagh's  famous  l"  I  will  not 
now  enter  upon  the  fundamental  feature 
upon  which  this  question  hinges,"  is  as 
nothing  compared  with  much  that  passes 
daily  under  our  eyes  in  the  pages  of 
popular  books  and  periodicals — tissues 
of  words  in  which  shreds  from  nature's 
four  quarters  are  jumbled  together  as  in 
heraldry ;  in  which  the  writer  begins 
with  a  lion,  but  finds  it  in  the  next 
clause  to  be  a  waterspout ;  in  which  ice- 
bergs swim  in  seas  of  lava,  comets  col- 
lect taxes,  pigs  sing,  peacocks  wear 
silks,  and  teapots  climb  trees. 

Pshaw !  technicalities  all !  the  mere 
minutiae  of  the  grammarian  and  the 
critic  of  expression !  Nothing  of  the 
kind,  good  reader !  Words  are  made 
up  of  letters,  sentences  of  words,  all  that 
is  written  or  spoken  of  sentences  suc- 
ceeding each  other  or  interflowing ;  and 
at  no  time,  from  Homer's  till  this,  has 
anything  passed  as  good  literature  which 
has  not  satisfied  men  as  tolerably  tight 
and  close-grained  in  these  particulars, 
or  become  classic  and  permanent 
which  has  not,  in  respect  of  them, 
stood  the  test  of  the  microscope. 
We  distinguish,  indeed,  usefully  enough, 
between  matter  and  expression,  Between 


thought  and  style  ;  but  no  one  has  ever 
attended  to  the  subject  analytically  with- 
out becoming  aware  that  the  distinction 
is  not  ultimate — that  what  is  called 
style  resolves  itself,  after  all,  into  man- 
ner of  thinking ;  nay,  perhaps  (though 
to  show  this  would  take  some  time)  into 
the  successive  particles  of  the  matter 
thought.  If  a  writer  is  said  to  be  fond 
of  epithets,  it  is  because  he  has  a  habit 
of  always  thinking  a  quality  very  pro- 
minently along  with  an  object ;  if  his 
style  is  said  to  be  figurative,  it  is  because 
he  thinks  by  means  of  comparisons ;  if 
his  syntax  abounds  in  inversions,  it  is 
because  he  thinks  the  cart  before  he 
thinks  the  horse.  And  so,  by  extension, 
all  the  forms  of  slip-shod  in  expression 
are,  in  reality,  forms  of  slip-shod  in 
thought.  If  the  syntax  halts,  it  is  be- 
cause the  thread  of  the  thought  has 
snapped,  or  become  entangled.  If  the 
phraseology  of  a  writer  is  diffuse  ;  if  his 
language  does  not  lie  close  round  his 
real  meaning,  but  widens  out  in  flat 
expanses,  with  here  and  there  a  tremor 
as  the  meaning  rises  to  take  breath ;  if 
in  every  sentence  we  recognise  shreds 
and  tags  of  common  social  verbiage — in 
such  a  case  it  is  because  the  mind  of  the 
writer  is  not  doing  its  duty,  is  not  con- 
secutively active,  maintains  no  continued 
hold  of  its  object,  hardly  knows  its  own 
drift.  In  like  manner,  mixed  or  inco- 
herent metaphor  arises  from  incoherent 
conception,  inability  to  see  vividly  what 
is  professedly  looked  at.  All  forms  of 
slip-shod,  in  short,  are  to  be  referred  to 
deficiency  of  precision  in  the  conduct  of 
thought.  Of  every  writer  it  ought  to  be 
required  at  least  that  he  pass  every  jot 
and  tittle  of  what  he  sets  down  through 
his  mind,  to  receive  the  guarantee  of 
having  been  really  there,  and  that  he 
arrange  and  connect  his  thoughts  in  a 
workmanlike  manner.  Anything  short 
of  this  is — allowance  being  made  for  cir- 
cumstances which  may  prevent  a  con- 
scientious man  from  always  doing  his 
best — an  insult  to  the  public.  Accord- 
ingly, in  all  good  literature,  not  ex- 
cepting the  subtlest  and  most  exuberant 
poetry,  one  perceives  a  strict  logic  link- 
ing thought  with  thought.  The  velocity 

u2 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


with  which  the  mind  can  perform  this 
service  of  giving  adequate  arrangement 
to  its  thoughts,  differs  much  in  different 
cases.  With  some  writers  it  is  -done 
almost  unconsciously — as  if  by  the 
operation  of  a  logical  instinct  so  power- 
ful that  whatever  teems  up  in  their 
minds  is  marshalled  and  made  exact  as 
it  conies,  and  there  is  perfection  in  the 
swiftest  expression.  So  it  Was  with  the 
all-fluent  Shakespeare,  whose  inven- 
tions, boundless  and  multitudinous, 
were  yet  ruled  by  a  logic  so  resistless, 
that  they  came  exquisite  at  once  to  the 
pen's  point,  and  in  studying  whose  in- 
tellectual gait  we  are  reminded  of  the 
description  of  the  Athenians  in  Euripi- 
des— "those  sons  of  Erectheus  always 
"moving  with  graceful  step  through  a 
"  glittering  violet  ether,  where  the  nine 
"  Pierian  muses  are  said  to  have  brought 
"  up  yellow-haired  Harmony  as  their  com- 
"  mon  child."  With  others  of  our  great 
writers  it  has  been  notably  different — 
rejection  of  first  thoughts  and  expres- 
sions, the  slow  choice  of  a  fit  per-cent- 
age,  and  the  concatenation  of  these  with 
labour  and  care. 

Prevalent  as  slip-shod  is,  it  is  not  so 
prevalent  as  it  was.  There  is  more 
careful  writing,  in  proportion,  now  than 
there  was  thirty,  seventy,  or  a  hundred 
years  ago.  This  may  be  seen  on  com- 
paring specimens  of  our  present  lite- 
rature with  corresponding  specimens 
from  the  older  newspapers  and  peri- 
odicals. The  precept  and  the  example 
of  Wordsworth  and  those  who  helped 
him  to  initiate  that  era  of  our  lite- 
rature which  dates  from  the  French 
Eevolution,  have  gradually  introduced, 
among  other  things,  habits  of  mecha- 
nical carefulness,  both  in  prose  and  in 
verse.  Among  poets,  Scott  and  Byron 
— safe  in  their  greatness  otherwise — 
were  the  most  conspicuous  sinners 
against  the  Wordsworthian  ordinances 
in  this  respect  after  they  had  been  pro- 
mulgated. If  one  were  willing  to  risk 
being  stoned  for  speaking  truth,  one 
might  call  these  two  poets  the  last  of 
the  great  slip-shods.  The  great  slip- 
shods,  be  it  observed  ;  and,  if  there  were 
the  prospect  that>  by  keeping  silence 


about  slip-shod,  we  should  see  any  other 
such  massive  figure  heaving  in  among 
us  in  his  slippers,  who  is  there  that 
would  object  to  his  company  on  account 
of  them,  or  that  would  not  gladly  assist 
to  fell  a  score  of  the  delicates  with 
polished  boot-tips  in  order  to  make 
room  for  him  ?  At  the  least,  it  may  be 
said  that  there  are  many  passages  in  the 
poems  of  Scott  and  Byron  which  fall 
far  short  of  the  standard  of  carefulness 
already  fixed  when  they  wrote.  Sub- 
sequent writers,  with  nothing  of  their 
genius,  have  been  much  more  careful. 
There  is,  however,  one  form  of  the 
slip-shod  in  verse  which,  probably  be- 
cause it  has  not  been  recognised  as  slip- 
shod, still  holds  ground  among  us.  It 
consists  in  that  particular  relic  of  the 
"  poetic  diction"  of  the  last  century 
which  allows  merely  mechanical  in- 
versions of  syntax  for  the  sake  of  metre 
and  rhyme.  For  example,  in  a  poem 
recently  published,  understood  to  be 
the  work  of  a  celebrated  writer,  and 
altogether  as  finished  a  specimen  of 
metrical  rhetoric  and  ringing  epigram  as 
has  appeared  for  many  a  day,  there 
occur  such  passages  as  these  : — 

"  Barley's  gilt  coach  the  equal  pair 
attends" 

"  What  earlier  school  this  grand  come- 
dian reard  ? 

His  first  essays  no  crowds  less  courtly 
cheered. 

From  learned  closets  came  a  saun- 
tering sage, 

Yawn'd,  smiled,  and  spoke,  and 
took  l>y  storm  the  age" 

"  All  their  lore 
Illumes  one  end  for  which  strives 

all  their  will ; 

Before  their  age  they  march  in- 
vincible." 

"  That  talk  which  art   as  eloquence 

admits 

Must  be  the  talk  of  thinkers  and 
of  wits." 

"  Let  Bright  responsible  for  Eng- 
land be, 

And  straight  in  Bright  a  Chatham 
we  should  see." 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


"  All  most  brave 
In  his  mixd  nature  seemd  to  life 

to  start, 
When  English  honour  roused  his 

English  heart." 

That  such  instances  of  syntax  inverted 
to  the  mechanical  order  of  the  verse 
should  occur  in  such  a  quarter,  proves 
that  they  are  still  considered  legitimate. 
But  I  believe — and  this  notwithstand- 
ing that  ample  precedent-may  be  shown, 
not  only  from  poets  of  the  last  century, 
but  from  all  preceding  poets — that  they 
are  not  legitimate.  Verse  does  not 
cancel  any  of  the  conditions  of  good 
prose,  but  only  superadds  new  and 
more  exquisite  conditions ;  and  that  is 
the  best  verse  where  the  words  follow 
each  other  punctually  in  the  most  exact 
prose  order,  and  yet  the  exquisite  dif- 
ference by  which  verse  does  distinguish 
itself  from  prose  is  fully  felt.  rAs, 
within  prose  itself,  there  are  natural 
inversions  according  as  the  thought 
moves  on  from  the  calm  and  straight- 
forward to  the  complex  and  impassioned 
— as  what  would  be  in  one  mood 
"  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  is  great,"  be- 
comes in  another,  "  Great  is  Diana  of 
the  Ephesians  " — so,  it  may  be,  there  is 
a  farther  amount  of  inversion  proper 
within  verse  as  such.  Any  such 
amount  of  inversion,  however,  must  be 
able  to  plead  itself  natural — that  is, 
belonging  inevitably  to  what  is  new  in 
the  movement  of  the  thought  under  the 
law  of  verse ;  which  plea  would  not 
extend  to  cases  like  .those  specified,  where 
versifiers,  that  they  may  keep  their 
metre  or  hit  a  rhyme,  tug  words  arbi- 
trarily out  of  their  prose  connexion.  If 
it  should  be  asked  how,  under  so  hard 
a  restriction,  a  poet  could  write  verse  at 
all,  the  answer  is,  "That  is  his  difficulty." 
But  that  this  canon  of  taste  in  verse  is 
not  so  oppressive  as  it  looks,  and  that 
it  will  more  and  more  come  to  be  re- 
cognised and  obeyed,  seems  augured  in 
the  fact  that  the  greatest  British  poet 
of  our  time  has  himself  intuitively 
attended  to  it,  and  furnished  an  almost 
continuous  example  of  it  in  his  poetry. 
Repeat  any  even  of  Tennyson's  lyrics, 


where,  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
obedience  to  the  canon  would  seem  most 
difficult — his  "  Tears,  idle  tears,"  or 
"  The  splendour  falls,"  —  and  see  if, 
under  all  that  peculiarity  which  makes 
the  effect  of  these  pieces,  if  of  any  in  our 
language,  something  more  than  the  effect 
of  prose,  every  word  does  not  fall  into 
its  place,  like  fitted  jasper,  exactly  in 
the  prose  order.  So  !  and  what  do  you 
say  to  Mr.  Tennyson's  last  volume,  with 
its  repetition  of  the  phrase  "  The  Table 
Round"  ?  Why,  I  say  that,  when  dif- 
ficulty mounts  to  impossibility,  then 
even  the  gods  relent,  even  Rhada- 
manthus  yields.  Here  it  is  as  if  the 
British  nation  had  passed  a  special 
enactment  to  this  effect  : — "  Whereas 
'  Mr.  Tennyson  has  written  a  set  of 
poems  on  the  Round  Table  of  Arthur 
and  his  Knights,  and  whereas  he  has 
'  represented  to  us  that  the  phrase 
'  '  The  Round  Table,'  specifying  the 
'  central  object  about  which  these  poems 
'  revolve,  is  a  phrase  which  no  force 
'  of  art  can  work  pleasingly  into  Iambic 
'  verse,  we,  the  British  nation,  con- 
'  sidering  the  peculiarity  of  the  case, 
'  and  the  public  benefits  likely  to 
'  accrue  from  a  steady  contemplation  of 
'  the  said  object,  do  enact  and  decree 
'  that  we  will  in  this  instance  depart 
'  from  our  usual  practice  of  thinking 
'  the  species  first  and  then  the  genus, 
c  and  will,  in  accordance  with  the 
'  practice  of  other  times  and  nations, 
'  say  '  The  Table  Round '  instead  of 
<  '  The  Round  Table '  as  heretofore." 
But  this  is  altogether  a  special  enact- 
ment. 

2.  There  is  the  vice  of  the  Trite. 
Here,  at  length,  we  get  out  of  the 
region  of  mere  verbal  forms,  and  gaze 
abroad  over  the  wide  field  of  our  litera- 
ture, with  a  view  everywhere  to  its 
component  substance.  We  are  overrun 
with  the  Trite.  There  is  Trite  to  the 
right  hand,  and  Trite  to  the  left ;  Trito 
before  and  Trite  behind  ;  the  view  is  of 
vast  leagues  of  the  Trite,  inclosing  little 
oases  of  true  literature,  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  reach.  And  what  is  the  Trite  ?  It 
is  a  minor  variety  of  what  is  known  as 
Cant.  By  Cant  is  meant  the  repetition, 


6 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


without  real  belief  of  sentiments  which 
it  is  thought  creditable  to  profess.  As 
the  name  implies,  there  is  a  certain 
solemnity,  as  of  upturned  eyes  and  a 
touch  of  song  in  the  voice,  required 
for  true  Cant  Since  Johnson's  time 
there  has  been  no  lack  of  denunciation 
of  this  vice.  But  the  Trite,  as  less 
immoral,  or  as  not  immoral  at  all,  has — 
with  the  exception,  as  far  as  we  recollect, 
of  one  onslaught  by  Swift — escaped 
equal  denunciation.  For  by  the  Trite 
is  meant  only  matter  which  may  be  true 
enough,  but  which  has  been  so  fami- 
liarised already  that  it  can  benefit  neither 
man  nor  beast  to  hear  or  read  it 
any  more.  "  Man  is  a  microcosm,"  may 
have  been  a  very  respectable  bit  of 
speech  once ;  and,  if  there  is  yet  any  poor 
creature  on  the  earth  to  whom  it  would 
be  news,  by  all  means  let  it  be  brought 
to  his  door.  But  does  such  a  creature 
exist  among  those  who  are  addressed  by 
anything  calling  itself  literature  ?  And 
so  with  a  thousand  other  such  sayings 
and  references — "Extremes  meet,  sir  ;" 
"  You  mustn't  argue  against  the  use  of 
a  thing  from  the  abuse  of  it;"  "The 
exception  proves  the  rule  ;"  Talleyrand's 
remark  about  the  use  of  speech ;  Newton 
gathering  pebbles  on  the  sea-shore  ;  and, 
worst  of  all,  Newton's  apple.  The  next 
writer  or  lecturer  that  brings  forward 
Newton's  apple,  unless  with  very  par- 
ticular accompaniments,  ought  to  be 
made  to  swallow  it,  pips  and  all,  that 
there  may  be  an  end  of  it.  Let  the 
reader  think  how  much  of  our  current 
writing  is  but  a  repeated  solution  of 
such  phrases  and  allusions,  and  let  him 
extend  his  view  from  such  short  speci- 
mens of  the  Trite,  to  facts,  doctrines, 
modes  of  thought,  and  tissues  of  fiction, 
characterised  by  the  same  quality,  and 
yet  occupying  reams  of  our  literature 
year  after  year,  and  he  will  understand 
the  nature  of  the  grievance.  What  we 
aver  is  that  there  are  numberless  writers 
who  are  not  at  all  slip-shod,  who  are 
correct  and  careful,  who  may  even  be 
said  to  write  well,  but  respecting  whom, 
if  we  consider  the  substance  of  what  they 
write,  the  report  must  be  that  they  are 
drowning  us  with  a  deluge  of  the  Trite. 


Translated  into  positive  language,  the 
protest  against  the  Trite  might  take  the 
form  of  a  principle,  formally  avowed,  we 
believe,  by  more  than  one  writer,  and 
certainly  implied  in  the  practice  of  all 
the  chiefs  of  our  literature — to  wit,  that 
no  man  ought  to  consider  himself  en- 
titled to  write  upon  a  subject  by  the 
mere  intention  to  write  carefully,  unless 
he  has  also  something  new  to  advance. 
We  are  aware,  of  course,  of  the  objection 
against  such  a  principle  arising  from  the 
fact  that  the  society  of  every  country  is 
divided,  in  respect  of  intelligence  and 
culture,  into  strata,  widening  as  they 
descend — from  the  limited  number  oi 
highly-educated  spirits  at  the  top  who 
catch  the  first  rays  of  all  new  thought, 
down  to  the  multitude  nearest  the 
ground,  to  whom  even  Newton's  apple 
would  be  new,  and  among  whom  the 
aphorism  "  Things  find  their  level " 
would  create  a  sensation.  It  is  admitted 
at  once  that  there  must,  in  every  com- 
munity, be  literary  provision  for  this 
state  of  things — a  popular  literature,  or 
rather  a  descending  series  of  literatures, 
consisting  of  solutions  more  or  less 
strong  of  old  knowledge  and  of  common 
sentiments,  in  order  that  these  may 
percolate  the  whole  social  mass.  Every- 
thing must  be  learnt  some  time  ;  and 
our  infants  are  not  to  be  defrauded  in 
their  nurseries,  nor  our  boys  and  girls 
in  their  school-time,  of  the  legends  and 
little  facts  with  which  they  must  begin 
as  we  did,  and  which  have  been  the 
outfit  of  the  British  mind  from  time 
immemorial  But,  even  as  respects 
popular  and  juvenile  literature,  the  rule 
still  holds  that,  to  justify  increase,  there 
must  be  novelty — novelty  in  relation  to 
the  constituencies  addressed  ;  novelty, 
if  not  of  matter,  at  least  of  method. 
Else  why  not  keep  to  the  old  popular 
and  elementary  books — which,  indeed, 
might  often  be  good  policy  ?  If  one 
could  positively  decide  which,  out  of 
competing  hundreds,  was  the  best  exist- 
ing Latin  school-grammar,  what  a  gain 
to  the  national  Latinity  it  would  be,  if, 
without  infraction  of  our  supreme  prin- 
ciple of  liberty,  as  applied  even  to  gram- 
mars, we  could  get  back  to  the  old 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature? 


English  plan,  have  Latin  taught  from 
that  one  grammar  in  all  the  schools  of 
the   land,    and   concentrate  all    future 
talent  taking  a  grammatical  direction  on 
its  gradual  improvement?     Returning, 
however,  to  current  literature,  more  ex- 
pressly so-called — to  the  works  of  his- 
tory, the  treatises,  the  poems,  the  novels, 
the  pamphlets,  the  essays,  &c.  that  cir- 
culate from  our  better  libraries,  and  lie 
on  the  tables  of  the  educated — we  might 
show  reason  for   our  rule   even  here. 
Allowing  for  the  necessity  even  here  of 
iteration,  of  dilution,  of  varied  and  long- 
continued  administration,  ere  new  truths 
or  modes  of  thought  can  be  fairly  worked 
into  the  minds  of  those  who  read,  new 
facts  rightly  apprehended,  or  new  fancies 
made  effective,  should  we  not  have  to 
report  a  huge  over-proportion   of  the 
merest    wish-wash?     What    a    reform 
here,  if  there  were  some  perception  of 
the  principle  that  correct  writing  is  not 
enough,  unless  one  has  something  fresh 
to  impart.     What !  a  premium  on  the 
love  of  paradox  ;  a  licence  to  the  passion 
for  effect;  more  of  straining  after  no- 
velty ?     Alas  !  the  kind  of  novelty  of 
which  we  speak,  is  not  reached  by  the 
kind  of  straining  that  is  meant,  but  by 
a  process  very  different — not  by  talking 
right  and  left,  and  writhing  one's  neck 
like  a  pelican,  on  the  chance  of  hitting 
something  odd  ahead  ;  but  by  accuracy 
of  silent  watch,  by  passive  quietude  to 
many   impressions,    by    search    where 
others  have  left  off  fatigued,  by  open-air 
rumination  and  hour-long  nightly  re- 
verie, by  the  repression  again  and  again 
of  paying  platitudes  as  they  rise  to  the 
lips,  in  order  that,  by  rolling  within  the 
mind,  they  may  unite  into  something 
better,  and  that,  where  now  all  is  a  dif- 
fused cloud  of  vapoury  conceit,   there 
may  come  at  last  the  clearing  flash  and 
the  tinkle  of  the  golden  drop.     Think, 
think,  think — is  the  advice  required  at 
present   by   scores   of   hopeful  writers 
injuring  themselves  by  luxury  in  com- 
monplace.   The  freshly-evolved  thought 
of  the  world,  the  wealth  of  new  bud  and 
blossom  which  the  mind  of  humanity  is 
ever  putting  forth — this,  and  not  the 
dead  wood,  is  what  ought  to  be  taken 


account  of  in  true  literature;  and  the 
peculiarity  of  the  case  is  that  the  rate  of 
the  growth,  the  amount  of  fresh  sprout- 
age  that  shall  appear,  depends  largely  on 
the  intensity  of  resolution  exerted.  But, 
should  the  associations  with  the  word 
"  novelty  "  be  incurably  bad,  the  expres- 
sion of  the  principle  may  be  varied.  It 
may  be  asserted,  for  example,  that,  uni- 
versally, the  proper  material  for  current 
literature,  the  proper  element  in  which 
the  writer  must  work,  is  the  material  or 
element  of  the  hitherto  uncommunicated. 
Adapting  this  universal  expression  to 
literature  as  broken  down  into  its  main 
departments,  we  may  say  that  the  proper 
element  for  all  new  writing  of  the  his- 
torical order  is  the  hitherto  unobserved 
or  unrecollected,  for  all  new  writing  of 
the  scientific  or  didactic  order  the 
hitherto  unexplained,  for  all  new  poetry 
the  hitherto  unimagined,  for  all  new 
writing  for  purposes  of  moral  and  social 
stimulation  the  hitherto  unadvised. 
There  may,  of  course,  be  mixture  of  the 
ingredients. 

Among  the  forms  of  the  Trite  with 
which  we  are  at  present  troubled  is  the 
repetition  everywhere  of  certain  obser- 
vations and  bits  of  expression,  admirable 
in  themselves,  but  now  hackneyed  till 
the  pith  is  out  of  them.  By  way  of 
example,  take  that  kind  of  imagined 
visual  effect  which  consists  in  seeing  an 
object  defined  against  the  sky.  How 
this  trick  of  the  picturesque  has  of  late 
been  run  upon  in  poems  and  novels — 
trees  "  against  the  blue  sky,"  mountains 
"  against  the  blue  sky,"  everything 
whatever  "against  the  blue  sky,"  till 
the  very  chimney-pots  are  ashamed  of 
the  background,  and  beg  you  wouldn't 
mention  it !  And  so  we  have  young 
ladies  seated  pensively  at  their  windows 
"  looking  out  into  the  Infinite,"  or 
"out  into  the  Night."  Similarly  there 
are  expressions  of  speculative  import 
about  man's  destiny  and  work  in  the 
world,  so  strong  in  real  meaning,  that 
those  who  promulgated  them  did  the 
world  good  service,  but  parroted  now 
till  persons  who  feel  their  import  most 
hear  them  with  disgust.  For  the  very 
test  that  a  truth  has  fallen  upon  a  mind 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


in  vital  relation  to  it,  is  that,  when 
reproduced  by  that  mind,  it  shall  be 
with  a  modification.  But  worse  than 
the  mere  incessant  reproduction  of 
propositions  and  particular  expressions 
already  worn  threadbare,  are  certain 
larger  accompanying  forms  of  the  Trite, 
which  consist  in  the  feeble  assumption 
of  entire  modes  of  thought,  already  ex- 
hausted of  their  virtue  by  writers  in 
whom  they  were  natural.  As  an  in- 
stance, we  may  cite  a  certain  grandiose 
habit,  common  of  late  in  the  description 
of  character.  Men  are  no  longer  men  in 
many  of  our  popular  biographic  sketches, 
but  prophets,  seers,  volcanoes,  cataracts, 
whirlwinds  of  passion — vast  physical 
entities,  seething  inwardly  with  un- 
heard-of confusions,  and  passing,  all 
alike,  through  a  necessary  process  of 
revolution  which  converts  chaos  into 
cosmos,  and  brings  their  roaring  energy 
at  last  into  harmony  with  the  universe. 
Now  he  were  a  most  thankless  as  well 
as  a  most  unintelligent  reader  who  did 
not  recognise  the  noble  power  of  thought, 
ay,  and  the  exactitude  of  biographic  art, 
exhibited  in  certain  famous  specimens 
of  character-painting  which  have  been 
the  prototypes  in  this  style — who  did 
not  see  that  there  the  writer  began 
firmly  with  the  actual  man,  dark-haired 
or  fair-haired,  tall  or  short,  who  was 
the  object  of  his  study ;  and,  only  when 
he  had  most  accurately  figured  him 
and  his  circumstances,  passed  into  that 
world  of  large  discourse  which  each 
man  carries  attached  to  him,  as  his 
spiritual  self,  and  in  the  representation 
and  analysis  of  which,  since  it  has  no 
physical  boundaries,  all  analogies  of 
volcanoes,  whirlwinds,  and  other  space- 
filling agencies  may  well  be  helpful 
But  in  the  parodies  of  this  style  all  is 
featureless  ;  it  is  not  men  at  all  that  we 
see,  but  supposititious  beings  like  the 
phantoms  which  are  said  to  career  in 
the  darkness  over  Scandinavian  ice- 
plains.  Character  is  the  most  complex 
and  varied  thing  extant — consisting  not 
of  vague  monotonous  masses,  but  of  in- 
volutions and  subtleties  in  and  in  for 
ever  ;  the  art  of  describing  it  may  well 
employ  whole  coming  generations  of 


writers  ;  and  the  fallacy  is  that  all  great 
painting  must  be  done  with  the  big 
brush,  and  that  even  cameos  may  be 
cut  with  pickaxes. 

I  have  had  half  a  mind  to  include 
among  recent  forms  of  the  Trite  the 
habit  of  incessant  allusion  to  a  round  of 
favourite  characters  of  the  past,  and 
especially  to  certain  magnates  of  the 
literary  series — Homer,  Dante,  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  Burns,  Scott,  Goethe, 
and  others.  But  I  believe  this  would 
be  wrong.  Although  we  do  often  get 
tired  of  references  to  these  names,  and 
of  disquisitions  written  about  them  and 
about  them ;  although  we  may  some- 
times think  that  the  large  amount  of 
our  literary  activity  which  is  devoted  to 
such  mere  stock-taking  of  what  has 
been  left  us  by  our  predecessors  is  a 
bad  sign,  and  that  we  might  push  intel- 
lectually out  on  our  own  account  more 
boldly  if  our  eyes  were  less  frequently 
retreverted ;  although,  even  in  the 
interest  of  retrospection  itself,  we  might 
desire  that  the  objects  of  our  wor- 
ship were  more  numerous,  and  that, 
to  effect  this,  our  historians  would 
resuscitate  for  us  a  goodly  array  of  the 
Dii  minorum  gentium,  to  have  their 
turn  with  the  greater  gods — yet,  in  the 
main,  the  intellectual  habit  of  which  we 
speak  is  one  that  has  had  and  will  have 
unusually  rich  results.  For  these  great 
men  of  the  past  are,  as  it  were,  the 
peaks,  more  or  less  distant,  that  surround 
the  plain  where  we  have  our  dwelling ; 
we  cannot  lift  our  eyes  without  seeing 
them ;  and  no  length  or  repetition  of 
gaze  can  exhaust  their  aspects.  And 
here  we  must  guard  against  a  possible 
misapprehension  of  what  has  been  said 
as  to  the  Trite  in  general.  There  are 
notions  permanent  and  elemental  in  the 
very  constitution  of  humanity,  simple 
and  deep  beyond  all  power  of  modifica- 
tion, the  same  yesterday  and  to-day,  in- 
capable almost  of  being  stated  by  any 
one  except  as  all  would  state  them,  and 
which  yet  never  are  and  never  can  be 
trite.  How  man  that  is  born  of  woman 
is  of  few  days  and  foil  of  trouble,  how 
he  comes  from  darkness  and  disappears 
in  darkness  again,  how  the  good  that  he 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


would  lie  does  not  and  the  evil  that 
he  would  not  still  he  does — these  and 
other  forms  of  the  same  conception  of 
time  and  death,  interwoven  with  certain 
visual  conceptions  of  space,  and  with 
the  sense  of  an  inscrutable  power  be- 
yond, have  accompanied  the  race  hither- 
to, as  identified  with  its  consciousness. 
Whether,  with  one  philosophy,  we  re- 
gard these  as  the  largest  objects  of 
thought,  or,  with  another,  as  the  neces- 
sary forms  of  human  sensibility,  equally 
they  are  ultimate,  and  those  souls  in 
which  they  are  strongest,  which  can 
least  tear  themselves  away  from  them, 
are  the  most  truly  and  grandly  human. 
Add  the  primary  affections,  the  feelings 
that  belong  to  the  most  common  and 
enduring  facts  of  human  experience. 
In  recollections  of  these  are  the  touches 
that  make  the  whole  world  kin  ;  these 
give  the  melodies  to  which  intellect  can 
but  construct  the  harmonies  ;  it  is  from 
a  soil  of  such  simple  and  deep  concep- 
tions that  all  genius  must  spring.  While 
the  branches  and  extreme  twigs  are 
putting  forth  those  fresh  sprouts  of  new 
truth  and  new  phantasy  that  we  spoke  of, 
nay,  in  order  that  this  green  wealth  and 
perpetual  proof  of  life  may  not  fail,  the 
roots  must  be  there.  And  so,  in  litera- 
ture, return  as  we  may  to  those  oldest 
facts  and  feelings,  we  need  never  doubt 
their  novelty.  Hear  how  one  rude 
Scottish  rhymer  found  out  for  himself 
all  over  again  the  fact  that  life  has  its 
sorrows,  and,  to  secure  his  copyright, 
registered  the  date  of  his  discovery  :— 

"  Upon  the  saxteen  hundred  year 

Of  God  and  thretty-three 
Frae  Christ  was  born,  wha  bought  us 

dear, 

As  writings  testifie, 
On  January  the  sixteenth  day, 

As  I  did  lie  alone, 
I  thus  unto  myself  did  say, 

'Ah !  man  was  made  to  moan." " 

3.  There  is  the  vice  of  the  Blase.  In 
its  origin  the  mental  habit  which  we  so 
name  is  often  healthy  enough — a  natural 
reaction  against  the  Trite.  When  the 
whole  field  of  literature  is  so  overrun 


with  the  Trite  ;  when  so  seldom  can  one 
take  up  a  bit  of  writing  and  find  any 
stroke  of  true  intellectual  action  in  it ; 
when,  time  after  time,  one  receives  even 
periodicals  of  high  repute,  and,  turning 
over  their  pages,  finds  half  their  articles 
of  a  kind  the  non-existence  of  which 
would  have  left  the  world  not  one  whit 
the  poorer — here  an  insipid  mince  of 
facts  from  a  popular  book,  there  a 
twitter  of  doctrinal  twaddle  which 
would  weary  you  from  your  feeblest 
relative,  and  again  a  criticism  on  the 
old  "beauty  and  blemish "  plan  of  a 
poem\long  ago  judged  by  everybody  for 
himself;  when,  worse  still,  the  Trite 
passes  into  Cant,  and  one  is  offended 
by  knobs  and  gobbets  of  a  spurious 
theology,  sent  floating,  for  purposes  half- 
hypocritical,  down  a  stream  of  what  else 
would  be  simple  silliness, — little  wonder 
that  men  of  honest  minds  find  it  sound 
economy  to  assume  habitually  a  sour 
mood  towards  all  literature  whatever, 
allowing  the  opposite  mood  to  develop 
itself  rarely  and  on  occasion.  As  it  may 
be  noted  of  bank-cashiers  that,  by  long 
practice,  they  have  learnt  to  survey  the 
crowd  outside  the  counters  rather  re- 
pellingly  than  responsively,  saving  their 
recognitions  for  personal  friends,  and 
any  respect  or  curiosity  that  may  be  left 
in  them  for  the  bearers  of  very  big 
warrants,  so,  and  by  a  similar  training, 
have  some  of  the  best  of  our  profes- 
sional critics  become  case-hardened  to 
the  sight  of  the  daily  world  of  writers, 
each  with  his  little  bit  of  paper,  be- 
sieging their  bar.  It  is  not,  however,  of 
this  natural  callousness  that  we  speak, 
but  of  a  habit  of  mind  sometimes  be- 
ginning in  this,  but  requiring  worse 
elements  for  its  formation.  No  one  can 
look  about  him  without  marking  the 
extent  to  which  a  blase  spirit  is  infecting 
the  British  literary  mind.  The  thing 
is  complained  of  everywhere  under  a 
variety  of  phrases — want  of  faith,  want 
of  earnest  purpose,  scepticism,  poco- 
curantism.  For  our  purpose  none  of 
these  names  seems  so  suitable  as  the  one 
we  have  chosen.  On*the  one  hand,  the 
charges  of  "  want  of  faith  "  and  the  like 
are  often  urged  against  men  who  have  a 


10 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


hundred  times  more  of  real  faith  and  of 
active  energy  directed  by  that  faith  than 
those  who  bring  the  charges,  and,  when 
interpreted,  they  often  mean  nothing 
more  than  an  intellect  too  conscientious 
to  surround  itself  with  mystifications 
and  popular  deceits  of  colour  when  it 
may  walk  in  white  light.  On  the  other 
hand,  by  the  term  Blase  we  preserve  a 
sense  of  the  fact  that  those  to  whom  the 
vice  is  attributed,  are  frequently,  if  not 
generally,  men  of  cultivated  and  even 
fastidious  minds,  writing  very  carefully 
and  pertinently,  but  ruled  throughout 
by  a  deplorable  disposition  ruinous  to 
their  own  strength,  restricting  them  to 
a  petty  service  in  the  sarcastic  and  the 
small,  and  making  them  the  enemies  of 
everything  within  their  range  that  mani- 
fests the  height  or  the  depth  of  the 
unjaded  human  spirit.  There  are,  in- 
deed, two  classes  of  critics  in  whom  this 
vice  appears — the  light  and  trivial,  to 
whom  everything  is  but  matter  for  witty 
sparkle  ;  and  the  grave  and  acrimonious, 
who  fly  more  seriously,  and  carry  venom 
in  their  stings.  But,  in  both,  the  forms 
in  which  the  spirit  presents  itself  are 
singularly  alike. 

One  form  is  that  of  appending  to 
what  is  meant  to  be  satirized  certain 
words  signifying  that  the  critic  has 
looked  into  it  and  found  it  mere  im- 
posture. "  All  that  sort  of  thing  "  is  a 
favourite  phrase  for  the  purpose.  "  Civil 
and  religious  liberty  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing,"  "  High  art  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing,"  "Young  love  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing ; "  is  there  anything 
more  common  than  such  combinations  ? 
Then,  to  give  scope  for  verbal  variety, 
there  are  such  words  as  "Dodge"  and 
"Business"  equally  suitable.  "The 
philanthropic  dodge,"  "The  transcen- 
dental business" — so  and  otherwise  are 
modes  of  thought  and  action  fitted  with 
nicknames.  Now,  nicknames  are  legiti- 
mate ;  the  power  of  sneering  was  given 
to  man  to  be  used ;  and  nothing  is  more 
gratifying  than  to  see  an  idea  which  is 
proving  a  nuisance,  sent  clattering  away 
with  a  hue  and  cry  after  it  and  a  tin- 
kettle  tied  to  its  tail.  But  the  practice 
we  speak  of  is  passing  all  bounds,  and 


is  becoming  a  mere  trick  whereby  a  few 
impudent  minds  may  exercise  an  in- 
fluence to  which  they  have  no  natural 
right,  and  abase  all  the  more  timid  in- 
telligence in  their  neighbourhood  down 
to  their  own  level  For  against  this 
trick  of  nicknames  as  practised  by  some 
of  our  pert  gentry,  what  thought  or  fact 
or  interest  of  man,  from  the  world's  be- 
ginning till  now,  so  solemn  as  to  be 
safe?  The  "Hear,  0  heaven,  and  give 
ear,  0  earth,  business,"  "  the  Hamlef  s 
soliloquy  dodge,"  "The  death  of  Socrates, 
martyrdom  for  truth,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing  " — where  lies  our  security  that 
impudence,  growing  omnipotent,  may 
not  reach  even  to  heights  like  these  ? 
Already  that  intermediate  height  seems 
to  be  attained,  where  systems  of  thought 
that  have  occupied  generations  of  the 
world's  intelligence,  and  swayed  for 
better  or  worse  vast  lengths  of  human 
action,  are  disposed  of  with  a  sneer. 
Calvinism  figures,  we  dare  say,  as  "  the 
brimstone  business  ;  "  German  philo- 
sophy as  "  the  unconditioned,  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing;"  and  we  may  hear 
ere  long  of  one  momentous  direction  of 
recent  scientific  thought  under  the  con- 
venient name  of  "the  Darwin  dodge." 
It  would  be  unjust  to  say  that  the 
blase  spirit,  wherever  it  is  most  respect- 
ably represented,  has  yet  become  so  im- 
pertinent as  this ;  and  it  would  be 
peevish  to  suppose  that  a  spurt  of  fun 
may  not  ascend  occasionally  as  high  as 
Orion  himself  without  disrespect  done 
or  intended.  But  the  danger  is  that, 
where  this  sarcastic  mood  towards  con- 
temporary efforts  of  thought  or  move- 
ments of  social  zeal  is  long  kept  up 
without  some  counteracting  discipline, 
the  whole  mind  will  be  shrivelled  into 
that  one  mood,  till  all  distinction  of 
noble  and  mean  is  lost  sight  of,  and  the 
passing  history  of  the  human  mind 
seems  but  an  evolution  of  roguery.  A 
Mephistopheles  going  about  with  a 
Faust,  whistling  down  his  grandilo- 
quence and  turning  his  enthusiasms 
into  jest,  is  but  the  type  perhaps  of  a 
conjunction  proper  to  no  age  in  parti- 
cular ;  but,  necessary  as  the  conjunction 
may  be,  who  is  there  that  would  not 


Three  Vices  of  Current  Literature* 


11 


rather  have  his  own  being  merged  in 
the  corporate  Faust  of  his  time  than  be 
a  part  of  the  being  of  its  corporate 
Mephistopheles  ? 

A  more  refined  manifestation  of  the 
blasS  spirit  in  literature  occurs  in  a 
certain  cunning  use  of  quotation-marks 
for  the  purpose  of  discrediting  maxims 
and  beliefs  in  popular  circulation.  A 
word  or  a  phrase  is  put  within  inverted 
commas  in  a  way  to  signify  that  it  is 
quoted  not  from  any  author  in  particular, 
but  from  the  common-place  book  of  that 
great  blatant  beast,  the  public.  Thus  I 
may  say  "  Civil  and  Religious  Liberty," 
or  "Patriotism,"  or  "Toleration,"  or 
"The  Oppressed  Nationalities,"  or  "  Phil- 
anthropy," hedging  the  words  in  with 
quotation-marks,  so  as  to  hint  that  I, 
original-minded  person  that  I  am,  don't 
mean  to  vouch  for  the  ideas  correspond- 
ing, and  indeed,  in  the  mighty  voyage  of 
my  private  intellect,  have  left  them  far 
behind.  Nowhere  again  there  is  a  fair  and 
a  foul  side  of  the  practice.  Frequently 
by  such  a  use  of  quotation-marks  all 
that  is  meant  is  that  a  writer,  having  no 
time  to  adjust  his  own  exact  relations  to 
an  idea,  begs  the  use  of  it  in  a  ge'neral 
way  for  what  it  seems  worth.  Farther, 
when  more  of  scepticism  or  sarcasm  is 
intended,  the  practice  may  still  be  as 
fair  as  it  is  convenient.  When  an  idea 
has  been  long  in  circulation,  ten  to  one, 
by  the  very  movement  of  the  collective 
mind  through  so  much  of  varied  subse- 
quent circumstance,  it  has  ceased  to 
have  that  amount  of  vital  relationship 
to  the  rest  of  present  fact  and  present 
aspiration,  which  would  make  it  fully 
a  truth.  No  harm,  in  such  a  case,  in 
indicating  the  predicament  in  which  it 
stands  by  quotation-marks  ;  no  harm  if 
by  such  a  device  it  is  meant  even  to  ex- 
press more  of  dissent  from  the  idea 
than  of  remaining  respect  for  it.  The 
visible  inclosure  within  quotation-marks 
is,  as  it  were,  a  mechanical  arrangement 
for  keeping  a  good-for-nothing  idea  an 
hour  or  so  in  the  stocks.  The  crowd 
point  their  fingers  at  him ;  the  constables 
will  know  him  again;  if  he  has  any 
shame  left,  he  will  be  off  from  that 
parish  as  soon  as  he  is  released.  But  all 


depends  on  the  discretion  exercised  by 
those  who  award  the  punishment.  Where 
a  Regan  and  a  Cornwall  are  the  justices, 
it  may  be  a  Kent,  a  King's  Earl  and 
messenger,  that  is  put  in  the  stocks ; 
and,  after  his  first  protest,  he  may  bear 
the  indignity  philosophically  and  suffer 
not  a  whit  in  the  regard  of  the  right- 
minded.  And  so  the  office  of  deciding 
what  are  and  what  are  not  good-for- 
nothing  ideas  is  one  in  which  there  may 
be  fatal  mistakes.  After  all,  the  funda- 
mental and  hereditary  articles  in  the 
creed  of  the  blatant  beast  are  pretty 
sure  to  have  a  considerable  deal  of  truth 
in  them ;  and,  though  it  may  do  the  old 
fellow  good  to  poke  him  up  a  bit,  there  is 
a  point  beyond  which  it  may  be  dangerous 
to  provoke  him,  and  sophisms  had  better 
keep  out  of  his  way.  In  other  words, 
though  there  may  be  notions  or  feelings 
whose  tenure  is  provisional,  there  are 
others  which  humanity  has  set  store  by  for 
ages,  and  shows  no  need  or  inclination  to 
part  with  yet.  It  is  the  habit  of  heartlessly 
pecking  at  these  that  shows  a  soul  that 
is  blase.  Of  late,  for  example,  it  has 
been  a  fashion  with  a  small  minority  of 
British  writers  to  assert  their  culture  by 
a  very  supercilious  demeanour  towards 
an  idea  which  ought,  beyond  all  others, 
to  be  sacred  in  this  island — the  idea  of 
Liberty.  Listen  to  them  when  this 
notion  or  any  of  its  equivalents  turns 
up  for  their  notice  or  comment,  and  the 
impression  they  give  by  their  language 
is  that  in  their  private  opinion  it  is  little 
better  than  clap-trap.  By  all  that  is 
British,  it  is  time  that  this  whey-faced 
intellectualism  should  be  put  to  the 
blush !  Like  any  other  thought  or 
phrase  of  man,  Liberty  itself  may  stand 
in  need  of  re- definition  and  re-explica- 
tion from  time  to  time ;  but  woe  to  any 
time  in  which  the  vague  old  sound  shall 
cease  to  correspond,  .in  the  actual  feelings 
of  men,  with  the  measureless  reality  of 
half  their  being  !  From  the  depths  of 
the  past  the  sound  has  come  down  to 
us ;  after  we  are  in  our  graves,  it  will 
be  ringing  along  the  avenues  of  the 
future ;  and,*  in  the  end,  it  will  be 
the  test  of  the  worth  of  all  our  philoso- 
phy whether  this  sound  has  been  inter- 


12 


Three,  Vices  of  Current  Literature. 


cepted  or  deadened  by  it,  or  only  trans- 
mitted the  clearer. 

What  in  the  blast  habit  of  mind 
renders  it  so  hurtful  to  the  interests  of 
literature  is  that  it  introduces  into  all 
departments  a  contentedness  with  the 
proximate — i.e.  with  the  nearest  thing 
that  will  do.  For  real  power,  for  really 
great  achievement  in  any  department  of 
intellect,  a  certain  fervour  of  feeling,  a 
certain  avidity  as  for  conquest,  a  certain 
disdain  of  the  petty  circle  within  the 
horizon  as  already  one's  own  and  pos- 
sessed, or,  at  the  least,  a  certain  quiet 
hopefulness,  is  absolutely  necessary. 
But  let  even  a  naturally  strong  mind 
catch  the  contagion  of  the  Blase,  and  this 
spur  is  gone.  The  near  then  satisfies — 
the  near  in  fact,  which  makes  History 
poor  and  beggarly ;  the  near  in  doctrine, 
which  annuls  Speculative  Philosophy, 
and  provides  instead  a  miscellany  of 
little  tenets  more  or  less  shrewd ;  the 
near  in  imagination,  which  checks  in 
Poetry  all  force  of  wing.  I  believe  that 
this  defect  may  be  observed  very  exten- 
sively in  our  current  literature,  appear- 
ing in  a  double  form.  In  the  first  place, 
it  may  be  seen  affecting  the  personal  lite- 
rary practice  of  many  men  of  ability  and 
culture  far  beyond  the  average,  making 
them  contented  on  all  subjects  with  that 
degree  of  intellectual  exertion  which 
simply  clears  them  of  the  Trite  and 
brings  them  to  the  first  remove  from 
commonplace,  and  thus  gradually  un- 
fitting them  for  the  larger  efforts  for 
which  nature  may  have  intended  them. 
There  are  not  a  few  such  men — the 
cochin-chinas  of  literature,  as  one  might 
call  them ;  sturdy  in  the  legs,  but  with 
degenerate  power  of  flight.  In  the 
second  place,  the  same  cause  produces 
in  these  men  and  in  others,  when  they 
act  as  critics,  a  sense  of  irritation  and 
of  offended  taste  (not  the  less  mean 
that  it  is  perfectly  honest),  when  they 
contemplate  in  any  of  their  contempo- 
raries the  gestures  and  evolutions  of  an 
intellect  more  natural  than  their  own. 
The  feeling  is  that  which  we  might  sup- 
pose in  honest  poultry,  .regarding  the 
movements  of  unintelligible  birds  over- 
head :  such  movements  do,  to  the 


poultry,  outrage  all  principles  of  correct 
ornithology.  Let  any  one  who  wishes  to 
understand  more  particularly  what  is 
meant,  read  the  speeches  of  the  Grecian 
chiefs  in  council  in  Shakespeare's  Troilus 
and  Cressida,  and  then  fancy  how  such 
a  bit  of  writing  would  fare  at  the  hands 
of  many  literary  critics  now-a-days,  if 
it  came  before  them  anonymously.  But 
it  is,  perhaps,  as  an  influence  tending  to 
arrest  the  development  of  speculative 
thought,  specially  so  called,  that  the 
distaste  of  so  many  literary  men  for  all 
but  the  proximate  operates  most  detri- 
mentally. The  habit  of  sneering  at 
Speculative  Philosophy,  both  name  and 
thing,  is  a  world  too  common  among  men 
who  ought  to  know  better.  Sneer  as 
they  wOl,  it  has  been  true  from  the 
beginning  of  time,  and  will  be  true  to 
the  end,  that  the  precise  measure  of  the 
total  intellectual  worth  of  any  man,  or 
of  any  age,  is  the  measure  of  the  specu- 
lative energy  lodged  in  him,  or  in  it. 
Take  our  politics  of  the  last  twelve 
years  for  an  example.  How  much  of 
British  political  writing  during  these 
years  has  consisted  in  vilification  of 
certain  men,  basing  their  theories  on 
elementary  principles,  and  styled  vision- 
aries or  fanatics  accordingly.  And  yet, 
if  matters  are  well  looked  at,  these  very 
men  are  now  seen  to  be  the  only  men 
who  apprehended  tendencies  rightly ; 
they  alone  have  not  had  to  recant ;  and  it 
is  the  others — the  from-hand-to-mouth 
men  in  politics — that  have  turned  out 
to  be  the  fools. 

Besides  other  partial  remedies  that 
there  may  be  for  the  wide-spread  and 
still  spreading  vice  of  the  Blase  among 
our  men  of  intellect,  there  may  be  in 
reserve,  for  aught  we  know,  some  form 
of  that  wholesale  remedy  by  which 
Providence  in  many  an  instance  hitherto 
has  revived  the  jaded  organisms  of  na- 
ti6ns.  Those  fops  in  uniform,  those 
loungers  of  London  clubs  and  ball- 
rooms, who  a  few  years  ago  used  to  be 
the  types  to  our  wits  of  manhood  grown 
useless,  from  whose  lips  even  their 
mother-speech  came  minced  and  clipped 
for  very  languor  of  life, — how  in  that 
Eussian  peninsula  they  straightened 


Annals  of  an  Industrial  School. 


13 


themselves,  the  fighting  English  demi- 
gods !  So,  should  it  be  the  hap  of  our 
nation  to  find  itself  ere  long  in  the 
probation  of  some  such  enterprise  of  all 
its  strength,  some  such  contest  of  life 
and  death,  as  many  foresee  for  it,  little 
doubt  that  then,  in  the  general  shaking 
which  shall  ensue,  fallacies  shall  fall 
from  it  like  withered  leaves,  and  meaner 
habits  with  them,  and  that  then  many 
a  mind  to  which  at  present  the  sole 
competent  use  of  pen  or  of  voice  seems 
to  be  in  a  splenetic  service  of  small 


sarcasm,  shall  receive  a  noble  rouse  for 
the  service  of  the  collective  need. 
Meanwhile,  in  these  yet  clear  heavens, 
and  ere  the  hurricane  com.es  that  shall 
huddle  us  together,  it  is  for  any  one 
here  and  there  that,  having  escaped 
the  general  taint  of  cynicism,  has 
dared  to  propose  to  himself  some 
positive  intellectual  labour  of  the  old 
enthusiastic  sort,  to  secure  the  neces- 
sary equanimity  by  pre-arranged  and 
persevering  solitude. 


ANNALS  OF  AN  INDUSTRIAL  SCHOOL. 

BY   THE   DEAN   OF   ELY. 


THIS  is  the  age  of  Reformatories.  Judges 
have  declared  against  the  cruelty  of 
awarding  punishment,  pure  and  simple, 
to  those  whose  chief  fault  is  utter  neglect 
on  the  part  of  parents  to  teach  them 
what  is  right,  or  diligence  in  teaching 
them  what  is  wrong ;  clergymen  have 
preached  about  it ;  Parliaments  have 
voted  upon  it ;  public  meetings  have 
declared  against  it ;  and,  what  is  still 
better,  Mettray,  Eedhill,  and  hundreds 
of  other  similar  asylums  for  young 
offenders  have  been  established,  and 
have  proved  the  possibility,  and  there- 
fore the  duty,  of  reforming  wicked  boys, 
instead  of  severely  whipping  them,  or 
confining  them,  or  hanging  them.  So 
undeniable  has  the  reformatory  success 
been,  that  we  have  almost  ceased  to  hear 
the  plausible  argument  that  bad  boys 
are  taken  care  of,  and  honest  boys 
left  to  shift  for  themselves.  The  Chris- 
tian instinct  of  warm-hearted  people 
long  ago  burst  through  the  bonds  which 
this  argument  would  lay  upon  them,  and 
we  now  see  clearly  enough  that  the 
argument  was  only  a  sophism,  and  that 
the  real  answer  to  it  is  this,  that  wicked- 
ness is  like  a  loathsome  infectious  dis- 
ease, and  that  to  remove  a  bad  case  to  a 
hospital  is  not  more  a  kindness  to  the 
patient  tban  an  act  of  mercy  to  the 


neighbourhood.  In  fact,  the  reforma- 
tory work  done  by  the  removal  of  a 
clever  ringleader  in  wickedness  is  by  no 
means  to  be  measured  by  the  benefit 
conferred  upon  the  individual,  or  even 
by  the  advantage  to  society  of  having 
one  knave  transformed  into  an  honest 
member ;  the  reformation  of  your  one 
knave  probably  breaks  up  a  gang,  and 
leaves  many  lads,  who  would  soon  have 
joined  the  same,  to  the  more  wholesome 
influence  of  their  pastors  and  masters. 
Within  my  own  knowledge,  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  reformatory  for  a  small 
number  of  boys,  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  a  large  city,  almost  immediately  pro- 
duced a  marked  effect  upon  the  number 
of  juvenile  offenders  brought  before  the 
magistrates. 

Nevertheless,  every  one  feels  that  a 
poor  lad  who  has  never  been  committed 
for  stealing,  but  who  is  quite  willing  to 
steal  if  occasion  offer,  a  young  thief  in 
posse,  if  not  in  esse,  can  make  out  some- 
thing of  a  case  against  reformatories,  if 
they  shut  their  doors  upon  him  as  not 
being  one  of  the  brotherhood.  Have 
you  ever  been  in  gaol  ?  No.  Are  you 
a  thief  1  Not  by  profession  ;  and  my 
doings  in  that  way  have  been  so  small, 
that  I  scarcely  deserve  the  name.  I  am 
afraid,  my  boy,  you  will  not  do  for  us. 


14 


Annals  of  an  Industrial  School 


But'  I  have  no  objection  to  steal,  says 
the  boy ;  only  try  me,  and  you  shall  see 
that  there  is  no  bar'  to  my  becoming  a 
thief  to-morrow.  WelLl  then,  become 
a  thief,  and,  when  you  are  one,  we  will 
take  you  in  hand  and  reform  you. 

There  is  enough  of  truth  in  this  cari- 
cature to  make  us  glad  that  there  are 
such  things  as  Industrial  Schools  and 
Boys'  Homes,  to  which  the  passport  is 
not  juvenile  crime,  but  rather  juvenile 
misery  and  misfortune.  In  every  large 
town  there  are  many  boys,  (and  girls 
too,  but  I  am  just  now  speaking  of  boys 
only,)  who  are  not  actually  criminal,  but 
who  are  very  likely  to  become  so  in 
times  of  idleness,  and  under  the  influ- 
ence of  temptation ;  boys  of  careless 
parents,  or  bad  parents ;  neglected 
orphans  ;  boys  brought  up  to  no  trade  ; 
boys  who  have  never  been  educated, 
and  who  have  forgotten  even  the  smat- 
tering of  knowledge  they  picked  up  at 
the  National  School ;  boys  who  play  at 
pitch-farthing  at  street-corners,  or  hang 
about  railway  stations,  or  sweep  cross- 
ings, or  beg  for  coppers,  or  do  anything 
else  but  work  for  an  honest  livelihood 
and  prepare  themselves  to  become  honest 
men  and  good  citizens.  What  is  to  be 
done  for  these  boys  ?  The  true  phi- 
losophy of  healing  involves  a  careful 
diagnosis  of  the  disease.  In  this  case 
the  disease  is,  fundamentally,  idleness ; 
the  cure  is  industry.  The  idleness  is  in 
a  certain  sense  artificial ;  the  industry 
must  be  artificial  too. 

It  was  with  such  views  as  these  that, 
some  years  ago,  a  school  was  established 
in  Cambridge  under  the  name  of  the 
Cambridge  Industrial  School.  The 
school  is  still  flourishing  and  virtually 
doing  a  great  deal  of  reformatory  work. 
Many  boys  who  have  been  in  the  school 
are  now  well-conducted,  useful  men ; 
not  a  few  owe  to  the  training  which 
they  received  in  it  all  that  they  are,  and 
all  that  they  hope  to  be ;  and  some  of 
the  cases  are  so  striking,  that  I  think 
many  of  the  readers  of  this  magazine 
will  thank  me  for  putting  before  them 
the  simple  annals  of  several  poor  lads, 
which  they  will  find  a  little  further  on. 

First,  however,  let  me  say  a  few  words 


concerning  the  organization  and  princi- 
ples of  the  school  in  question.  I  will 
speak  of  it  with  as  much  fairness  as  it 
is  possible  to  speak  of  a  child  which 
you  have  nursed  from  the  cradle,  and 
watched  through  its  teething  and  other 
infantine  infirmities ;  and  I  would  say, 
once  for  all,  that  whatever  good  may 
have  come  from  the  school,  is  due  (under 
God)  not  so  much  to  its  organization  as 
to  the  superlative  qualifications  for  the 
work  possessed  by  the  master  whom 
the  managers  were  fortunate  enough  to 
engage.  I  can  easily  conceive  that  an 
Industrial  School  might  be  established, 
apparently  upon  the  same  principles  as 
that  at  Cambridge,  and  might  fail ;  I 
have  no  doubt  there  are  fit  men  to  be 
had  ;  only  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  qualifications  are  such  as  can  hardly 
be  gained  by  training.  With  regard  to 
some  of  them,  at  least,  the  Industrial 
Master  nasdtur,  nonjit. 

The  Cambridge  Industrial  School  was 
intended  for  about  fifty  boys  ;  and  some- 
times there  have  been  more  than  that 
number  in  attendance — generally  less. 
The  boys  may  or  may  not  be  criminal ; 
inquiry  is  of  course  made  as  to  their 
history,  but  no  objection  is  made  on  the 
score  of  not  possessing  a  certificate  of 
roguery.  The  school  has  about  six  or 
seven  acres  of  land  in  spade  cultivation, 
and  the  working  of  this  land  is  the 
staple  occupation  of  the  boys.  The  land 
is  a  cold,  heavy  clay,  and  was  terrible 
work  for  the  boys  at  first,  but  it  has 
given  way  to  the  general  reformatory 
influences  of  the  place,  and  is  now  very 
manageable  and  docile.  Besides  the 
field  or  garden  work,  there  is  a  work- 
shop, in  which  the  boys  pursue  the  use- 
ful occupations  of  tailoring  and  shoe- 
malung,  becoming  snips  or  snobs  accord- 
ing to  fancy — only  with  this  reservation, 
that  a  boy  who  has  once  declared  for 
breeches  must  not  go  to  boots,  nor  vice 
versd.  Further  industrial  employment 
is  afforded  by  a  greenhouse ;  and  there 
is  a  tolerably  extensive  piggery,  the  in- 
mates of  which  may  indeed  be  regarded 
as  liberal  subscribers  to  the  institution, 
and  amongst  its  most  energetic  sup- 
porters. 


Annals  of  an  Industrial  School. 


15 


In  addition  to  the  workshop  there 
are  two  rooms,  one  for  the  feeding  of 
the  mind,  the  other  for  that  of  the  body. 
A  certain  portion  of  each  day  is  passed 
in  the  former  occupation,  under  the 
direction  of  the  head  master,  who  also 
superintends  the  outdoor  exercises  :  this 
is  an  essential  part  of  the  plan — the 
field  and  the  school  act  and  react  upon 
each  other  :  the  former  is  the  place  for 
exercising  the  virtues  instilled  in  the 
latter,  and  any  faults  which  appear  in 
the  field  can  be  discussed  and  corrected 
afterwards  in  school.  The  feeding  is 
confined  to  one  meal  a  day.  I  do  not 
mean  that  the  boys  eat  no  more  ;  but 
only  one  meal  is  provided  by  the  school 
funds ;  whatever  else  is  necessary  to 
support  life  the  boys  are  obliged  to  find 
for  themselves.  Hence  there  is  small 
temptation  to  enter  the  school  on  false 
pretences  ;  the  'maxim  of  little  to  eat 
and  plenty  to  do,  serves  to  keep  away 
all  those  who  are  not  proper  subjects 
for  the  school's  reformatory  operations. 

The  admission  is  entirely  free.  In 
the  first  instance  a  small  payment  was 
demanded, — twopence  per  week ;  and  I 
remember  the  case  of  a  sturdy  boy  who 
used  to  work  hard  at  the  school  all  day, 
and  then  go  round  with'  a  basket  calling 
"  Trotters  ! "  through  the  streets  of  Cam- 
bridge all  the  evening  in  order  to  pay  his 
school  fee  and  find  himself  breakfast. 
But  it  was  found,  after  some  experience, 
that  the  payment  of  twopence  per  week 
excluded  many  whom  it  was  desirable, 
above  all  others,  to  take  in,  and  the 
rule  was  consequently  abrogated. 

The  school  has  been  open  for  exactly 
ten  years.  During  this  period  nearly 
400  boys  have  passed  through  it.  These 
have  remained  for  longer  or  shorter 
times,  as  the  case  might  be  :  some 
attending  regularly  for  several  years ; 
others  coming  for  a  time,  then  getting 
work,  then  returning  when  work  is  not 
to  be  had — a  practice  encouraged  by  the 
managers,  and  which  has  kept  many  a 
poor  lad  out  of  mischief ;  others  again 
coming  for  a  short  time,  and  then,  on 
finding  steady  work  and  cleanliness  too 
much  for  them,  returning  to  idleness 
and  dirt.  Thirty-four  are  serving  her 


Majesty  in  the  army,  four  been  in  the 
navy,  and  for  about  fifty  of  the  number 
good  situations  have  been  obtained 
through  the  agency  of  the  school.  I 
cannot  pretend  to  weigh  exactly  the 
successes  against  the  failures.  I  know 
that  there  have  been  some  of  the  latter ; 
I  am  equally  sure  that  there  have  been 
many  of  the  former ;  and  even  in  cases 
which  have  seemed  to  the  Committee 
and  the  master  of  the  school  quite 
hopeless,  a  seed  may  have  been  sown 
which  should  spring  up  afterwards. 
This  was,  in  fact,  demonstrated  to  be 
possible  in  a  recent  case.  A  boy,  regarded 
as  nearly  the  worst  whom  the  school 
ever  received,  and  who  left  the  school 
without  giving  the  master  a  ray  of  hope, 
has  lately  written  a  letter  from  India,  in 
a  new  strain,  announcing  that  he  is 
acting  as  Scripture  Reader  in  the  regi- 
ment to  which  he  belongs. 

I  ought  to  add  that,  during  the  ten 
years  of  the  school's  existence,  the 
head  master  has  been  the  same,  the 
shoemaking-master  the  same,  and  the 
tailoring-master  was  the  same  till  about 
two  years  ago,  when  he  obtained  prefer- 
ment in  one  of  the  Colleges. 

So  much  for  the  machinery  of  the 
school,  which  I  have  compressed  into 
as  short  a  space  as  possible,  for  fear  of 
wearying  my  readers,  and  in  order  that 
I  may  carry  them  forward  as  quickly  as 
possible  to  that  part  of  my  paper  upon 
which  I  chiefly  depend  for  any  interest 
which  may  attach  to  it.  .Indeed  I  should 
hardly  have  ventured  to  draw  the  still 
life  picture  of  the  school,  if  I  had  not 
been  able  to  add  some  sketches  of  the 
inmates,  which  can  hardly  fail  to  be 
deemed  striking :  some  portions  of  the 
sketches  will  have  the  additional  interest 
of  being  drawn  by  the  industrial  boys 
themselves. 

I  proceed,  then,  to  give  an  account  of 
some  of  the  boys,  and  extracts  from  letters 
received  from  them :  there  are  obvious 
reasons  why,  in  some  cases,  the  names 
ought  not  to  be  given,  and,  as  they 
cannot  be  given  in  some,  I  shall  with- 
hold them  in  all,  designating  the  boys 
by  their  numbers  on  the  school  register. 

No.   1    was  the  first  boy  admitted 


16 


Annals  of  an  Industrial  School. 


into  the  school.  He  was  an  intelligent 
lad,  and  as  such  had  been  employed  as 
a  monitor  and  assistant  in  a  national 
school ;  he  was  tempted  by  his  love  of 
books  to  steal  a  considerable  number 
belonging  to  the  school  library,  and  was 
ejected  in  consequence.  Having  thus 
lost  his  character,  he  was  picked  up  by 
the  Industrial  School,  where  he  re- 
mained for  about  two  years,  when  he 
was  recommended,  in  consequence  oi 
his  good  conduct,  to  a  tradesman  in 
Cambridge.  He  remained  in  his  place 
for  some  time,  but  told  his  master  from 
the  first  that  he  longed  to  be  a  soldier, 
and  intended  to  enlist  when  a  favour- 
able opportunity  offered.  At  length 
the  opportunity  came  ;  he  enlisted  into 
a  cavalry  regiment,  and  served  in  the 
Crimea.  From  the  Crimea  he  wrote 
the  most  affectionate  letters  to  the 
school,  with  many  inquiries  about  his 
former  companions.  At  the  close  of 
the  war  he  was  selected  as  the  best- 
behaved  private  of  his  regiment,  and 
sent  by  Government  for  two  years' 
training  at  Maidstone.  He  went  out 
to  India,  after  training,  as  corporal,  and 
last  Christmas  was  promoted  to  be  a 
sergeant.  I  have  several  letters  from 
him  before  me ;  in  the  last,  dated 
Bangalore,  he  says,  "  I  suppose  the 
"  school  has  a  very  smart  appearance 
"  by  this  time ;  and  I  do  hope  I  shall 
"  not  be  very  long  before  I  am  able  to 
"  give  you  a  call."  In  the  midst  of 
the  terrible  Crimean  winter  campaign, 
he  found  time  to  use  his  pencil,  with 
which  he  was  very  clever,  in  drawing  a 
picture  of  himself  in  his  sentry-box, 
which  he  sent  to  the  school  with  many 
inquiries  concerning  his  old  companions. 
No.  16  is  a  very  remarkable  case. 
My  first  acquaintance  with  this  boy 
was  made,  after  evening  service,  in  a 
church  in  which  I  had  been  officiating. 
He  was  brought  before  me  as  a  culprit 
who  had  been  disturbing  the  congrega- 
tion, and  was  admonished  and  dis- 
charged. He  was  then  quite  a  small 
boy.  Growing  in  time  to  be  a  big  one, 
he  became  a  very  rough  and  turbulent 
fellow ;  was  known  as  the  bully  of  the 
parish,  and  was  the  terror  of  all  quiet 


and  orderly  folks.  A  country  girl,  who 
lived  as  servant  with  the  master,  threat- 
ened to  give  notice  if  No.  16  continued 
in  the  school ;  she  said  he  was  "  such  a 
terrible  swearer,  she  could  not  bear  it." 
This  was  when  he  first  came  to  the 
school.  After  being  in  the  school  some 
months,  he  and  another  boy  (now  a 
well-conducted  married  man)  had  a 
pitched  battle.  The  master  threatened 
expulsion,  and  they  both  begged  par- 
don, and  promised  to  do  so  no  more. 
Better  days  now  dawned;  No.  16  im- 
proved rapidly  ;  in  less  than  two  years 
from  his  admission  he  was  made  assist- 
ant to  the  master,  and  proved  most 
valuable.  His  great  strength  and  de- 
termined character  were  now  turned  to 
good  account ;  the  roughest  boys  found 
their  master;  and  when  they  told  him 
that  they  could  not  leave  off  this  or 
that  bad  habit,  he  was  able  to  tell  them, 
from  his  own  experience,  that  he  knew 
it  could  be  done.  He  now  became  a 
Sunday-school  teacher.  This  was  too 
much  for  his  old  companions ;  they 
ridiculed  him  in  the  streets  and  pelted 
him.  He  told  the  master  in  distress, 
that  he  must  turn  upon  them  some  day 
and  give  them  a  thrashing  or  get  one 
himself.  The  master  told  him  all  his 
work  would  be  undone  if  he  did  so,  and 
No.  16  restrained  himself.  Any  one 
who  knew  the  fire  of  his  eye  and  the 
strength  of  his  arnis  would  understand 
how  much  this  forbearance  cost  him. 
One  day  a  Colonial  Bishop  saw  him 
superintend  a  large  gang  of  boys  at 
field-work,  was  struck  by  his  skill  and 
power  of  managing  his  gang,  and  car- 
ried him  off  as  a  catechist  to  his  distant 
diocese,  where  he  is  doing  honour  to 
his  Christian  profession,  and  justifying 
the  Bishop's  choice.  I  have  abundance 
of  this  young  man's  letters  before  me 
as  I  write.  They  are  in  every  way  well 
written;  they  are  full  of  affection  to 
his  old  master ;  they  breathe  a  genuine 
missionary  spirit ;  and,  as  I  read  them,  I 
say  to  myself,  Is  it  possible  that  the 
writer  can  be  that  wild,  fierce  lad, 
whom  I  remember  ten  years  ago  in  the 
Industrial  School  ? 

No.  24,  a  fatherless  lad,  came  to  the- 


Annals  of  an  Industrial  School. 


17 


school  a  cripple,  with  crutch  and  stick. 
He  was  set  upon  his  legs  by  the  manage- 
ment of  a  medical  gentleman,  who 
chanced  to  call  at  the  school  and  per- 
ceived his  crippled  condition  ;  and  the 
same  operation  was  performed  for  him 
morally  by  the  school :  for,  having 
earned  a  good  character,  he  was  ap- 
prenticed to  a, shoemaker,  by  help  of 
friends  whom  he  had  gained  while  at 
school,  and  on  easy  terms  in  conse- 
quence of  the  knowledge  of  the  trade 
which  he  had  already  acquired.  He  is 
now  a  good  workman,  subscribes  annu- 
ally to  the  funds  of  the  Industrial 
School,  and  helps  to  support  a  widowed 
mother. 

No.  57  was  a  boy  the  complete  treat- 
ment of  whose   case   was  beyond  the 
appliances  of  the  school.    He  had  a  bad 
father  and  an  infamous  stepmother,  who 
taught  him  to  steal.     He  came  to  the 
school  as  young  as  he  could  be  according 
to  the  rules,  but  had  already  been  in 
prison  several  times,  and  was  in  prison 
several  times  afterwards.      Altogether, 
the  magistrates   had  him  before  them 
fifteen  times  !      Notwithstanding  this 
tendency  to   steal,  the   master   of  the 
school  spoke  well  of  him,  and,  indeed, 
said  that  anything  might  be  done  with 
him,  if  he  had  only  a  fair  chance ;  and 
when  I  went  to  see  him  in  gaol,  the 
governor  gave  the  same  account  of  him. 
The  Industrial  School  had  not  the  means 
of  taking  him  entirely  away  from  tempta- 
tion for  a  time,  and  the  good  resolutions 
of  the  day  were  destroyed  by  the  bad 
home  influences  of  evening.     After  he 
had  been  liberated  from  gaol  for  the  last 
time,   a  lady  who   supports   a   private 
reformatory,  and  whose  name  may  be 
guessed  by  those  versed  in  reformatory 
matters,  but  shall  not  be  revealed  by 
me,  offered,  in  the  kindest  manner  pos- 
sible, to  recaive  a  boy  from  the  school  if 
there  chanced  to  be  one  to  whom  an 
absolute  removal  to  a  reformatory  would 
be  beneficial.     No.  57  was  precisely  the 
case  and  accordingly  No.  57  was  sent  to 
the  reformatory,  in  which  he  realized 
the  best  hopes  that  had  been  formed  of 
him,  and  was  eventually  sent  to  America 
by  his   kind    patroness,    where  he  is 
No.  7. — VOL.  n. 


flourishing  as  assistant  in  a  large  store, 
and  seems  likely  to  become  a  substantial 
Yankee.  This  boy  frequently  writes  to 
the  schoolmaster,  in  the  most  affectionate 
terms. 

I  give  one  extract.  Referring  to  a 
domestic  affliction  in  the  master's  family, 
he  writes  : — "  Gladly  would  I,  if  I  was 
near  you,  do  all  I  could  for  you ;  for  I 
feel  as  if  I  could  not  do  enough  to  pay 
for  the  kindness  you  always  showed 
towards  me  :  but  I  hope  that  I  shall 
have  the  privilege,  some  time,  to  do  you 
a  kindness  in  some  way  or  other.  I  was 
very  glad  indeed  to  hear  such  an  account 

of  .     I  know  it  must  cheer  your 

heart  to  hear  such  accounts  of  the  boys 
that  have  been  with  you,  and  that  you 
can  see  that  your  labour  was  not  in  vain. 
I  know  that,  had  you  cast  me  off,  I  should 
have  been  a  ruined  man." 

No.  60  is  the  son  of  a  shoemaker  in 
Cambridge,  a  first-rate  workman,  who 
had  an  unfortunate  dislike  to  maintain 
his  wife  and  family,  and  positively  went 
to  prison,  and  afterwards  to  the  Union 
workhouse,  rather  than  support  them. 
The  boy  was  very  ill-behaved  at  times, 
intensely  fond  of  smoking,  and  much 
addicted  to  bad  language.  However,  he 
improved  very  considerably ;  and  at 
length,  through  the  efforts  of  the  Com- 
mittee, was  apprenticed  in  Her  Majesty's 
navy.  He  writes  to  the  master  with  the 
same  warm  affection  that  characterises 
other  letters  of  which  I  have  spoken ; 
and  in  one  of  his  letters,  from  Plymouth, 
he  says, — "  I  should  very  much  like  to 
come  to  Cambridge  for  two  days,  but  I 
shall  not  have  money  enough,  as  I  am 
very  happy  to  tell  you  that  I  have  done 
what  I  know  I  am  right  to  do  ;  that  is, 
to  assist  my  mother,  which  I  have  felt 
a  great  deal  since  I  have  been  at  sea ; 
and  I  feel  just  as  well  as  if  I  had  the 
money  myself,  for  I  should  only  spend 
it  in  waste,  and  be  no  better  for  it.  I 
have  left  <£!  every  month  for  this  last 
twelvemonth,  and  that  is  ever  since  I 
have  been  able  to  do  so." 

No.  68  was  a  very  bad  boy  before 
coming  to  the  school.  The  master  fre- 
quently received  petitions  that  he  would 
punish  him  for  misdemeanours  in  the 

c 


18 


Annals  of  an  Industrial  School. 


parish  where  he  lived;  but  this  he 
deemed  to  be  out  of  his  jurisdiction ;  on 
one  occasion,  however,  having  committed 
an  offence  within  the  school,  the  master 
punished  him  very  severely,  and  with 
such  effect  as  to  produce  an  almost  im-  , 
mediate  change.  The  lad's  improvement 
was  so  marked,  that  the  master  felt 
justified  in  recommending  him  to  a  lady 
who  wanted  a  servant-boy ;  he  behaved 
himself  in  the  situation  admirably  for 
three  years,  when  he  moved  into  a 
family  of  distinction,  in  which  he  is  now 
living  as  butler,  and  from  which  he 
writes  to  the  master  with  the  feelings 
of  a  child  to  a  father. 

No.  110  came  from  the  National 
School,  to  the  great  joy  of  the  master  of 
the  same,  who  said  that  he  could  do 
nothing  with  him,  nor  make  anything 
of  him.  However,  he  soon  began  to 
improve,  and  was  taken  out  by  Arch- 
deacon Mackenzie,  a  warm  friend  of  the 
school  and  member  of  its  committee,  to 
Natal,  where  he  is  still,  and  bears  an 
excellent  character. 

This  list  might  be  easily  extended; 
but  it  is  already  long  enough  for  its 
purpose.  It  does  not  prove  that  an  in- 
dustrial school  is  sufficient  to  reform  all 
the  juvenile  population  of  a  large  town, 
but  it  certainly  shows  that  it  may  be  the 
means  of  doing  great  good,  and  that 
many  a  poor  lad  may  be  lifted  by  its 
agency  from  misery  and  criminality. 
Nor  is  it  a  very  expensive  piece  of 
machinery  :  the  only  expensive  part  of 
the  business  is  the  supply  of  dinners  to 
the  boys,  and,  in  the  most  extravagant 
times,  I  believe,  the  price  of  a  dinner 
has  never  mounted  up  to  twopence, 
while  it  has  generally  been  much  less  : 
and  the  appearance  of  the  school  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  town,  with  its  neat 


garden,  and  busy  workshops,  and  gan« 
of  industrious  lads,  whose  faces  show 
clearly  enough  what  would  be  their 
employment  if  they  were  not  there,  is  a 
sight  'to  do  good  to  the  hearts  of  the 
inhabitants.  Indeed,  if  the  question 
be  regarded  from  an  entirely  financial 
point  of  view,  and  the  expense  of  the 
school  be  set  against  4he  expense  of 
prosecuting  the  boys  and  keeping  them 
in  gaol,  I  have  no  doubt  that  an  indus- 
trial school  far  more  than  pays  itself. 
Yet,  after  all,  the  success  turns  very 
much  upon  .the  master,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected from  the  reason  of  the  thing,  and 
as  any  one  would  perceive,  who  visited 
the  Cambridge  Industrial  School,  or 
who  examined  the  letters  which  I  have 
had  before  me  while  writing  this  paper, 
and  from  which  I  have  given  a  few  ex- 
tracts. It  is  the  combination  of  extreme 
kindness  of  heart,  and  true  Christian 
devotion  to  a  great  work,  with  a  clear 
head  and  iron  determination  to  be 
obeyed,  that  can  alone  ensure  success. 
It  is  manifest  from  their  own  letters, 
that  every  one  of  the  boys,  whose  cases 
I  have  chronicled  above,  look  upon  the 
master  as  their  father,  and  upon  the 
school  as  the  home  of  their  best  feel- 
ings. The  same  sentiment  has  ever 
pervaded  the  school.  Poor  lads  !  many 
of  them  never  knew  much  of  parental 
kindness  and  of  home  affections,  until 
they  found  these  blessed  influences 
there.  What  is  to  be  done,  said  I  one 
day  to  an  Inspector  of  Schools,  who  was 
bemoaning  the  depravity  of  much  of  the 
juvenile  population  in  his  district — 
what  is  to  be  done  to  bring  about  an 
improvement  ?  We  must  find  a  number 
of  men,  was  the  answer,  like  the  master 
of  your  Industrial  School. 


19 


THE  CAMBEIDGE  UNIVEKSITY  BOAT  OF   1860. 

BY   G.    O.    TREVELYAN,    TRIKITY   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE. 

IN  accordance  with  a  custom  established  for  some  years  past,  the  following 
lines  were  written,  by  request,  before  the  event  of  the  contest.  Whether  they 
had  a  Tyrtaean  effect  may  be  doubted:  their  prophetic  attributes  cannot  be 
denied.  The  allusions  are  of  a  local  nature,  but  the  general  interest  excited  by 
the  race  may  justify  their  insertion.  It  may  be  well  to  remind  our  readers  of  the 
names  of  the  oarsmen,  and  their  position  in  the  boat. 

1.  S.  HEATHCOTE,  Trinity.  6.  B.  N.  CHERRY,  Clare. 

2.  H.  J.  CHAYTOR,  Jesus.  7.  A.  H.  FAIRBAIRN,  Trinity. 

3.  D.  INQLES,  Trinity.  8.  J.  HALL,  Magdalene. 

4.  J.  S  BLAKE,  Corpus.  j  T-  MoRLAND  Trinit 

5.  M.  COVENTRY,  Tnmty  Hall.  Coxswain. 


SOME  twenty  years  back,  o'er  his  nectar  one  day, 

King  Jove  to  the  gods  in  Olympus  did  say  : — 

"  Degenerate  mortals,  it  must  be  confessed, 

Grow  smaller  each  year  round  the  arm  and  the  chest. 

Not  ten  modern  navvies  together  could  swing 

The  stone  that  great  Ajax  unaided  did  fling. 

They  may  talk  of  their  Heenan,  and  Paddock,  and  Nat  : 

I'll  bet  that  old  Milo,  though  puny  and  fat> 

Would  thrash  the  whole  ring,  should  they  come  within  range, 

From  slashing  Tom  Sayers  to  sneaking  Bill  Bainge. 

I've  determined,  as  plain  as  the  staff  of  a  pike, 

To  show  to  the  world  what  a  man  should  be  like. 

Go  fetch  me  some  clay :  no,  not  that  common  stuff, 

But  the  very  best  meerschaum — and  fetch  me  enough. 

I'll  make  eight  hearty  fellows,  all  muscle  and  bone, 

Their  average  weight  shall  be  hard  on  twelve  stone ; 

With  shoulders  so  broad,  and  with  arms  so  well  hung, 

So  lithe  in  the  loins,  and  so  sound  in  the  lung ; 

And  because  I  love  Cambridge,  my  purpose  is  fixed,  I 

Will  make  them  her  crew  in  the  year  eighteen  sixty." 

Stand  by  me,  dear  reader,  and  list  to  my  song, 
As  our  boat  round  Plough-corner  comes  sweeping  along. 
I'll  point  out  each  hero,  and  tell  you  his  name, 
His  college,  his  school,  and  his  titles  to  fame. 
No  fear  of  a  crowd  ;  towards  the  end  of  the  course 
They  have  left  all  behind  but  a  handful  of  horse. 
To  keep  at  their  side  on  the  gods  you  must  call 
For  the  wind  of  a  tutor  of  Trinity  Hall. 

One  stroke,  and  they're  on  us.     Quick !     Left  face  and  double ! 
Look  hard  at  the  bow  ;  he  is  well  worth  the  trouble. 

c2 


The  Cambridge  University  Boat  of  1860. 

'Tis  Heathcote,  the  pride  of  First  Trinity  Club, 
The  boast  of  our  eight,  and  the  tale  of  our  tub. 
No  Oxonian  so  gay  but  will  tremble  and  wince 
As  he  watches  the  oar  of  our  gallant  Black  Prince. 

Who  can  think  on  that  morn  without  sorrow  and  pain 
"When  valour  proved  futile,  and  skill  was  in  vain  ? 
As  they  watched  the  light  jerseys  all  swimming  about, 
The  nymphs  of  the  Thames,  with  a  splash  and  a  shout, 
Cried,  "  Thanks  to  rude  Boreas,  who,  wishing  to  please  us, 
Has  sent  to  our  arms  Harry  Chaytor  of  Jesus." 

Next  comes  David  Ingles,  and  long  may  he  live, 
Adorned  with  each  laurel  our  river  can  give. 
Had  the  Jews  seen  our  David  but  once  on  the  throne, 
They  would  not  have  thought  quite  so  much  of  their  own. 
Deign  then  to  accept  this  my  humble  petition, 
And  make  me  your  chief  and  your  only  musician  : 
And  so,  when  you've  passed,  as  you  will  do  with  ease, 
I'll  sing  you,  my  David,  a  Song  of  Degrees. 

Oh,  blame  not  the  bard  if  at  thought  of  his  section 
The  blood  in  his  temples  with  vanity  tingles  : 
"Who  would  not  dare  deeds  worth  a  world's  recollection 
With  a  sergeant  like  Heathcote,  a  corporal  like  Ingles. 

Old  Admiral  Blake,  as  from  heaven  he  looks  down, 
Bawls  out  to  his  messmates — "  You  lubberly  sinners, 
Three  cheers  for  my  namesake  !     I'll  bet  you  a  crown 
He'll  thrash  the  Oxonians  as  I  thrashed  the  Mynheers." 

Here's  Coventry  next,  but  not  Patmore,  no,  no ! 
Not  an  "  angel "  at  all,  but  a  devil  to  row. 
Should  Louis  Napoleon  next  August  steam  over, 
With  scarlet-breeched  Zouaves,  from  Cherbourg  to  Dover, 
We'll  send  him  to  Coventry  :  won't  he  look  blue, 
And  wish  he  was  back  with  his  wife  at  St.  Cloud  ? 

A  problem  concerning  the  man  who  rows  six, 
Puts  many  high  wranglers  quite  into  a  fix  : 
James  Stirling  himself,  as  he  candidly  owns, 
Can't  conceive  how  a  Cherry  can  have  thirteen  stones. 

But  oh  for  the  tongue  of  a  Dizzy  or  Cairns, 
Thou  fairest  and  strongest  of  Trinity's  bairns, 
To  tell  how  your  fellow-collegians  in  vain 
Of  the  veal  and  the  Peter-house  pudding  complain, 
Of  the  greasy  old  waiters,  and  rotten  old  corks, 
And  the  horrors  that  lurk  'twixt  the  prongs  of  the  forks. 
Men  point  to  your  muscles,  and  sinews,  and  thews,  sir, 
The  wonder  and  envy  of  many  a  bruiser ; 
And  say  that  our  grumbling  exceeds  all  belief, 
So  well  have  you  thriven  on  Trinity  beef. 

But  how  shall  I  worthily  celebrate  you, 
The  hope  of  our  colours,  the  joy  of  our  crew  ? 
Shall  I  sing  of  your  pluck,  or  the  swing  of  your  back, 
Or  your  fierce  slashing  spurt,  most  redoubtable  Jack  ? 
The  world  never  saw  such  a  captain  and  cargo 
Since  Jason  pulled  stroke  in  the  good  ship  the  Argo. 
And  oh,  when  you  pass  to  the  mansions  above, 
Look  down  on  your  Cambridge  with  pity  and  love  I 
"ft 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret.  21 

Then,  on  some  future  day  of  disaster  and  woe, 

When  the  wash  surges  high,  and  our  fortunes  are  low, 

When  Oxford  is  rowing  three  feet  to  our  two, 

And  victory  frowns  on  the  flag  of  light  blue, 

Oh,  then  may  our  captain  in  agony  call 

On  the  'varsity's  guardian  angel,  Jack  Hall ! 

You  may  search  the  whole  coast  from  Land's  End  to  North  Foreland, 
But  where  will  you  find  such  a  steersman  as  Morland  ? 
Just  look  at  him  peering,  as  sharp  as  a  rat, 
From  under  his  rum  little  shaggy  black  hat. 
Let  all  honest  Cambridge  men  fervently  pray 
That  our  pet  Harrow  coxswain,  for  once  in  a  way, 
Though  as  valiant  a  sergeant  as  any  we  know, 
On  Saturday  next  may  show  back  to  the  foe. 

So  at  night,  when  the  wine-cups  all  mantling  are  seen 
(Whatever  the  mantling  of  wine-cups  may  mean), 
With  your  temper  at  ease,  and  your  muscles  unstrung, 
And  your  limbs  'neath  the  table  right  carelessly  flung, 
As  you  press  to  your  lips  the  beloved  nut-brown  clay, 
So  cruelly  widowed  for  many  a  day  : 
Oh,  then  as  one  man  may  the  company  rise, 
With  joy  in  their  hearts,  and  with  fire  in  their  eyes, 
Pour  out  as  much  punch  as  would  set  her  afloat, 
And  drink  long  and  deep  to  our  conquering  boat ! 


March  24th,  1860. 


LOCH-NA-DIOMHAIR— THE  LAKE  OF  THE  SECEET. 
A  HIGHLAND  FLIGHT. 

BY     GEORGE     CUPPLES. 

I.  necessary  plans  of  departure.    A  sudden 

HOW  WE  SET  OUT  FOR  IT— ICKERSON  occurrence  had  just  rendered  that  de- 

^P  j  parture  indispensable,  nay,  required  that 

it  should  be  immediate ;  if  possible,  with- 

DOWN  on  the  little  rustic  landing-pier  out  even  the  delay  we  now  made ;  above 

before    Inversneyd    Hotel,    by    Loch-  all,  without  so  much  as  re-entering  the 

Lomond  edge,  my  friend  Tckerson  and  door  of  the  hotel.     Yet  not  only  was 

I  had  sought  a  few  minutes'  breathing-  our  modest  bill  to  be  settled,  and  the 

time   for    private    consultation    in   an  few  travelling  encumbrances  of  one  of 

unexpected  dilemma  ;  which,  however  us  to  be  regained  from  the  lobby -table  ; 

absurd,   was    real.      Ere    many    more  we  had  also  to  consider  our  first  steps  of 

minutes    elapsed,    our   present   refuge  escape,  the  most  critical  of  all,  and  for  a 

would  be  taken  from  us ;    though  at  brief  space  to  deliberate  as  to  the  precise 

that  instant  it  was  the  sole  spot,  round  track  that  must  be  taken,  by  now  recur- 

the  noisy  falls  made  classical  by  Words-  ring  to  our  only  clue  in  the  matter.   This 

worth,  and  the  noisier  place  of  entertain-  clue  was  to  be  found  in  the  letter  of 

ment  for  tourists,  where  we  could  hope  our  mutual  friend,  Moir    from  London, 

to   hear  each  other,    or    arrange    our  whom  we  were  to  join  at  a  certain  spot 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


which  he  thus  indicated  and  described  : 
the  letter  was  fortunately  in  my  posses- 
sion still,  and  over  it  were  we  here 
holding  council  On  Ickerson's  part, 
with  the  help  of  "  a  few  post-jentacular 
inhalations,"  as  he  in  his  colossal  manner 
was  pleased  to  phrase  it,  "from  that 
fragrant  weed  which  so  propitiates 
clearness  of  thought,  and  tends  to  pro- 
mote equanimity  in  action."  For  me, 
I  was  too  conscious  of  the  energy  our 
situation  demanded,  to  share  any  such 
indulgence.  The  action/ not  the  equa- 
nimity, was  what  our  peculiar  circum- 
stances then  required.  As  the  prompt 
cigar  to  the  contemplative  meerschaum, 
so  were  we  to  each  other. 

"  To  think,"  broke  out  my  companion, 
meditatively,  "that  he  should  have  taken 
the  same  direction  as  ourselves — joining 
these  snobbish  pedestrians,  too,  at  such 
an  early  hour — and  without  Mrs.  Blythe 
and  the  other  ladies,  whom — " 

"  Whom,  you  may  depend  upon  it," 
I  interrupted  with  impatience,  "the 
droskies  from  the  Trosachs  Inn  will 
bring  up  behind  him,  in  ten  minutes 
more,  luggage  and  all.  Then,  do  you  see 
that  smoke  yonder,  through  the  haze  on 
the  water?"  I  pointed  emphatically 
down  the  lake.  "That  is  the  first 
steamer  from  Balloch,  of  course,  which 
will  soon  pour  on  this  spot  a  whole  mob 
from  Glasgow — yes,  Glasgow"  repeated 
I,  significantly  eyeing  my  friend  "I 
now  see  it  all !  He  expected  Glasgow 
friends,  don't  you  recollect?  He  ex- 
pected one  in  particular — have  you 
forgot  whom  ? "  And  it  was  evident, 
despite  Ickerson's  wished-for  equanimity 
(strictly  speaking,  a  disposition  to  im- 
promptitude  in  cases  of  action),  that  he 
began  to  shudder;  while  my  own  un- 
easiness did  not  prevent  me  from  push- 
ing the  advantage  thus  obtained  over 
his  too  lethargic  nature.  "  Yes  ;  it  was 
M'Killop,  whom  he  must  have  come 
on  to  meet,  and  to  concert  with  as  to 
choice  of  summer  quarters.  The  moment 
the  steamer's  paddles  are  heard,  he'll 
be  down  to  welcome  him — M'Killop 
will  see  us  at  once,  even  if  Trellington 
Blythe  should  not — both  will  recog- 
nise us — both  be  surprised — both  be  on 


the  scent.  After  which,  all  is  of  course 
lost!" 

"  Horrible  !  True.  Very  disagree- 
able and  awkward,  I  must  say,"  re- 
sponded my  friend ;  for  once  lowering 
that  censer-like  appurtenance  of  his,  with 
one  of  his  least  phlegmatic  or  pro- 
vokingly-placid  expressions  of  counte- 
nance. "For  really,  after  all  Dr.  Blythe's 
own  openness  and  manifest  inclination 
to  our  society,  we  did  leave  him  some- 
what abruptly,  perhaps,  at  the  Trosachs 
yesterday  forenoon ;  without  making 
him  aware,  either,  of  the  intention, 
which,  by  the  way,  my  dear  Brown," 
remarked  Ickerson  gravely,  "  I  did  not 
know  till  you  stated  it  just  before. 
Much  less,  that  Moir  had  described  his 
whereabouts  to  you." 

A  mild  reproach  was  designed,  but  I 
affected  unconsciousness  of  it ;  not  even 
smiling  as  I  echoed  this  remorseful 
strain.  "The  worst  of  it  was,"  I  re- 
minded him,  "it  might  seem  a  base 
advantage  to  take,  that  we  walked  off  on  a 
Sabbath  afternoon,  when  the  doctor  and 
his  family  were  absent  at  kirk,  as  be- 
came his  public  character  and  standing. 
I  do  not  understand  a  Gaelic  service, 
however  orthodox  my  turn  of  mind, 
whereas  you,  you  know,  though  sus- 
pected of  latitudinarian  views,  are  quite 
familiar  with  the  tongue."  At  this 
home-thrust,  again  did  Ickerson  wince  : 
he  looked  uncomfortably  over  his 
shoulder  to  the  Inversneyd  Hotel,  where 
our  learned  fellow-citizen  and  late  inn- 
mate  at  the  Trosachs  was  despatching 
breakfast,  all  unconscious  of  our  abject 
vicinity  to  him  :  then  in  front,  toward 
the  growing  vapour  which  brought 
M'Killop,  he  gazed  with  a  dismay  far 
more  apparent. 

The  truth  was,  I  had  felt  doubtful 
up  to  the  last  moment  of  Ickerson. 
Happily,  Sundays  do  fall  amongst  the 
Trosachs,  and  after  unintentionally  en- 
countering the  Blythe  party  there,  we 
had  availed  ourselves  without  much  con- 
sideration of  that  circumstance,  together 
with  our  needing  no  vehicles,  to  take  far 
more  than  the  proper  seventh-day's 
journey  in  advance  of  our  estimable 
acquaintance.  I  myself  had  inferred, 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


23 


too  hastily,  that  he  was  to  retrace  his 
steps  toward  the  direction  of  Loch  Tay 
and  Dunkeld.  A  most  estimable  person 
is  Dr.  Trellington  Blythe,  F.S.A.  and 
Ph.D.  Heid. ;  and  at  home  we  knew 
him  particularly  well,  but  never  had 
suspected  him  of  the  condescension  of  a 
Highland  tour,  or  of  his  betaking  himself 
to  fishing ;  much  less  of  his  looking  out 
for  good,  retired  summer  quarters  for 
himself  and  family,  "in  some  secluded 
district  of  the  mountain  country,  con- 
tiguous to  water — within  reach  of  agree- 
able acquaintance — yet  not  hackneyed, 
not  hackneyed,  sir."  Such,  neverthe- 
less, had  been  his  confidential  words  to 
us,  in  MacGregor's  baronial-looking 
hostelry  by  Loch-Katrine,  while  we 
took  our  last  evening  rummer  of  Glen- 
Dronach  toddy  near  him  •  he  confining 
himself,  as  usual,  to  soda-water,  and 
several  times,  with  a  frown,  sniffing  at 
the  nicotine  odour  of  Ickerson's  clothes. 
For  it  must  be  said  that  the  latter  is 
singularly  regardless  of  people's  pre- 
judices, even  in  sundry  other  uncouth 
traits  :  yet,  strangely  enough,  there  is  a 
favour  for  him  none  the  less  universal 
among  his  acquaintances,  Dr.  T.  B.  in- 
cluded ;  still  more,  perhaps,  Mrs.  T.  B., 
a  very  pretty-looking  woman  with  highly 
aesthetic  tastes.  When  agreeable  society 
was  referred  to,  that  lady  had  not  failed 
to  glance  our  way ;  as  if  it  were  a  pity 
we  were  but  pedestrianizing  in  a  trans- 
ient manner,  without  aim  or  purpose 
beyond  an  occasional  day's  fishing  near 
the  road.  In  fact,  we  had  not  indicated 
any  purpose  at  all.  Far  from  Ickerson's 
knowing  at  the  time  that  we  had  one,  I 
was  aware  of  his  easy  temperament,  his 
too-passive  or  too-transient  disposition, 
over  which  a  superior  will  possessed 
great  influence ;  and  even  to  him  also, 
I  had  as  yet  concealed  my  knowledge  of 
our  friend  Moir's  discovery ;  I  had  ex- 
pressed an  interest  in  the  same  scenery, 
towards  Dunkeld,  which  the  Blythes 
had  in  contemplation,  with  a  similar 
desire  to  behold  the  tomb  of  Eob  Eoy 
in  passing,  and  probably  explore  the 
Tude  vicinity  of  Loch  Earn,  then  to  wit- 
ness the  Celtic  games  of  St.  Fillan's.  The 
reality  was,  I  well  knew  the  difficulty 


of  escape  from  that  peculiar  instinct,  if 
once  set  upon  our  track,  which  pertains 
to  one  whom  I  may  call  a  philanthropic 
Beagle — delicacy  forbidding  the  word 
Bore. 

Yet  here  was  Trellington  Blythe  again, 
after  all  my  pains,  most  imminently  at 
hand  in  the  hotel  coffee-room,  snatch- 
ing a  hasty  luncheon  before  he  issued 
forth.  Genially  fraternizing  with  a  whole 
band  of  eager  tourists  from  the  road, 
whose  knapsacks,  and  wide-awakes,  and 
volumes  of  Scott  and  "Wordsworth,  had 
scared  us  both  as  they  rushed  in  upon 
the  debris  of  our  glorious  Highland 
breakfast ;  though  Ickerson  had  only 
gazed  his  supine  dismay,  indiscrimi- 
nately regarding  ^them,  till  I  perceived 
the  direr  apparition  behind,  and  drew 
him  with  me  in  our  retreat  by  an  op- 
posite door.  Somewhat  unprepared  for 
immediate  renewal  of  active  measures 
we  were,  it  must  be  owned ;  at  least  in 
my  friend's  case.  Since  Ickerson's  per- 
sonal vigour  and  capacity  for  exertion, 
combined  with  a  singular  faculty  for 
abstinence  when  needful,  are  propor- 
tionate to  his  stature  and  his  thews, 
rendering,  perhaps,  indispensable  on  his 
part  those  few  ruminative  whiffs.  I 
could  well  have  spared,  certainly,  that 
formal  replenishment  of  a  meerschaum 
resembling  a  calumet,  that  careful  re- 
placement of  the  ashes,  and  that  scru- 
pulous ignition,  that  studious  conscious- 
ness of  every  fume.  Was  it  possible 
that  he  had  hesitated  to  support  me,  till 
I  had  fortunately  recollected  the  certain 
advent  of  M'Killop  that  very  day  ? — did 
a  hankering  still  possess  him  after  the 
Egyptian  fleshpots  of  Mrs.  Blythe  and 
her  elegant  cousins,  heedless  of  the  doc- 
tor's own  educational  theories,  and  his 
feeling  remarks  on^nature  ?  Could  he  so 
forget  what  was  at  stake  in  the  prospect 
of  that  delicious  solitude  which  Moir 
had  lit  upon,  and  to  which  at  that  mo- 
ment we  alone  possessed  the  key?  Could 
it  possibly  enter  into  his  mind  to  avoid 
further  ambiguity  in  the  affair  by  his 
usual  absurd  candour,  and,  for  the  sake 
of  future  relations  with  the  Trellington 
Blythes,  to  propose  allowing  them  the 
opportunity,  so  much  after  their  own 


24 


Loch-na-Diomliair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


hearts,  of  sharing  our  expected  delight  1 
I  declare,  if  so,  that  then  and  there 
I  could  savagely  have  quarrelled  with 
him,  despite  our  long,  close  friendship, 
had  not  the  simple  fact  about  Mr. 
M'Killop  saved  me.  The  editor  of  the 
Daily  Tribune  is  a  man  whom,  though 
I  dislike,  I  do  not  fear.  Whereas  the 
intense  repugnance  towards  him,  almost 
the  superstitious  dread,  entertained  by 
Mark  Ickerson,  with  all  his  equanimity, 
is  something  unaccountable.  We  were 
both  aware  that  Mr.  M'Killop  had  a 
wife  and  many  daughters,  that  the  par- 
liamentary season  was  just  about  over, 
and  the  dearth  of  news  to  be  made  up 
for  by  sporting  matters  alone ;  so  when 
it  struck  me  like  a  flash  of  lightning 
that  he  too  was  on  the  outlook  for 
summer  quarters,  with  the  desire  to 
lodge  his  family  where  the  Tribune 
might  still  be  cared  for  amidst  his  own 
race  and  original  language,  need  it  be 
wondered  that  I  avowed  the  conviction 
to  Ickerson,  or  that  Ickerson  was  utterly 
overcome  ? 

Urged  by  haste,  though  inwardly 
triumphant,  I  had  but  to  take  out  again 
our  London  friend's  epistle  from  Loch- 
na-Diomhair ;  and  for  Ickerson's  benefit, 
while  he  suspended  his  meerschaum 
anxiously,  to  retrace  the  considerate 
chart  of  our  way  which  the  postscript 
contained.  Its  first  bearings  and  guide- 
marks  were  identically  before  us  from 
that  spot,  far  over  amongst  the  sinewy 
mountain-shoulders  which  press  from 
westward  on  the  lake,  reflected  below 
more  softly;  above,  too,  in  the  Alps  of 
Arrochar  that  overpeak  these,  remote 
beyond  record  even  in  that  magic  mirror. 
It  was  a  blessed  picture  still  farther  in 
the  unseen  background,  which  the  letter 
itself  conjured  up  ;  the  ecstatic  affirma- 
tion from  Frank  Moir  of  an  absolute 
Highland  Arcadia  undetected  by  guide- 
books, which,  allowing  for  some  acci- 
dental rose-colour  of  a  personal  kind, 
he  was  not  yet  too  much  cockneyfied  to 
appreciate  ;  while,  to  us,  in  our  holiday 
escape  from  rote  and  toil,  from  the 
weary  hack-round  and  daily  trouble,  it 
was  a  precious  refreshment  to  hear  of. 
To  one  of  us,  lately  fagged  to  the  ut- 


most, and  bitterly  disciplined  by  expe- 
rience, it  was  a  longing,  desperate 
necessity  of  the  very  life  and  brain, 
the  heart  and  soul.  We  now  certified 
ourselves  there,  that  we  had  only  to 
ferry  across  forthwith,  then  hold  those 
peaks  upon  a  certain  side,  and  then  the 
way  afterwards  was  scarcely  to  be  mis- 
taken ;  until  we  should  perceive  that 
other  mountain,  of  shape  unique  and 
indubitable  position,  which  oversha- 
dowed the  very  entrance  to  the  secluded 
glen  of  the  Macdonochies.  I  myself, 
pure  Goth  as  I  was,  had  some  practice 
in  Highland  wanderings  ;  as  to  Ickerson, 
he  was  an  Islesman,  familiar  from  youth 
with  the  tongue  of  the  Gael  as  with  his 
school  Latin  or  college  Greek,  almost  his 
daily  German ;  claiming  distant  Celtic 
blood,  actually  pretending,  in  his  slow, 
elephantine,  Teutonic  humour,  to  "  have 
a  Tartan,"  with  right  to  the  kilt  and 
eagle's  feather.  Though  stamped  by 
name  and  aspect,  as  by  inner  nature, 
true  son  of  old  Scandinavian  sea-riders, 
having  the  noble  viking  always  in  him, 
sometimes  the  latent  Berserkir  like  to 
flash  forth ;  otherwise  inexperienced, 
impractical,  the  mere  abstracted  quietist, 
who  might  use  the  eyes  and  help  the 
active  energy  of  a  companion  that  knew 
the  world. 

It  was  hot  already.  By  the  nearest 
route  it  must  be  a  good  long  afternoon's 
tramp  for  us,  even  from  the  opposite 
shore  of  Benlomond,  where  the  light 
would  glare  and  the  heat  would  broil 
above  us.  As  for  fear  of  weather  or 
change,  it  had  varied  too  long  before, 
for  any  fear  of  it  now  from  me;  although 
Ickerson  looked  up  into  the  very  bright- 
ness of  the  sky,  and  away  at  some  mist 
about  the  distinctest  mountains,  saying, 
in  his  queer,  quasi-prophetic  manner, 
that  it  would  rain  to  the  west.  I  only 
set  some  store  by  him  in  the  matter,  be- 
cause he  nonetheless  resolutely  put  up  his 
pipe,  stretched  his  large  limbs,  and  rose, 
professing  himself  ready.  He,  indeed  ! 
the  half-abstracted,  half-sagacious  mon- 
ster of  good  luck  that  I  have  often  found 
him  ! — it  was  not  lie  who  needed  to  go 
back  into  the  hotel  lobby,  facing  the  full 
glare  of  those  spectacles  in  the  sunlight, 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


25 


"before  we  could  again  abscond ;  for  he 
invariably  had  borne  his  fishing-rod 
about  with  him  in  the  compendious 
form  of  that  huge  walking-staff  which  he 
now  struck  upon  the  ground  so  promptly, 
and  his  plaid  was  always  over  his  shoul- 
der, enveloping  in  one  fold  that  simple 
oilskin  parcel  of  his.  It  was  not  he  who 
had  become  responsible  to  the  waiter  for 
our  charges,  nor  who  had  left  his  well- 
compacted  impedimenta,  with  every  essen- 
tial of  pedestrian  comfort,  on  the  hall 
table ;  and  despite  his  solemn  conster- 
nation at  the  reiterated  statement,  it  is 
impossible  to  get  rid  of  a  belief,  from  one 
scarce  perceptible  twinkle  of  his  eye, 
that  the  hypocrite  enjoyed  it.  "  Being 
conscious  of  my  own  deficiences  in  the 
practical  department,"  said  he,  with  that 
provoking  Orcadian  accent,  occasionally 
similar  to  a  snuffle,  "I  have  to  guard 
against  them,  or  rather,  my  worthy 
aunt  and  cousins  have  ;"  uplifting  and 
surveying  his  whole  outfit  with  an  air  of 
innocent  satisfaction.  "  But  would  he — 
the  doctor,  I  mean — seeing  you  alone,  my 
dear  Brown,  do  you  think,  be  so  eager  to 
accost  you  as  you  suppose  1  To  wish  to 
— that  is,  to  persevere  in  having  you  of 
his  party — that  is  to  say,  I — as  you  feel 
it  disagreeable — perhaps  he  may  not,  in 
fact,  care  for  your  proximity  and  a — a 
— what  particular  exploration  you  might 
contemplate?" 

It  is  true,  as  the  fellow  naively  showed 
himself  aware,  Ickerson  was  the  chief 
magnet  to  the  Blythe  party  in  general ; 
nor  am  I  sure  to  this  moment  that  the 
inestimable  doctor  likes  me  at  bottom. 
Well  knowing,  therefore,  that  I  could 
trust  myself  alone,  even  with  Trellington 
Blythe,  I  at  once  cut  the  knot  by  pro- 
viding that  my  companion  should  forth- 
with skirt  the  lake  towards  the  ferry- 
boat, while  I,  at  every  hazard,  would 
boldly  rush  up  to  the  hotel.  Struck  by 
a  sudden  thought  at  Ickerson's  depar- 
ture, however,  I  lingered  instead  upon 
the  pier,  as  the  steamer  came  plashing 
up.  Already  the  doctor's  voice  was 
conspicuous  from  the  other  side,  hurry- 
ing down  among  other  tourists  ;  but  the 
sharp-prowed  "  Lady-of-the-Lake  "  was 
quicker  than  he  or  I  had  calculated; 


sending  an  eddy  before  her  to  my  very 
feet,  when,  with  a  roar,  and  a  hiss,  and 
a  clamour,  she  came  sheering  round  to 
float  broadside  in.  The  first  face  I  dis- 
cerned was  that  of  M'Killop  of  the 
Daily  Tribune,  high  on  one  paddle-box, 
through  the  steam  which  contrasted 
with  his  sandy  whiskers,  carpet-bag 
and  umbrella  in  hand,  firmly  looking 
for  the  shore.  His  eye  was  in  a  mo- 
ment upon  me ;  but  the  motley  crowd 
were  scarce  begun  to  be  disgorged,  ere, 
with  a  presence  of  mind  I  still  plume 
myself  upon,  I  had  turned  and  hastened 
up  in  the  van  of  the  confusion ;  meet- 
ing right  in  the  face,  of  course,  as  if 
newly  arrived  from  Glasgow,  with  the 
good  Trellington  Brythe.  It  was  the 
Avork  of  a  few  seconds  to  make  my  hur- 
ried and  broken  explanation  as  he  stum- 
bled against  me — to  mutter  a  reply  to 
his  alarmed  inquiry  about  Ickerson — to 
nod  assent  to  his  hope  of  further  leisure 
together  in  the  hotel — and  then,  leaving 
him  to  meet  his  friend,  to  dash  in  for  my 
indispensables,  settle  with  the  waiter, 
and  once  more  escape,  breathless,  to  the 
ferry-place.  There  the  stout-built  High- 
land boatmen-,  of  pudgy  shapes,  with 
foxy  faces,  were  at  their  oars.  Ickerson 
was  seated,  calmly  waiting,  beside  a 
rustic  female  of  carroty  locks,  with 
a  suckling  baby,  whose  unreserved 
relations  he  mildly  regarded,  in  his 
own  placid,  all-tolerating,  catholic  man- 
ner, dabbling  his  hand  alongside  the 
while. 

Why  must  we  thus  wait  still,  though? 
Why,  leaving  the  honorary  stern  sheets 
vacant,  and  the  helm  untouched,  must 
I  pass  into  the  forepart  also,  beside 
nursing  rustics?  "Somepotty  is  be 
coming,"  it  seems,  from  the  boatman, "  off 
impoartanze."  Was  the  place  bespoken 
then?  Was  it  engaged  beforehand? 
They  stare  at  me.  "  Aye,  shis  two  day, 
Hoo,  Aye!"  "Some  superior  person," 
gravely  whispers  Ickerson,  "  from  Glas- 
gow, by  the  steamer."  We  were  mutu- 
ally appalled  by  the  same  idea :  especially 
as  I  saw  M'Killop's  form  with  the  doctor, 
over  the  edge  of  the  little  pier,  absorbed 
in  conversation  behind  the  throng,  in 
rear  of  a  whole  stalking  procession  of 


26 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


females  with,  hats  and  feathers.  Doubt- 
less the  M'Killop  family  !  All  so  near, 
that,  as  we  crouch,  we  can  hear  the 
sound  of  their  voices  across  the  smooth 
little  bay;  and,  out  of  sight  myself,  I 
can  still  see  the  distincter,  warmer  reflec- 
tion of  that  able  editor's  gestures — nay, 
what  was  not  before  visible,  the  very 
under-brim  of  his  furry  hat,  the  bristling 
sandiness  under  his  full  chin.  He  had, 
on  a  sudden,  a  staring-white  paper  in 
his  hand,  and,  looking  at  it  curiously, 
gave  it  to  Trellington  Blythe,  who 
peered  into  it  also ;  till  they  both  looked 
round  and  round.  Yet,  to  our  joy,  we 
were  unobserved;  indeed,as  they  were  de- 
parting towards  the  hotel,  we  saw  further 
proof  that  it  was  none  of  them  the  boat 
delayed  for.  A  groom,  from  the  steamer, 
carrying  a  gun-case,  leading  two  fine 
setters,  came  and  stepped  into  the  boat 
beside  us :  followed  at  greater  leisure  by 
two  gentlemen,  both  young,  one  plea- 
sant-faced and  with  a  military  air,  his 
accents  English ;  the  other  under-browed 
and  Celtic,  though  darkly  handsome, 
with  a  sulky  hauteur,  jealous  and  half 
awkward,  that  checked  his  friend's  de- 
signed complaisance  towards  ourselves. 
We  sat  unheeded,  therefore;  while  at 
an  abrupt  motion  of  the  hand  from  that 
glooming  young  Gael,  the  rowers 
stretched  out,  and  he  took  the  tiller  to 
steer  us  across  for  Bealach-More. 
Strange  to  say,  it  was  the  Englishman 
who  wore  a  costume  like  a  chief's, 
while  the  Celt  wore  the  fashionable 
garb  of  to-day. 

"  The  Macdonochy,  nevertheless," 
murmured  Ickerson  to  me.  "  The  young 
chief,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  Macdono- 
chies. "  I  stared.  It  was  to  the  land  of  the 
Macdonochies  we  were  bound.  "  Which  ?  " 
I  whispered  back — "  He  with  the  kilt 
and  feather  ? "  "  No.  With  the  long 
Noah's-ark  frock-coat,  the  peg-top  trou- 
sers, the  Zouave  cap,  and  first-rate  boots 
— on  that  starboard  sole  of  which,  dis- 
played so  unconsciously,  you  perceive  in 
small  nails  the  advertisement  of  '  Dun- 
can and  Co.,  Princes  Street,  Edin- 
burgh.3 "  There  was  in  Ickerson,  as  I 
hinted,  a  slow,  subterranean,  subacid 
humour;  and  he  noticed  things  unex- 


pectedly. I  leant  back,  musing  on  the 
doubtful  likelihood  of  Loch-na-Diomhair 
remaining  an  oasis  long ;  while  the  Mac- 
donochy sulked  at  us,  and  talked  loud 
to  his  better-bred  companion,  using 
French  phrases ;  then  once  or  twice 
superciliously  drawled  to  the  boatmen 
a  hideous  sentence  of  authority,  inter- 
spersed with  what  seemed  a  Gaelic 
oath ;  to  which  they,  rowing,  droned 
humbly  back. 

As  we  leapt  upon  the  other  shore  of 
Loch-Lomond,  the  road  lay  before  us ; 
wild  enough  at  best;  parting,  within 
sight,  to  a  wilder  one,  up  a  stern  pass, 
through  which  brawled  a  headlong  river. 
At  the  parting,  stood  a  well-equipped 
dog-cart,  waiting.  But  neither  help  nor 
guidance  was  I  inclined  to,  even  from 
the  looks  of  the  best-mannered  friend  of 
the  Macdonochies ;  and  in  the  wilder  of 
the  two  ways  I  recognised  the  "short 
cut,"  of  which  Moir's  letter  spoke. 
Ickerson,  after  another  of  his  mystical 
looks  overhead  and  up  the  mountains, 
silently  acceded.  So  we  escaped  from 
the  Macdonochy  also,  and  took  the  short 
cut  by  the  pass. 


IL 


OUR  JOURNEY   THITHER. 

WILD,  grim,  desolate,  it  was  soon,  as 
the  sternest  valley  of  Eephidim.  Away 
on  either  hand,  drearier  in  their  very 
formlessness,  began  to  slant  without 
sublimity  the  worn  grey  hill-sides,  from 
waste  to  waste.  Chaotic  shatterings 
and  tumblings  here  and  there,  driven 
back  upon  forgotten  Titans,  had  long 
come  to  an  end  in  utter  stillness ;  where 
the  lichen  and  moss  were  the  sole  living 
things,  creeping  insensibly  over  some 
huge  foremost  boulder,  bald  and  blind 
with  storm  that  had  been.  In  the  sultry, 
suffocating  heat  of  that  Glen-Ogie,  the 
very  rocks  gave  out  a  faint  tinkling,  as 
•  when  calcined  limestone  cools  slowly ; 
nothing  else  sounded  but  our  own  feet, 
slipping  or  crackling.  For  Ickerson  was 
especially  taciturn,  yet  in  haste  ;  nor  at 
the  same  time  abstracted,  as  I  could  have 
pardoned  his  becoming.  Thus  his  un- 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


27 


social  inood  annoyed  the  more ;  no  sneer 
at  Ossian,  nor  lure  to  the  pipe,  or  to  the 
flask  of  Glenlivet  I  bore,  could  draw  him 
out.  The  fellow's  tone  and  manner  be- 
came positively  uncomfortable,  when, 
grasping  me  by  the  arm  with  a  hand  which 
is  like  a  vice,  he  bade  me  turn  and  look 
along  Glen-Ogie.  "We  were  in  the  bot- 
tom of  it.  There  was  nothing  particular 
to  see.  That  way — the  other  also,  to- 
wards which  he  kept  that  staff  of  his 
pointed  like  a  divining  rod — was  but 
a  wild,  inarticulate,  rugged  ascent,  with 
dry  rifts  and  gullies  on  both  sides, 
a  wrinkling  off  through  stony  beds  of 
vanished  torrents  into  unknown  chasms ; 
then  up,  as  where  avalanches  had  rolled 
down,  or  volcanic  eruptions  had  passed. 
Where  had  the  hazy  sweltering  sun  re- 
treated ?  Where  were  our  own  shadows 
— where  the  clouds — on  what  side,  the 
east,  west,  north,  or  south — and  which 
the  vista  of  Glen-Ogie  we  had  descended, 
which  the  perspective  of  it  we  were  yet 
to  ascend  ?  To  tell  the  truth,  for  all  I 
know,  we  might  then  have  steadily  pro- 
ceeded backward,  even  passing  the  last 
nondescript  clachan  of  human  burrows 
as  a  new  one,  and  reaching  Loch-Lomond 
as  if  it  were  our  lake  in  prospect,  till  we 
ferried  across  to  the  supposed  welcome 
of  Moir,  and  should  find  the  embrace  of 
Trellington  Blythe,  with  the  exulting 
recognition  of  M'Killop  !  For  a  moment 
I  was  in  Ickerson's  hands :  so  that  if  he 
had  smiled,  I  could  have  dashed  him 
from  me.  But  in  the  most  earnest 
spirit  of  companionship,  which  never 
shall  I  forget,  he  thrust  his  staff  before 
him  like  a  sword,  and  without  a  word 
we  rushed  upward  together.  One  glimpse 
was  all  I  wanted  now  of  the  double- 
headed  summit  of  Ben-Araidh,  with  its 
single  cairn  of  stones. 

At  length,  with  something  like  a  cry 
of  satisfaction,  my  friend  sprang  up 
before  me  from  the  rocky  trough,  out 
upon  a  heathery  knoll.  Beside  us  was 
a  small  round  mountain-tarn,  fed  by  a 
quick  little  burn  from  above,  which  again 
stole  out  into  wide-rolling  moor.  Over 
its  own  vast  brown  shoulder  I  caught 
sight  of  the  bare  grey  top  I  looked  for ; 
slightly  swathed,  between,  with  a  slight 


wreath  of  mist.  Here  we  quenched 
our  thirst ;  here  we  gave  ourselves  up, 
at  ease,  to  the  untroubled  rapture  of  the 
pause  at  that  high  spot,  our  journey's 
zenith.  The  rest  was  plain  before  us ; 
and  Ickerson  took  out  his  meerschaum 
once  more,  and  smoked  tranquilly  again. 
Too  well  does  he  meditate,  my  friend 
Ickerson,  and  pour  forth  at  length  the 
tenor  of  his  meditations ;  in  rhapsody 
that  takes  indeed  the  colour  of  sublime 
phenomena  around  him,  yet  too  much 
assimilates  to  the  other  vapour  he 
breathes  forth,  till  it  is  apt  to  lull  one  into 
dreams.  Had  it  not  been  to  avoid  this, 
I  do  not  think,  in  circumstances  still  re- 
quiring care,  that  I  should  have  been 
tempted  to  join  my  rod  together  and 
leave  him  a  little,  to  try  the  upward 
course  of  the  brook.  To  him,  forsooth, 
it  may  be  the  easiest  thing  to  put  away 
inveterate  thoughts  at  will :  they  never 
haunted  or  terrified  him.  There  was 
always  a  fund  of  latent  power  in  the 
fellow,  which  he  never  troubled  himself 
to  draw  upon ;  because,  perhaps,  he  was 
six  feet  two  without  his  shoes,  with  a 
bone,  muscle,  and  length  of  arm  that  set 
him  above  need  of  much  sparring  prac- 
tice with  our  friend  Francalanza.  I 
soon  heard  him,  but  in  the  distance  ; 
his  eyes  closed,  his  incense  ascending, 
his  knees  up — eventually,  as  I  looked 
over  my  shoulder,  raising  by  turns  his 
delighted  feet,  in  real  enjoyment  of  the 
glorious  hush — with  the  supposition, 
doubtless,  that  the  silent  pea-coat  beside 
him  was  a  drowsy  companion.  Alas ! 
ye  dogging  remembrances,  ye  jading  and 
worldly  consciousnesses — ye  could  not 
so  easily  be  left.  I  followed  the  upward 
vein  of  the  brook,  in  its  deep  water- 
course, broken  and  fern-fringed ;  and 
it  is  strange,  though  childish,  how  a  few 
minutes,  which  self-control  could  not 
compose  to  peace,  will  glide  away  in 
puerile  sport  and  device.  Rest ! — rest, 
said  wo  ?  Flight  from  thought,  or  from 
the  pertinacity  of  words  and  artifices  ? 
No — 'tis  a  new,  eager,  wild  refuge  of 
pursuit,  exultingly  compensative  by  re- 
venge for  what  you  have  feared  and  fled 
from  before  :  pitiless  in  its  first  savage 
longings  for  the  scent,  the  chase,  capture, 


28 


Loch-na-D  iomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


Mood,  and  for  bootless  relentings  after. 
Soon  the  zest  grows  unsatisfied  :  you 
would  fain  be  lulled  away  more  tho- 
roughly, on,  on,  by  some  strong  salmon- 
rush  into  deeper  abysses — instead  of 
upward  to  the  dribbling  source  of  min- 
nows and  tadpoles — rather  outward  to 
the  frith  and  sea,  among  old  former 
hazards  and  contentions.  Suddenly,  too, 
the  very  dragon-fly  lost  its  charm — the 
paltry  trout  scorned  me  in  their  turn, 
ceasing  to  rise  at  all.  What  was  it? 
Ah.  I  had  thought  as  much.  Thunder 
in  the  stifling  air — thunder  in  those 
bronze-like  tints  of  the  mountain- 
shoulders,  and  in  the  livid  cloud  beyond 
Ben  Araiclh ;  though  his  summit  still 
showed  the  distincter,  above  a  snow- 
white  shroud  on  the  lower  cleft. 

Mist  had  been  spreading  unawares 
below,  but  the  living  burn  rushed  all 
the  livelier  down  beside  me,  a  certain 
clue  to  regain  the  tarn — and  if  I  had 
all  at  once  felt  a  slight  uncertainty  of  re- 
collection about  our  friend's  road-map, 
my  recent  ascent  above  the  obscurer  at- 
mosphere was  fortunate  for  the  moment. 
Composedly  enough,  therefore,  I  was 
about  to  verify  my  impressions  by  Moir's 
careful  letter,  when  I  was  greatly  an- 
noyed to  find  it  was  no  longer  in  my 
possession.  Ickerson's  thoughtless  habits 
occurred  to  me,  and  a  redoubled  anxiety 
now  urged  the  precipitate  speed  I  at 
once  put  forth  to  rejoin  him,  down  the 
course  of  the  stream ;  impatient  of  every 
turn  by  which  it  wound,  now  glittering 
upward  to  a  levin-flash,  now  sullenly 
plunging  downward  from  the  thunder- 
echoes.  Not  for  myself  did  I  shudder 
then,  but  for  him — him,  Ickerson,  my 
heedless  friend,  doubly  dear  to  me  in 
those  moments  of  remembrance.  For 
well  did  I  know  what  was  the  character 
of  a  Highland  "  speat "  from  the  hills. 
The  welter  and  roar  of  its  foaming  outlet 
was  along  with  me,  neck  and  neck, 
among  the  mist  and  the  wind-stirred 
bracken,  right  to  the  shore  of  that  wild 
black  tarn,  sulkily  splashing  where  dry 
heath  had  been.  Heavens  !  Was  my 
foreboding  realized  so  darkly  !  Not  a 
trace  of  him — he  was  gone — his  very 
couching-place  obliterated  and  flooded. 


I  shouted  ;  a  hope  striking  me.  He 
had  most  probably  underrated  my  ex- 
perience or  presence  of  mind.  What 
extravagant  conceptions  might  he  not 
form,  indeed,  of  my  possible  course  of 
conduct — fancying  me  still  on  my  way 
apart ;  yet  himself  never  thinking  ot 
that  clue  which  the  stream  had  supplied 
me.  If  he  were  wet,  he  had  no  flask  of 
Glenlivet  to  support  him,  as  I  still  had  ; 
and  with  one  more  hasty  gulp  from  it, 
I  took  the  hill,  dashing  after  him  ;  once 
or  twice  positively  sure  of  the  traces  of 
his  great,  huge-soled,  heavy  and  soaking 
steps. 

Over  the  heathery  brow,  down  to  the 
sheltered  hollow  of  a  fresh  rivulet ;  for 
I  thought  his  voice  came  up  to  me,  sten- 
torian, through  the  blast.  At  all  events, 
some  distance  off,  there  was  in  reality 
the  fern-thatched  roof  of  a  hut  to  be 
descried  ;  scarce  distinguishable  but  for 
a  slight  wreath  of  smoke,  curling  against 
the  misty  mountain-breast.  I  shouted, 
too,  as  I  made  for  it.  Some  shepherd's 
shealing,  of  course,  or  hunting  bothy, 
lodged  in  that  secluded  covert ;  for 
which  he  had  doubtless  sped  in  supposed 
chase  of  me  !  This  much  I  could  have 
sworn  of  poor  Ickerson. 

Alas  !  Utterly  still  and  deserted  it 
stood  ;  not  a  voice  answering  mine  as  I 
sprang  in.  Ickerson  would  have  stayed 
there,  hoping  for  help,  if  his  foot  had 
ever  crossed  the  threshold.  So  did  not 
I,  however.  The  fancied  smoke  had 
been  but  a  wreath  of  mist ;  I  marked 
only  for  an  instant  the  weird  and  obso- 
lete aspect  of  the  uncouth  hermitage, 
manifestly  built  long  ago,  over  the  very 
cataract  of  a  boiling  torrent ;  at  once 
bridge  and  dwelling,  but  for  ages  left 
solitary,  like  a  dream  of  the  bewildering 
desert.  Then  I  turned  to  speed  back 
again,  at  least  with  the  certainty  that 
Ickerson  had  not  reached  so  far. 

Powers  above  !  Was  I  certain  of  any- 
thing, though  1  Why,  as  I  climbed 
again,  to  return — glad  to  feel  now  the 
mist  cleared — why  did  I  reach  the  same 
hill-brow  so  slowly  this  time,  though 
with  all  my  energies  on  the  strain; 
rising  at  last,  too,  amidst  such  a  hissing 
storm-blast  ?  I  could  see  far,  from  ridge 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


29 


to  ridge  of  grey  bent-grass,  islanded  in 
mist — along,  up,  through  shimmering 
water-gully  and  shaded  corrie.  "Where 
was  I  going — what  was  that,  yonder,  so 
slowly  letting  the  vapour  sink  from  it ; 
as  a  gleam  of  watery  sunlight  clove  in, 
shearing  aside  the  upper  clouds  1  A 
cairn  of  stones — solitary  on  a  bare  grey 
rocky  cone,  riven  and  rifted.  I  was  on 
the  mountain-shoulder  itself,  making 
hard  for  the  top  of  Ben-Araidh  ! 

A  shudder  for  myself,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, ran  through  me.  For  a  brief 
space  of  time  I  dropped  my  head,  giving 
way  to  some  unmanly  depression  of  heart. 
Quickly  I  felt,  however,  that  after  all  I 
was  not  lost.  I  had  only  escaped  beyond 
track,  and  those  dogging  thoughts  were 
at  my  ear  no  longer.  Taking  out  my 
small  watch-seal  compass,  I  carefully 
surveyed  the  point  in  view,  studying  the 
precise  bearings,  and  taking  fresh  deter- 
mination in  with  the  act.  Giving  up 
Ickerson,  well-nigh  for  a  few  minutes 
forgotten,  I  took  a  new  course ;  and 
steadily,  but  rapidly,  for  bare  hope  of 
life,  began  to  plunge  direct  down  for 
that  spot  disdained  so  lately — that  un- 
couth and  mysterious  booth  of  unknown 
antiquity. 

Staggering  down  for  it  at  last  in  vain, 
slipping,  sometimes  reeling  on,  then 
squelching  into  a  quagmire,  I  yielded  in 
the  end.  I  collected  myself  to  perish.  It 
was  warm,  positively  warm  below  there, 
beside  the  marshy  navel  of  that  hollow 
in  the  valley,  of  which  I  had  not  before 
seen  the  least  likeness.  There,  soft  white 
lichens  and  emerald  heaths,  and  pale 
coral-like  fungous  water-growths,  were 
marbled  and  veined  together,  into  a 
silent  whirl  of  fairy  moss,  lovelier  than 
any  sea-shell  of  Singapore.  I  looked  at 
it,  seeing  not  only  how  beautiful,  but 
how  secret  it  was.  A  great  secret  it 
began  to  tell  me  as  I  sat.  It  was  Loch- 
na-Diomhair,  I  thought,  which  we  had 
so  foolishly  been  in  quest  of.  There  was 
perfect  welcome,  and  peace,  and  our 
friend  Moir — so  that  I  could  have  slept, 
"but  that  a  little  black  water-hen,  or  a 
dab-chick,  out  of  a  contiguous  pool, 
emerged  up  suddenly,  with  a  round 
bright  eye,  squeaking  at  me,  and  not 


plopping  down  again.  By  the  expression 
of  its  eye,  I  saw  that  it  was  Ickerson, 
and  I  clutched  my  rod,  summoning  up 
the  last  strength  for  vengeance ;  with 
stupid  fancy,  too,  that  I  heard  behind 
me,  in  the  wind,  voices,  yelps  of  dogs, 
bloodhounds,  led  on  by  some  one  who 
had  lost  the  trail. 

As  in  a  dream,  there  came  to  my  very 
neck  the  grip  of  a  hard  hand ;  before  I 
could  once  more  stumble  onward.  While 
close  at  my  ear  there  panted  a  hot  breath, 
followed  by  a  harsh  voice  that  woke  me 
up,  but  had  no  meaning  in  its  yells. 
Was  I  thought  deaf,  because  I  under- 
stood it  not,  or  because  I  stared  at  a 
bare-headed,  red-haired  savage  in  a 
rusty  philabeg,  with  the  hairiest  red  legs 
imaginable,  clutching  me  :  for  whom  I 
natter  myself,  nevertheless,  that  in  ordi- 
nary circumstances  I  was  more  than  a 
match.  As  the  case  stood,  I  yielded  up 
my  sole  weapon  with  a  weak  attempt  at 
scorn  only,  Needless  were  his  feUow- 
caterans,  springing  and  hallooing  down 
from  every  quarter  of  the  hill,  at  his  cry 
of  triumph.  With  a  refinement  of  bar- 
barism, a  horn  of  some  fiery  cordial, 
flavouring  of  antique  Pictish  art,  was 
applied  to  my  feeble  lips ;  to  save  them 
the  pains,  no  doubt,  of  carriage  to  their 
haunt.  Eeviving  as  it  was  to  every 
vital  energy,  I  could  have  drained  it  to 
the  bottom,  heedless  of  their  fiendish 
laughter,  but  that  some  one  rushed  up 
breathless,  forcing  it  away.  I  looked  up 
and  saw,  as  a  dark  presentiment  had 
told  me,  Ickerson  himself.  A  train  of 
dire  suspicions  poured  upon  my  mind 
while  I  heard  his  explanations,  while 
I  came  back  to  sober  reality.  Never  had 
his  vague  political  theories  squared  with 
my  own  practical  views  :  had  his  Celtic 
leanings  entangled  him  in  some  deep- 
laid  plot,  of  which  Moir  and  he  were 
accomplices — I  the  silly  victim,  unless 
a  proselyte  ?  Nay — his  genuine  delight^ 
his  affectionate  joy  convinced. me  I  could 
depend  upon  him  yet,  as  he  fell  upon 
my  neck  like  Esau,  informing  me  how 
simple  the  facts  had  been.  Too  tutelary 
only,  if  not  triumphant,  that  manner  of 
statement  about  the  sheep-drivers  on 
the  hill  who  had  seen  me,  of  the  actual 


30 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


distillers  who  were  present,  the  supposi- 
tion that  I  was  the  English  ganger,  and 
the  safe  vicinity,  amidst  that  drenching 
rain,  of  the  smuggling-bothy.  There  is 
a  coolness,  there  is  a  depth  about  the 
character  of  Mark  Ickerson,  which  even 
yet  I  have  to  fathom.  He  now  used  the 
Erse  tongue  like  a  truncheon:  and  in 
all  he  said,  did  those  heathery-looking 
Kernes  place  implicit  faith ;  conducting 
us  to  their  den  with  welcome,  nay  re- 
suming their  operations  before  us,  in 
which  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  join 
zealously.  Indeed,  for  my  own  part, 
I  have  an  impression  that  there  is  con- 
siderable vivacity  in  the  Gaelic  language, 
and  that  it  has  a  singular  power  of  com- 
municating social  and  mirthful  ideas.  I 
now  look  back  upon  my  enjoyment  of 
its  jests  or  lyric  effusions  with  a  feeling 
of  surprise  ;  except  as  indicative  of  an 
habitual  courtesy,  and  of  a  certain 
aptn,ess  in  me  to  catholic  sympathies 
with  all  classes  or  races  of  men. 

We  were  not  going,  however,  to  live 
perpetually  in  a  mist,  which  bade  fair  to 
continue  up  there  ;  neither  was  it  de- 
sirable that  Ickerson  should  become 
permanently  an  illicit  distiller,  speaking 
Gaelic  only.  Happily  there  was  of  the 
party  a  man,  of  course  accidentally 
present,  and  by  no  means  connected 
with  systematic  fraud  against  the  excise, 
who  could  guide  us  in  fog  or  rain,  by 
day  or  night,  to  our  destination ;  himself, 
it  turned  out,  a  Macdonochy,  though 
rejoicing  more  in  the  cognomen  of 
"  Dochart."  How  or  in  what  manner, 
along  with  this  Dochart,  we  emerged 
gradually  from  the  mist  upon  a  wet 
green  knoll  of  fern  and  juniper,  fairly 
into  the  splendour  of  the  west,  striking 
down  Glen-Samhach  itself, — how  we  all 
three  descended  with  augmented  spirits, 
till  the  long  expanse  of  the  lake  glittered 
upon  our  sight,  and  then  the  scattered 
smoke  of  huts  grew  visible, —  it  were 
difficult,  if  it  had  been  judicious,  to 
relate.  There  is  to  this  hour  something 
confused  about  that  memorable  short  cut 
altogether,  more  especially  as  to  its  close. 
Only,  that  some  one,  probably  Ickerson, 
struck  up  a  stave  of  a  song,  German 
-or  Gaelic,  in  the  refrain  of  which  we 


all  joined,    not  excepting  the   elderly 
Dochart. 

All  at  once  we  were  close  upon  the 
schoolmaster's  house,  a  homely  enough 
cottage,  where  Moir's  head-quarters  had 
been  established ;  at  one  end  of  the 
clachan,  before  you  reach  the  lake.  He 
had  made  himself  at  home  as  usual ;  and, 
though  surprised  at  our  despatch,  of 
course  welcomed  us  gladly.  A  pleasant, 
lively  young  fellow,  Frank  Moir  :  former 
college-mate  of  us  both,  though  but  for 
a  term  or  two,  ere  he  turned  aside  to 
commerce.  And  who  can  enjoy  the 
Highlands  like  a  London  man  born 
north  of  Tweed ;  or  enjoy,  for  that 
matter,  a  tumbler  or  so  of  genuine 
Highland  toddy,  with  the  true  peaty 
flavour  from  up  some  Ben-Araidh  ;  con- 
versing of  past  days  and  present  life,  to 
more  indigenous  friends  ?  We  too 
relished  it  to  the  utmost.  The  pursuers 
were  left  behind  us,  unable  to  follow. 
Finally,  Ickerson  and  I,  on  two  boxed- 
in  beds  of  blanket  over  heather — at  the 
end  next  the  cowshed,  with  the  partition 
not  up  to  the  rafters  between  us  and  its 
wheezy  occupants,  slept  the  sweetest 
sleep  of  many  months. 

Ill 

AN   UNLOOKED-FOR   CATASTROPHE. 

THAT  first  whole  day  of  untroubled, 
silent,  secluded  safety,  upon  the  sunlit 
waters  of  Loch-na-Diomhair,  how  inde- 
scribable was  it !  We  heeded  little  the 
first  day,  how  our  sporting  successes 
might  be  ensured ;  excepting  Moir  only, 
to  whom  nature  is  rather  the  pretext  for 
fishing,  than  vice  versd  as  with  most 
intellectual  workers,  like  us  who  fol- 
lowed his  guidance.  A  boat,  at  any  rate, 
was  the  first  desire  of  all  three ;  and 
as  a  boat  was  at  the  schoolmaster's 
command,  we  put  it  to  immediate  use. 
"  This  day,  0  Moir,"  says  Ickerson,  in 
his  quaint  way,  "  let  Brown  indulge  that 
idle  vein  of  his — while  we  revel,  rather, 
in  the  exertion  so  congenial  to  us. 
Yesterday,  he  perhaps  had  enough  of 
that.  Nevertheless,  let  him  take  the 
oars  to  himself,  that  we  may  troll  these 
waters  as  he  enjoys  his  visions — see 


Loch-na-DiomJiair — TJie  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


31 


what  a  sweep  of  blue  loch  !  Yea,  past 
the  lee  of  the  trees,  yonder,  what  a 
favouring  ripple  of  a  breeze — too  soon 
to  be  lost,  I  fear  me  !" 

The  sly  pretender,  he  had  an  advantage 
over  me  yet.  It  was  not  I,  but  he,  who 
inclined  to  inert  dreaming ;  as  we  floated 
forth  on  an  expanse  as  yet  distinguishable 
by  very  little  from  other  lakes,  with  no 
features  of  extraordinary  beauty ;  but 
solitary,  bare,  spreading  on  wider  till  it 
folded  between  two  promontories  of  wild 
bill.  And  then,  with  the  first  buoyant 
sense  of  depth — of  liquid  force  taken 
hold  upon  by  the  oar  in  a  conscious 
hand,  to  be  wrestled  with  at  least  for 
exercise — what  refreshment,  what  exul- 
tation at  your  measureless  might,  your 
endless  outgoings,  your  inexhaustible 
sources,  0  ye  abundant  and  joyous 
waters  !  Anywhere — anywhere  with  ye, 
for  Loch-Diomhair  is  but  a  name,  that 
in  itself  would  soon  disappoint  us. 
And  Ickerson,  too,  cheated  of  his  evasive 
resort  to  the  rod  and  its  lazy  pleasures, 
is  held  in  emulous  unison  with  me,  by 
the  ash-stave  he  has  not  time  to  lay 
aside ;  till  insensibly  we  are  trying  our  - 
strength  together,  and  our  power  to 
modulate  it  harmoniously,  while  Moir's 
will  becomes  ours,  as  he  stands  erect 
before  us,  but  backward — his  minnow 
spinning  astern,  his  eye  intent,  hand 
ready,  the  ends  of  his  somewhat  sump- 
tuous neckerchief  fluttering  with  the 
swift  smooth  motion.  A  sudden  jerk 
at  last,  a  whirr,  the  running  reel  is 
tremulous  with  his  first  sea-trout  of  the 
season,  which  shows  play  in  good  earnest, 
making  straight  for  open  water  through 
yonder  reeds  by  the  point,  where  no  line 
twisted  by  tackle-maker's  hands  will 
bear  the  strain. 

At  that,  no  Yankee  whaling-captain 
can  shout  more  excitedly,  or  more  un- 
reasonably demand  superhuman  exer- 
tions, than  Moir;  when  he  required  our 
double  speed  on  the  instant,  to  do  all 
but  overtake  the  fin-borne  fugitive,  tail- 
propelled  for  its  dear  life;  that  he 
might  save  the  first  tug  upon  his  line 
as  he  shortened  it  quickly,  with  a  subtile 
art !  Yet  we  justified  his  expectations, 
Ickerson  and  I,  putting  forth  the  strenu- 


ousness  of  Mohawks  upon  the  chase ; 
so  that  down,  down,  in  the  nearer  pro- 
found beneath  us,  our  sea-trout  must 
sound  himself  perforce,  then,  after  a 
sullen  pause,  come  up  exhausted,  to  show 
but  a  few  more  freaks  of  desperation, 
and,  turning  its  yellow  side  to  the  sun, 
yield  to  the  insidious  pole-net  at  last. 
A  solid  three-pounder  at  the  least,  plump, 
lustrous,  red-spotted ;  the  pledge,  merely, 
of  a  splendid  future  in  Loch-Diomhair. 
"We  rejoiced  over  it,  drank  over  it  the 
first  quaich  of  that  day's  mountain-dew, 
and  were  thenceforth  voAved  to  the  en- 
grossing pursuit  in  which  Frank  Moir 
revelled.  Little  matter  was  it  then, 
save  for  this  object,  how  magnificent 
the  reach  of  open  water  visible,  lost  in 
distant  perspective ;  with  here  and  there 
a  soft  shore  of  copse,  rising  into  a  hill  of 
wood ;  a  little  island  dotting  the  liquid 
space  :  on  either  side,  the  shadowy 
recesses  of  glens  looking  forth,  purple- 
mouthed  ;  midway  to  one  hand,  the 
great  shoulders  and  over-peering  top  of 
Ben-Araidh,  supreme  over  all,  beginning 
faintly  to  be  reflected  as  the  breeze  failed. 
But  there  was  one  grim,  grey,  castellated 
old  house,  projected  on  a  low  point, 
which  our  friend  denoted  to  us ;  the 
abode  of  the  Macdonochy,  who  looked 
forth  with  jealous  preservation-law  upon 
the  sport  of  strangers.  Nearer  to  us,  he 
showed,  as  we  were  glad  to  find,  the 
more  modest  yet  wealthier  residence  of 
that  English  merchant,  Mr.  St.  Clair, 
who  had  purchased  there  of  late  his 
summer  retreat :  and  the  St.  Glairs  were 
far  more  liberal  of  their  rights,  although 
it  was  said  the  young  Macdonochy  had 
become  an  intimate  at  their  lodge, 
aspiring  greedily  to  the  hand  of  its  fair 
heiress. 

Hence  we  turned  our  prow  that  way, 
and,  still  rowing  stoutly,  were  fain  to 
pass  the  hotter  hours  near  shore,  with 
oars  laid  by ;  trying  for  heavy  pike  in  the 
sedge-fringed  bay.  It  was  in  order  to 
find  a  pole  in  the  nearest  fence,  on  which 
Ickerson' s  plaid  might  be  spread  as  a 
sail,  that  he  himself  deliberately  landed; 
showing,  I  must  say,  a  cool  heedless- 
ness  of  legality,  such  as  his  recent  still- 
life  might  have  tended  to  produce. 


32 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret. 


He  caine  back  in  his  leisurely  style, 
slowly  relaxing  his  features  to  a  smile, 
as  he  held  up  a  glazed  card  of  address, 
which  he  bore  in  triumph,  along  with 
the  paling-slab.  We  had,  indeed, 
heard  voices ;  and  now  found  that 
Ickerson  had  fallen  into  sudden  alter- 
cation with  a  groom  attended  by  two 
setters.  The  groom  looked  after  him 
as  he  stepped  into  the  boat,  with  the 
timber  shouldered  still;  and  I  recog- 
nised the  attendant  of  our  two  fellow- 
passengers  across  Inversneyd  ferry.  It 
was  not  merely  that  he  had  been  awed 
by  Ickerson's  stalwart  dimensions  :  the 
truth  was,  that  Ickerson,  when  detected 
by  him  in  a  felonious  act,  had  cha- 
racteristically insisted  on  giving  his  own 
card  to  the  groom,  whom  he  commanded 
to  bear  it  to  the  party  of  sportsmen  he 
saw  at  hand.  Thereupon,  the  young 
English  officer,  already  known  to  us 
both  by  sight,  had  come  forward  smiling; 
to  waive  further  excuses,  to  make  re- 
cognition of  Ickerson,  and  give  in  his 
turn  his  titular  piece  of  paste-board; 
apologizing,  also,  for  his  awkward  con- 
straint on  the  previous  occasion.  He 
had  discovered  that  Ickerson  and  he  had 
mutual  acquaintances  in  town,  with  whom 
the  former  was,  as  usual,  a  favourite ;  and 
knowing  him  thus  by  reputation  before- 
hand, now  wished  the  pleasure  of  cul- 
tivating this  opportunity,  so  long  as  our 
friend  should  be  in  the  neighbourhood. 
He  was  Captain  St.  Glair,  Ardchonzie 
Lodge :  at  which  retreat,  throughout  the 
sporting  season  now  opened,  the  captain 
and  his  father  would  be  delighted  to 
profit  by  Mr.  Ickerson's  vicinity,  with 
that  of  any  friends  of  his  who  might 
incline  to  use  the  boats,  or  to  shoot  upon 
the  moor.  And  before  Ickerson  left,  in 
short,  he  had  blandly  reciprocated  these 
advances,  sociably  engaging  for  us  all 
that  we  would  use  the  privilege  at  an 
early  day ;  so  that  the  hospitality  of 
the  St  Glairs,  with  the  facilities  and 
amenities  of  Ardchonzie  Lodge,  might 
fairly  be  considered  open  to  us  three. 
The  luck  of  Ickerson,  I  repeat,  is  some- 
thing inexplicable.  "What  a  number  of 
friends  he  has,  without  any  trouble  to 
him  ;  and  what  a  flow  of  acquaintances, 


ever  partial,  ever  discovering  their 
mutuality,  so  as  to  increase,  and  be  inter- 
connected !  Appearing  improvident,  un- 
calculative,  unworldly — yet  how  does 
the  world  foster  and  pet  him,  playing, 
as  it  were,  into  his'  hands.  Even  his 
facile  nature  will  not  explain  it — nor 
that  diffuse,  impersonal,  lymphatic,  self- 
unconsciousness,  which  makes  all  sorts 
of  people  fancy  him  theirs  while  they 
are  with  him.  He  must  have  some 
deep-seated  ambition,  surely,  which  he 
has  marvellous  powers  to  conceal.  But 
at  all  events  we  returned  together  to- 
wards our  quarters  at  the  schoolmaster's, 
in  the  clachan  of  Glen-Samhach,  full  of 
Elysian  prospects  for  many  a  day's 
rustication  there.  Loch-Diomhair  was 
Utopia  indeed — the  very  expanse  we 
had  sighed  for,  of  Lethean  novelty,  of 
strange  and  deep  Nepenthe,  amidst  a 
primitive  race,  who  knew  us  not;  a 
rudely-happy  valley,  where  the  spirit  of 
nature  alone  could  haunt  us,  asking  none 
of  our  secrets  in  exchange  for  hers. 

At  our  re-entrance  to  the  humble 
lodging,  as  the  dusk  fell,  my  first  glance 
caught  upon  an  object  on  the  table 
where  our  evening  repast  was  to  be  spread. 
It  was  a  letter — a  letter  addressed  in 
some  hand  I  recognised,  to  me.  To 
me,  of  course,  these  ghastly  pursuers 
always  come,  if  to  any;  and  a  vague 
foreboding  seemed  to  have  warned  me 
as  I  crossed  the  threshold.  It  had  not 
come  by  post,  however :  it  was  no 
pursuing  proof-sheet,  nor  dunning  re- 
minder, no  unfavourable  criticism,  or 
conventional  proposal  Simply,  what 
bewildered  me,  till  I  read  some  words 
in  the  envelope — an  inclosure  of  Frank 
Moi^s  letter  from  that  spot  to  me,  which 
I  had  read  to  Ickerson  at  Inversneyd, 
and  supposed  him  to  have  retained.  I 
had  forgot  it  again  till  I  now  saw  it,  and 
saw — by  the  pencilled  note  of  Dr. 
Trellington  Blythe— what  the  fact  had 
been.  I  had  dropped  it  in  my  haste  on 
the  little  landing-pier,  and  it  had  at- 
tracted the  sharp  eye  of  Mr.  M'Killop 
as  it  lay.  It  was  Mr.  M'Killop  who, 
with  a  degree  of  inadvertence,  as  Dr. 
Blythe's  note  explained,  had  read  the 
letter  before  he  looked  at  the  address — 


Loch-na-Diomhair — The  Lake  of  the  Secret 


33 


a  thing  which  our  excellent  friend,  the 
doctor,  seemed  to  repudiate,  but  could 
not  regret ;  because  it  had  been  the  acci- 
dental occasion  of  a  great  benefit,  and  an 
expected  pleasure.  They  would  have  a 
speedy  opportunity  of  explaining  in 
person.  They  had  themselves  brought 
the  letter  to  Glen-Sambach.  They  were 
in  search  of  lodgings  near.  Glen-Sam- 
bach  and  Loch-Diomhair  were  (they 
found)  the  very  place — the  precise  kind 
of  locality — for  which  Mrs.  Blythe  had 
been  longing.  They  were  near  me,  in 
short — and  to-morrow  they  would  do 
themselves  the  satisfaction,  &c.  Any 
friends  of  mine,  and  so  on,  would  be 
an  accession  to  their  modest  circle,  in 
that  sequestered  scene,  so  well  depicted 
by  my  enthusiastic  correspondent,  whom 
they  hoped  soon  to  number  among  their 
acquaintances. 

This  was  an  emergency  indeed  requir- 
ing the  utmost  vigour  and  tact,  with 
unflagging  resolution,  to  disentangle  our- 
selves from  it  once  more;  nay,  if  promptly 
taken,  to  render  it  the  outlet  of  a  com- 
plete and  trackless  escape.  Not  that 
I  myself  hesitated  for  a  moment ;  since 
it  was  no  other  than  the  Blythe  and 
M'Killop  connection  I  now  fled  from — 
while  Glen-Sambach  and  Loch-Diom- 
hair, shared  with  them,  became  as  the 
suburbs  of  that  public  which  the  Daily 
Tribune  sways,  bringing  all  its  odious 
issues  after.  Like  the  gold-diggings  of 
Kennebec '  or  Bendigo  would  soon  be 
our  fancied  El  Dorado ;  the  greater  its 
charin,  the  sweeter  its  secresy  and  soli- 
tude, the  more  speedily  to  be  gone  for 
ever. 

Happily,  it  was  evident  that  they 
kneyr  nothing  yet  of  Ickerson's  conti- 
nuance with  me.  Fortunately,  too,  Moir 
did  not  need  to  fear  their  subseqtient 
displeasure.  All  that  I  had  to  overcome 
was  the  sudden  vividness  of  anticipation 
they  had  both  conceived,  the  latter  espe- 
cially, from  the  cordial  proffer  of  young 
St.  Clair.  It  was  a  glowing  vision  for 
me  to  break  yet ;  if  I  did  not  break  it, 
how  much  more  painfully  would  it  be 
dissipated  by  the  claim  on  our  society, 
with  all  its  advantages  and  openings, 
which  Trellington  Blythe  would  amiably 

No.  7. — VOL.  II. 


employ,  and  M'Killop  firmly  expect — 
nay,  enforce.  To  me  the  prospect  lost 
every  tint  when  thus  re-touched  ;  yet  if 
they  cared  to  try  it,  to  fail  me  and  re- 
main behind,  they  were  welcome,  I  said, 
' — so  revealing  the  whole  direness  of  the 
case. 

Had  it  not  been  for  Ickerson's  dread 
of  the  editor,  before  mentioned,  I  sus- 
pect he  would  now  have  shown  defec- 
tion ;  nay,  even  then,  but  for  the  said 
acquaintance  with  the  courteous  St. 
Glairs,  which,  if  they  two  remained,  he 
must  now  cultivate.  He  has  no  repug- 
nance like  mine,  I  suspect,  for  the  Blythe 
circle.  As  for  Frank  Moir,  he  is  an 
eager  sportsman,  otherwise  a  mere  man 
of  the  world ;  and  he  swears  by  Ickerson 
in  higher  matters.  The  influence  pos- 
sessed by  Ickerson  over  him  and  others 
of  the  same  stamp  is  curious  to  me. 
Ickerson  did  not  reason  on  the  matter ; 
he  did  not  even  trouble  himself  to  paint 
M'Killop :  giving  but  one  significant 
shrug  of  his  vast  shoulders,  one  expres- 
sive grimace,  then  taking  up  his  staff 
and  plaid  to  follow  me.  Then  Moir, 
shouldering  his  portmanteau  for  the  first 
boy  that  could  be  found  at  hand,  gave 
in  a  reluctant  adhesion,  and  came  with 
him;  while  I  obscurely  accounted  for 
the  change  to  our  host,  the  intelligent 
but  simple-minded  pedagogue  of  the 
Macdonochies. 

It  was  a  misty  moonrise,  through 
which,  as  we  silently  set  forth,  we  were 
soon  lost  to  the  most  prying  eyes  in  the 
clachan.  Instead  of  suffering  our  friend's 
portmanteau  to  be  delivered  to  any  gillie 
whatever,  I  was  ready  for  the  burden 
myself.  Whither  we  were  going  I  did 
not  say,  not  even  knowing :  only  taking 
the  way  which  led  likeliest  to  some 
ultimate  coach-road  ;  while  truly  it  may 
be  said,  that,  for  a  time,  I  had  two  silent, 
unsupporting  followers — one  sullen,  the 
other  wrapt  in  most  unsociable  medi- 
tation— till  the  moon  rose  bright  upon 
our  rugged  path,  the  lake  shimmering 
along  beneath  us  through  dreamy  haze, 
silence  lying  behind  upon  the  unseen 
glen.  A  new  valley  was  opening  up 
through  the  mountains,  where  the  high 
road  to  the  grand  route  lay  plainly 


34 


Mr.  Holman  Hunt's  Picture. 


marked,  as  a  turnpike  bar  reassured  me 
soon.  The  milestones  to  Campbelltown 
pledged  our  security  thenceforward. 

"  Ickerson,"  I  said  then,  "  I  am  will- 
ing to  give  up  this  leadership.  Observe, 
I  confess  my  past  oversights.  I  own 
that,  but  for  me,  this  would  not  have 
dccurred.  There  are  other  spots  than 
Loch-Diomhair,  doubtless,  where  we 
may  escape,  to  realise  jointly  what  we 
have  severally  at  heart.  Henceforth, 
nevertheless,  I  relinquish  all  ambiguity 
or  subterfuge  to  your  utmost  desire.  I 
will  eschew  short  cuts.  Let  us  go  with 
the  common  stream,  if  you  will,  and 
take  our  unpurposed  pleasure  as  we  find 
it.  Let  us  even  visit,  under  your  guid- 
ance, the  tomb  of  Highland  Mary,  and 
inscribe  our  initials,  if  there  is  room  for 
them,  on  the  walls  of  the  birth-place  of 
Burns.  Or,  if  Moir  inclines,  let  him 
head  us  to  the  glorious  sport  of  the 
Sutherland  lochs,  and  the  favourite 


Findhorn  of  St.  John.  I  will  gladly 
yield  the  burdensome  post  of  command 
to  either,  Avho  undertakes  our  common 
security  from  M'Killop  and — and  the 
Blythes." 

How  clear  is  that  consciousness  of 
superior  will  which  alone  enables  us  to 
lead  onward  !  When  I  thus  seemed  to 
surrender  it,  neither  Ickerson  nor  Moir 
felt  capable  of  the  function.  They 
jointly  confessed  it  by  their  looks,  and 
successively  repudiated  the  charge  : 
which  I  then  resolutely  took  again. 

How  I  justified  it,  and  how  we  spent 
the  holiday-season  in  joyous  companion- 
ship, refreshed  for  new  work,  is  not  to 
the  point.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  I  had 
learnt  how  the  Blythes  avoid  the  com- 
mon track,  and  the  M'Killops  follow 
them ;  thus,  however,  turning  aside  the 
vulgar  current,  and  so  leaving  the  old 
channels  free. 


ME.   HOLMAN    HUNT'S    PICTURE, 

THE    FINDING    OP   CHEIST    IN    THE    TEMPLE. 


ALL  persons  conversant  with  art  matters 
of  late  have  been  aware  that  this  distin- 
guished artist  has  for  five  or  six  years 
past  been  engaged  upon  a  work  entitled 
as  above,  in  executing  which  he  had 
spared  neither  time,  labour,  study,  nor 
expense,  in  order  to  put  before  the  world 
a  picture  produced  exactly  in  his  own 
ideal — such  a  one  indeed  as  should  dis- 
play those  convictions  respecting  art 
which  he  is  known  to  have  made  the 
rule  of  his  life,  and  has  followed  out, 
notwithstanding  difficulties  and  real 
dangers  such  as  would  have  utterly  de- 
feated most  men,  or  at  least  modified  an 
ordinary  strength  of  purpose.  Con- 
ceiving an  idea  of  the  great  advantages 
that  would  result  from  painting  any 
picture  in-  the  very  locality  where  the 
incident  chosen  happened,  and  choos- 
ing a  Scriptural  theme  such  as  this, 
Mr.  Hunt  was  fortunate  in  the  cir- 
cumstantial immutability  of  character 


and  costume  which  has  prevailed  to  a 
great  extent  in  the  East  from  the  time 
of  the  Saviour  until  now.  In  the  East 
traditions  linger  for  ages  such  as  in 
this  more  mutable  West  would  have 
vanished  long  ago.  By  the  light  of  this 
irregular  history  many  customs  have 
been  elucidated,  the  comprehension  of 
which  is  highly  essential  to  the  faith- 
ful and  observant  study  of  a  subject  re- 
lating to  the  life  of  Christ.  That  a  pic- 
ture to  be  duly  honoured  in  execution 
should  be  painted  on  its  own  ground,  so 
to  speak,  being  the  leading  conviction  of 
the  artist's  mind,  there  remained  nothing 
for  him  but  to  proceed  to  Jerusalem 
when  he  decided  upon  this  subject. 
Accordingly  this  was  done,  and  during 
a  stay  of  more  than  eighteen  months 
Mr.  Hunt's  whole  attention  was  devoted 
to  the  study  of  the  material  he  required, 
to  the  getting  together  of  accessorial 
matter,  and  actual  execution  of  a  consi- 


Mr.  Holman  Hunt's  Picture. 


35 


derable  part  of  this  picture.  The  greater 
portion  of  four  succeeding  years  has 
been  given  to  its  completion,  and  the 
result  is  now  before  the  world. 

It  will  be  right  to  premise  that  Mr. 
Hunt's  opinions  in  art,  which  opinions 
were  convictions,  and,  what  is  far  more, 
convictions  put  into  action,  led  him  to 
journey  to  Jerusalem,  not  only  to  study 
the  best  existing  examples  of  the  phy- 
sical aspect  of  the  race  he  had  to  paint, 
but  to  obtain  such  material  in  the  way  of 
costume  as  could  only  be  obtained  there. 
To  do  this  fully,  he  acquired  before  de- 
parting a  sound  knowledge  of  the  very 
history  he  had  to  illustrate.  Thus  pre- 
pared, his  journey  was  so  far  profitable 
that  we  believe  there  is  not  one  single 
incident  in  the  action  of  the  picture,  or 
single  point  of  costume  shown — from 
the  very  colour  of  the  marble  pavement 
of  the  Temple,  the  jewellery  worn,  or 
instruments  carried  by  the  personages 
represented — for  which  he  has  not  actual 
or  analogical  authority.  How  deep  this 
labour  has  gone  will  be  best  conceived 
when  we  say  that  the  long-lost  archi- 
tecture of  the  second  Temple  has  been 
brought  to  a  new  life  in  his  work. 
Based  upon  the  authorities  existing,  the 
whole  of  the  architecture  shown  in  the 
picture  may  be  styled  the  artist's  in- 
vention, not  in  any  way  a  wild  flight  of 
imagination,  but  the  result  of  thought- 
ful study,  and  the  building  up  of  part  by 
part,  founded  upon  the  only  true  prin- 
ciple of  beauty  in  such  designs — that  is, 
constructive  fitness.  The  whole  edifice 
is  gilded  or  overlaid  with  plates  of 
gold,  the  most  minute  ornaments  are 
profoundly  studied,  extremely  diversi- 
fied, yet  all  in  keeping  with  the  charac- 
teristics of  Eastern  architecture,  that  de- 
rived its  archetypes  from  an  Oriental 
vegetation,  and  decoratively  employed 
the  forms  of  the  palm,  the  vine,  and 
pomegranate.  But  let  it  not  be  consi- 
dered that  these  mere  archaeological 
matters  have  absorbed  the  artist  beyond 
their  due ;  so  far  from  this  is  the  case, 
that  the  design  itself  is  not  without  a 
modern  instance  of  applicability  to  the 
life  of  every  man,  and  the  "  Wist  ye  not 
that  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  busi- 


ness?" is  as  much  an  exhortation  to  us 
as  it  was  a  reply  to  the  parents  of 
Christ 

The  unflinching  devotion  shown  by 
the  painter,  and  the  inherent  nobility  of 
his  principles  of  art,  have  then  this  great 
merit  in  them,  that  the  result  stands  be- 
fore us  almost  with  the  solemnity  of  a 
fact.  It  seems  life  that  has  been  lived, 
and  a  potent  teaching  for  us  all,  not  only 
to  show  the  way  in  which  our  labours 
should  be  performed — by  that  by  which 
Mr.  Hunt  has  executed  his— but,  by  the 
vividness  and  vitality  of  his  representa- 
tion, the  first  step  of  Christ's  mission 
produces  a  fresh,  and,  it  may  be,  deeper 
impression  upon  the  mind,  than  that 
which  most  men  have  to  recall  the  me- 
mories of  their  youth  to  enter  on.  This  he 
holds,  and  wo  also,  to  be  the  true  result 
of  art.  Let  us  consider  to  what  purpose 
he  has  applied  these  principles,,  and  how 
the  end  of  this  long  labour  can  be  said 
to  fulfil  them. 

The  distinguishing  executive  character 
of  the  picture  that  strikes  the  eye  at 
first,  is  luminous  depth  and  intensity 
of  colour,  the  perfect  truth  of  chiaro- 
scuro that  gives  relief  and  roundness  to 
every  part— to  which  its  solidity  of 
handling  aids  potentially  —  the  whole 
truthful  eifect  being  enhanced,  when, 
upon  examination,  we  discern  the  minute 
and  elaborate  finish  that  has  been  given 
to  the  most  trifling  details.  The  whole 
has  the  roundness  and  substantiality  of 
nature,  utterly  unniarred  by  that  want 
of  balance  in  parts  observable  in  the 
productions  of  the  less  accomplished 
painters  of  the  Pre-Baflaelite  school, 
whose  shortcomings  in  this  respect  have, 
notwithstanding  the  earnestness  and 
energy  displayed  by  many  among  them, 
rendered  the  title  "  Pre-Baflaelite "  al- 
most opprobrious.  Let  us  now  turn  to 
the  picture  itself. 

The  Temple. — A  brief  vista  of  gilded 
columns  closed  at  the  end  by  a  lattice- 
work screen  of  bronze  open  to  the  ex- 
ternal air.  The  immediate  locality,  an 
outer  chamber  of  the  building,  one 
valve  of  the  entrance  door  put  wide 
back,  showing  without  the  courtyard, 
with  masons  at  work  selecting  a  stone, 

D2 


36 


Mr.  Holman  Hunt's  Picture. 


maybe  the  "  stone  of  the  corner ;  "  over 
the  wall  the  roofs  of  the  city,  and  far 
off  the  hill  country.  Within,  and  seated 
npon  a  low  dewan,  scarcely  raised  from 
the  floor,  are  the  elders  of  the  Temple, 
seven  in  number,  arranged  in  a  semi- 
circle, one  horn  of  which  approaches 
the  front  of  the  picture.  Behind  them 
stand  four  musicians,  whose  grouping 
repeats  the  generally  semicircular  dispo- 
sition of  the  figures.  A  flight  of  doves 
gambol  in  the  air  without ;  several  have 
entered  the  building,  and  fly  over  the 
heads  of  the  family  of  Christ,  who  stand 
by  the  doorway  facing  the  priest  and 
elders.  Mary,  who  has  just  discovered 
her  Son,  tenderly  embraces,  and  with 
trembling  lips  presses  her  mouth  to- 
wards his  face.  Lovely  is  the  eager 
yearning  of  her  eyes,  the  lids  dropped, 
the  irides  dilated  and  glittering  with 
tearful  dew  that  has  gathered  itself  into 
a  drop  to  run  down  her  cheek.  Her 
skin  is  fair  and  young,  her  features 
moulded  appropriately  on  the  pure  Jew- 
ish type  in  its  finest  and  tenderest 
character.  The  bold  fine  nose,  the  broad, 
low,  straight  forehead,  straight  eyebrows 
— a  royal  feature  ;  wide-lidded  eyes — 
reddish  with  anxiety;  the  pure  fine- 
lined  cheek — a  little  hollowed,  but  a 
very  little — and  rounded,  clear-cut  chin, 
make  a  countenance  as  noble  as  it  is 
beautiful  But  far  beyond  the  mere 
nobility  of  structural  perfectness,  the 
expression  is  the  tenderest  of  the  utmost 
outpouring  of  a  heart  that  has  yearned, 
and  travailed,  and  hungered  long.  That 
long,  long  throe  days  of  searching  has 
marked  her  cheek  and  sunk  her  eyes, 
and  although  the  red  blood  of  joy  runs 
now  to  its  surface,  this  does  but  show 
how  pale  it  was  before.  Could  I  but 
tell  you  in  my  poor  words  how  her 
mouth  tells  all  this,  how  it  quivers  with 
a  hungry  love,  arches  itself  a  little  over 
the  teeth,  its  angles  just  retracted, 
ridging  a  faint  line,  that  is  too  intense 
for  a  smile,  upon  the  fair,  sweet  maternal 
cheek  !  Forward  her  head  is  thrust,  the 
whole  soul  at  the  lips  urgent  to  kiss. 
There  is  a  spasm  in  the  throat,  and  the 
nostrils  breathe  sharply,  but  all  the  joy- 
ful agony  of  the  woman — the  intensity 


of  the  maternal  storge — seeks  at  the  lips 
the  cheek  of  her  Son.  For  this  the  eyes 
sheathe  themselves  with  levelled  lids — 
for  this  the  body  advances  beyond  the 
hasty  feet.  It  is  but  to  draw  him  nearer 
that  one  eager  hand  clasps  his  removed 
shoulder,  and  the  other  eager  hand 
raises  that  which  the  Son  has  put  upon 
its  wrist,  pressing  it  against  his  mother's 
bosom. 

The  feet  of  all  three  are  bared.  Joseph 
stands  looking  down  on  both ;  Mary's 
shoes,  held  by  the  latchet,  are  slung  over 
Joseph's  shoulder  by  one  hand ;  his  other 
hand  has  been  upon  the  arm  of  Jesus, 
until  the  eager,  trembling  fingers  of  the 
mother  slid  beneath,  displacing  it  in  her 
passionate  haste.  Christ  has  been  stand- 
ing before  the  elders  when  his  parents 
entered,  and  then  turned  towards  the 
front,  so  that  we  see  his  face  full.  It  is 
an  oval,  broadened  at  the  top  by  a  noble, 
wide,  high-arched  forehead,  surmounting 
abstracted  and  far-off  seeing  eyes  that 
round  the  eyelids  open,  wistfully  and 
thoughtfully  presaging,  yet  radiant  with 
purpose,  though  mournful  and  earnest. 
They  express  the  thought  of  his  reply, 
"  "Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  about  my 
Father's  business  ?"  He  is  heedful  of 
his  mission — half  abstracted  from  the 
embrace.  The  action  of  his  right  hand, 
drawing  tighter  the  broad  leathern  girdle 
of  his  loins,  and  the  almost  passive  way 
in  which  his  fingers  rest  upon  the  wrist 
of  Mary,  express  this,  while  the  firmly- 
planted  feet,  one  advanced,  although 
his  body  sways  to  his  mother's  breast, 
indicate  one  roused  to  his  labour  and 
ready  to  enter  upon  the  journey  of  life. 
The  beauty  of  the  head  of  Christ  takes 
the  eye  at  once — not  only  through  the 
totally  original  physical  type  the  artist 
has  adopted,  but  by  the  union  of  healthy 
physique  with  intellectual  nobleness, 
fitting  the  body  for  the  endurance  of 
suffering.  There  is  a  marked  difference 
between  Hunt's  idea  of  the  corporeal 
appearance  of  our  Lord  and  that  usually 
chosen  by  the  painters,  who  have  shown 
him  as  a  delicate  valetudinary — for  such 
is  the  character  imparted  by  their 
allowing  a  certain  feminine  quality  to 
overweigh  the  robustness  required  for 


Mr.  Holman  Hunt's  Picture. 


37 


the  simple  performance  of  his  labours. 
He  is  here  a  noble,  beautiful  boy  of 
about  twelve,  broad-chested,  wide-shoul- 
dered, active-limbed,  and  strong  to  bear 
and  do.  The  head  sustains  this  charac- 
ter, the  forehead  being  as  we  have 
before  said,  the  eyes  blue,  clear  yet 
tender,  with  all  their  strength  of  pur- 
pose that  does  but  recognise  sorrow.  The 
mouth,  pure,  sweet,  small,  yet  pulpy 
and  full,  is  compassionate  and  sympa- 
thising. The  nostrils  are  full  without 
breadth.  The  complexion  fair,  yet  rich, 
and  charged  with  healthy  blood.  If  we 
give  attention  to  the  eyes,  their  beauty 
and  nobility  become  distinct :  the  broad 
lids  are  lifted,  so  that  the  gaze  is  open 
and  upon  vacancy.  From  the  forehead 
the  hair  springs  like  a  flame  gathered 
about  the  countenance,  parted  at  the 
centre,  and  laid  back  to  either  side  ; 
the  sunlight  from  without  is  caught 
amongst  its  tips,  and  breaks  in  a  golden 
haze  like  a  glory.  So  placed,  this  is 
ever  the  case  with  hair  of  that  character. 
There  remains  for  us  to  point  out  one 
exquisite  subtlety  of  expression  in  this 
head  :  it  is  this,  the  near  warmth  of  the 
Virgin's  face  causes  the  side  of  Christ's 
countenance  to  flush  a  little,  and  one 
eyelid  to  droop  and  quiver,  almost  im- 
perceptibly, but  still  plainly  enough  to 
be  read. 

Let  us  point  out  that  this  is  no  tender, 
smiling  Virgin,  like  that  of  many  of  the 
old  masters,  blandly  regarding  a  pretty 
infant — a  theme  of  mere  beauty — but  a 
tearful,  trembling,  eager,  earnest  mother 
finding  the  lost  Lamb  and  the  devoted 
Son.  Rightly  has  Mr.  Hunt  nationalized 
her  features  to  the  Jewish  type.  Nor  is 
Christ  like  the  emaciated  student  usually 
chosen  for  a  model.  Here  the  intensity 
of  the  artist's  thought  appears.  He  has 
been  penetrated  with  the  idea  of  service, 
use,  and  duty;  no  making  of  a  pretty 
picture  has  been  his  aim,  but  rather,  in 
showing  us  how  the  noblest  and  most 
beautiful  submitted  to  duty,  he  would 
teach  us  our  own.  This  is  Christ  of 
the  preaching,  Christ  of  the  crown  of 
thorns,  Christ  of  the  cross,  Christ  of 
the  resurrection  and  the  life  eternal, 
the  soldier  and  the  Son  of  God.  Beau- 


tiful is  the  son  of  the  King  ;  he  is 
dressed  in  the  colours  of  royalty  of  the 
house  of  Judah ;  even  his  poor  robe  is 
a  princely  garment  of  stripes  of  pale 
crimson  and  blue — the  ordained  fringe  is 
about  its  lower  hem.  The  broad  leathern 
belt  that  goes  about  his  loins  is  of 
blood  red,  and  marked  with  a  cross  in 
front,  an  ornament  in  common  use  in 
the  East  from  time  immemorial,  being 
the  symbol  of  life  even  with  the 
ancient  Egyptians ;  it  is  placed  appro- 
priately upon  the  girdle  of  Christ. 
These  three  form  the  principal  group 
placed  towards  the  left  of  the  picture. 
Facing  them  are  the  rabbis  and  elders, 
to  whom  we  now  turn. 

These  are  arranged  in  a  sort  of  semi- 
circle, as  was  said  above,  one  of  its  horns 
retreating  into  the  picture.  The  men 
are  of  various  ages  and  characters  ;  all 
the  principal  heads  were  painted  at 
Jerusalem,  from  ^Jews  whose  counte- 
nances suggested  to  the  artist  the  cha- 
racter he  wished  to  represent.  The 
eldest  of  the  rabbis  sits  in  front,  white- 
bearded,  blind,  and  decrepit ;  with  his 
lean  and  feeble  hands  he  holds  the  rolls 
of  the  Pentateuch  against  his  shoulder ; 
the  silver  ends  of  the  staves  on  which 
this  is  rolled,  with  their  rattling  pen- 
dants and  chains,  rise  beside  his  head  ; 
the  crimson  velvet  case  is  embroidered 
with  golden  vine-wreaths  and  the  mystic 
figure  of  the  Tetragrammaton  ;  over 
this  case  is  an  extra  covering  or  mantle 
of  light  pink,  striped  with  blue,  intended 
to  protect  the  embroidery.  As  all  ap- 
purtenances of  this  holy  roll  of  the  law 
were  held  sacred  and  beneficent,  there 
is  placed  a  pretty  little  child  at  the  feet 
of  the  rabbi,  armed  with  a  whisk  to  brush 
off  the  flies — that  is,  Beelzebub,  from 
the  cover  of  holy  rolls.  Behind  stands 
an  older  boy,  furtively  invoking  a  bless- 
ing on  himself  by  kissing  the  mantle 
of  silk.  Blind  and  half  imbecile  is  the 
oldest  rabbi;  but  he  who  sits  next  to 
him,  a  mild  old  man,  with  a  gentle  face 
of  faith,  holds  a  phylactery  in  his  hand. 
Let  us  here  explain  that  a  phylactery  is 
not  at  all  one  of  those  placards  which  it 
was  the  custom  of  the  old  painters  to 
put  over  the  foreheads  of  the  Pharisees, 


Mr.  Holman  Hunt's  Picture. 


&e.  inscribed  with  Luge  characters,  but 
really  a  small  square  wooden  box,  bound 
round  the  head  by  a  leathern  belt,  and 
containing  the  written  promises  of  the 
old  dispensation.  Such  is  the  phylac- 
tery the  second  rabbi  holds  in  one  hand, 
while  he  presses  the  other  upon  the 
wri«t  of  his  neighbour,  and  seems  to  be 
asserting  that,  whatever  might  be  the 
nature  of  the  reasonings  of  Christ,  they 
at  least  had  these  promises  that  were 
written  within  the  phylactery  upon 
which  they  might  both  rely. 

Next  comes  another,  in  the  prime  of 
life,  who,  having  entered  eagerly  into 
the  dispute  with  the  Saviour,  unrolls 
the  book  of  the  prophecies  of  Daniel, 
whereby  to  refute  the  argument.  He  is 
interested,  disputatious,  and  sceptical ; 
leans  forward  to  speak  passionately,  half 
impatient  of  the  interruption  caused  by 
the  entrance  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  to 
which  the  attention  of  several  of  the 
other  rabbis  is  given.  His  feet  are 
drawn  up  close  beneath  him  upon  the 
dewan,  a  characteristic  action  of  such  a 
temperament  when  excited :  those  of 
the  elder  rabbis  are  placed  at  ease  upon 
the  floor,  but  with  varying  and  appro- 
priate attitudes.  There  is  a  hard  look 
upon  this  man's  face — set  passion  in  his 
mouth,  resolute  anger  in  his  eye,  and  a 
firm,  sharp  gripe  of  the  hands  upon  the 
roll  he  holds  ;  this  is  finely  in  keeping. 
Over  his  shoulder,  from  the  second  row, 
leans  a  musician,  one  of  the  house  of 
Levi,  speaking  to  him,  and  with  pointed 
finger  making  a  comment  on  the  words 
of  Christ,  at  whom  he  is  looking.  The 
fourth  rabbi,  who  is  also  concerned  in 
this  dialogue,  wears  a  phylactery  on  his 
forehead.  We  presume  Mr.  Hunt  in- 
tended by  this  to  indicate  a  supereroga- 
tion of  piety  in  this  individual,  the 
phylactery,  in  strict  propriety,  being 
only  worn  at  time  of  prayer.  He  recounts 
the  arguments,  and,  holding  a  reed  pen 
in  one  hand,  presses  its  point  against  a 
finger  of  the  other,  as  one  does  who  is 
anxious  to  secure  the  premises  before  he 
advances  further.  The  overweening  cha- 
racter of  this  man  is  thus  indicated;  let 
the  observer  note  how  the  artist  makes 
the  action  of  each  person  to  be  with  an 


entire  consent  of  the  attitude  of  his  whole 
body,  by  this  man's  assumption  of  repose 
and  dignity  shown  in  his  leaning  back 
on  the  dewan.  The  fifth  rabbi,  an  old, 
mild-visaged  man,  whose  long  white 
beard,  divided  in  two  parts,  falls  nearly 
to  his  girdle,  sits  more  erect ;  his  feet, 
drawn  up  beneath  him,  are  planted 
flatly  before.  He  holds  a  shallow  glass 
vessel  of  wine  in  his  hand  that  has  been 
poured  out  by  an  attendant  behind. 
He  looks  at  the  reunion  of  the  Holy 
Family,  and  suspends  his  drinking  to 
observe  them.  A  sixth  elder  leans 
forward  to  look  also,  placing  his  hand 
upon  the  back  of  the  dewan.  The  seventh 
and  last  is  as  distinct  in  character  and 
action  as  all  the  rest  are.  Like  the  fifth, 
he  has  an  ink-horn  in  his  girdle  ;  he  is 
corpulent,  self-satisfied,  and  sensuously 
good-natured ;  he  raises  his  hand  from 
his  knee  to  express  an  interest  in  the 
transaction  before  him ;  he  sits  cross- 
legged,  and  quite  at  ease,  nevertheless. 
This  individual  completes  the  semi- 
circle of  the  rabbis,  and  brings  us  again 
to  the  figure  of  Christ. 

Returning  now  to  the  other  side  of 
the  picture  :  Immediately  above  the  dis- 
putatious rabbi,  and  leaning  against  one 
of  the  gilded  columns,  is  a  youth  hold- 
ing a  sistrum  in  his  hand — one  of  the 
rings  strung  upon  its  wires  about  to 
drop  from  his  fingers.  He  is  handsome, 
supercilious-looking,  and  fair-complex- 
ioned.  Leaning  upon  his  shoulder  is 
another  youth,  also  a  musician,  bearing 
a  four-stringed  harp ;  the  face  of  the 
last  is  quite  in  contrast  to  that  of  his 
companion,  having  an  ingenuous  sweet- 
ness and  gentleness  of  character  about 
it  that  is  almost  fascinating.  Eagerly 
thrusting  his  face  against  the  column, 
and  peering  over  the  head  of  the  last,  is 
a  third  youth,  whose  large,  well-open 
eyes,  broad  features,  and  inquisitive  look, 
support  his  active  anxiety  to  see  what 
is  going  forward,  admirably. 

In  the  extreme  distance  of  the  vista 
of  columns,  a  money-changer  is  seen 
weighing  gold  in  a  balance.  A  father 
has  brought  his  firstborn  to  the  Temple, 
accompanied  by  his  wife,  who  bears  the 
child  in  her  arms;  the  husband  has 


Mr.  Holman  Hunt's  Picture. 


39 


across  his  shoulder  the  lamb  of  sacrifice, 
while  a  seller  of  lambs,  from  whom  this 
has  just  been  purchased,  counts  the 
price  in  the  palm  of  one  hand,  and  with 
the  other  presses  back  an  anxious  ewe 
that  would  follow  her  offspring.  In 
another  part,  a  boy  is  seen  with  a  long 
scarf  driving  out  the  fugitive  doves  that 
have  entered  the  Temple.  At  the  door, 
a  lame  and  blind  beggar  is  chanting  a 
prayer  for  alms. 

Thus  far  we  have  spoken  of  the  inci- 
dents of  the  design,  the  character  and 
expressions  of  the  personages,  and  gene- 
ral appearance  of  this  marvellous  picture. 
We  have  endeavoured  also  to  indicate 
what  have  been  the  artist's  purposes 
and  motives,  and  the  difficulties  of  its 
execution.  It  remains  now  to  speak  of 
the  manner  in  which  he  has  carried  this 
out,  especially  in  regard  to  the  noble 
qualities  of  colour  and  drawing.  For 
the  last,  let  it  suffice  that  the  minutest 
detail  has  been  wrought  out ;  the  veiy 
hands  of  the  men  are  a  perfect  accom- 
paniment to  their  eyes  and  physical 
aspect ;  those  of  the  oldest  rabbi  are 
pallid,  full- veined,  and  slow  pulses  seem 
to  circulate  in  them.  Mary's  are  ele- 
gantly slender — a  little  sunken,  but  very 
beautiful.  Each  fold  in  every  garment 
is  "accounted  for,"  and  duly  studied 
from  nature.  The  Virgin's  dress  is  grey, 
dust-stained  with  travel.  She  has  an 
under-garment  of  white,  and  a  girdle, 
whose  red  fringes  show  at  the  open  side, 
tossed  up  with  the  eagerness  of  hef 
actions.  An  elegant  head-dress  of  white, 
striped  with  red,  falls  back  on  her 
shoulders.  Joseph's  body-coat  is  like 
that  of  Christ,  crimson  and  purple  in 
very  narrow  stripes  ;  over  this  is  a  brown 
and  white  burnoose,  such  as  the  Arabs 
wear  to  this  day.  The  provision  for  a 
journey,  a  row  of  figs,  is  strung  to  his 
girdle.  The  rabbis  have  all  the  over- 


garment proper  to  Pharisees,  of  pure 
white,  except  that  worn  by  the  chief, 
which  is  barred  with  broad  and  narrow 
bands  of  black  upon  the  sleeves ;  a  dress 
styled  the  "Tillith,"  worn  only  when 
bearing  the  Torah,  or  rolls  of  the  law. 
The  most  removed  has  his  under-gar- 
ment amber-coloured,  striped  with  blue, 
and  a  deep-blue  robe  beneath  all.  He 
that  is  about  to  drink  wears  an  exqui- 
site turquoise  green-blue  vest  of  sheeny 
texture,  that  gathers  brightness  in  the 
shade ;  this  is  girt  to  him  by  a  girdle 
of  white  and  red.  The  young  musicians 
wear  green  garments  and  turbans  of  rich 
crimson,  and  purple  and  green,  harmo- 
niously blended  so  as  to  create  exquisite 
c  lour.  The  roof  of  the  Temple  is  gilt 
like  the  columns,  elaborately  decorated 
with  alternate  pines,  vine-branches,  and 
pomegranates,  and  lighted  from  without 
by  small  openings,  filled  with  stained 
glass.  The  door  of  the  Temple,  visible 
over  Joseph's  head,  bears  plates  of  ham- 
mered gold  riveted  upon  it ;  upon  these 
is  discernible  a  great  circle,  from  whose 
centre  radiates  an  ornament  of  papyrus 
plant,  the  intersections  filled  with  the 
unopened  buds  of  the  same  :  guttce  of 
gold  are  drawn  on  the  flat  surface  of  the 
door.  The  pavement  of  the  Temple  is 
of  a  deep-tinted  marble,  in  broad  veins 
of  a  palish  blood-colour  and  white. 

It  is  now  time  to  announce  our  con- 
viction that  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  who  has 
ever  been  the  steadfast  centre  of  the 
Pre-Eafl'aelite  movement,  has  in  this 
noble  work  successfully  laid  down  his 
idea  of  art ;  that  by  so  doing  he  has  put 
a  crown  on  to  his  previous  labours ;  and 
that  the  result  is  likely  to  be  a  great  exten- 
sion of  those  principles — now,  perhaps, 
for  the  first  time  fairly  elucidated — to 
which  is  mainly  due  the  remarkable  and 
inestimable  advance  that  has  of  late  years 
taken  place  in  English  art. 


40 


OUR  FATHER'S  BUSINESS : 

HOLMAN   HUNT'S  PICTURE   OF  "CHRIST  IN   THE  TEMPLE." 
BY    THE   AUTHOR   OP    "JOHN   HALIFAX." 

0  CHRIST-CHILD,  Everlasting,  Holy  One, 
Sufferer  of  all  the  sorrow  of  this  world, 
Redeemer  of  the  sin  of  all  this  world, 
Who  by  Thy  death  brought' st  life  into  this  world — 
0  Christ,  hear  us  ! 

This,  this  is  Thou.     No  idle  painter's  dream 
Of  aureoled,  imaginary  Christ, 
Laden  with  attributes  that  make  not  God ; 
But  Jesus,  son  of  Mary ;  lowly,  wise, 
Obedient,  subject  unto  parents,  niild, 
Meek — as  the  meek  that  shall  inherit  earth, 
Pure — as  the  pure  in  heart  that  shall  see  God. 

O  infinitely  human,  yet  divine  ! 

Half  clinging  child-like  to  the  mother  found, 

Yet  half  repelling — as  the  soft  eyes  say 

"  How  is  it  that  ye  sought  me  ?     Wist  ye  not 

That  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  business  ?" 

As  in  the  Temple's  splendors  mystical, 

Earth's  wisdom  hearkening  to  the  all- wise  One, 

Earth's  closest  love  clasping  the  all-loving  One, 

He  sees  far  off  the  vision  of  the  cross, 

The  Christ-like  glory  and  the  Christ-like  doom. 

Messiah  !     Elder  Brother,  Priest  and  King, 
The  Son  of  God,  and  yet  the  woman's  seed  ; 
Enterer  within  the  veil ;  Victor  of  death, 
And  made  to  us  first  fruits  of  them  that  sleep  ; 
Saviour  and  Intercessor,  Judge  and  Lord, — 
All  that  we  know  of  Thee,  or  knowing  not 
Lov*  only,  waiting  till  the  perfect  time 
When  we  shall  know  even  as  we  are  known — 
0  Thou  Child  Jesus,  Thou  dost  seem  to  say 
By  the  soft  silence  of  these  heavenly 'eyes 
(That  rose  out  of  the  depths  of  nothingness 
Upon  this  limner's  reverent  soul  and  hand) 
We  too  should  be  about  our  Father's  business — 
0  Christ,  hear  us  ! 

Have  mercy  on  us,  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord  ! 

The  cross  Thou  borest  still  is  hard  to  bear; 

And  awful  even  to  humblest  follower 

The  little  that  Thou  givest  each  to  do 

Of  this  Thy  Father's  business  ;  whether  it  be 

Temptation  by  the  devil  of  the  flesh, 

Or  long-linked  years  of  lingering  toil  obscure, 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet.  41 

Uncomforted,  save  by  tlie  solemn  rests 
On  mountain-tops  of  solitary  prayer ; 
Oft  ending  in  the  supreme  sacrifice, 
The  putting  off  all  garments  of  delight, 
And  taking  sorrow's  kingly  crown  of  thorn, 
In  crucifixion  of  all  self  to  Thee, 
Who  offeredst  up  Thyself  for  all  the  world. 
0  Christ,  hear  us  ! 

Our  Father's  business  : — unto  us,  as  Thee, 

The  whole  which  this  earth-life,  this  hand-breadth  span 

Out  of  our  everlasting  life  that  lies 

Hidden  with  Thee  in  God,  can  ask  or  need. 

Outweighing  all  that  heap  of  petty  woes — 

To  us  a  measure  huge — which  angels  blow 

Out  of  the  balance  of  our  total  lot, 

As  zephyrs  blow  the  winged  dust  away. 

0  Thou  who  \vert  the  Child  of  Nazareth, 

Make  us  see  only  this,  and  only  Thee, 

Who  earnest  but  to  do  thy  Father's  will, 

And  didst  delight  to  do  it.     Take  Thou  then 

Our  bitterness  of  loss, — aspirings  vain, 

And  anguishes  of  unfulfilled  desire, 

Our  joys  imperfect,  our  sublimed  despairs, 

Our  hopes,  our  dreams,  our  wills,  our  loves,  our  all, 

And  cast  them  into  the  great  crucible 

In  which  the  whole  earth,  slowly  purified, 

Runs  molten,  and  shall  run — the  Will  of  God. 

0  Christ,  hear  us  ! 


SPIRITUALISTIC    MATERIALISM :— MICHELET. 

BY   J.    M.  LUDLOW. 

THE  future  historian  of  the  literature  of  he  a  pure  physiologist  ?    His  latest  pro- 

the  nineteenth  century  will  have  con-  ductions  turn  largely  on  physiological 

siderable    difficulty     in    ticketing    M.  considerations ;  yet  I  suspect  that  a  real 

Michelet  according  to  his  proper  class  physiologist  will  be  as  little  disposed  to 

and  order.     Is  he  to  rank  among  the  admit  him  for  such,  as  a  lawyer  would 

historians?      He    has    written    many  deem   him   a  jurist  in   virtue   of    his 

volumes     of    so-called    histories,    but  volume   "  On  the    Origins   of    French 

which  v  are  generally  valuable   and  in-  Law."     Is  he  a  political  writer1?     His 

teresting    precisely  by   that    in    them  lectures  had  to  be  stopped  by  command 

which  is  not  really  historic.     Is  he  a  of  Government ;   yet  I  doubt  if  even 

naturalist  ?     He   has  taken  to  natural  his  invocation  to  the  "  Holy  Bayonets 

history  in  later  life ;  but  his  two  pleasant  of  France  "  ever  raised  him  in  any  one 

volumes   on   "  The    Bird,"    and   "  The  madcap's  mind  to  the  rank  of  a  political 

Insect,"  contain  the  blunders  of  a  tyro,  leader.     Is  he  a  philosopher  1     He  cer- 

nor   should   I   advise   any   student   to  tainly    has    .translated     the    "Scienza 

assert   anything   as   a   fact   in  nature,  Nuova "   of  Giambattista  Vico ;   but  I 

because  M.  Michelet  has  stated  it.     Is  pity  the  man  who  should  seek  to  evolve 


42 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


a  connected  philosophy  from  his  writings. 
Is  he  a  theologian  ?  a  religious  inno- 
vator? He  has  seemed  everything  by 
turns — at  one  time  writing  "  Luther's 
Memoirs;"  at  another  professing  his 
attachment  to  the  "poor  old  Catholic 
Church  ;"  at  a  third  attacking  Jesuitism 
in  the  name  of  Voltaire ;  at  last  setting 
up  Egyptian  mythology  as  the  most 
perfect  of  religious  symbols. 

"  Unstable  as  water,  thou  shalt  not 
excel."  Eeuben's  lot  seems  to  have 
been  his.  With  marvellous  gifts  of  style, 
an  imagination  of  singular  vivacity, 
active  faculties  of  observation,  occa- 
sional keen  flashes  of  insight,  very  con- 
siderable and  varied  acquirements,  quick 
sympathies  at  once  with  the  beautiful 
and  with  the  good,  and  the  most  sincere 
desire  for  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-crea- 
tures,— with  powers,  in  a  word,  sufficient 
for  the  creation  of  half-a-dozen  master- 
pieces, and  much  of  that  universal 
aptitude  which,  if  it  be  not  genius 
itself,  seems  yet  as  it  were  the  bulb  out 
of  which  it  springs, — M.  Michelet  has 
not  produced,  and  I  believe  will  not 
leave  behind  him,  one  single  great  Avork 
— one  really  beautiful — one  really  good 
one ;  although  he  will  leave  few  which 
are  not  replete  with  interest ;  not  one 
which  does  not  present  us  with  beautiful 
thoughts,  attractive  pages,  often  chapters 
at  a  time. 

Yet  M.  Michelet's  influence  over  his 
generation  in  France  has  been  consider- 
able, and  has  not  ceased  to  be  such. 
Not  a  little,  probably,  on  this  account, 
that  few  men  have  opened  a  greater 
number  of  new  paths,  for  the  time 
being,  to  their  countrymen.  He  brought 
back  to  them,  from  Italy,  the  great 
Neapolitan  thinker,  Vico.  He  was  for 
France  one  of  the  first  discoverers  of 
modern  Germany.  He  first,  in  his 
Roman  History,  popularized  some  of  the 
Niebuhrian  views  as  to  Roman  origins. 
Older  professors  stood  aghast ;  the  book 
and  its  fellows  were  for  a  time  nearly 
as  much  tabooed  in  the  history  classes 
of  French  colleges  as  a  novel,  or  were 
only  used  in  otherwise  desperate  cases, 
to  kindle  an  interest  in  the  subject. 
Learned  men,  the  very  pillars  of  the 


universities  —  those  survivors  of  an 
earlier  age,  trained  either  by  Jesuit  or 
Jansenist,  before  the  first  Revolution 
and  Empire  had  deprived  Frenchmen, 
for  a  time,  of  the  leisure  to  learn  Greek, 
•<^stood  utterly  aghast  at  the  pranks  of 
a  young  professor  of  the  Normal  School, 
who  talked  of  Sanscrit  poetry  and 
Welsh  triads ;  quoted  at  first  hand  the 
legendary  romances  of  the  middle  ages  ; 
gave  extracts  from  Dante ;  referred  to 
Walter  Scott ;  and  constantly  mixed  up 
the  experiences  of  the  present  with  the 
narratives  of  the  past.  Still  Michelet's 
works, — although  of  course  read  with 
avidity  wherever  they  were  treated,  or 
supposed  to  be  treated,  as  forbidden 
fruit, — did  not  bear  their  full  effect  at  the 
comparatively  early  age  at  which  the 
ordinary  French  college  is  usually  fre- 
quented. The  school-boy  in  all  coun- 
tries is  in  general  an  essentially  practical 
creature.  He  soon  found  that  for  scho- 
lastic purposes — for  the  cram  of  ex- 
aminations— Michelet's  works  were  of 
far  less  use  to  him  than  much  duller 
ones,  but  better  stored  with  the  right 
facts,  and  more  methodically  treated. 
It  was  at  a  later  age,  and  in  that  much 
higher  theatre  of  the  "College  de 
France,"  where  the  vulgar  stimulus  of 
competition  disappears,  and  the  student 
learns  for  the  sake  of  learning,  that  the 
brilliant  eloquence  of  the  man  really 
took  hold  of  the  Parisian  youth.  Here 
the  variety  at  once,  and  the  mobility  of 
Michelet's  mind — which  will  preserve 
for  him  a  kind  of  youth  even  in  his 
dotage — seemed  exactly  to  correspond 
with  the  like  qualities  in  his  hearers. 
Here  was  a  man  who  appeared  to  have 
handled  everything,  looked  into  every- 
thing, thought  about  everything,  sympa- 
thized with  almost  every  human  ten- 
dency ;  who  brought  up  the  past  into 
pictures  as  living  as  those  of  the  present; 
who  yet  was  essentially  a  Frenchman, 
and  a  Frenchman  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  full  of  national  prejudices  and 
national  vanities,  carried  away  with  all 
the  dominant  impulses  of  the  day. 
Who  can  wonder  that  when  he  came 
to  deliver,  simultaneously  with  his  col- 
league, M.  Quinet,  his  famous  course 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Mtchelet. 


43 


upon  the  Jesuits,  crowds,  such  as  never 
had  attended  a  professor  before  since  the 
days  of  the  middle  ages,  thronged  his  lec- 
ture-hall even  more  than  that  of  Quinet, 
till  the  two  professors  grew  to  be  almost 
a  power  in  the  state,  and  had  to  be 
silenced  by  authority  ? 

The  enormous  popularity  which  the 
lecturer  thus  reached  may  be  considered 
as  opening  the  second  period  of  his 
career.  Though  not,  I  repeat  it,  a 
genuine  historian,  yet  his  works  hitherto 
have  all  an  historical  character;  they 
are  full  of  materials  for  history,  his- 
torical sketches,  curiosities  of  history. 
Now,  the  turbulence  of  the  partisans  of 
monasticism,  which  had  interrupted  his 
and  Quinet's  courses,  seems  to  have 
stung  him  up  into  a  politician,  a  dealer 
mainly  with  the  things  of  the  present ; 
and  though  he  may  write  history  so- 
called  (that  of  the  "  Revolution,"  form- 
ing the  last  volumes  of  his  "  History  of 
France"),  this  he  will  be  henceforth 
above  all,  not  indeed  as  a  partisan,  but 
as  one  of  those  who,  wandering  on  the 
border  land  between  the  political  and 
what  may  be  called  the  psychical  realm, 
contribute  often  far  more  powerfully 
towards  impressing  a  general  direction 
upon  the  public  mind  than  does  the 
mere  politician,  who  points  it  to  a 
definite  aim.  The  "Jesuits,"  which 
reached  four  editions  in  six  weeks, 
"Priests,  Women,  and  Families,"  the 
"  History  of  the  Revolution,"  the 
"  People,"  belong  to  this  period. 

Then  came  the  strange  downfall  of  the 
liberties  of  France  under  the  weight  of  a 
dead  man's  name,  the  sudden  hushing 
of  her  most  eloquent  voices,  except 
from  beyond  the  sea,  at  the  blare  of  the 
imperial  trumpet.  Michelet  was  silent, 
or  nearly  so,  Hke  others  for  awhile,  and 
then  spoke  out  as  a  student,  not  of 
historic  facts,  but  of  actual  organisms. 
His  book,  "  The  Bird,"  opens  what  may 
be  called  the  physiological  portion  of 
his  career.  So  remarkable  a  transform- 
ation, exhibited  by  a  man  on  the  shady 
side  of  fifty,  is  a  singular  phenomenon 
in  literary  history,  and  many,  foreigners 
especially,  could  scarcely  believe  that 
there  was  not  a  second  "  J.  Michelet" 


at  work  with  his  pen.     There  was  no 

mistaking,  however,  the   artist's   hand. 

"The  Bird"  displays  all  the  qualities 

of  style,  and  more  than  all  the  poetical 

fancy,  of  Michelet's  best  historical  days. 

It  begins  by  telling  "how  the  author 

was  led  to  the  study  of  nature."    "  The 

'  tune  is  heavy,  and  life,  and  work,  and 

'  the  violent  catastrophes  of  the  time, 

'  and  the  dispersion  of  a  world  of  intel- 

'  ligence   in   which   we   lived,  and   to 

'which   nothing  has  succeeded.     The 

'  rude  labours  of  history  had  once  for 

'their  recreation  teaching,  which  was 

'  my  friendship.     Their  halts  are  now 

'  only  a  silence.     Of  whom  should  I 

'  ask    moral    refreshment    unless    of 

'  nature  1 "     The  health  of  one  dear  to 

him,  a  passionate  observer  of  nature, 

made  him  leave  Paris,  at  first  for   a 

mere  suburban  home,  from  whence  he 

returned  to  town  every  day.     But  the 

turmoil  of  the  great  city,  its  abortive 

revolutions,  sent  him  farther  off.  He  took 

up  his  quarters  near  Nantes,  and  here 

he  wrote  the  latter  part  of  his  "  History 

of  the  Revolution,"  already  wakening 

up  to  the  beauty  and  interest  of  nature, 

already  longing  for  leisure  to  study  her. 

But  the   climate  was   too   damp,   and 

drove  him,  in  ill-health,  further  south. 

He  now  "  placed  his  moveable  nest  in  a 

fold  of  the  Apennines,  at  two  leagues  of 

Genoa."     And  here,  with  no  company 

but  lizards,  and  living   the  life  of  a 

lizard  himself,  he  felt  a  revolution  take 

place  within  him.     He  seemed  to  see 

all  living  creatures  claiming  their  place 

in  the  great  democracy.      Such,  he  tells 

us,  was  his  renovation,  "that  late  vita 

nuova  which  gradually  brought  me  to 

the  natural  sciences." 

"  The  Bird,"  however,  is  still  a  work 
of  mere  natural  history  rather  than  of 
physiology.  It  deals  with  the  outside 
of  living  nature;  with  form,  colour, 
habits ;  with  these  mostly  in  reference 
to  man  as  a  prototype;  whatever  of 
anatomy  occurs  in  it  is  derived  from 
the  study  of  Dr.  Auzoux's  models.  "  The 
Insect "  travels  over  much  of  the  same 
ground,  though  in  a  lower  stratum  of 
life,  but  opens  up  another  field.  The 
author  tells  us  how  he  bought  a  micro- 


44 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


scope,  how  he  placed  under  it  a  woman's 
finger,  a  spider's  leg ;  how  coarse  ap- 
peared the  structure  of  that  which  to  us 
is  living  satin,  how  the  repulsive  coarse- 
ness of  the  latter  opened  out  into  mar- 
vellous beauty.  It  is  from  this  point 
that  the  naturalist  grows  into  the  phy- 
siologist. The  microscope  is  a  cruel 
teacher ;  no  one  who  has  once  experi- 
enced the  fascination  of  its  powers  can 
stop  over  outward  form,  but  must  pierce 
the  mysteries  of  structure ;  and  the 
study  of  structure,  except  in  a  few 
transparent  organisms  generally  of  the 
lowest  class,  means  disruption,  dissec- 
tion. Whilst  even  apart  from  structure, 
the  world  of  form  and  life  which  the 
microscope  unveils  to  us  is  one  so  well- 
nigh  entirely  extra-human, — the  limbs 
which  unite  us  to  it  are  so  few  and  so 
loose, — those  which  unite  its  members 
among  themselves  so  many  and  so  pro- 
minent,— that  the  temptation  is  strong 
for  a  fervid,  fickle  mind  to  be  alto- 
gether carried  away  by  the  new  specta- 
cle,— to  change  altogether  the  pivot 
of  its  contemplations;  and  instead  of 
seeing  in  the  creature  the  shadow  of  the 
man,  to  see  in  man  henceforth  only  the 
more  highly  organized  creature.  Hence 
already  in  this  volume  pages  painful 
and  repulsive  to  read. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  more  essen- 
tially physiological  works  of  the  ex- 
professor  of  history.  "IS Amour" — now 
at  its  fourth  edition, — represents  the 
climax  of  this  period.  I  hardly  know 
how  to  characterize  this  work  fairly  for 
an  English  public,  so  immoral  would  it 
be  if  written  by  an  Englishman,  so  essen- 
tially does  it  require  to  be  judged  from, 
a  French  point  of  view.  I  hardly  know 
how  even  to  give  an  adequate  idea  of 
it,  so  greatly  does  it  depart  from  any 
standard  within  reach  of  English  hands 
by  which  it  can  be  decently  measured.  I 
am  convinced  that  never  was  a  book  writ- 
ten with  honester  intentions.  The  writer 
is  full  of  good  impulses ;  his  object,  as 
he  sets  it  forth  in  the  first  page  of  his 
introduction,  is  a  noble  one, — "  Moral 
enfranchisement  by  true  love."  That 
object  he  seeks  to  carry  out  by  exhibit- 
ing to  us  the  picture  of  the  married  life 


of  a  nameless  couple,  from  the  wedding- 
day  to  the  grave.  The  book  teems  with 
tender  and  delicate  passages,  though 
placed  in  startling  contact  with  the 
coarse  and  the  trivial.  There  are  pages 
in  it  which  it  is  impossible  to  read  with- 
out emotion.  But  the  whole  is  sickly  ; 
nauseous.  As  one  closes  the  book,  one 
seems  to  be  coming  out  of  some  stifling 
boudoir,  leaving  an  atmosphere  mawkish 
with  the  mingled  smell  of  drugs  and  per- 
fumes, heavy  with  the  deadly  steam  of  life. 
You  miss  in  the  "true  love"  of  the  book 
both  the  free  buoyancy  of  health,  and 
(except  in  a  page  here  and  there)  the 
noble  martyrdom  of  real  suffering.  Its 
aim  seems  to  be  to  coax  men  into  purity, 
by  showing  them  a  virtue  more  volup- 
tuous than  vice,  into  tenderness  towards 
woman  by  dwelling  on  her  infirmities. 
The  whole  sense  and  substance  of  the 
book  seems  to  be  this, — Given,  an  en- 
lightened young  Frenchman  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  with  a  competent 
knowledge  of  anatomy,  a  fair  income, 
large  ideas  of  the  perfectibility  of  the 
species,  kindly  feelings  towards  religion 
in  general,  and  what  may  be  called  a 
bowing  acquaintance  with  the  idea  of 
God,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other, 
a  sickly  Parisian  girl,  brought  up  in  a 
Eomish  convent  or  quasi-convent, — 
how  the  one  is  to  make  the  best  of  the 
other  ? 

Looked  at  in  this  way — remembering 
the  writer's  popularity — not  forgetting 
that  he  speaks  with  the  authority  of 
sixty  years  of  life,  I  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  the  book  is  not  likely  to  do 
some  good  to  the  class  for  which  it  is 
written.  That  class  is  a  narrow  one.  It 
has  been  said  ere  this,  in  France,  that 
M.  Michelet's  ideal  "woman"  would 
require  from  15,000  to  45,000  francs 
a  year  to  keep  her.  To  the  great  bulk 
of  the  French  population  his  book  itself 
would  be  as  Greek ;  and,  indeed,  it  is 
quite  amusing  to  see  how  entirely  the 
writer  ignores  the  possibility  that  the 
red-cheeked  country  girl,  whom  he  as- 
signs for  servant  to  his  ideal  couple  in 
their  suburban  home,  should  ever  have 
a  claim  to  "  true  love"  on  her  own 
account  He  admits  himself,  that  whilst 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


45 


he  does  not  write  for  the  rich,  he  does 
not  Avrite  either  "for  those  who  have 
'  no  time,  no  liberty,  who  are  mastered, 
'  crushed  by  the  fatality  of  circumstances, 
'  those  whose  unceasing  labour  regulates 
'and  hastens  all  their  hours.  What 
'  advice  can  one  give  to  those  who  are 
'  not  free  ? "  But  the  class  of  men  whom 
he  addresses  no  doubt  does  exist,  and 
is  but  too  numerous  for  the  health  and 
well-being  of  the  French  body-politic ; 
nor  are  samples  of  it,  Gad  knows,  want- 
ing amongst  ourselves.  It  must  have 
startled  some  of  these  to  be  told,  by  a 
man  whose  voice  has  often  charmed 
them,  who  is  one  of  themselves  by  his 
intellectual  training  and  sympathies, 
who  starts  from  no  old-world  notions 
of  right  and  duty,  but  from  the  last  new 
discoveries  in  medical  science,  that  mar- 
riage, and  faithful  love  in  marriage,  are 
to  give  them  their  "  moral  enfranchise- 
ment." Certainly,  as  compared  with 
the  coarse  cynicism,  or  the  still  coarser 
attempts  at  morality,  of  the  French 
novel  or  the  French  press  under  the 
imperial  regime,  M.  Michelet's  work, 
unreadable  as  it  is  in  the  main  for 
Englishwomen, — certainly  unfit  to  be 
read  by  English  girls, — may  well  stand 
out  as  a  very  model  of  purity. 

The  indications  indeed,  which  it  gives, 
of  the  growth  of  immorality  under  that 
regime — tallying  as  they  do  entirely  with 
information  from  other  quarters — are 
most  painful.  I  do  not  speak  of  such 
facts  as  M.  Michelet  quotes  from  sta- 
tistics, and  which  any  one  may  verify 
there,  ominous  though  they  be  ;  a 
stationary  or  decreasing  population  ; 
an  increasing  number  of  young  men 
unfit  for  military  service,  marriages 
rapidly  diminishing,  widows  ceasing  to 
re-marry,  female  suicides  multiplying. 
Most  of  these  facts  might  be  paralleled 
elsewhere  ;  some  amongst  ourselves. 
I  refer  to  those  details,  evidently 
founded  upon  actual  facts,  which  are 
given  in  the  chapters  entitled  "The 
Fly  and  the  Spider,"  and  "Temptation," 
as  to  the  corruption  of  female  friend- 
ships, the  abuse  of  official  power,  the 
utter,  expected,  absence  of  moral  strength, 
even  in  the  pure  of  life. 


"  For  the  best,  it  is  through  their 
husband  himself  that  for  the  most  part 
they  are  attacked."  If  he  be  powerful, 
M.  Michelet  shows  us  "  ladies  in 
honourable  positions,  esteemed,  often 
pious,  active  in  good  works,  whom  she 
has  seen  at  charitable  gatherings," 
coming  to  the  virtuous  wife  in  order 
to  present  some  "  young  son,  an  inte- 
"  resting  young  man,  already  capable  of 
"serving  the  husband,  devoted  to  his 
"  ideas,  quite  in  his  line  ; "  who  has 
been  "a  solitary  student,"  "needs  the 
polish  of  the  world."  He  shows  us 
female  friends  assiduously  praising  the 
young  man  into  favour  ;  the  lady's 
maid  soon  breaking  the  ice,  to  tell 
her  mistress,  whilst  doing  her  hair,  that 
he  is  dying  of  love.  Formerly,  M.  Mi- 
chelet asserts,  Lisette  had  to  be  bought. 
No  need  now.  She  knows  well  that 
the  lady  being  once  launched  in  such 
adventures,  having  given  a  hold  upon 
her,  and  let  a  secret  be  surprised,  she 
herself  will  be  her  mistress's  mistress, 
will  be  able  to  rule  and  rob  uncon- 
trolled. 

The  case  is  still  worse,  if  the  husband, 
instead  of  protecting,  needs  protection, 
if  he  is  a  small  official  waiting  for  pro- 
motion, a  worker  in  want  of  a  capitalist 
to  push  him.  Here  the  female  friend 
(who  seems  by  M.  Michelet's  account  to 
be  the  modern  Diabolos  of  France,  vice 
Satan  superannuated)  works  upon  the 
young  woman,  now  by  dwelling  on  her 
husband's  inferiority  to  herself,  now  by 
insisting  on  his  need  of  help  from  some 
one  who  should  have  strength  and  credit 
to  lift  him  at  last  from  the  ground.  A 
meeting  is  arranged  somehow  between 
the  lady  and  the  future  protector,  both 
duly  instructed  beforehand  ;  the  young 
woman  seldom  fails  to  justify  what  has 
been  said  of  her  by  some  slight  act  of 
coquetry,  which  she  deems  innocent, 
and  in  her  husband's  interest  .... 
Audacity,  a  half-violence,  often  carries 
the  thing  .  .  . 

"You  say  no.  You  believe  that 
"such  odious  acts  are  only  to  be  seen 
"  in  the  lowest  classes.  You  are  quite 
"mistaken.  It  is  very  common  ...  A 
"number  of  facts  of  this  kind  have 


46 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


"  come  to  my  knowledge,  and  by  most 
"  certain  channels." ....  She  cries,  she 
will  tell  all,  she  does  nothing  .  .  .  "My 
"  dear,  in  your  husband's  name,  I  be- 
"  seech   you,  say  nothing.     He  would 
die  of  grief.     Your  children  would  be 
ruined,  your  whole  life  upset.     That 
man  is  so  powerful  to  do  harm.     He 
is  very  wicked  when  he  hates,  and  is 
provoked.     But,  one  must  admit   it, 
he  is  zealous  also  for  those  he  loves, 
he  will  do  everything  for  your  family, 
for  the  future  of  your  children." 
And  so  the  nauseous  tale  of  corrup- 
tion through  family  interest  rolls  on. 
The  young  woman  is   entrapped  into 
writing    a    letter,    which    henceforth 
establishes  her  shame.     Now,  "  She  is 
"  spoken  to  in  another  tone.   Command 
"  succeeds  entreaty.     She  has  a  master, 
"  — on  such  a  day,  at  •  such  an  hour, 
"  here  or  there,  she  is  bid  to  come,  and 
she  comes.     The  fear   of  scandal,   I 
'know  not  what  fascination,  as  of  a 
bird   towards   the    snake,   draw  her 
back  in  tears.    She  is  all  the  prettier. 
'  The  promises  are  little  remembered. 

"When  he  has  had  enough,  is  she 
"free  at  least?  Not  a  whit.  The 
"  female  friend  has  the  paper.  .  .  .  She 
"must  go  on,  sold  and  resold,  must 
"  endure  a  new  protector,  who  she  is 
"  told  will  do  more,  and  often  does  yet 
"  nothing.  Fearful  slavery,  which  lasts 
"  while  she  is  pretty  and  young,  which 
"plunges  her  deeper  and  deeper,  de- 
"  bases,  perverts  her." 

Now,  it  would  be  too  much  to  say 
that  such  tales-  are  without  analogy 
amongst  ourselves.  There  were  a  few 
years  ago,  there  may  still  be,  factories 
in  Lancashire  and  Cheshire,  where  the 
young  master,  or  even  more  so  the  over- 
looker, views  the  female  hands  simply 
as  a  harem,  of  which  he  is  the  sultan. 
There  are  still-  agricultural  parishes 
where  no  girl  field-worker's  virtue  is  safe 
against  the  squire's  bailiff  or  gamekeeper. 
There  are  sweater's  dens  in  London 
where*  living  wages  are  utterly  out  of 
the  reach  of  the  poor  tailoress,  unless 
she  be  also  the  favourite  for  the  time 
being.  But  in  the  classes  to  which 
M.  Michelet  assigns  the  tale,  it  could 


not  occur  without  filling  journalists' 
pens  with  fire  instead  of  ink,  from  John 
O' Groats  to  the  Land's  End.  The 
leprosy  of  half-starved  officialism  has 
not  tainted  us  so  far  as  to  endure  such 
things.  The  moloch  of  competition  has 
not  yet  in  the  trading  world,  even  if  it 
have  in  the  working,  claimed  female 
virtue  for  its  holocausts.  Whilst  England 
is  free  England,  such  enormities  by  the 
influential  protector,  capitalist,  or  offi- 
cial are,  thank  God,  as  unheard  of,  as 
in  free  France  they  some  day  will  be. 

But  it  is  not  only  through  its  inci- 
dental revelations  of  these  effects  of 
the  poison  of  a  despotic  centralization, 
both  in  corrupting  the  relations  be- 
tween man  and  man,  and  in  taking 
away  all  fear  on  the  one  side,  all  con- 
fidence on  the  other,  in  the  might  of 
justice  and  public  morality  that  this 
book  is  valuable.  It  is  far  more  so  as 
a  testimony,  all  the  more  precious  be- 
cause unconscious,  to  that  which  M. 
Michelet  in  his  nineteenth  century 
enlightenment  well-nigh  completely 
ignores, — God's  Bible,  Christ's  Gospel 
M.  Michelet  exalts  physiology,  half  pro- 
scribes the  Bible.  He  forgets  that  there 
is  a  certain  amount  of  physiological 
knowledge  which  is  absolutely  essential 
to  the  understanding  of  the  Bible,  and 
which  no  mother  who  really  reve- 
rences God's  word  will  withhold,  in 
due  time,  from  her  daughter.  But  the 
moral  truths  Avhich  he  evolves  from 
physiological  teaching  are  all,  as  far 
as  I  can  see,  anticipated  in  the  Bible. 
If  M.  Michelet  has  satisfied  himself 
by  means  of  physiology  that  man  is  a 
monogamic  animal,  so  much  the  better. 
But  he  who  believes  that  from  the 
mouth  of  Wisdom  herself  proceeded  the 
words  :  "  And  they  twain  shall  be  one 
flesh,"  knows  as  much  as  he.  If  M. 
Michelet  has  learned  from  medical  men 
that  woman  is  not  the  impure  creature 
that  unnatural  middle-age  asceticism 
made  of  her,  so  much  the  better.  But 
he  who  has  read  in  Genesis  that  she 
was  made  man's  "help-meet," — bone  of 
his  bone,  and  flesh  of  his  flesh, — can 
never  be  tempted,  unless  bewildered 
with  lying  traditions  or  puffed  up  with 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


47 


false  spiritual  pride,  to  think  otherwise 
of  her.  If  he  insist  that  by  her  consti- 
tution she  has  a  constantly  recurrent 
cause  of  disease  within  her,  St.  Paul's 
words,  "the  weaker  vessel,"  command 
of  stronger  man  all  the  deference  and 
indulgence  to  which  M.  Michelet  would 
persuade  him.  In  short,  mix  together 
the  few  texts  I  have  alluded  to,  with 
those  other  ones  of  Gen.  ii.  25,  and 
Gen.  iii.  16,  and  dilute  them  with 
an  infinite  quantity  of  French  fine 
writing,  and  you  have  the  whole  of 
"  L' Amour,"  so  ,far  as  it  has  any  moral 
worth  whatever.  And  he  who  chooses 
to  meditate  upon  the  "  Song  of  Songs/' 
both  in  itself,  as  the  divine  sanction  of 
sensuous  love  as  being  the  only  ade- 
quate mirror  of  spiritual,  and  in  its 
position  in  the  sacred  volume  between 
Ecclesiasticus,  the  book  of  worldly  ex- 
perience, and  Isaiah,  the  book  of  pro- 
phetic insight,  as  indicating  the  link 
which  earthly  love  supplies  between  the 
two,  will  feel  that  450  pages  of  French 
prose  are  but  a  poor  exchange  for  its 
lyric  lessons. 

What  is  wanting  indeed  to  M. 
Michelet's  " true  love"?  Not  self-con- 
templation ;  not  the  effort  to  be  self- 
wrapped.  But  everything  below — 
everything  above.  The  rock  of  a  divine 
command  on  which  man  or  woman  can 
stand  and  say,  I  ought,  and  to  the 
Tempter,  Thou  shalt  not.  The  sense  of 
an  Almighty  Love  by  whom  each  is  up- 
held, on  whose  bosom  each  may  sink, 
and  feel  that  "  underneath  are  the  ever- 
lasting arms."  The  light  of  a  Word 
made  Flesh,  who  has  suffered  all  our 
sufferings,  borne  all  our  sins.  The  help 
of  a  Spirit  of  Truth,  who  will  guide  us 
into  all  truth,  though  through  never  so 
much  of  doubt,  and  darkness,  and  de- 
spair. The  beholding  of  the  joy  of  a 
divine  marriage,  of  the  redeemed  church 
with  its  Saviour,  of  which  every  smallest 
wedded  joy  of  earth  is  a  ray,  towards 
which  every  truth  of  pure  human  love 
is  an  aspiration.  The  abiding  and 
restful  sense  of  subordination  in  har- 
monic unity,  link  after  link  in  a  divine 
chain;  a  subordination  that  lifts  and 
does  not  lower,  that  joins  and  not 


divides ;  gathering  up  successively  all 
desire  into  a  nobler  object,  all  life  into 
a  mightier  focus, — man  the  head  of  the 
woman, — Christ  the  head  of  man, — 
God  the  head  of  Christ. 

And  for  want  of  these,  his  whole 
purpose  makes  shipwreck.  He  promises 
woman  her  enfranchisement ;  but  it  is 
only  to  jail  her  within  her  own  physical 
constitution,  with  her  husband  for  turn- 
key. He  lavishes  his  fancy  on  what 
may  be  called  the  lyrics  of  the  flesh ; 
but  he  does  not  trust  that  poor  flesh  for 
a  moment;  he  is  always  watching  it, 
spying  it ;  his  "  medication  "  of  heart  or 
body  presupposes  and  leaves  it  as  frail 
and  false  as  any  Jesuit  folio  of  casuistry. 
It  has  been  well  said,  indeed,  of  the 
work  by  M.  Emile  Monte"gut  that  it  is 
essentially  a  Romanist  book,  which  had 
been  unwritable  and  incomprehensible 
anywhere  else  than  in  a  Roman  Catholic 
country.  The  whole,  in  fact,  of  M. 
Michelet's  work  affords  evidence  of  that 
"invincible  ignorance" — to  use  a  term  of 
Romish  theology — of  Christ  and  of  the 
Bible  which  Romanism  leaves  behind  it 
in  most  souls,  if  it  should  come  to 
depart  from  them.  M.  Michelet  has 
no  doubt  read  the  Bible ;  he  is  familiar 
with  religious  works,  both  Protestant 
and  Romish ;  he  has  himself  written 
"  Memoirs  of  Luther."  And  yet  it  may 
not  be  too  much  to  say  that  he  has  never 
once  seen  Christ.  This  is  even  more 
evident  in  his  last  work,  "  La  Femme," 
of  which  I  have  now  to  say  a  few 
words. 

"La  Femme"  is  in  some  parts  a 
mere  repetition,  in  many  a  dilution,  of 
"  L'Amour."  It  is  on  the  whole  less 
mawkish,  but  more  wearisome.  The 
writer's  dissective  tendencies  rise  in  it 
to  absolute  rapture.  A  child's  brain 
becomes  in  his  pages  "a  broad  and 
mighty  camellia,"  "the  flower  of  flowers," 
"  the  most  touching  beauty  that  nature 
has  realized."  But  the  work  covers  in 
some  respects  a  new  field.  The  hypo- 
thetical wife  whom  he  exhibited  in 
"L'Amour"  was  after  all,  as  I  have 
said,  some  existing  Frenchwoman 
brought  up  in  Romanism,  having,  ac- 
cording to  the  writer,  everything  to 


48 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


unlearn  from  her  free-minded  husband, 
but  at  the  same  time  most  will  ing  to  do 
so.  This  last  trait,  however,  it  would 
seem,  was  so  far  from  reality  as  to  spoil 
the  picture.  The  second  work  then 
comes  in  to  supply  the  true  female 
ideal. 

The  great  fact  of  the  time,  M.  Michelet 
tells  us,  patent  to  all,  is,  that  man  lives 
apart  from,  woman,  and  that  more  and 
more.  Woman  is  left  behind  by  man. 
Even  a  drawing-room  divides  into  two 
— one  of  men,  one  of  women.  The 
attempt  to  make  men  and  women  speak 
together  only  creates  a  silence.  They 
have  no  more  ideas  in  common — no 
more  a  common  language.  In  his  in- 
troduction, the  most  valuable  part  of 
the  volume,  M.  Michelet  inquires  rapidly 
into  the  social  and  economical  causes  of 
this  alienation,  quoting  many  interesting, 
some  harrowing  and  hideous  facts. 
Imagine  this  for  instance,  as  to  the 
venal  tyranny  of  the  theatrical  press, 
in  a  country  such  as  France,  where 
political  freedom  is  gagged  : — An  actress 
comes  to  a  theatrical  critic,  to  ask  him 
why  he  is  always  writing  her  down. 
The  answer  is  that  she  was  somewhat 
favourably  treated  at  first,  and  ought  to 
have  sent  some  solid  mark  of  gratitude. 
— " '  But  I  am  so  poor ;  I  gain  next  to 
'  nothing ;  I  have  a  mother  to  main- 
'  tain.'  '  What  do  I  care  ?  take  a  lover.' 
' '  But  I  am  not  pretty — I  am  so  sad — 
'  men  are  only  in  love  with  cheerful 
'  women.'  '  No,  you  won't  bamboozle 
'  me ;  you  are  pretty,  young  lady,  it  is 
'  only  ill-will :  you  are  proud,  which 
'  is  bad.  You  must  do  as  others — you 
'  must  have  a  lover.' "  M.  Michelet 
seems  to  speak  of  this  from  personal 
experience.  I  wish  he  had  added  that 
he  had  flung  the  hound  of  a  penny-a- 
liner  out  of  window. 

Taking  up,  then,  in  the  nineteenth 
century  the  work  of  F6nelon  in  the 
seventeenth,  M.  Michelet  adopts  for 
special  subject  the  education  of  girls, 
with  a  view  to  filling  the  gap  between 
the  sexes.  "  Woman,"  he  tells  us,  "  is 
a  religion."  The  education  of  a  girl 
is  therefore  "  to  harmonize  a  religion," 
whilst  that  of  a  boy  is  "to  organize  a 


force."  In  his  views  on  the  subject  of 
female  education,  much  will  be  found 
that  is  suggestive  and  beautiful.  But 
the  main  point  still  remains — if  Avoman 
is  a  religion,  how  is  she  to  have  one  ? 
"  She  must  have  a  faith,"  we  are  told  by 
the  writer ;  logic  would  seem  to  require 
that  that  faith  should  be  in  her  own 
self.  What  it  is  to  be  is  really  most 
difficult  to  discover.  Towards  ten  or 
twelve,  her  father  is  to  give  her  some 
select  readings  from  original  writers  ; 
narratives  from  Herodotus  ;  the  Retreat 
of  the  Ten  Thousand  ;  "some  beautiful 
narrations  from  the  Bible,"  the  Odyssey, 
and  "our  modern  Odyssey s,  our  good 
travellers."  Even  before  these,  it  would 
seem,  she  should  have  some  "  sound 
"  and  original  readings  ....  some  of 
"  the  truly  ethereal  hymns  of  the  Vedas, 
"  such  and  such  prayers  and  laws  of 
"  Persia,  so  pure  and  so  heroic,  join- 
"  ing  to  these  several  of  the  touching 
"  Biblical  pastorals — Jacob,  Ruth,  To- 
"bit,"  &c.  The  Bible  itself  must  be 
kept  aloof.  Most  of  its  books  seem 
to  M.  Michelet  to  have  been  written 
after  dark  at  night.  God  forbid  that 
one  should  trouble  too  soon  a  young 
heart  with  the  divorce  of  man  from  God, 
of  the  son  from  his  father ;  with  the 
dreadful  problem  of  the  origin  of  evil! 
.  .  .  The  book  is  not  soft  and  enervating 
like  the  mystics  of  the  middle  ages  ; 
but  it  is  too  stormy,  thick,  restless. 
"  Another  motive  again,  which  would 
"  make  me  hesitate  to  read  this  too  soon, 
"  is  the  hatred  of  nature  which  the  Jews 
"  express  everywhere.  .  .  .  This  gives 
"  to  their  books  a  negative,  critical  cha- 
"  racter;  a  character  of  gloomy  austerity, 
"  which  is  yet  not  always  pure  ..." 
Better  read  "  in  the  Bible  of  light,  the 
"  Zend  Avesta,  the  ancient  and  sacred 
"  complaint  of  the  cow  to  man,  to  recall 
"  to  him  the  benefits  which  he  owes 
"  her  ..." 

The  subject  is  too  grave  for  joking. 
But  only  imagine  bringing  up  a  girl 
upon  cow-laments  from  the  Zend  Avesta, 
and  keeping  the  Bible  from  her  handrf  ! 
Is  it  possible  too  for  a  man  to  read  more 
completely  into  a  book  his  own  preju- 
dices against  it?  Where,  except  in  the  in- 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — MicJielet. 


49 


Iranian  asceticism  of  the  Romish  middle 
ages,  or  in  extreme  Scotch  Calvinism, 
do  you  find  any  trace  of  that  "  hatred  of 
nature"  which  M.  Michelet  fathers  upon 
the  Bible  1  From  the  first  page  to  the 
last,  it  is  the  book  of  nature  almost  as 
much  as  it  is  the  book  of  man.  Hatred 
of  nature  !  No,  the  intensest  sympathy 
which  can  yet  consist  with  man's  dignity, 
as  God's  vice-king  over  nature,  made  to 
have  dominion  over  fish  and  fowl,  cattle 
and  creeping  thing ;  over  "  all  the  earth," 
which  he  is  not  only  commanded  to 
"replenish,"  but  to  "subdue."  He  is  to 
sympathise  with  nature  under  every 
aspect,  from  every  point  of  view ;  as 
comprised  with  him  in  that  creation,  of 
whose  absolute  order  and  beauty  it  is 
written  that -"God  saw  everytliing  that 
"  He  had  made,  and  behold  it  was  very 
"good;"  as  suffering,  guiltless,  through 
his  fall,  and  cursed  for  his  sake  alone  ; 
as  "  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain 
together "  with  him  for  a  common  deli- 
verance, as  assured  of  a  common  perfec- 
tion in  the  New  Heaven  and  the  New 
Earth.  It  is  not  enough  that  he  is 
taught  by  Prophet,  Psalmist,  Apostle — 
by  none  more  assiduously  than  by  the 
Saviour  Himself — to  look  on  the  face  of 
nature  as  a  mirror  wherein  are  revealed 
the  mysteries  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
He  is  called  on  to  look  on  her  as  a 
fellow-servant ;  her  obedience  is  re- 
peatedly contrasted  with  his  revolt. 
"The  stork  in  the  heavens  knoweth 
"  her  appointed  times ;  and  the  turtle, 
"  and  the  crane,  and  the  swallow  observe 
"  the  time  of  their  coming ;  but  my 
"  people  know  not  the  judgment  of  the 
"  Lord."  "  The  ox  knoweth  his  owner, 
"  and  the  ass  his  master's  crib,  but 
"  Israel  doth  not  know,  my  people  doth 
"  not  consider."  Nay,  she  is  more  than 
a  fellow-servant,  she  is  a  fellow-wor- 
shipper. Prophet  nor  Psalmist  can 
satisfy  their  raptures  of  devotion,  unless 
they  call  upon  her  to  share  them : 
"Sing,  0  heavens,  and  be  joyful,  0 
"  earth,  and  break  forth  into  singing, 
"  O  mountains."  "  Let  the  heaven  re- 
"  joice,  and  let  the  earth  be  glad ;  let  the 
"  field  be  joyful,  and  all  that  therein  is  ; 
"  yea  let  all  the  trees  of  the  wood  rejoice 
No.  7. — VOL.  ii. 


'  before  the  Lord."     "  Praise  the  Lord 

'  upon  earth,  ye  dragons  and  all  deeps  ;• 

'  fire  and  haU,  snow  and  vapours,  stormy 

'wind  fulfilling  his  word;  mountains 

'and   all  hills,  fruitful  trees   and   all 

'  cedars,    beasts   and   all  cattle,  worms 

'  and  feathered  fowls."  ..."  Let  every- 

'  thing   that    hath   breath    praise    the 

'  Lord."     If  this  be  hatred  of  nature, ' 

may  every  one   of  us  enter  more  and 

more  into  the  infinite  fervent  charity  of 

such  hatred !     Is  it  not  more  likely  to 

lift   the   soul  of  girl  or  boy  than  the 

sentimental  self-consciousness   of  some 

ancient  Parsee   cow,   mooing   over  her 

own.  ill-requited   services  ?      Will   any 

worship   of    the   bull  Apis   ever   give 

such  a  sense  of  the  real  preciousness  of 

animal  life,   as  that  last  verse  of  the 

Book  of  Jonah :  "  Should  I  not  spare 

'  Nineveh,  that  great  city,  wherein  are 

'  more  than  six-score  thousand  persons, 

'  that  cannot  discern  between  their  right 

'hand   and  their  left  hand;  and  also 

'much  cattle  ?" 

I  suspect  the  physiological  period  of 
M.  Michelet' s  career  will  be  the  last. 
Read  in  the  light  of  his  two  latest  works, 
I  think  his  earlier  ones — the  "  Introduc- 
tion to  Universal  History"  for  instance 
— bear  testimony  that  the  whole  ten- 
dency of  his  mind  has  always  been 
towards  the  spiritualistic  materialism,  as 
I  prefer  to  call  it — the  "mystic  sen- 
sualism," as  it  has  been  called  by  a 
French  Protestant  critic  —  of  which 
"  L' Amour,"  and  "  La  Femme,"  are  the 
direct  exponents.  Jn  "La  Femme"  we 
cannot  fail  to  perceive  a  senile  garrulity, 
which  marks  that  the  writer  has  fully 
passed  the  climax  of  his  genius,  a  climax 
which  may  perhaps  be  fixed  at  "  The 
Bird."  I  have  generally  felt  compelled, 
in  translating  from  him,  to  abridge  also. 
I  doubt  if  he  has  much  henceforth  to 
tell  us  that  is  new.  Indeed,  the  moral 
side  of  "  La  Femme,"  is  already  to  be 
found  fully  indicated  in  the  much  earlier 
"  Priests,  Women,  and  Families." 

I  have  called  the  doctrine  of  these 
works  "  materialism."  I  know  that 
none  would  protest  more  strongly 
against  the  application  to  them  of  such 
a  term  than  the  writer.  "  I  have 


50 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


spent  all  my  life,"  he  tells  us,  "in 
claiming  the  rights  of  the  soul  against 
the  nauseous  materialism  of  my  time." 
Again  and  again  he  uses  the  term  as 
one  of  the  utmost  reproach.  And  yet 
the  books  are  essentially  materialistic. 
The  physical  organization  of  woman  is 
made  practically  the  standard  of  her 
capacity  for  perceiving  right  and  wrong. 
Love  is  made,  in  fact,  its  own  end,  al- 
though announced  as  a  means  of  moral 
enfranchisement.  Nothing  is  shown  to 
the  woman  above  the  man,  unless  it  be, 
and  in  such  proportions  as  he  chooses 
to  show  it  her,  some  misty  idea  of  the 
great  harmony,  "  in  which  we  should 
wish  to  die  as  much  as  to  live,  in  the  just 
and  regular  law  of  the  All."  Through 
this  "all"  may  indeed  hover  the  name 
of  God,  but  more  as  a  ghost  deprived 
of  its  last  resting-place,  than  as  He  that 
Is.  The  writer  may  indeed  tell  us  that 
he  "cannot  do  without  God;"  that  "the 
"  momentary  eclipse  of  the  high  central 
"idea  darkens  this  marvellous  modern 
"  world  of  sciences  and  discoveries ;"  that 
the  unity  of  the  world  is  love  ;  that 
woman  feels  the  infinite  "  in  the  loving 
"cause  and  the  father  of  nature,  who 
"procreates  her  from  the  good  to  the 
"  better."  Yet  what  is  this  beyond  mere 
Pantheistic  Hindooism,  drenched  in  ver- 
biage? Heine,  we  are  told,  called  M. 
Michelet  a  Hindoo.  One  feels  tempted 
to  say,  Let  him  be  so  in  good  earnest. 
God  for  god,  I  prefer  Vishnu  to  the 
thin  shadow  of  him  which  flits  through 
M.  Michelet's  pages.  Any  one  of  his 
avatars  would  be  preferable  for  me  to 
that  repulsive  Egyptian  myth  of  Isis, 
(a  mother  by  her  twin  brother  ere  her 
birth),  which  M.  Michelet  tells  us  has 
never  been  exceeded,  which  he  offers  as 
food  to  the  "  common  faith"  of  husband 
and  wife.  Again,  he  may  give  us  a 
chapter,  and  a  very  touching  one  too, 
on  "  love  beyond  the  grave,"  in  which 
he  exhibits  to  us  the  departed  husband 
discoursing  on  immortality  to  his  widow. 
But  after  all,  what  assurance  have  we 
that  such  a  colloquy  is  any  more,  was 
even  meant  to  be  any  more,  than  a  piece 
of  sentimental  ventriloquism  1  The 
pledge  of  immortality  is  not  one  that 


can  be  given  by  mortal  to  mortal.  "  Be- 
cause I  live,  ye  shall  live  also."  When 
He  who  is  the  Source  and  Lord  of  life 
tells  us  so,  we  may  believe  and  hope. 
"  Because  I  died,  thou  shalt  live."  Can 
even  the  madness  of  unsatisfied  love 
make  more  than  a  temporary  plaything 
of  such  an  assurance  ? 

But  I  have  called  the  doctrine  of  these 
works,  spiritualistic  materialism.     I  do 
not  care  for  the  strangeness  of  the  expres- 
sion, if  by  means  of  it  I  can  only  waken 
up  those  who  are  content  to  rest  upon 
the   traditions,    opinions,  prejudices   of 
past  days,  to  some  sense  of  the  strange 
and  new  things  with  which  they  have 
now  to  deal.    If  they  would  be  prepared 
to  combat  whatever  is  evil  and  deadly 
in  the  doctrine  of  which  I  am  speaking, 
let  them  utterly  put  out  of  their  minds 
all  conceptions  of  a  materialist  as   of 
a    man  wallowing    in    sensual    indul- 
gencies,  denying  the  very  idea  of  right ; 
or  even  as  of  a  hard-minded  logician, 
treating  as  impossible  all  that  he  can- 
not see,  scoffing  at  faith  as  at  a  child 
grasping  for  the  moon,  or  for  his  own 
image    in   the   mirror.      Michelet,    in- 
deed, proclaims  himself  a  spiritualist ; 
he  "cannot  do  without  God  ;"  faith  in 
a  spirit  of  love,   if  scarcely  of  truth, 
breathes  throughout  his  pages.     What 
I  have  ventured  to  term  his  materialism 
comes  forth  in  the  name  and  on  behalf 
of  morality ;  for  the  restoration  of  the 
purity  of  marriage,  of  the  harmony  of 
the  family.     As  the  frank  and  eloquent 
witness  against  the  corruptions  of  that 
purity  and  harmony  in  our  social  state, 
he  deserves  all  our  sympathy  and  res- 
pect.    We  may  not,  thank  God,  have 
reached  yet  in  free  Protestant  England 
that  depth  of  cold  cynicism  which  he 
indignantly   exhibits   to   us,   when   he 
repeats,  as  an  ear- witness,  the  advice  of 
a  husband  and  a  father  living  in  the 
country,  to  a  young  man  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood :  "If  you  are  to  remain  here, 
"you  must  marry,  but  if  you  live  in 
"  Paris,  it  is  not  worth  while.     It  is  too 
"  easy  to  do  otherwise."     But  that  is  all 
the  greater  reason  why  we  should  in 
time   beware,  lest  we   should  ever  be 
carried  away,    on   the   same   or   other 


Spiritualistic  Materialism — Michelet. 


51 


slopes,  to  the  same  gulf.  We  have 
nothing,  God  knows,  to  boast  of.  Peni- 
tentiaries, I  fear,  receive  generally  but  the 
heaviest  dregs  of  the  seething  caldron 
of  female  vice.  Midnight  tea-meetings 
will,  I  fear,  do  little  more  than  skim  off  a 
little  froth  from  its  surface.  Neither 
the  one  nor  the  other  either  lessen  the 
demand,  or  even  attack  the  supply  in  its 
sources, — in  those  ill-paid  labours  which 
the  cursed  thirst  for  cheapness  tends  to 
multiply, — in  that  money- worship  which 
makes  wealth  as  such  honourable,  and 
poverty  the  worst  of  shames, — in  those 
plutonomic  doctrines  which  are  erected 
into  a  faith  for  states  or  for  individuals, 
and  which  tend  to  supplant  everywhere 
duty  by  interest,  the  living  force  of 
"  Thou  shalt "  by  the  restraining  doubt 
"  Will  it  pay  ? "  Michelet  has  at  least 
the  merit  of  attempting  a  radical  cure 
for  the  evil.  He  addresses  man  rather 
than  woman ;  and  he  is  right.  He 
seeks  to  conquer  lust  by  love ;  and  he 
is  right.  His  folly  lies  in  treating 
earthly  love  as  if  it  could  be  its  own 
centre,  its  own  self-renewing  source. 

That  folly  has  been  pointed  out  ere 
this  in  France  itself  by  manlier  and 
nobler  pens  than  his  own.  M.  Emile 
Monte"gut,  in  the  "  Eevue  des  Deux 
Mondes,"  for  December  1858,  has  com- 
plained of  the  absence  in  M.  Michelet's 
ideal  marriage  of  the  true  freedom  of 
the  soul,  "  of  those  great  moral  and 
religious  laws"  which  formerly  presided 
over  it ;  has  told  him  that  love,  as  he 
represents  it,  wounds  the  dignity  of 
man,  enervates,  effeminates  him  ^  that 
the  home  he  paints  is  little  more  than 
the  "retreat  of  two  selfish  voluptuaries." 
These  are  hard  words,  harder  than  I 
have  ventured  to  use.  And  yet  the 
French  critic  concludes,  as  I  would  fain 
do  myself,  with  expressing  the  hope 
that  M.  Michelet's  writings  may  not  be 
without  their  use, — that  they  may  have 
some  effect  for  good  on  many  "an 
opaque  and  dried-up  brain,"  on  many 
'a  dry  vain  heart,"  on  many  poor  crea- 


tures prone  to  brutality,  to  sensual 
ferocity,  to  barbarous  selfishness.  In- 
deed already  and  long  ere  this,  as  M. 
Michelet  tells  us  himself,  the  witness 
which  he  has  borne  for  moral  purity 
has  not  been  without  its  fruits.  Whilst 
he  was  yet  professor,  a  young  man  one 
morning  burst  into  his  room,  to  give 
him  the  news  that  the  masters  of  certain 
cafe's,  of  certain  other  well-known  houses, 
complained  of  his  teaching.  Their  es- 
tablishments were  losing  by  it.  Young 
men  were  imbibing  a  mania  of  serious 
conversation,  forgetting  their  habits. 
The  students'  balls  ran  risk  of  closing. 
All  who  gained  by  the  amusements  of 
the  schools  deemed  themselves  threa- 
tened by  a  moral  revolution. — How 
many  of  our  preachers  could  say  as 
much? 

For  us,  Englishmen, — bound  as  we  are 
in  charity  to  indulgence  towards  M. 
Michelet  by  the  almost  invariable  mis- 
takes which  he  makes  whenever  he 
speaks  of  us  or  of  our  country, — we 
need  not  fear,  I  take  it,  even  the  worst 
influences  of  his  teaching ;  it  is  too 
essentially  French  to  affect  us.  We 
may  fear  however,  and  we  ought  to 
fear,  that  refined  materialism  of  which 
it  is  one  of  the  symptoms,  which  con- 
founds worship  with  a  certain  religiosity, 
replaces  faith  by  sentiments,  and  affects 
to  see  God  in  nature  everywhere,  but 
in  nature  only.  Crown  him,  girdle 
him,  smother  him  with  flowers,  the 
Nature-god  is  at  bottom  but  a  bundle 
of  cruel  forces  and  lawless  lusts, — the 
Krishna  of  the  sixteen  thousand  gopis  is 
the  same,  through  whose  flaming  jaws 
Arjuna  saw  generation  after  generation 
of  created  beings  rush  headlong  to 
destruction.  But  against  such  Pan- 
theism, overt  or  latent,  in  the  gristle  or 
in  the  bone,  there  is  no  better  preserva- 
tion than  the  Pantfieism,  if  I  may  use 
the  term,  of  Christianity.  None  will 
ever  be  temp  ted 'to  worship  nature  less, 
than  he  who  has  learnt  to  see  her  divine 
in  God. 


52 


TOM  BROWtf  AT  OXFORD. 

BY   THE   AUTHOR   OP   "TOM   BROWN'S   SCHOOL-DAYS." 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

NEW   GROUND. 

MY  readers  have  now  been  steadily  at 
Oxford  for  six  months  without  moving. 
Most  people  find  such  a  spell  of  the 
place  without  a  change  quite  as  much 
as  they  care  to  take ;  moreover  it  may 
do  our  hero  good  to  let  him  alone  for 
a  number,  that  he  may  have  time  to  look 
steadily  into  the  pit  which  he  has  been 
so    near    falling    into,    which    is    still 
yawning  awkwardly  in  his  path  ;  more- 
over,   the   exigencies   of   a   story-teller 
must  lead  him   away  from  home  now 
and  then.      Like   the   rest  of  us,    his 
family  must  have  change  of  air,  or  he 
has  to  go  off  to  see  a  friend  properly 
married,  or  a  connexion  buried:  to  wear 
white  or  black  gloves  with  or  for  some 
one,  carrying  such  sympathy  as  he  can 
with  him,  that  so  he  may  come  back 
from  every  journey,  however  short,  with 
a  wider  horizon.     Yes ;   to  come  back 
home  after  every  stage  of  life's  journey- 
ing with  a  wider  horizon,  more  in  sym- 
pathy with  men  and  nature,  knowing 
ever  more  of  the  righteous  and  eternal 
laws  which  govern  them,  and  of  the 
righteous  and  loving  will  which  is  above 
all,  and  around  all,  and  beneath  all,  this 
must  be  the  end  and  aim  of  all  of  us,  or 
we  shall  be  wandering  about  blindfold, 
and  spending  time  and  labour  and  jour- 
ney-money on  that  which  profiteth  no- 
thing.    So  now  I  must  ask  my  readers 
to  forget  the  old  buildings  and  quad- 
rangles of  the  fairest  of  England's  cities, 
the  caps  and  the  gowns,  the  reading  and 
rowing,  for  a  short  space,  and  take  a 
flight  with  me  to  other  scenes  and  pas- 
tures new. 

The  nights  are  pleasant  in  May,  short 
and  pleasant  for  travel.  We  will  leave 
the  ancient  city  asleep,  and  do  our  flight 
in  the  night  to  save  time.  Trust  your- 
selves then  to  the  story-teller's  aerial 
machine.  It  is  but  a  rough  affair,  I  own, 


rough  and  humble,  unfitted  for  high  or 
great  flights,  with  no  gilded  panels,  or 
dainty  cushions,  or  C-springs — not  that 
we  shall  care  about  springs,  by  the  way, 
until  we  alight  on  terra  firina  again — 
still,  there  is  much  to  be  learned  in  a 
third-class  carriage  if  we  will  only  not 
look  for  the  cushions  and  fine  panels, 
and  forty  miles  an  hour  travelling  in  it, 
and  will  not  be  shocked  at  our  fellow- 
passengers  for  being  weak  in  their  h's 
and  smelling  of  fustian.  Mount  in  it, 
then,  you  who  will  after  this  warning; 
the  fares  are  holiday  fares,  the  tickets 
return  tickets.  Take  with  you  nothing 
but  the  poet's  luggage, 

"  A  smile  for  Hope,  a  tear  for  Pain, 
A  breath   to   swell  the  voice  of. 
Prayer," 

and  may  you  have  a  pleasant  journey, 
for  it  is  time  that  the  stoker  should  be 
looking  to  his  going  gear  !_, 

So  now  we  rise  slowly  in  the  moon- 
light from  St.  Ambrose's  quadrangle, 
and,  when  we  are  clear  of  the  clock- 
tower,  steer  away  southwards,  over 
Oxford 'city  and  all  its  sleeping  wisdom 
and  folly,  over  street  and  past  spire, 
over  Christ  Church  and  the  canons' 
houses,  and  the  fountain  in  Tom  quad ; 
over  St.  Aldate's  and  the  river,  along 
which  the  moonbeams  lie  in  a  pathway  of 
twinkling  silver,  over  the  rail  way  sheds — 
no,  there  was  then  no  railway,  but  only 
the  quiet  fields  and  footpaths  of  Hincksey 
hamlet.  Well,  no  matter  ;  at  any  rate, 
the  hills  beyond  and  Bagley  Wood  were 
there  then  as  now  :  and  over  hills  and 
•wood  we  rise,  catcliing  the  purr  of  the 
night-jar,  the  trill  of  the  nightingale, 
and  the  first  crow  of  the  earliest  cock 
pheasant,  as  he  stretches  his  jewelled 
wings,  conscious  of  his  strength  and  his 
beauty,  heedless  of  the  fellows  of  St. 
John's,  who  slumber  within  sight  of  his 
perch,  on  whose  hospitable  board  he 
shall  one  day  lie  prone  on  his  hick,  with 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


fair  larded  breast  turned  upwards  for 
the  carving  knife,  having  crowed  his 
last  crow.  He  knows  it  not ;  what 
matters  it  to  him?  If  he  knew  it, 
could  a  Bagley  Wood  cock-pheasant  desire 
a  better  ending  ? 

"We  pass  over  the  vale  beyond ;  hall 
and  hamlet,  church  and  meadow,  and 
copse  folded  in  mist  and  shadow  below 
us,  each  hamlet  holding  in  its  bosom  the 
materials  of  three-volumed  novels  by 
the  dozen,  if  we  could  only  pull  off  the 
roofs  of  the  houses  and  look  steadily 
into  the  interiors  ;  but  our  destination 
is  farther  yet.  The  faint  white  streak 
behind  the  distant  Chilterns  reminds  us 
that  we  have  no  time  for  gossip  by  the 
way ;  May  nights  are  short,  and  the  sun 
will  be  up  by  four.  No  matter;  our 
journey  will  now  be  soon  over,  for  the 
broad  vale  is  crossed,  and  the  chalk  hills 
and  downs  beyond.  Larks  quiver  up 
by  us,  "  higher  ever  higher,"  hastening 
up  to  get  a  first  glimpse  of  the  coming 
monarch,  careless  of  food,  flooding  the 
fresh  air  with  song.  Steady  plodding 
rooks  labour  along  below  us,  and  lively 
starlings  rush  by  on  the  look-out  for  the 
early  worm;  lark  and  swallow,  rook  and 
starling,  each  on  his  appointed  round. 
The  sun  arises,  and  they  get  them  to  it ; 
he  is  up  now,  and  these  breezy  uplands 
over  which  we  hang  are  swimming  in 
the  light  of  horizontal  rays,  though  the 
shadows  and  mists  still  lie  on  the 
wooded  dells  which  slope  away  south- 
wards. 

Here  let  us  bring  to,  over  the  village 
of  Englebourn,  and  try  to  get  acquainted 
with  the  outside  of  the  place  before  the 
good  folk  are  about  and  we  have  to  go 
down  among  them,  and  their  sayings 
and  doings. 

The  village  lies  on  the  southern  slopes 
of  the  Berkshire  hills,  on  the  opposite 
side  to  that  under  which  our  hero  was 
born.  Another  soil  altogether  is  here,  we 
remark  in  the  first  place.  This  is  nobu 
chalk,  this  high  knoll  which  rises  above 
— one  may  almost  say  hangs  over — the 
village,  crowned  with  Scotch  firs,  its 
sides  tufted  with  gorse  and  heather.  It 
is  the  Hawk's  Lynch,  the  favourite  resort 
of  Englebourn  folk,  who  come  up — for 


the  view,  for  the  air,  because  their 
fathers  and  mothers  came  up  before 
them;  because  they  came  up  themselves 
as  children — from  an  instinct  which 
moves  them  all  in  leisure  hours  and 
Sunday  evenings,  when  the  sun  shines 
and  the  birds  sing,  whether  they  care 
for  view  or  air  or  not  Something  guides 
all  their  feet  hitherward  ;  the  children, 
to  play  hide-and-seek  and  look  for  nests 
in  the  gorse-bushes  ;  young  men  and 
maidens,  to  saunter  and  look  and  talk, 
as  they  will  till  the  world's  end — or  as 
long,  at  any  rate,  as  the  Hawk's  Lynch 
and  Englebourn  last — and  to  cut  their 
initials,  inclosed  in  a  true  lover's  knot, 
on  the  short  rabbit's  turf ;  steady  married 
couples,  to  plod  along  together  consulting 
on  hard  times  and  growing  families ; 
even  old  tottering  men,  who  love  to  sit 
at  the  feet  of  the  firs,  with  chins  leaning 
on  their  sticks,  prattling  of  days  long 
past  to  any  one  who  will  listen,  or  look- 
ing silently  with  dim  eyes  into  the  sum- 
mer air,  feeling  perhaps  in  their  spirits 
after  a  wider  and  more  peaceful  view 
which  will  soon  open  for  them.  A 
common  knoll,  open  to  all,  up  in  the 
silent  air,  well  away  from  every-day 
Englebourn  life,  with  the  Hampshire 
range  and  the  distant  Beacon  Hill  lying 
soft  on  the  horizon,  and  nothing  higher 
between  you  and  the  southern  sea,  what 
a  blessing  the  Hawk's  Lynch  is  to  the 
village  folk,  one  and  all !  May  Heaven 
and  a  thankless  soil  long  preserve  it  and 
them  from  an  inclosure  under  the  Act ! 
There  is  much  temptation  lying  about, 
though,  for  the  inclosers  of  the  world. 
The  rough  common  land,  you  see, 
stretches  over  the  whole  of  the  knoll, 
and  down  to  its  base,  and  away  along 
the  hills  behind,  of  which  the  Hawk's 
Lynch  is  an  outlying  spur.  Rough 
common  land,  broken  only  by  pine 
woods  of  a  few  acres  each  in  extent,  an 
occasional  woodman's  or  squatter's  cottage 
and  little  patch  of  attempted  garden. 
But  immediately  below,  and  on  eack 
flank  of  the  spur,  and  half-way  up  the ' 
slopes,  come  small  farm  inclosures  break- 
ing here  and  there  the  belt  of  wood 
lands,  which  generally  lies  between  the 
rough  wild  upland  and  the  cultivated 


54 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


country  below.  As  you  stand  on  the 
knoll  you  can  see  the  common  land  just 
below  you  at  its  foot  narrow  into  a  mere 
road,  with  a  border  of  waste  on  each 
side,  which  runs  into  Englebourn  Street. 
At  the  end  of  the  straggling  village 
stands  the  church  with  its  square  tower, 
a  lofty  grey  stone  building,  with  bits  of 
fine  decorated  architecture  about  it,  but 
much  of  churchwarden  Gothic  super- 
vening. The  churchyard  is  large,  and 
the  graves,  as  you  can  see  plainly  even 
from  this  distance,  are  all  crowded  on 
the  southern  side.  The  rector's  sheep 
are  feeding  in  the  northern  part  nearest 
to  us,  and  a  small  gate  at  one  corner 
opens  into  his  garden.  The  rectory 
looks  large  and  comfortable,  and  its 
grounds  well  cared  for  and  extensive, 
with  a  rookery  of  elms  at  the  lawn's 
end.  It  is  the  chief  house  of  the  place, 
for  there  is  no  resident  squire.  The 
principal  street  contains  a  few  shops, 
some  dozen  perhaps  in  all ;  and  several 
f^rm  houses  lie  a  little  back  from  it, 
with  garden  in  front,  and  yards  and 
barns  and  orchards  behind  ;  and  there 
are  two  public  houses.  The  other  dwel- 
lings are  mere  cottages,  and  very  bad 
ones  for  the  most  part,  with  floors  below 
the  level  of  the  street.  Almost  every 
house  in  the  village  is  thatched,  which 
adds  to  the  beauty  though  not  to  the 
comfort  of  the  place.  The  rest  of  the 
population  who  do  not  live  in  the  street 
are  dotted  about  the  neighbouring  lanes, 
chiefly  towards  the  west,  on  our  right 
as  we  look  down  from  the  Hawk's  Lynch. 
On  this  side  the  country  is  more  open, 
and  here  most  of  the  farmers  live,  as  we 
may  see  by  the  number  of  homesteads. 
And  there  is  a  small  brook  on  that  side 
too,  which  with  careful  damming  is  made 
to  turn  a  mill,  there  where  you  see  the 
clump  of  poplars.  On  our  left  as  we 
look  down,  the  country  to  the  east  of 
the  village,  is  thickly  wooded ;  but  we 
can  see  that  there  is  a  village  green  on 
that  side,  and  a  few  scattered  cottages, 
the  farthest  of  which  stands  looking  out 
like  a  little  white  eye,  from  the  end  of 
a  dense  copsa  • 

Beyond  it  there  is  no  sign  of  habita- 
tion for  some  two  miles ;  then  you  can 


see  the  tall  chimneys  of  a  great  house, 
and  a  well-timbered  park  round  it.  The 
Grange  is  not  in  Englebourn  parish — 
happily  for  that  parish,  one  is  sorry  to 
remark.  It  must  be  a  very  bad  squire 
who  does  not  do  more  good  than  harm 
by  living  in  a  country  village.  But 
there  are  very  bad  squires,  and  the 
owner  of  the  Grange  is  one  of  them. 
He  is,  however,  for  the  most  part,  an 
absentee,  so  that  we  are  little  concerned 
with  him,  and  in  fact,  have  only  to 
notice  this  one  of  his  bad  habits,  that 
he  keeps  that  long  belt  of  woodlands, 
which  runs  into  Englebourn  parish,  and 
comes  almost  up  to  the  village,  full  of 
hares  and  pheasants.  He  has  only  suc- 
ceeded to  the  property  some  three  or 
four  years,  and  yet  the  head  of  game  on 
the  estate,  and  above  all  in  the  woods, 
has  trebled  or  quadrupled.  Pheasants 
by  hundreds  are  reared  under  hens, 
from  eggs  bought  in  London,  and  run 
about  the  keepers'  houses  as  tame  as 
barn-door  fowls  all  the  summer. 
When  the  first  party  comes  down 
for  the  first  ~battue  early  in  October, 
it  is  often  as  much  as  the  beaters  can  do 
to  persuade  these  pampered  fowls  that 
they  are  wild  game,  whose  duty  it  is  to 
get  up  and  fly  away  and  be  shot  at. 
However,  they  soon  learn  more  of  the 
world — such  of  them,  at  least,  as  are  not 
slain — and  are  unmistakeable  wild  birds 
in  a  few  days.  Then  they  take  to  roost- 
ing farther  from  their  old  haunts,  more 
in  the  outskirts  of  the  woods,  and  the 
time  comes  for  others  besides  the  squire's 
guests  to  take  their  education  in  hand, 
and  teach  pheasants  at  least  that  they 
are  no  native  British  birds.  These 
are  a  wild  set,  living  scattered  about 
the  wild  country ;  turf-cutters,  broom- 
makers,  squatters,  with  indefinite  occu- 
pations and  nameless  habits,  a  race  hated 
of  keepers  and  constables.  These  have 
increased  and  flourished  of  late  years; 
and,  notwithstanding  the  imprisonments 
and  transportations  which  deprive  them 
periodically  of  the  most  enterprising 
members  of  their  community,  one  and 
all  give  thanks  for  the  day  when  the 
owner  of  the  Grange  took  to  pheasant 
breeding.  If  the  demoralization  stopped 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


55 


with  them,  little  harm  might  come  of  it, 
as  they  would  steal  fowls  in  the  home- 
steads if  there  were  no  pheasants  in  the 
woods — which  latter  are  less  dangerous 
to  get,  and  Avorth  more  when  gotten. 
But,  unhappily,  this  method  of  earning 
a  livelihood  has  strong  attractions,  and 
is   catching ;   and   the   cases    of    farm 
labourers  who  get  into   trouble   about 
game    are    more    frequent    season    by 
season  in  the    neighbouring  parishes, 
and  Englebourn  is  no  better  than  the 
rest.     And  the  men  are  not  likely  to  be 
much  discouraged  from  these  practices, 
or  taught  better,  by  the  farmers ;  for,  if 
there  is  one  thing  more  than  another 
that  drives  that  sturdy  set  of  men,  the 
Englebourn  yeomen,  into  a  frenzy,  it  is 
talk  of  the  game  in  the  Grange  covers. 
Not  that  they  dislike  sport ;  they  like  it 
too  well,  and,  moreover,  have  been  used 
to  their  fair  share  of  it.     For  the  late 
squire  left  the  game"  entirely  in  their 
hands.      "  You  know  best   how  much 
game    your    land    will    carry   without 
serious  damage  to  the  crops,"  he  used 
to  say.     "  I  like  to  show  my  friends  a 
fair  day's  sport  when  they  are  with  me, 
and  to  have  enough  game  to  supply  the 
house  and  make  a  few  presents.  Beyond 
that  it  is  no  affair  of  mine.     You  can 
course  whenever  you  like  ;  and  let  me 
know  when  you  want  a  day's  shooting, 
and  you  shall  have  it."      Under  this 
system  the  yeomen  became  keen  sports- 
men ;  they  and  all  their  labourers  took 
an  interest  in  preserving,  and  the  whole 
district  would  have  risen  on  a  poacher. 
The  keeper's  place  became  a  sinecure, 
and  the  squire  had  as  much  game  as  he 
wanted  without  expense,  and  was,  more- 
over,  the  most    popular    man  in   the 
county.     Even  after  the  new  man  came, 
and  all  was  changed,  the  mere  revoca- 
tion of  their  sporting  liberties,  and  the 
increase   of  game,  unpopular   as   these 
things  were,  would  not  alone  have  made 
the  farmers  so  bitter,  and  have  raised 
that  sense  of*  outraged  justice  in  them. 
But  with  these  changes  came  in  a  cus- 
tom new  in  the  country — the  custom  of 
selling  the  game.     At  first  the  report 
was  not  believed  ;  but  soon  it  became 
notorious  that  no  head  of  game  from  the 


Grange  estates  was  ever  given  away, 
that  not  only  did  the  tenants  never  get  a 
brace  of  birds  or  a  hare,  or  the  labourers 
a  rabbit,  but  not  one  of  the  gentlemen 
who  helped  to  kill  the  game  ever  found 
any  of  the  bag  in  his  dog-cart  after  the 
day's  shooting.  Nay,  so  shameless  had 
the  system  become,  and  so  highly  was 
the  art  of  turning  the  game  to  account 
cultivated  at  the  Grange,  that  the 
keepers  sold  powder  and  shot  to  any 
of  the  guests  who  had  emptied  their 
own  belts  or  flasks  at  something 
over  the  market  retail  price.  The 
light  cart  drove  to  the  market-town 
twice  a  week  in  the  season,  loaded 
heavily  with  game,  but  more  heavily 
with  the  hatred  and  scorn  of  the  far- 
mers ;  and,  if  deep  and  bitter  curses 
could  break  patent  axles  or  necks,  the 
new  squire  and  his  game-cart  would  not 
long  have  vexed  the  country  side.  As 
it  was,  not  a  man  but  his  own  tenants 
would  salute  him  in  the  market-place  ; 
and  these  repaid  themselves  for  the  un- 
willing courtesy  by  bitter  reflections  on 
a  squire  who  was  mean  enough  to  pay 
his  butcher's  and  poulterer's  bill  out  of 
their  pockets. 

Alas,  that  the  manly  instinct  of  sport 
which  is  so  strong  in  all  of  us  English- 
men— which  sends  Oswell's  single- 
handed  against  the  mightiest  beasts 
that  walk  the  earth,  and  takes  the  poor 
cockney  journeyman  out  a  ten .  miles' 
walk  almost  before  daylight  on  the  rare 
summer  holiday  mornings,  to  angle  with 
rude  tackle  inreservoir  or  canal — should 
be  dragged  through  such  mire  as  this  in 
many  an  English  shire  in  our  day.  If 
English  landlords  want  to  go  on  shoot- 
ing game  much  longer,  they  must  give 
up  selling  it.  For  if  selling  game  be- 
comes the  rule,  and  not  the  exception 
(as  it  seems  likely  to  do  before  long), 
good-bye  to  sport  in  England.  Every 
man  who  loves  his  country  more  than 
his  pleasures  or  his  pocket— and,  thank 
God,  that  includes  the  great  majority  of 
us  yet,  however  much  we  may  delight 
in  gun  and  rod,  let  Mr.  Bright  and  every 
demagogue  in  the  land  say  what  they 
please — will  cry,  "  Down  with  it,"  and 
lend  a  hand  to  put  it  down  for  ever. 


56 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


But,  to  return  to  our  perch  on  the 
Hawk's  Lynch  above  Englebourn  village. 
As  I  was  saying  just  now,  when  the 
sight  of  the  distant  Grange  and  its 
woods  interrupted  me,  there  is  no  squire 
living  here.  The  rector  is  the  fourth  of 
his  race  who  holds  the  family  living — a 
kind,  easy-going,  gentlemanly  old  man, 
a  Doctor  of  Divinity,  as  becomes  his 
position,  though  he  only  went  into 
orders  because  there  was  the  living  ready 
for  him.  In  his  day  he  had  been  a  good 
magistrate  and  neighbour,  living  with, 
and  much  in  the  same  way  as,  the 
squires  round  about!  But  his  contem- 
poraries had  dropped  off  one  by  one ; 
his  own  health  had  long  been  failing; 
his  wife  was  dead  ;  and  the  young  gene- 
ration did  not  seek  him.  His  work  and 
the  parish  had  no  real  hold  on  him ;  so 
he  had  nothing  to  fall  back  on,  and  had 
become  a  confirmed  invalid,  seldom 
leaving  the  house  and  garden  even  to  go 
to  church,  and  thinking  more  of  his 
dinner  and  his  health  than  of  all  other 
things  in  earth  or  heaven. 

The  only  child  who  remained  at  home 
with  him  was  a  daughter,  a  girl  of  nine- 
teen or  thereabouts,  whose  acquaintance 
we  shall  make  presently,  and  who  was 
doing  all  that  a  good  heart  and  sound 
head  prompted  in  nursing  an  old  hypo- 
chondriac and  filling  his  place  in  the 
parish.  But  though  the  old  man  was 
weak  and  selfish,  he  was  kind  in  his 
way,  and  ready  to  give  freely,  or  to  do 
anything  which  his  daughter  suggested 
for  the  good  of  his  people,  provided  the 
trouble  were  taken  off  his  shoulders. 
In  the  year  before  our  tale  opens  he  had 
allowed  some  thirty  acres  of  his  glebe  to 
be  parcelled  out  in  allotments  amongst 
the  poor ;  and  his  daughter  spent  almost 
what  she  pleased  in  clothing-clubs, 
and  sick-clubs,  and  the  school,  without  a 
word  from  him.  Whenever  he  did 
remonstrate,  she  managed  to  get  what 
she  wanted  out  of  the  house-money,  or 
her  own  allowance. 

We  must  make  acquaintance  with 
such  other  of  the  inhabitants  as  it  con- 
cerns us  to  know  in  the  course  of  the 
story ;  for  it  is  broad  daylight,  and  the 
Tillagers  will  be  astir  directly.  Folk  who 


go  to  bed  before  nine,  after  a  hard  day's 
work,  get  into  the  habit  of  turning  out 
soon  after  the  sun  calls  them.  So  now, 
descending  from  the  Hawk's  Lynch,  we 
will  alight  at  the  east  end  of  Engle- 
bourn, opposite  the  little  white  cottage 
which  looks  out  at  the  end  of  the  great 
wood,  near  the  village-green. 

Soon  after  five  on  that  bright  Sunday 
morning,  Harry  Winburn  unbolted  the 
door  of  his  mother's  cottage,  and  stepped 
out  in  his  shirt-sleeves  on  to  the  little 
walk  in  front,  paved  with  pebbles.  Per- 
haps some  of  my  readers  will  recognise 
the  name  of  an  old  acquaintance,  and 
wonder  how  he  got  here;  so  I  shall 
explain  at  once.  Soon  after  our  hero 
went  to  school,  Harry's  father  had 
died  of  a  fever.  He  had  been  a 
journeyman  blacksmith,  and  in  the  re- 
fceipt,  consequently,  of  rather  better 
wages  than  generally  fall  to  the  lot  of 
the  peasantry,  but  not  enough  to  leave 
much  of  a  margin  over  current  expendi- 
ture. Moreover,  the  Winburns  had 
always  been  open-handed  with  whatever 
money  they  had ;  so  that  all  he  left  for 
his  widow  and  child,  of  worldly  goods, 
was  their  "  few  sticks  "  of  furniture,  £5 
in  the  Savings' -bank,  and  the  money 
from  his  burial-club,  which  was  not  more 
than  enough  to  give  him  a  creditable 
funeral — that  object  of  honourable  am- 
bition to  all  the  independent  poor.  He 
left,  however,  another  inheritance  to 
them,  which  is  in  price  above  rubies, 
neither  shall  silver  be  named  in  com- 
parison thereof, — the  inheritance  of  an 
honest  name,  of  which  his  Avidow  was 
proud,  and  which  was  not  likely  to 
suffer  in  her  hands. 

After  the  funeral,  she  removed  to 
Englebourn,  her  own  native  village,  and 
kept  her  old  father's  house,  till  his 
death.  He  was  one  of  the  woodmen 
to  the  Grange,  and  lived  in  the  cottage 
at  the  corner  of  the  wood  in  which 
his  work  lay.  When  ,he  too  died, 
hard  times  came  on  Widow  Winburn. 
The  steward  allowed  her  to  keep  on 
the  cottage.  The  rent  was  a  sore  bur- 
then to  her,  but  she  would  sooner  have 
starved  than  leave  it.  Parish  relief  was 
out  of  the  question  for  her  father's  child 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


57 


and  her  husband's  widow ;  so  she  turned 
her  hand  to  every  odd  job  which  offered, 
and  went  to  work  in  the  fields  when 
nothing  else  could  be  had.  Whenever 
there  was  sickness  in  the  place,  she  was 
an  untiring  nurse  ;  and,  at  ono  time,  for 
some  nine  months,  she  took  the  office  of 
postman,  and  walked  daily  some  nine 
miles  through  a  severe  winter.  The 
fatigue  and  exposure  had  broken  down 
her  health,  and  made  her  an  old  woman 
before  her  time.  At  last,  in  a  lucky 
hour,  the  doctor  came  to  hear  of  her 
praiseworthy  struggles,  and  gave  her  the 
rectory  washing,  which  had  made  her 
life  a  comparatively  easy  one  again. 

During  all  this  time  her  poor  neigh- 
bours had  stood  by  her  as  the  poor 
do  stand  by  one  another,  helping  her 
in  numberless  small  ways,  so  that 
she  had  been  able  to  realize  the  great 
object  of  her  life,  and  keep  Harry  at 
school  till  he  was  nearly  fourteen.  By 
this  time  he  had  learned  all  that  the 
village  pedagogue  could  teach,  and  had 
in  fact  become  an  object  of  mingled 
pride  and  jealousy  to  that  worthy  man, 
who  had  his  misgivings  lest  Harry's 
fame  as  a  scholar  should  eclipse  his  own 
before  many  years  were  over. 

Mrs.  Winburn's  character  was  so  good, 
that  no  sooner  was  her  son  ready  for  a 
place  than  a  place  was  ready  for  him  ; 
he  stepped  at  once  inlo  the  dignity  of 
carter's  boy,  and  his  earnings,  when 
added  to  his  mother's,  made  them  com- 
fortable enough.  Of  course  she  was 
wrapped  up  in  him,  and  believed  that 
there  was  no  such  boy  in  the  parish. 
And  indeed  she  was  nearer  the  truth 
than  most  mothers,  for  he  soon  grew  into 
a  famous  specimen  of  a  countryman ;  tall 
and  lithe,  full  of  nervous  strength,  and 
not  yet  bowed  down  or  stiffened  by 
the  constant  toil  of  a  labourer's  daily 
life.  In  these  matters,  however,  he  had 
rivals  in  the  village ;  but  in  intellectual 
accomplishments  he  was  unrivalled.  He 
was  full  of  learning  according  to  the 
village  standard,  could  write  and  cipher 
well,  was  fond  of  reading  such  books  as 
came  in  his  Avay,  and  spoke  his  native 
English  almost  without  an  accent.  He 
is  one-and-twenty  at  the  time  when  our 


story  takes  him  up,  a  thoroughly  skilled 
labourer,  the  best  hedger  and  ditcher  in 
the  parish ;  and,  when  his  blood  is  up,  he 
can  shear  hventy  sheep  in  a  day  without 
razing  the  skin,  or  mow  for  sixteen  hours 
at  a  stretch,  with  rests  of  half  an  hour 
for  meals  twice  in  the  day. 

Harry  shaded  his  eyes  with  his  hand 
for  a  minute,  as  he  stood  outside  the 
cottage  drinking  in  the  fresh  pure  air, 
laden  with  the  scent  of  the  honeysuckle 
which  he  had  trained  over  the  porch, 
and  listening  to  the  chorus  of  linnets 
and  finches  from  the  copse  at  the  back 
of  the  house,  and  then  set  about  the 
household  duties,  which  he  always 
made  it  a  point  of  honour  to  attend  to 
himself  on  Sundays.  First  he  unshut- 
tered the  little  lattice-window  of  the 
room  on  the  ground- floor  ;  a  simple 
operation  enough,  for  the  shutter  was  a 
mere  wooden  flap,  which  was  closed 
over  the  window  at  night,  and  bolted 
with  a  wooden  bolt  on  the  outside,  and 
thrown  back  against,  the  wall  in  the 
daytime.  Any  one  who  would  could 
have  opened  it  at  any  moment  of  the 
night ;  but  the  poor  sleep  sound  without 
bolts.  Then  he  took  the  one  old  bucket 
of  the  establishment,  and  strode  away  to 
the  well  on  the  village-green,  and  filled 
it  with  clear  cold  water,  doing  the  same 
kind  office  for  the  vessels  of  two  or 
three  rosy  little  damsels  and  boys,  of 
ages  varying  from  ten  to  fourteen,  who 
were  already  astir,  and  to  whom  the 
winding-up  of  the  parish  chain  and 
bucket  would  have  been  a  work  of  diffi- 
culty. Eeturning  to  the  cottage,  he 
proceeded  to  fill  his  mother's  kettle, 
sweep  the  hearth,  strike  a  light,  and 
make  up  the  fire  with  a  faggot  from  the 
little  stack  in  the  corner  of  the  garden. 
Then  he  haiiled  the  three-legged  round 
table  before  the  fire,  and  dusted  it  care- 
fully over,  and  laid  out  the  black  japan 
tea-tray  with  two  delf  cups  and  saucers 
of  gorgeous  pattern,  and  diminutive 
plates  to  match,  and  placed  the  sugar 
and  slop  basins,  the  big  loaf  and  small 
piece  of  salt  butter,  in  their  accustomed 
places,  and  the  little  black  teapot  on 
the  hob  to  get  properly  warm.  There 
was  little  more  to  be  done  indoors,  for 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


the  furniture  was  scanty  enough ;  but 
everything  in  turn  received  its  fair 
share  of  attention,  and  the  little 
room,  with  its  sunken  tiled  floor  and 
yellow-washed  walls,  looked  cheerful 
and  homely.  Then  Harry  turned  his 
attention  to  the  shed  of  his  own  con- 
triving which  stood  beside  the  faggot- 
stack,  and  from  which  expostulatory  and 
plaintive  grunts  had  been  issuing  ever 
since  his  first  appearance  at  the  door, 
telling  of  a  faithful  and  useful  friend 
who  was  sharp  set  on  Sunday  mornings, 
and  desired  his  poor  breakfast,  and  to 
be  dismissed  for  the  day  to  pick  up  the 
rest  of  his  livelihood  with  his  brethren 
porkers  of  the  village  on  the  green  and 
in  the  lanes.  Harry  served  out  to  the 
porker  the  poor  mess  which  the  wash  of 
the  cottage  and  the  odds  and  ends  of 
the  little  garden  aiforded;  which  that 
virtuous  animal  forthwith  began  to  dis- 
cuss with  both  fore-feet  in  the  trough — 
by  way,  I  suppose,  of  adding  to  the 
flavour — while  his  master  scratched  him 
gently  between  the  ears  and  on  the 
back  with  a  short  stick  till  the  repast 
was  concluded.  Then  he  opened  the 
door  of  the  stye,  and  the  grateful  animal 
rushed  out  into  the  lane,  and  away  to 
the  green  with  a  joyful  squeal  and  flirt 
of  his  hind  quarters  in  the  air ;  and 
Harry,  after  picking  a  bunch  of  wall- 
flowers, and  pansies,  and  hyacinths,  a 
line  of  which  flowers  skirted  the  narrow 
garden  walk,  and,  putting  them  in  a 
long-necked  glass  which  he  took  from 
the  mantelpiece,  proceeded  to  his  morn- 
ing ablutions,  ample  materials  for  which 
remained  at  the  bottom  of  the  family 
bucket,  which  he  had  put  down  on  a 
little  bench  by  the  side  of  the  porch. 
These  finished,  he  retired  indoors  to 
shave  and  dress  himself, 

CHAPTEE   XVIII 

ENGLEBOURN   VILLAGE. 

DAME  WINBURN  was  not  long  after 
her  son,  and  they  sat  down  together  to 
breakfast  in  their  best  Sunday  clothes — 
she,  in  plain  large  white  cap,  which 
covered  all  but  a  line  of  grey  hair,  a 
black  stuff  gown  reaching  to  neck  and 


wrists,  and  small  silk  neckerchief  put  on 
like  a  shawl ;  a  thin,  almost  gaunt,  old 
woman,  whom  the  years  had  not  used 
tenderly,  and  who  showed  marks  of  their 
usage — but  a  resolute,  high-couraged  soul, 
who  had  met  hard  times  in  the  face,  and 
could  meet  them  again  if  need  were. 
She  spoke  in  broad  Berkshire,  and  was 
otherwise  a  homely  body,  but  self-pos- 
sessed and  without  a  shade  of  real  vul- 
garity in  her  composition. 

The  widow  looked  with  some  anxiety 
at  Harry  as  he  took  his  seat.  Although 
something  of  a  rustic  dandy,  of  late  he 
had  not  been  so  careful  in  this  matter 
as  usual;  but,  in  consequence  of  her 
reproaches,  on  this  Sunday  there  was 
nothing  to  complain  of.  His  black  vel- 
veteen shooting-coat  and  cotton  plush 
waistcoat,  his  brown  corduroy  knee 
breeches  and  gaiters  sat  on  him  well,  and 
gave  the  world  assurance  of  a  well-to-do 
man,  for  few  of  the  Englebourn  labourers 
rose  above  smock-frocks  and  fustian 
trousers.  He  wore  a  blue  bird's-eye 
handkerchief  round  his  neck,  and  his 
shirt,  though  coarse  in  texture,  was  as 
white  as  the  sun  and  the  best  laundress 
in  Englebourn  could  manage  to  bleach  it. 
There  was  nothing  to  find  fault  with  in 
his  dress  therefore,  but  still  his  mother 
did  not  feel  quite  comfortable  as  she  took 
stealthy  glances  at  him,  Harry  was 
naturally  rather  a  reserved  fellow,  and 
did  not  make  much  conversation  himself, 
and  his  mother  felt  a  little  embarrassed 
on  this  particular  morning. 

"  It  was  not,  therefore,  until  Dame 
Winburn  had  finished  her  first  slice 
of  bread  and  butter,  and  had  sipped 
the  greater  .part  of  her  second  dish  of 
tea  out  of  her  saucer,  that  she  broke 
silence. 

"I  minded  thy  business  last  night, 
Harry,  when  I  wur  up  at  the  rectory 
about  the  washin'.  It's  my  belief  as 
thou'lt  get  t'other  'lotment  next  quarter- 
day.  The  doctor  spoke  very  kind  about 
it,  and  said  as  how  he  heerd  as  high  a 
character  o'  thee,  young  as  thee  hist,  as 
of  are'  a  man  in  the  parish,  and  as  how 
he  wur  set  on  lettin'  the  lots  to  they  as'd 
do  best  by  'em  ;  only  he  said  as  the 
farmers  went  agin  givin'  more  nor  an 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


59 


acre  to  any  man  as  worked  for  them,  and 
the  doctor,  you  see,  he  don't  Like  to  go 
altogether  agin  the  vestry  folk." 

"  What  business  is  it  o'  theirs,"  said 
Harry,  "  so  long  as  they  get  their  own 
work  done  1  There's  scarce  one  on  'em 
as  hasn't  more  land  already  nor  he  can 
keep  as  should  be,  and  for  all  that  they 
want  to  snap  up  every  bit  as  falls 
vacant,  so  as  no  poor  man  shall  get  it." 

"'Tis  mostly  so  with  them  as  has," 
said  his  mother,  with  a  half-puzzled 
look ;  "  Scriptur  says  as  to  them  shall 
be  given,  and  they  shall  have  more 
abundant."  Dame  Winburn  spoke  hesi- 
tatingly, and  looked  doubtfully  at  Harry, 
as  a  person  who  has  shot  with  a  strange 
gun,  and  knows  not  what  effect  the  bolt 
may  have.  Harry  was  brought  up  all 
standing  by  this  unexpected  quotation 
of  his  mother's  ;  but,  after  thinking  for 
a  few  moments  while  he  cut  himself  a 
slice  of  bread,  replied  : — 

"It  don't  say  as  those  shall  have 
more  that  can't  use  what  they've  got 
already.  'Tis  a  deal  more  like  Naboth's 
vineyard  for  aught  as  I  can  see.  But 
'tis  little  odds  to  me  which  way  it 
goes." 

"  How  canst  talk  so,  Harry  ?"  said  his 
mother  reproachfully;  "  thou  know'st 
thou  wast  set  on  it  last  fall,  like  a  wapse 
on  sugar.  Why,  scarce  a  day  past  but 
thou  wast  up  to  the  rectory,  to  see  the 
doctor  about  it ;  and  now  thou'rt  like 
to  get  it>  thou'lt  not  go  aginst  'un." 

Harry  looked  out  at  the  open  door, 
without  answering.  It  was  quite  true 
that,  in  the  last  autumn,  he  had  been 
very  anxious  to  get  as  large  an  allot- 
ment as  he  could  into  his  own  hands, 
and  that  he  had  been  for  ever  up  towards 
the  rectory,  but  perhaps  not  always  on 
the  allotment  business.  He  was  natu- 
rally a  self-reliant,  shrewd  fellow,  and 
felt  that  if  he  could  put  his  hand  on 
three  or  four  acres  of  land,  he  could 
soon  make  himself  independent  of  the 
farmers.  He  knew  that  at  harvest-times, 
and  whenever  there  was  a  pinch  for  good 
labourers,  they  would  be  glad  enough  to 
have  him ;  while  at  other  times,  with  a 
few  acres  of  his  own,  he  would  be  his 
own  master,  and  could  do  much  better 


for  himself.  So  he  had  put  his  name 
down  first  on  the  doctor's  list,  taken 
the  largest  lot  he  could  get,  and  worked 
it  so  well,  that  his  crops,  amongst  others, 
had  been  a  sort  of  village-show  last 
harvest-time.  Many  of  the  neighbouring 
allotments  stood  out  in  sad  contrast  to 
those  of  Harry  and  the  more  energetic 
of  the  peasantry,  and  lay  by  the  side  of 
these  latter,  only  half  worked  and  full  of 
weeds,  and  the  rent  was  never  ready.  It 
was  worse  than  useless  to  let  matters  go 
on  thus,  and  the  question  arose,  what 
was  to  be  done  with  the  neglected  lots. 
Harry,  and  all  the  men  like  him,  applied 
at  once  for  them;  and  their  eagerness  to 
get  them  had  roused  some  natural  jea- 
lousy amongst  the  farmers,  who  began 
to  foresee  that  the  new  system  might 
shortly  leave  them  with  none  but  the 
worst  labourers.  So  the  vestry  had 
pressed  on  the  doctor,  as  Dame  Win- 
burn  said,  not  to  let  any  man  have  more 
than  an  acre,  or  an  acre  and  a  half ;  and 
the  well-meaning,  easy-going,  invalid  old 
man  couldn't  make  up  his  mind  what 
to  do.  So  here  was  May  come  again, 
and  the  neglected  lots  were  still  in  the 
nominal  occupation  of  the  idlers.  The 
doctor  got  no  rent,  and  was  annoyed  at 
the  partial  failure  of  a  scheme  which  he 
had  not  indeed  originated,  but  for  which 
he  had  taken  much  credit  to  himself. 
The  negligent  occupiers  grumbled  that 
they  were  not  allowed  a  drawback  for 
manure,  and  that  no  pigstyes  were  put 
up  for  them.  "  'Twas  allers  understood 
so,"  they  maintained,  "  and  they'd  never 
ha'  took  to  the  lots  but  for  that."  The 
good  men  grumbled  that  it  would  be  too 
late  now  for  them  to  do  more  than  clean 
the  lots  of  weeds  this  year.  The  farmers 
grumbled  that  it  was  always  understood 
no  man  should  have  more  than  one  lot. 
The  poor  rector  had  led  his  flock  into  a 
miry  place  with  a  vengeance.  People 
who  cannot  ntake  up  their  minds  breed 
trouble  in  other  places  besides  country 
villages.  However  quiet  and  out-of-the- 
way  the  place  may  be,  there  is  always 
some  quasi  public  topic  which  stands,  to 
the  rural  Englishman,  in  the  place  of 
treaty,  or  budget,  or  reform-bill.  So  the 
great  allotment  question,  for  the  time, 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


was  that  which  exercised  the  minds  of 
the  inhabitants  of  Englebourn ;  and  until 
lately  no  one  had  taken  a  keener  interest 
in  it  than  Harry  Winburn.  But  that 
interest  had  now  much  abated,  and  so 
Harry  looked  through  the  cottage-door, 
instead  of  answering  his  mother. 

"  "Tis  my  belief  as  you  med  amost  hev 
it  for  the  axin',"  Dame  Winburn  began 
again,  when  she  found  that  he  would  not 
re-open  the  subject  himself.  " The  young 
missus  said  as  much  to  me  herself  last 
night.  Ah !  to  be  sure,  things  'd  go 
better  if  she  had  the  guidin  on  'em." 

"  I'm  not  going  after  it  any  more, 
mother.  We  can  keep  the  bits  o'  sticks 
here  together  without  it  while  you  be 
alive  ;  and  if  anything  was  to  happen  to 
you,  I  don't  think  I  should  stay  in  these 
parts.  But  it  don't  matter  what  becomes 
o'  me ;  I  can  earn  a  livelihood  any- 
where." 

Dame  Winburn  paused  a  moment, 
before  answering,  to  subdue  her  vexa- 
tion, and  then  said,  "  How  can  'ee  let 
hankerin'  arter  a  lass  take  the  heart  out 
o  thee  s6  ?  Hold  up  thy  head,  and  act 
a  bit  measterful.  The  more  thou  makest 
o'  thyself,  the  more  like  thou  art  to 
win." 

"  Did  you  hear  ought  of  her,  mother, 
last  night1?"  replied  Harry,  taking  ad- 
vantage of  this  ungracious  opening  to 
speak  of  the  subject  which  was  upper- 
most in  his  mind. 

"  I  heered  she  wur  going  on  well," 
said  his  mother. 

"  No  likelihood  of  her  comin'  home?" 

"Not  as  I  could  make  out.      Why, 

she  hevn't  been  gone  not  four  months. 

Now,  do'ee  pluck  up  a  bit,  Harry ;  and 

be  more  like  thyself." 

"  Why,  mother,  I've  not  missed  a 
day's  work  since  Christmas  ;  so  there 
ain't  much  to  find  fault  with." 

"  Nay,  Harry,  'tisn't  thy  work.  Thou 
wert  always  good  at  thy  work,  praise 
God.  Thou'rt  thy  father's  own  son  for 
that.  But  thou  dostn't  keep  about  like, 
and  take  thy  place  wi'  the  lave  on  'em 
since  Christmas.  Thou  look'st  hagged 
at  times,  and  folk  '11  see  it,  and  talk 
about  thee  afore  long." 

"  Let  'em  talk.     I  mind  their  talk  no 


more  than  last  year's  wind,"  said  Harry 
abruptty. 

"  But  thy  old  mother  does,"  she  said, 
looking  at  him  with  eyes  full  of  pride 
and  love ;  and  so  Harry,  who  was  a  right 
good  son,  began  to  inquire  what  it  was 
which'  was  specially  weighing  on  his 
mother's  mind,  determined  to  do  any- 
thing in  reason  to  replace  her  on  the 
little  harmless  social  pinnacle  from 
which  she  was  wont  to  look  down  on  all 
the  other  mothers  and  sons  of  the  parish. 
He  soon  found  out  that  her  present 
grievance  arose  from  his  having  neglected 
his  place  as  ringer  of  the  heavy  bell  in 
the  village  peal  on  the  two  preceding 
Sundays ;  and,  as  this  post  was  in  some 
sort  corresponding  to  stroke  of  the 
boat  at  Oxford,  her  anxiety  was  reason- 
able enough.  So  Harry  promised  to  go 
to  ringing  in  good  time  that  morning, 
and  then  set  about  little  odds  and  ends 
of  jobs  till  it  would  be  time  to  start. 
Dame  Winburn  went  to  her  cooking 
and  other  household  duties,  which  were 
pretty  well  got  under  when  her  son 
took  his  hat  and  started  for  the  belfry. 
She  stood  at  the  door  with  a  half-peeled 
potato  in  one  hand,  shading  her  eyes 
with  the  other,  as  she  watched  him 
striding  along  the  raised  footpath  under 
the  elms,  when  the  sound  of  light  foot- 
steps and  pleasant  voices  coming  up 
from  the  other  direction  made  her  turn 
round,  and  drop  a  curtsey  as  the  rector's 
daughter  and  another  y^oung  lady  stopped 
at  her  door. 

"  Good  morning,  Betty,"  said  the 
former;  "here's  a  bright  Sunday  morning 
at  last,  isn't  it  ? " 

"  'Tis  indeed,  miss  ;  but  where  hev'ee 
been  to  ? " 

"  Oh,  we've  only  been  for  a  little 
walk  before  school-time.  This  is  my 
cousin,  Betty.  She  hasn't  been  at 
Englebourn  since  she  was  quite  a  child ; 
so  I've  been  taking  her  to  the  Hawk's 
Lynch  to  see  our  view." 

"And  you  can't  think  how  I  have 
enjoyed  it,"  said  her  cousin  ;  "  it  is  so 
still  and  beautiful." 

"  I've  heer'd  say  as  there  ain't  no  such 
a  place  for  thretty  mile  round,"  said 
Betty  proudly.  "  But  do  'ee  come  in, 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


61 


tho',  and  sit'ee  down  a  bit,"  she  added, 
bitstling  inside  her  door,  and  beginning 
to  rub  down  a  chair  with  her  apron  ; 
"  'tis  a  smart  step  for  gentlefolk  to  walk 
afore  church."  Betty's  notions  of  the 
walking  powers  of  gentlefolk  were  very 
limited. 

"No,  thank  you,  we  must  be  getting 
on,"  said  Miss  Winter ;  "  but  how  lovely 
your  flowers  are.  Look,  Mary,  did  you 
ever  see  such  double  pansies?  We've 
nothing  like  them  at  the  rectory." 

"  Do'ee  take  some,"  said  Betty,  emerg- 
ing again,  and  beginning  to  pluck  a 
handful  of  her  finest  flowers ;  "  'tis  all 
our  Harry's  doing ;  he's  mazin  partickler 
about  seeds." 

"  He  seems  to  make  everything  thrive, 
Betty.  There,  that's  plenty,  thank  you. 
We  won't  take  many,  for  fear  they  should 
fade  before  church  is  over." 

"  Oh,  dont'ee  be  afeard,  there's  plenty 
more  ;  and  you  be  as  welcom  as  the 
day." 

Betty  never  said  a  truer  word  ;  she 
was  one  of  the  real  open-handed  sort, 
who  are  found  mostly  amongst  those 
who  have  the  least  to  give.  They  or 
any  one  else  were  welcome  to  the  best 
she  had. 

So  the  young  ladies  took  the  flowers, 
and  passed  on  towards  the  Sunday- 
school 

The  rector's  daughter  might  have 
been  a  year  or  so  older  than  her  com- 
panion ;  she  looked  more.  Her  position 
in  the  village  had  been  one  of  much 
anxiety,  and  she  was  fast  getting  an  old 
head  on  young  shoulders.  The  other 
young  lady  was  a  slip  of  a  girl  just 
coming  out ;  in  fact,  this  was  the  first 
visit  which  she  had  ever  paid  out  of 
leading  strings.  She  had  lived  in  a 
happy  home,  where  she  had  always  been 
trusted  and  loved,  and  perhaps  a  thought 
too  much  petted. 

There  are  some  natures  which  attract 
petting  ;  .you  can't  help  doing  your  best 
to  spoil  them  in  this  way,  and  it  is  satis- 
factory therefore  to  know  (as  the  fact  is) 
that  they  are  just  the  ones  which  cannot 
be  so  spoilt. 

Miss  Mary  was  one  of  these.  Trust- 
ful, for  she  had  never  been  tricked; 


fearless,  for  she  had  never  been  cowed ; 
pure  and  bright  as  the  Englebourn  brook 
at  fifty  yards  from  its  parent  spring  in 
the  chalk,  for  she  had  a  pure  and  bright 
nature,  and  had  come  in  contact  as  yet 
with  nothing  which  could  soil  or  cast  a 
shadow !  What  wonder  that  her  life 
gave  forth  light  and  music  as  it  glided 
on,  and  that  every  one  who  knew  her 
was  eager  to  have  her  with  them,  to 
warm  themselves  in  the  light  and  rejoice 
in  the  music. 

Besides  all  her  other  attractions,  or  in 
consequence  of  them  for  anything  I 
know,^  she  was  one  of  the  merriest 
young'  women  in  the  world,  always 
ready  to  bubble  over  and  break  out 
into  clear  laughter  on  the  slightest  pro- 
vocation. And  provocation  had  not 
been  wanting  during  the  last  two  days 
which  she  had  spent  with  her  cousin. 
As  usual,  she  had  brought  sunshine 
with  her,  and  the  old  doctor  had  half- 
forgotten  his  numerous  complaints  and 
grievances  for  the  time.  So  the  cloud, 
which  generally  hung  over  the  house, 
had  been  partially  lifted,  and  Mary, 
knowing  and  suspecting  nothing  of  the 
dark  side  of  life  at  Englebourn  rectory, 
rallied  her  cousin  on  her  gravity,  and 
laughed  till  she  cried  at  the  queer 
ways  and  talk  of  the  people  about  the 
place. 

As  soon  as  they  were  out  of  hearing 
of  Dame  Winburn,  Mary  began — 

"Well,  Katie,  I  can't  say  that  you 
have  mended  your  case  at  all." 

"  Surely  you  can't  deny  that  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  character  in  Betty's  face?" 
said  Miss  Winter. 

"  Oh,  plenty  of  character :  all  your 
people,  as  soon  as  they  begin  to  stiffen 
a  little  and  get  wrinkles,  seem  to  be  full 
of.  character,  and  I  enjoy  it  much  more 
than  beauty ;  but  we  were  talking  about 
beauty,  you  know." 

"  Betty's  son  is  the  handsomest  young 
man  in  the  parish,"  said  Miss  Winter ; 
"  and  I  must  say  I  don't  think  you 
could  find  a  better-looking  one  any- 
where." 

"  Then  I  can't  have  seen  him." 

"Indeed  you  have;  I  pointed  him 
out  to  you  at  the  post-office  yesterday. 


62 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


Don't  you  remember?  he  was  waiting 
for  a  letter." 

"  Oh,  yes  !  now  I  remember.  "Well, 
he  was  better  than  most.  But  the  faces 
of  your  young  people  in  general  are  not 
interesting — I  don't  mean  the  children, 
but  the  young  men  and  women — and 
they  are  awkward  and  clownish  in  their 
manners,  without  the  quaintness  of  the 
elder  generation,  who  are  the  funniest 
old  dears  in  the  world." 

"They  will  all  be  quaint  enough  as 
they  get  older.  You  must  remember 
the  sort  of  life  they  lead.  They  get 
their  notions  very  slowly,  and  they  must 
have  notions  in  their  heads  before  they 
can  show  them  on  their  faces." 

"  Well,  your  Betty's  son  looked  as  if 
he  had  a  notion  of  hanging  himself 
yesterday." 

"It's  no  laughing  matter,  Maiy.  I 
hear  he  is  desperately  in  love." 

"Poor  fellow!  that  makes  a  differ- 
ence, of  course.  I  hope  he  won't  carry 
out  his  notion.  Who  is  it,  do  you 
know  ?  Do  tell  me  all  about  it." 

"  Our  gardener's  daughter,  I  believe. 
Of  course  I  never  meddle  with  these 
matters,  but  one  can't  help  hearing  the 
servants'  gossip.  I  think  it  likely  to  be 
true,  for  he  was  about  OUT  premises  at 
all  sorts  of  times  until  lately,  and  I 
never  see  him  now  that  she  is  away." 

"  Is  she  pretty  ? "  said  Mary,  who  was 
getting  interested. 

"  Yes,  she  is  our  belle.  In  fact,  they 
are  the  two  beauties  of  the  parish." 

"  Fancy  that  cross-grained  old  Simon 
having  a  pretty  daughter.  Oh,  Katie, 
look  here,  who  is  this  figure  of  fun  ?  " 

The  figure  of  fun  was  a  middle-aged 
man  of  small  stature,  and  very  bandy- 
legged, dressed  in  a  blue  coat  and  brass 
buttons,  and  carrying  a  great  bass-viol 
bigger  than  himself,  in  a  rough  baize 
cover.  He  came  out  of  a  footpath  into 
the  road  just  before  them,  and  on  seeing 
them  touched  his  hat  to  Miss  Winter, 
and  then  fidgeted  along  with  his  load, 
and  jerked  his  head  hi  a  deprecatory 
manner  away  from  them  as  he  walked 
on,  with  the  sort  of  lopk  and  action 
which  a  favourite  terrier  uses  when  his 
master  holds  out  a  lighted  cigar  to  his 


nose.  He  was  the  village  tailor  and 
constable,  also  the  principal  performer 
in  the  church-music  which  obtained  in 
Englebourn.  In  the  latter  capacity  he 
had  of  late  come  into  collision  with  Miss 
Winter.  For  this  was  another  of  the 
questions  which  divided  the  parish — 
the  great  church-music  question.  From 
time  immemorial,  at  least  ever  since  the 
gallery  at  the  west  end  had  been  built, 
the  village  psalmody  had  been  in  the 
hands  of  the  occupiers  of  that  Protes- 
tant structure.  In  the  middle  of  the 
front  row  sat  the  musicians,  three  in 
number,  who  played  respectively  a  bass- 
viol,  a  fiddle,  and  a  clarionet.  On  one 
side  of  them  were  two  or  three  young 
women,  who  sang  treble — shrill,  ear- 
piercing  treble, — with  a  strong  '•nasal 
Berkshire  drawl  in  it.  On  the  other 
side  of  the  musicians  sat  the  blacksmith, 
the  wheelwright,  and  other  tradesmen 
of  the  place.  Tradesman  means  in  that 
part  of  the  country  what  we  mean  by 
artizan,  and  these  were  naturally  allied 
more  with  the  labourers,  and  consorted 
with  them.  So  far  as  church-going  was 
concerned,  they  formed  a  sort  of  inde- 
pendent opposition,  sitting  in  the  gal- 
lery, instead  of  in  the  nave,  where  the 
farmers  and  the  two  or  three  principal 
shopkeepers — the  great  landed  and  com- 
mercial interests — regularly  sat  and  slept, 
and  where  the  two  publicans  occupied 
pews,  but  seldom  made  even  the  pre- 
tence of  worshiping. 

The  rest  .of  the  gallery  was  filled  by 
the  able-bodied  male  peasantry.  The 
old  worn-out  men  generally  sat  below 
in  the  free  seats ;  the  women  also,  and 
some  few  boys.  But  the  hearts  of  these 
latter  were  in  the  gallery, — a  seat  on  the 
back  benches  of  which  was  a  sign  that 
they  had  indued  the  toga  virilis,  and 
were  thenceforth  free  from  maternal  and 
pastoral  tutelage  in  the  matter  of  church- 
going.  The  gallery  thus  constituted 
had  gradually  usurped  the  psalmody  as 
their  particular  and  special  portion  of 
the  service  :  they  left  the  clerk  and  the 
school  children,  aided  by  such  of  the 
aristocracy  below  as  cared  to  join,  to  do 
the  responses  ;  but,  when  singing  time 
came,  they  reigned  supreme.  The  slate 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


63 


on  which  the  Psalms  were  announced 
was  hung  out  from  before  the  centre  of 
the  gallery,  and  the  clerk,  leaving  his 
place  under  the  reading  desk,  marched 
up  there  to  give  them  out.  He  took 
this  method  of  preserving  his  consti- 
tutional connexion  with  the  singing, 
knowing  that  otherwise  he  could  not 
have  maintained  the  rightful  position  of 
his  office  in  this  matter.  So  matters 
had  stood  until  shortly  before  the  time 
of  our  story. 

The  present  curate,  however,  backed 
by  Miss  Winter,  had  tried  a  reform. 
He  was  a  quiet  man,  with  a  wife  and 
several  children,  and  small  means.  He 
had  served  in  the  diocese  e,ver  since  he 
had  been  ordained,  in  a  hum-drum  sort 
of  way,  going  where  he  was  sent  for, 
and  performing  his  routine  duties  rea- 
sonably well,  but  without  showing  any 
great  aptitude  for  his  work.  He  had 
little  interest,  and  had  almost  given  up 
expecting  promotion,  which,  he  certainly 
had  done  nothing  particular  to  merit. 
But  there  was  one  point  on  which  he 
was  always  ready  to  go  out  of  his  way, 
and  take  a  little  trouble.  He  was  a 
good  musician,  and  had  formed  choirs 
at  all  his  former  curacies. 

Soon  after  his  arrival,  therefore,  he, 
in  concert  with  Miss  Winter,  had  begun 
to  train  the  children  in  church-music. 
A  small  organ,  which  had  stood  in  a 
passage  in  the  rectory  for  many  years, 
had  been  repaired,  and  appeared  first  at 
the  school  room,  and  at  length  under  the 
gallery  of  the  church ;  and  it  was  an- 
nounced one  week  to  the  party  in  pos- 
session, that,  on  the  next  Sunday,  the 
constituted  authorities  would  take  the 
church-music  into  their  own  hands. 
Then  arose  a  strife,  the  end  of  which 
had  nearly  been  to  send  the  gallery  off 
in  a  body,  headed  by  the  offended  bass- 
viol,  to  the  small  red-brick  little  Bethel 
at  the  other  end  of  the  village.  For- 
tunately the  curate  had  too  much  good 
sense  to  drive  matters  to  extremities, 
and  so  alienate  the  parish  constable,  and 
a  large  part  of  his  flock,  though  he  had 
not  tact  or  energy  enough  to  bring  them 
round  to  his  own  views.  So  a  compro- 
mise was  come -to;  and  the  curate's  choir 


were  allowed  to  chant  the  Psalms  and 
Canticles,  which  had  always  been  read 
before,  while  the  gallery  remained  trium- 
phant masters  of  the  regular  Psalms. 

My  readers  will  now  understand  why 
Miss  Winter's  salutation  to  the  musical 
Constable  was  not  so  cordial  as  it  was  to 
the  other  villagers  whom  they  had  come 
across  previously. 

Indeed,  Miss  Winter,  though  she  ac- 
knowledged the  Constable's  salutation, 
did  not  seem  inclined  to  encourage  him 
to  accompany  them,  and  talk  his  mind 
out,  although  he  was  going  the  same 
way  with  them ;  and,  instead  of  draw- 
ing him  out,  as  was  her  wont  in  such 
cases,  went  on  talking  herself  to  her 
cousin. 

The  little  man  walked  out  in  the 
road,  evidently  in  trouble  of  mind.  He 
did  not  like  to  drop  behind  or  go  ahead 
without  some  further  remark  from  Miss 
Winter,  and  yet  could  not  screw  up  his 
courage  to  the  point  of  opening  the 
conversation  himself.  '  So  he  ambled  on 
alongside  the  footpath  on  which  they 
were  walking,  showing  his  discomfort 
by  a  twist  of  his  neck  every  few  seconds 
(as  though  he  were  nodding  at  them 
with  the  side  of  his  head)  and  perpetual 
shiftings  of  his  bass  viol,  and  hunching 
up  of  one  shoulder. 

The  conversation  of  the  young  ladies 
under  these  circumstances  was  of  course 
forced;  and  Miss  Mary,  though  infi- 
nitely delighted  at  the  meeting,  soon 
began  to  pity  their  involuntary  com- 
panion. She  was  full  of  the  sensitive 
instinct  which  the  best  sort  of  women 
have  to  such  a  marvellous  extent,  and 
which  tells  them  at  once  and  infallibly 
if  any  one  in  their  company  has  even  a 
creased  rose-leaf  next  their  moral  skin. 

Before  they  had  walked  a  hundred 
yards  she  was  interceding  for  the  rebel- 
lious Constable. 

"  Katie,"  she  said  softly,  in  French, 
"do  speak 'to  him.  The  poor  man  is 
frightfully  uncomfortable." 

"  It  serves  him  right,"  answered  Miss 
Winter,  in  the  same  language;  "you 
don't  know  how  impertinent  he  was  the 
other  day  to  Mr.  Walker.  And  he  won't 
give  way  on  the  least  point,  and  leads 


64 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


the  rest  of  the  old  singers,  and  makes 
them  as  stubborn  as  himself." 

"  But  do  look  how  he  is  winking  and 
jerking  his  head  at  you.  You  really 
mustn't  be  so  cruel  to  him,  Katie.  I 
shall  have  to  begin  talking  to  him  if 
you  don't." 

Thus  urged,  Miss  Winter  opened  the 
conversation  by  asking  after  his  wife, 
and,  when  she  had  ascertained  "  that  his 
missus  wur  pretty  middlin,"  made  some 
other  common-place  remark,  and  relapsed 
into  silence.  By  the  help  of  Mary, 
however,  a  sort  of  disjointed  dialogue 
was  kept  up  till  they  came  to  the  gate 
•which  led  up  to  the  school,  into  which 
the  children  were  trooping  by  twos  and 
threes.  Here  the  ladies  turned  in,  and 
were  going  up  the  walk,  towards  the 
school  door,  when  the  Constable  sum- 
moned up  courage  to  speak  on  the 
matter  which  was  troubling  him,  and, 
resting  the  bass  viol  carefully  on  his 
right  foot,  called  out  after  them, 

"  Oh,  please  marrn  !     Miss  Winter  ! " 

"  Well,"  she  said  quietly,  turning 
round,  "  what  do  you  wish  to  say  1 " 

"Wy,  please  marm,  I  hopes  as  you 
don't  think  I  be  any  ways  unked  'bout 
this  here  quire-singin  as  they  calls  it — 
I'm  sartin  you  knows  as  there  aint 
amost  nothing  I  wouldn't  do  to  please 
ee." 

"  Well,  you  know  how  to  do  it  very 
easily,"  she  said  when  he  paused.  "I 
don't  ask  you  even  to  give  up  your 
music  and  try  to  work  with  us,  though 
I  think  you  might  have  done  that.  I 
only  ask  you  to  use  some  psalms  and 
tunes  which  are  fit  to  be  used  in  a 
church." 

"To  be  shure  us  ooL  'Taint  we  as 
wants  no  new-fangled  tunes ;  them  as 
we  sings  be  aal  owld  ones  as  ha'  been 
used  in  our  church  ever  since  I  can 
mind.  But  you  only  choose  thaay  as 
you  likes  out  o'  the  book,  and  we  be 
ready  to  kep  to  thaay." 

"I  think  Mr.  Walker  made  a  selec- 
tion for  you  some  weeks  ago,"  said  Miss 
Winter;  "did  not  he?" 

"  'Ees,  but  'tis  narra  mossel  o'  use  for 
we  to  try  his  'goriunis  and  sich  like.  I 
hopes  you  wunt  be  offended  wi'  me, 


miss,  for  I  be  telling  nought  but  truth." 
He  spoke  louder  as  they  got  nearer  to  the 
school  door,  and,  as  they  were  opening  it, 
shouted  his  last  shot  after  them,  "  'Tis 
na  good  to  try  thaay  tunes  o'  his'n,  miss. 
When  u§  praises  God,  us  likes  to  praise 
un  joyful." 

"There,  you  hear  that,  Mary,"  said 
Miss  Winter.  "You'll  soon  begin  to 
see  why  I  look  grave.  There  never  was 
such  a  hard  parish  to  manage.  Nobody 
will  do  what  they  ought.  I  never  can 
get  them  to  do  anything.  Perhaps  we 
may  manage  to  teach  the  children  better, 
that's  my  only  comfort." 

"  But,  Katie  dear,  what  do  the  poor- 
things  sing  1  Psalms,  I  hope." 

"  Oh  yes,  but  they  choose  all  the  odd 
ones  on  purpose,  I  believe.  Which 
class  will  you  take  1 " 

And  so  the  young  ladies  settled  to 
their  teaching,  and  the  children  in  her 
class  all  fell  in  love  with  Mary  before 
church  time. 

The  bass  viol  proceeded  to  the  church 
and  did  the  usual  rehearsals,  and  gos- 
sipped  with  the  sexton,  to  whom  he 
confided  the  fact  that  the  young  missus 
was  terrible  vexed.  The  bells  soon 
began  to  ring,  and  Widow  Winburn's 
heart  was  glad  as  she  listened  to  the 
full  peal,  and  thought  to  herself  that  it 
was  her  Harry  who  was  making  so 
much  noise  in  the  world,  and  speaking 
to  all  the  neighbourhood.  Then  the 
peal  ceased  as  church-time  drew  near, 
and  the  single  bell  began,  and  the  con- 
gregation came  flocking  in  from  all  sides. 
The  farmers,  letting  then-  wives  and 
children  enter,  gathered  round  the  chief 
porch  and  compared  notes  in  a  pon- 
derous manner  on  crops  and  markets. 
The  labourers  collected  near  the  door  by 
which  the  gallery  was  reached.  All 
the  men  of  the  parish  seemed  to  like 
standing  about  before  church,  though 
poor  Walker,  the  curate,  did  not  appear. 
He  came  up  with  the  school  children 
and  the  young  ladies,  and  in  due 
course  the  bell  stopped  and  the  ser- 
vice began.  There  was  a  very  good  con- 
gregation still  at  Englebourn  ;  the  adult 
generation  had  been  bred  up  in  times 
when  every  decent  person  in  the  parish 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


65 


"went  to  church,  and  the  custom  was 
still  strong,  notwithstanding  the  rector's 
bad  example.  He  scarcely  ever  came 
to  church  himself  in  the  mornings, 
though  his  wheel-chair  might  be  seen 
going  up  and  down  on  the  gravel  before 
his  house  or  on  the  lawn  on  warm  days ; 
and  this  was  one  of  his  daughter's 
greatest  troubles. 

The  little  choir  of  children  sang  ad- 
mirably, led  by  the  schoolmistress,  and 
Miss  Winter  and  the  curate  exchanged 
approving  glances.  They  performed  the 
liveliest  chant  in  their  collection,  that 
the  opposition  might  have  no  cause  to 
complain  of  their  want  of  joyfulness. 
And  in  turn  Miss  Wheeler  was  in  hopes 
that  out  of  deference  to  her  the  usual 
rule  of  selection  in  the  gallery  might 
have  been  modified.  It  was  with  no 
small  annoyance,  therefore,  that,  after 
the  Litany  was  over  and  the  tuning 
finished,  she  heard  the  clerk  give  out 
that  they  would  praise  God  by  singing 
part  of  the  ninety-first  Psalm.  Mary, 
who  was  on  the  tiptoe  of  expectation  as 
to  what  was  coming,  saw  the  curate  give 
a  slight  shrug  with  his  shoulders  and 
lift  of  his  eyebrows  as  he  left  the  read- 
ing-desk, and  in  another  minute  it 
became  a  painful  effort  for  her  to  keep 
from  laughing  as  she  slyly  watched  her 
cousin's  face;  while  the  gallery  sang 
with  vigour  worthy  of  any  cause  or 
occasion — 

"  On  the  old  lion  He  shall  go, 
The  adder  fell  and  long ; 
On  the  young  lion  tread  also, 
With  dragons  stout  and  strong." 

The  trebles  took  up  the  last  line,  and 
repeated — 

"  With  dragons  stout  and  strong  •" 

and  then  the  whole  strength  of  the 
gallery  chorused  again, 

"  With  dra-^rons  stout  and  strong," 

and  the  bass  viol  seemed  to  her  to  pro- 
long the  notes  and  to  gloat  over  them 
as  he  droned  them  out,  looking  tri- 
umphantly at  the  distant  curate.  Mary 
No.  7. — VOL.  ii. 


was  thankful  to  kneel  down  to  compose 
her  face.  The  first  trial  was  the  severe 
one,  and  she  got  through  the  second 
psalm  much  better;  and  by  the  time 
Mr.  Walker  had  plunged  fairly  into  his 
sermon  she  was  a  model  of  propriety 
and  sedateness  again.  But  it  was  to  be 
a  Sunday  of  adventures.  The  sermon 
had  scarcely  begun  when  there  was  a 
stir  down  by  the  door  at  the  west  end, 
and  people  began  to  look  round  and 
whisper.  Presently  a  man  came  softly 
up  and  said  something  to  the  clerk ;  the 
clerk  jumped  up  and  whispered  to 
the  curate,  who  paused  for  a  moment 
with  a  puzzled  look,  and,  instead  of 
finishing  his  sentence,  said  in  a  loud 
voice,  "  Farmer  Grove's  house  is  on 
fire!" 

The  curate  probably  anticipated  the 
effect  of  his  words  ;  in  a  minute  he  was 
the  only  person  left  in  the  church 
except  the  clerk  and  one  or  two  very 
infirm  old  folk.  He  shut  up  and 
pocketed  his  sermon,  and  followed  his 
flock. 

It  proved  luckily  to  be  only  farmer 
Grove's  chimney  and  not  bis  house 
which  was  on  fire.  The  farmhouse  was 
only  two  fields  from  the  village,  and  the 
congregation  rushed  across  there,  Harry 
Winburn  and  two  or  three  of  the  most 
active  young  men  and  boys  leading. 
As  they  entered  the  yard  the  flames 
were  rushing  out  of  the  chimney,  and  any 
moment  the  thatch  might  take  fire. 
Here  was  the  real  danger.  A  ladder 
had  just  been  reared  against  the  chim- 
ney, and,  while  a  frightened  farm-girl 
and  a  carter-boy  held  it  at  the  bottom, 
a  man  was  going  up  it  carrying  a  bucket 
of  water.  It  shook  with  his  weight, 
and  the  top  was  slipping  gradually ,along 
the  face  of  the  chimney,  and  in  another 
moment  would  rest  against  nothing. 
Harry  and  his  companions  saw  the  dan- 
ger at  a  glance,  and  shouted  to  the  man 
to  stand  still  till  they  could  get  to  the 
ladder.  They  rushed  towards  him  with 
the  rush  which  men.  can  only  make 
under  strong  excitement ;  but  the  fore- 
most of  them  caught  a  spoke  with  one 
hand,  and,  before  he  could  steady  it,  the 
top  slipped  clear  of  the  chimney,  and 


66 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


ladder,  man,  and  bucket  came  heavily 
to  the  ground. 

Then  came  a  scene  of  bewildering  con- 
fusion, as  women  and  children  trooped 
into  the  yard—"  Who  was  it  ]  "  "  Was 
he  dead  ? "  "  The  fire  was  catching  the 
thatch."  "The  stables  were  on  fire." 
"Who  done  it?" — all  sorts  of  cries, 
and  all  sorts  of  acts  except  the  right 
ones.  Fortunately,  two  or  three  of  the 
men,  with  heads  on  their  shoulders,  soon 
organized  a  line  for  handing  buckets  ; 
the  flue  was  stopped  below,  and  Harry 
Winburn,  standing  nearly  at  the  top  of 
the  ladder,  which  was  now  safely  planted, 
was  deluging  the  thatch  round  the  chim- 
ney from  the  buckets  handed  up  to  him. 
In  a  few  minutes  he  was  able  to  pour 
water  down  the  chimney  itself,  and  soon 
afterwards  the  whole  affair  was  at  an 
end.  The  farmer's  dinner  was  spoilt, 
but  otherwise  no  damage  had  been  done, 
except  to  the  clothes  of  the  foremost 
men  ;  and  the  only  accident  was  that 
first  fall  from  the  ladder. 

The  man  had  been  carried  out  of  the 
yard  while  the  fire  was  still  burning ; 
so  that  it  was  hardly  known  who  it  was. 
Now,  in  answer  to  their  inquiries,  it 
proved  to  be  old  Simon,  the  rector's 
gardener  and  head  man,  who  had  seen 
the  fire,  and  sent  the  news  to  the  church, 
while  he  himself  went  to  the  spot,  with 
such  result  as  we  have  seen. 

The  surgeon  had  not  yet  seen  him. 
Some  declared  he  was  dead  ;  others,  that 
he  was  sitting  up  at  home,  and  quite 
well  Little  by  little  the  crowd  dis- 
persed to  Sunday's  dinners ;  and,  when 
they  met  again  before  the  afternoon's 
service,  it  was  ascertained  that  Simon 
was  certainly  not  dead,  but  all  else  was 
still  nothing  more  than  rumour.  Public 
opinion  was  much  divided,  some  holding 
that  it  would  go  hard  with  a  man  of  his 
age  and  heft ;  but  the  common  belief 
seemed  to  be  that  he  was  of  that  sort 
"  as'd  take  a  deal  o'  killin,"  and  that  he 
would  be  none  the  worse  for  such  a  fall 
as  that. 

The  two  young  ladies  had  been 
much  shocked  at  the  accident,  and 
had  accompanied  the  hurdle  on  which 
old  Simon  was  carried  to  his  cot- 


tage door;  after  afternoon  service  they 
went  roxind  by  the  cottage  to  inquire. 
The  two  girls  ^knocked  at  the  door, 
which  was  opened  by  his  wife,  who 
dropped  a  curtsey  and  smoothed  down 
her  Sunday  apron  when  she  found  who 
were  her  visitors. 

She  seemed  at  first  a  little  unwilling 
to  let  them  in ;  but  Miss  Winter  pressed 
so  kindly  to  see  her  husband,  and  Mary 
made  such  sympathising  eyes  at  her, 
that  the  old  woman  gave  in,  and  con- 
ducted her  through  the  front  room 
into  that  beyond,  where  the  patient 
lay. 

"  I  hope  as  you'll  excuse  it,  miss,  for 
I  knows  the  place  do  smell  terrible  bad 
of  baccer ;  only  my  old  man  he  said  as 
how—" 

"  Oh,  never  mind,  we  don't  care  at 
all  about  the  smell  Poor  Simon  !  I'm 
sure  if  it  does  him  any  good,  or  soothes 
the  pain,  I  shall  be  glad  to  buy  him 
some  tobacco  myself." 

The  old  man  was  lying  on  the  bed 
with  his  coat  and  boots  off,  and  a 
worsted  nightcap  of  his  wife's  knitting 
pulled  on  to  his  head.  She  had  tried 
hard  to  get  him  to  go  to  bed  at  once, 
and  take  some  physic,  and  his  present 
costume  and  position  was  the  compro- 
mise. His  back  was  turned  to  them  as 
they  entered,  and  he  was  evidently  in 
pain,  for  he  drew  his  breath  heavily  and 
with  difficulty,  and  gave  a  sort  of  groan 
at  every  respiration.  He  did  not  seem 
to  notice  their  entrance ;  so  his  wife 
touched  him  on  the  shoulder,  and  said, 
"  Simon,  here's  the  young  ladies  come 
to  see  how  you  be." 

Simon  turned  himself  round,  and 
winced  and  groaned  as  he  pulled  off 
his  nightcap  in  token  of  respect 

"  We  didn't  like  to  go  home  without 
coming  to  see  how  you  were,  Simon. 
Has  the  doctor  been  1 "  . 

"Oh,  yes,  thank'ee,  miss.  He've  a 
been  and  feel'd  un  all  over,  and  listened 
at  the  chest  on  un,"  said  his  wife. 

"  And  what  did  he  say  1 " 

"A  zem'd  to  zay  as  there  wur  no 
bwones  bruk — ugh,  ugh,"  put  in  Simon, 
who  spoke  his  native  tongue  with  a 
buzz,  imported  from  farther  west,  "  but 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


67 


a  couldn't  zay  wether  or  no  there  warn't 
som  infarnal  injury — " 

"  Etarnal,  Simon,  etarnal !  "  inter- 
rupted his  wife  ;  "  how  canst  use  such 
words  afore  the  young  ladies  ? " 

"  I  tell'ee,  wife,  as  'twur  infarnal — 
ugh,  ugh,"  retorted  the  gardener. 

"  Internal  injury  1 "  suggested  Miss 
Winter.  "I'm  very  sorry  to  hear  it." 

"  Zummat  inside  o'  me  like,  as  Avur 
got  out  o'  place,"  explained  Simon; 
"and  I  thenks  a  must  be  near  about 
the  mark,  for  I  feels  mortal  bad  here 
when  I  tries  to  move ; "  and  he  put  his 
hand  on  his  side.  "  Hows'  m'  ever,  as 
there's  no  bwones  bruk,  I  hopes  to  be 
about  to-morrow  mornin',  please  the 
Lord — ugh,  ugh  !  " 

"You  mustn't  think  of  it,  Simon," 
said  Miss  Winter.  "  You  must  be  quite 
quiet  for  a  week,  at  least,  till  you  get 
rid  of  this  pain." 

"So  I  tells  un,  Miss  Winter,"  put 
in  the  wife.  "  You  hear  what  the  young 
missus  says,  Simon  ? " 

"  And  wut's  to  happen  Tiny  1 "  said 
the  contumacious  Simon  scornfully. 
"Her'll  cast  her  calf,  and  me  not  by. 
Her's  calving  may  be  this  minut.  Tiny^s 
time  wur  up,  miss,  two  days  back,  and 
her's  never  no  gurt  while  arter  her 
time." 

"  She  will  do  very  well,  I  dare  say," 
said  Miss  Winter.  "  One  of  the  men 
can  look  after  her." 

The  notion  of  any  one  else  attending 
Tiny  in  her  interesting  situation  seemed 
to  excite  Simon  beyond  bearing,  for  he 
raised  himself  on  one  elbow,  and  was 
about  to  make  a  demonstration  with  his 
other  hand,  when  the  pain  seized  him 
again,  and  he  sank  back  groaning. 

"There,  you  see,  Simon,  you  can't 
move  without  pain.  You  must  be  quiet 
till  you  have  seen  the  doctor  again." 

"  There's  the  red  spider  out  along  the 
south  wall,  ugh,  ugh,"  persisted  Simon, 
without  seeming  to  hear  her ;  "  and 
your  new  g'raniums  a'most  covered  wi' 
blight.  I  wur  a  tacklin'  one  on  'em 
just  afore  you  cum  in." 


Following  the  direction  indicated  by 
his  nod,  the  girls  _  became  aware  of  a 
plant  by  his  bed-side,  which  he  had 
been  fumigating,  for  his  pipe  was  lean- 
ing against  the  flower-pot  in  which  it 
stood. 

"  He  wouldn't  lie  still  nohow,  miss," 
explained  his  wife,  "till  I  went  and 
fetched  un  in  a  pipe  and  one  o'  thaay 
plants  from  the  greenhouse." 

"  It  was  very  thoughtful  of  you, 
Simon,"  said  Miss  Winter  ;  "  you 
know  how  much  I  prize  these  new 
plants  :  but  we  will  manage  them ;  and 
you  mustn't  think  of  these  things  now. 
You  have  had  a  wonderful  escape  to-day 
for  a  man  of  your  age.  I  hope  we  shall 
find  that  there  is  nothing  much  the 
matter  with  you  after  a  few  days,  but 
you  might  have  been  killed,  you  know. 
You  ought  to  be  very  thankful  to  God 
that  you  were  not  killed  in  that  fall." 

"So  I  be,  miss,   werry  thankful  to 

un — ugh,  ugh; — and   if  it   plaase  the 

Lord  to  spare   my  life  till   to-morrow 

mornin', — ugh,  ugh, — we'll  smoke  them 

,  cussed  insects." 

This  last  retort  of  the  incorrigible 
Simon  on  her  cousin's  attempt,  as  the 
rector's  daughter,  to  improve  the  occa- 
sion, was  too  much  for  Miss  Mary,  and 
she  slipped  out  of  the  room  lest  she 
should  bring  disgrace  on  herself  by  an 
explosion  of  laughter.  She  was  joined 
by  her  cousin  in  another  minute,  and 
the  two  walked  together  towards  the 
rectory. 

"I  hope  you  were  not  faint,  dear, 
with  that  close  room,  smelling  of 
smoke  ? " 

"  Oh,  dear  no ;  to  tell  you  the  truth, 
I  was  only  afraid  of  laughing  at  your 
quaint  old  patient.  What  a  rugged  old 
dear  it  is.  I  hope  he  isn't  much  hurt." 

"  I  hope  not,  indeed ;  for  he  is  the 
most  honest,  faithful  old  servant  in  the 
world,  but  so  obstinate.  He  never  will 
go  to  church  on  Sunday  mornings ;  and, 
when  I  speak  to  him  about  it,  he  says 
papa  doesn't  go,  which  is  very  wrong 
and  impertinent  of  him." 


To  be  continued. 


68 


THE  PAPAL  EXCOMMUNICATION:   A  DIALOGUE. 


A .  I  HAVE  been  talking  with  our  friend 

G ,   the   Eoman   Catholic   convert, 

about  the  Excommunication.    It  is  all  in 
vain.   He  will  not  see  that  the  nineteenth 
century  is  different  from  the  thirteenth. 

B.  In  what  respects   do  you  think 
them  different  ? 

A.  Looking  at  facts,  not  at  theories — 
not  determining  which  is  worst  or  which 
is   best — I   should    say  that  invisible 
terrors  had  a  power  for  the  one  which 
they  have  not  for  the  other. 

B.  On  what  facts  would  you  rest  that 
opinion  ? 

A.  They  are  obvious  enough,  I  should 

suppose.    That  G should  be  unable 

to  see  them  causes   me  little  surprise. 
Facts  were  always  coloured  for  him  by 
the  fancy  which  looked  at  them.  What- 
ever might  be  his  prevailing  notions  at 
the  time  determined — not  his  judgment 
of  the   events   which   he   read  of,    or 
which  were    passing  before   him, — but 
their  very  form  and  nature. 

B.  I  am  afraid  G is  not  a  very 

exceptional  observer.    The  siccum  lumen 
is  a  rare  gift.      Let  us  ask  for  it,  but 
not  be  sure  that  we  have  attained  it. 
What  facts  in  the  thirteenth   century 
were  you  thinking  of  ? 

A.  I  know  that,  if  I  used  any  general 
phrase,  such  as  "  the  mediaeval  period," 
or  "  the  dark  ages,"  you  would  take  me 
to  task ;  so  I  tried  to  be  definite. 

B.  Let  us  be  a  little  more  definite 
still.     You  would  not  complain  of  me, 
would  you,  if  I  fixed  on  the  first  sixteen 
years  of  that  century  for  a  comparison 
with  our  own  ? 

A.  Certainly    not     I    should    have 
fancied  that  /  was  unfair  in  selecting 
the  palmiest  days  of  the  Papacy,  the 
glorious  era  of  Innocent  III.,  for  the  sup- 
port of  my  position. 

B.  I  willingly  accept  it.     And,    to 
make  the  trial  fair,   let  the   scene  be 
laid  in  Italy.     What   say  you  of  the 
relations  between  Innocent  and  Venice 
as  illustrated  by  the  story  of  the  fourth 
Crusade  ? 


A.  No   doubt  the    great    Republic, 
having  fixed  its  eyes  on  its  old  Greek 
enemy,  showed  a  strange  indifference  to 
the  thunders  of  the  Vatican,  and  pre- 
ferred the  spoils   of  Constantinople  to 
those  of  Jerusalem.  One  must  always  make 
exceptions  for  commercial  cupidity  and 
ambition.     There  is,  I  confess,  a  link 
between  the  two  ages.    The  same  causes 
produce  the  same  effects.     England  has 
inherited  the  Venetian   scorn  for   the 
invisible. 

B.  The  sea  I  should  have  thought 
was  not  exactly  the  school  for  learning 
that   scorn.     The  mystery  of  invisible 
force,  its  victory  and  its  terrors,  is  sug- 
gested to  the  sailor  and  the  trader,  almost 
as  strikingly  as  to  the  landsman. 

A.  You  are  playing  with  the  words 
"  invisible  force"  and  "invisible  terrors." 
What  have  the  winds  and  waves,  what 
have  men's  triumphs  over  them,  to  do 
with  Excommunication  ? 

B.  I    might    respond,    What    have 
cupidity  and  ambition  to  do  with  Excom- 
munication?    Those   also  are  invisible 
forces.     You  may  hold  that  they  enable 
Nations  to  despise  the  vague  and  unreal. 
I  think  they  cause  Nations  to  tremble 
before    the     vague    and    unreal      On 
the  other  hand,  whatever  there   is  in 
the  sailor  or  merchant  which  does  not 
merely  grasp   at   pelf  and   dominion; 
whatever  shows  him  his  subjection  to 
eternal  laws ;  whatever  makes  him  con- 
scious of  human  strength  and  weakness ; 
whatever  teaches  him  to  recognise  a  fel- 
lowship which  seas  and  difference  of  cus- 
toms do  not  break  ;  this  lifts  him  above 
the  mere  show  of  invisible  authority  by 
giving  him  an  apprehension  of  its  reality. 

A.  The  Merchant  City,  whatever  may 
be  the  reason,  was  the  one  which  could 
in  that  day  defy  the  terrors  of  the 
Vatican,  could  compel  the  Latin  Church 
to  accept  Constantinople  as  a  boon  from 
the  very  hands  which  she  had  pronounced 
accursed  for  touching  it.  What  an 
opposite  spectacle  do  King  John  and 
England  present ! 


The  Papal  Excommunication. 


69 


B.  How,  opposite  1  England  in  the 
thirteenth  century  trembled  when  graves 
were  left  unclosed,  children  unbaptized, 
couples  unmarried.  England  in  the 
nineteenth  century  could  bear  such  spec- 
tacles no  better.  But  if  a  majority  of 
the  Clergy  yielded  to  the  commands  of 
him  who  issued  the  Interdict — if  John 
with  his  weight  of  merited  unpopularity 
shook  with  good  reason  before  the  decree 
which  permitted  any  subject  whose 
coffers  he  had  robbed,  or  whose  wife  he 
had  defiled,  to  strike  him  dead  ;  was  not 
Magna  Charta  won  in  defiance  of  the 
curse  which  was  launched  against  those 
who  touched  the  Pope's  vassal  1  did  not 
Stephen  Langton  teach  the  nobles  to 
express  their  sacrilegious  claims,  and  to 
word  them  so  that  serfs  should  after- 
wards be  the  better  for  them  ?  Was  there 
no  mockery  of  Excommunication  in  the 
thirteenth  century  1  Did  the  mockery 
only  come  from  men  enlightened  by 
commerce  1  Did  it  not  come  from  those 
who  felt  that  they  were  called  by  God 
to  assert  their  rights  as  members  of  a 
Nation  1  Did  not  the  priests  who  had 
received  their  nomination  from  Innocent, 
bear  their  full  part  in  it  ? 

A.  I  do  not  know  that  G could 

be  much  better  pleased  with  your  read- 
ing of  history  than  with  mine.    Goneril 
leaves  poor  Lear  his  fifty  knights  in  the 
good  old  armour ;  Began  will  not  even 
allow  him  these. 

B.  I  do  not  think  the  solemn  lessons 
of  the  past  must  be  expanded  or  con- 
tracted to  suit  the  convenience  of  Pro- 
testant or  Romanist   commentators,    to 
flatter  the  prejudices  of  the  idolater  of 
the  Middle  Ages  or  of  the  Victorian 
Age.     We  want  these  lessons   for  our 
warning  and  our  encouragement.     Woe 
to  us  if  we  twist 'them  so  that  they  shall 
be  useless   for  either  purpose !      If  I 
think  you  conceded  too  much  to  your 
ultramontane  friend  in  admitting  that 
an  Excommunication  was  sure    to   be 
effectual  six  centuries  ago,  I  think  you 
were  unjust  to  him  in  saying  that  it 
must  be  ineffectual  now. 

A.  You  do  not  mean  that  you  think 
the  present  one  will  be  effectual  in 
Romagna,  in  Tuscany,  in  Piedmont  ? 


B.  I  hope  and  trust  not.  But  my 
trust  and  hope  rest  upon  another  ground 
than  the  notion  that  Italians  or  English- 
men of  this  day  are  made  of  different 
stuff  from  their  forefathers.  I  want 
them  both  to  believe  that  they  are 
made  of  the  same  stuff.  I  can  look 
for  no  good  to  one  or  the  other  if  they 
lose  that  faith. 

A.  And  you  honestly  hold  that  men 
living  amidst  the  noise  of  spinning-jen- 
nies and  the  endless  movement  of  print- 
ing-presses can  be  affected  by  invisible 
terrors  as  those  were  who  lived  when 
women  were  thrown  into  the  water  to 
see  whether  their  floating  would  con- 
vict them  of  witchcraft  ? 

B.  I  should  have  thought  the  print- 
ing-press had  brought  us  much  more 
within  the  scope  and  sense  of  invisible 
agencies  than  the  ordeal  ever  could  have 
brought  our  ancestors. 

A.  How? 

B.  The  woman  is  visible  ;  the  water 
or  hot  iron  is  visible  ;  the  sentence  of 
death  is  visible.     From  Printing  House 
Square  there  issues  a  power  which  goes 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
land.     No  one  can  tell  whence  it  pro- 
ceeds or  what  it  is.     But  it  is  felt  in 
every  limb  of  the  English  body  politic ; 
whether  it  is  an  energy  for  health  or  for 
destruction,   it  is  surely  invisible,   in- 
definable, mysterious. 

A.  Again  I  must  ask  you,  what  has 
this  to  do  with  Excommunication  ? 

B.  Again  I   must  answer   you ;    it 
has   everything    to    do    with   Excom- 
munication.    It    is    Excommunication 
which  all  people  in  all  circles,  little  and 
great,  dread.     They  fear  the  awful  sen- 
tence which  may  go  forth  from  their 
circle,  or  from  the  dictator  of  it,  cutting 
them   off  from   its   privileges    and   its 
fellowship.     The  fear  of  public  opinion, 
the  fear  of  newspapers,  is  nothing  else 
than   the  fear  that  from  them  should 
issue  the  decree  of  Excommunication. 
Your    nineteenth    century   is    not  rid 
of  this  fear  in  the  very  least  degree. 
No  one  of  your  English  classes  is  free 
from  it.     Read  any  United  States  news- 
paper, and  see  whether  you  will  escape 
from  it  by  flying  into   that  more  ad- 


70 


The  Papal  Excommunication. 


vanced  state  of  civilization.  De  Toc- 
queville  explained  nearly  thirty  years 
ago  that  that  was  the  very  region  in 
which  social  Excommunication  was  most 
tremendous.. 

A.  But  the  Papal  Excommunication  is 
different  in  kind  from  this  Social 
Excommunication.  One  belongs  to  the 
present  only ;  the  other  to  the  unknown 
future. 

£.  I  do  not  admit  a  difference  in 
kind.  The  Social  Excommunication  is 
altogether  uncertain,  indefinite.  Those 
who  utter  it  do  not  know  exactly  how 
much  they  intend  by  it.  They  admit 
degrees  of  exclusion,  in  some  cases  a 
possibility  of  restoration ;  in  some  utter, 
irremediable  banishment.  How  much 
is  involved  in  that  depends  upon  the 
nature  and  permanence  of  the  society 
itself. 

A.  And,  therefore,  the  Papacy,  assum- 
ing  the   Church   to   be    a    permanent 
society  existing  in  both  worlds — binding 
all  ages,   past,  present,  and  future  to- 
gether— of  necessity  regards  utter  exclu- 
sion from  its  society  as  the  loss  of  every 
blessing  that  men  or  nations  can  inherit. 
Such  an  exclusion  past  ages  thought  it 
possible  for  a  man  to  pronounce  ;  what 
I  maintained  in  my  conversation  with 

G was  that  our  age  does  not  hold  it 

to  be  possible.     Do  you  demur  to  that 
proposition  1 

B.  I  remember  reading  a  pamphlet 
by  a  more  eminent  convert  than  your 

friend  G ,  written  whilst  he  was  a 

clergyman  in  the  English  Church.     In 
it  he  told  those  who  were  attacking  him 
for  his  opinions,  that  he  despised  their 
threats.     But  he  added — 

"  Di  me  terrent  et  Jupiter  hostis." 

His  minor  gods  were  the  twenty-four 
bishops  of  the  English  Church ;  Jupiter 
was  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  He 
learnt  to  think  that  the  cardinals  more 
properly  represented  the  former;  that 
there  was  a  thunderer  in  the  Vatican 
more  terrible  than  the  thunderer  of 
Lambeth.  In  his  heart  of  hearts  he 
confessed  another  power  higher  than 
any  of  these;  he  feared  them  because 
he  identified  them  with  that  power, 


Whenever  Nations  in  the  old  time  con- 
fessed the  might  of  the  Papal  Excommu- 
nication, it  was  because  they  identified 
the  power  which  went  forth  in  it  with 
that  higher  Power ;  whenever  they  re- 
sisted the  Papal  Excommunication  it 
was  because  they  could  not  identify  one 
with  the  other.  The  Jupiter  in  the 
Vatican  might  be  their  enemy.  But  He 
who  sat  above  the  water-flood  was  not 
their  enemy  :  would  only  show  Himself 
their  enemy,  would  only  exclude  them 
from  his  fellowship  and  from  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  good  and  true  in  all  ages,  if 
they  shrunk  from  the  duty  which  He 
called  them  to  do  ;  would  uphold  them 
against  all  visible  and  invisible  foes  if 
they  stood  forth  like  brave,  earnest, 
faithful  men,  and  utterly  defied  and  set 
at  nought  those  who  bade  them  be 
cowardly  and  untrue.  My  hope  and 
belief  is  that  Tuscany,  Parma,  Ro- 
magna,  Piedmont,  have  learnt  and  are 
learning  more  and  more  deeply  this 
lesson.  It  is  not  that  they  disbelieve  in 
the  invisible  Power  which  their  fathers 
believed.  They  have  been  disbelieving 
in  invisible  Power ;  they  have  been  wor- 
shipping visible  Power.  Now  they  are 
awakening  to  a  sense  of  the  invisible ; 
now  they  are  conscious  that  the  invisible 
is  fighting  for  them  against  the  visible  ; 
now  they  are  sure  that  the  Jupiter  whom 
they  may  trust  as  a  friend,  whom  they 
must  fear  as  an  enemy,  is  a  God  of 
Eighteousness ;  the  Deliverer  of  man 
and  nations  out  of  the  house  of  bondage ; 
always  the  enemy  of  the  oppressor.  To 
grasp  this  faith  is  to  feel  themselves  a 
nation.  To  grasp  this  faith  is  to  become 
one  with  the  Italians  of  other  times. 
They  dare  not  tremble  at  the  Excommu- 
nication of  a  visible  ruler,  because  they 
do  tremble  at  the  Excommunication 
which  may  proceed  from  another  Judge, 
and  which  may  cut  them  off  from  fel- 
lowship with  those  that  groaned  and 
bled  for  righteousness  and  freedom  in 
their  own  and  every  land. 

A.  You  believe  that  Italy,  after  all, 
has  learnt  something  from  intercourse 
with  us  Protestants  and  Englishmen. 

B.  From  us  ?  From  the  fine  ladies  and 
gentlemen  who  mock  at  their  worship, 


TJie  Fusilier  s  Dcg. 


71 


or  indulge  in  dilettante  admiration  of  it 
at  Eome  1  From  our  diplomatists  at 
Florence  ?  From  those  who  have  bribed 
and  corrupted  them  ?  No;  they  have  had 
a  better  teacher.  In  Austrian,  or  Papal, 
or  Neapolitan  prisons  He  has  been 
educating  them.  There  He  has  been 
nerving  them  not  to  fear  Papal  Excom- 
munication, but  to  be  in  great  terror  of 
His.  Eather  let  its  learn  of  those  whom 
we  might  have  helped,  and  have  failed  to 


help.  Let  them  instruct  us  that  there 
is  an  invisible  Power  which  is  more  to 
be  dreaded  than  the  invisible  power  of 
the  Press  or  of  the  Stock  Exchange ! 
Let  them  remind  us  what  an  Excommu- 
nication that  is  which  says  to  Nations, 
"  They  have  cut  themselves  off  from 
"  truth  and  righteousness  !  They  have 
"  sold  themselves  to  Mammon  !  Let 
"  them  alone  !  " 


THE  FUSILIEES'  DOG. 

(LATELY  RUN  OVER,  AFTER  HAVING  GONE  THROUGH  THE  CRIMEAN  CAMPAIGN.) 
BY  SIR  F.  H.  DOYLE,  BART. 


Go  lift  him  gently  from  the  wheels, 

And  soothe  his  dying  pain, 
For  love  and  care  e'en  yet  he  feels, 

Though  love  and  care  be  vain ; 
'Tis  sad  that,  after  all  these  years, 

Our  comrade  and  our  friend, 
The  brave  dog  of  the  Fusiliers, 

Should  meet  with  such  an  end. 

Up  Alma's  hill,  among  the  vines, 

We  laughed  to  see  him  trot, 
Then  frisk  along  the  silent  lines, 

To  chase  the  rolling  shot : 
And,  when  the  work  waxed  hard  by  day, 

And  hard  and  cold  by  night ; 
When  that  November  morning  lay 

Upon  us,  like  a  blight, 

And  eyes  were  strained,  and  ears  were 
bent, 

Against  the  muttering  north, 
Till  the  grey  mist  took  shape,  and  sent 

Grey  scores  of  Eussians  forth — 
Beneath  that  slaughter  wild  and  grim, 

Nor  man  nor  dog  would  run ; 
He  stood  by  us,  and  we  by  him, 

Till  the  great  fight  was  done. 

And  right   throughout  the   snow  and 
frost 

He  faced  both  shot  and  shell ; 
Though  unrelieved,  he  kept  his  post, 

And  did  his  duty  well. 


By  death  on  death  the  time  was  stained, 

By  want,  disease,  despair ; 
Like  autumn  leaves  our  army  waned, 

But  still  the  dog  was  there  : 

He  cheered  us  through  those  hours  of 
gloom  j 

We  fed  him  in  our  dearth ; 
Through  him  the  trench's  living  tomb 

Eang  loud  with  reckless  mirth : 
And  thus,  when   peace  returned  once 
more, 

After  the  city's  fall, 
That  veteran  home  in  pride  we  bore, 

And  loved  him,  one  and  all. 

With  ranks  re-filled,  our  hearts  were  sick, 

And  to  old  memories  clung  ; 
The  grim  ravines  we  left  glared  thick 

With  death-stones  of  the  young. 
Hands  which  had  patted  him  lay  chill, 

Voices  which  called  were  dumb, 
And  footsteps  that  he  watched  for  still 

Never  again  could  come. 

Never  again ;  this  world  of  woe 

Still  hurries  on  so  fast ; 
They  come  not  back,  'tis  he  must  go 

To  join  them  in  the  past : 
There,  with  brave  names  and  deeds  en- 
twined, 

Which  Time  may  not  forget, 
Young  Fusiliers  unborn  shall  find 

The  legend  of  our  pet. 


72 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


"Whilst  o'er  fresh  years,  and  other  life 

Yet  in  God's  mystic  urn, 
The  picture  of  the  mighty  strife 

Arises  sad  and  stern — 
Blood  all  in  front,  behind  far  shrines 

With  women  weeping  low, 
For  whom  each  lost  one's  fame  but  shines, 

As  shines  the  moon  on  snow — 


Marked  by  the  medal,  his  of  right, 

And  by  his  kind  keen  face, 
Under  that  visionary  light 

Poor  Bob  shall  keep  his  place ; 
And  never  may  our  honoured  Queen 

For  love  and  service  pay, 
Less  brave,  less  patient,  or  more  mean 

Than  his  we  mourn  to-day ! 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  AGE— IS  IT  PEACE  ? 

BY   T.    E.    CLIFFE   LESLIE. 


HAS  Europe,  at  the  point  of  civiliza- 
tion which  it  has  reached,  passed  beyond 
the  military  stage  of  social  progress,  so 
that  a  disappearance  of  war  is  already 
before  us  in  political  prospect?  This 
question  raises,  as  will  be  seen,  some 
collateral  inquiries  of  practical  and 
immediate  moment ;  but,  apart  from  the 
temporary  interest  and  light  which 
they  may  afford,  the  investigation  is,  at 
bottom,  one  of  a  philosophical  character. 
There  is  a  matter  of  fact  to  be  decided 
at  the  beginning.  For  an  obvious,  if 
not  altogether  conclusive,  indication  of 
the  exorcism  of  the  ancient  combative 
spirit,  and  of  the  pacific  structure  and 
temper  of  modern  civilization,  would  be 
a  comparative  infrequency  in  our  own 
times  of  international  quarrels  and  in- 
testine conflicts  and  disquietude.  A 
great  predominance  of  peaceful  interests 
and  tendencies  might  naturally  be  ex- 
pected to  bear  fruit  and  witness  both  in 
the  foreign  relations  and  in  the  internal 
condition  of  the  states  of  Europe.  And 
it  is  in  fact  asserted  that  there  has  been, 
beyond^all  controversy,  a  steady  decline 
in  the  frequency  of  war  in  each  succes- 
sive century  of  modern  history ;  a  signal 
example  of  which  is,  as  it  is  alleged, 
afforded  by  the  repose  of  Europe,  and 
of  this  country  in  particular,1  during  the 

1  "  That  this  barbarous  pursuit  is  in  the 
progress  of  society  steadily  declining,  must 
be  evident  even  to  the  most  superficial 
reader  of  European  history.  If  we  compare 
one  century  with  another  we  shall  find  that 
wars  have  been  becoming  less  frequent ;  and 
now  so  clearly  is  the  movement  marked,  that 
until  the  late  commencement  of  hostilities 
(with  Russia)  we  had  remained  at  peace  for 
nearly  forty  years;  a  circumstance  unparal- 


interval  between  1815  and  the  com- 
mencement of  the  Russian  war  in  1853. 
With  a  view  to  enable  the  reader  to 
judge  for  himself  of  the  accuracy  of  this 
statement,  and  to  collect  such  indications 
of  the  future  as  are  possible  from  the 
observation  of  proximate  antecedents, 
the  following  table  has  been  prepared, 
exhibiting  the  wars  and  quarrels  in 
which  Great  Britain  has  been  involved 
from  1815  to  the  present  time,  as  well 
as  the  wars  and  principal  insurrections 
and  revolutions  which  have  disturbed 
the  peace  of  the  Continent  within  the 
same  period. 

Wars,  &c.  of  Great     Wars,  &c.  of  Continental 
Britain.  States  of  Europe. 

1816. 

War  with  Algiers.  War   between   Spain 

Commencement  of  the  and    her    revoltel 

Pindaree  War.  American  colonies. 

British    troops    con-  Army  of   occupation 

tinue     to     occupy  in  France. 

France.  Revolutionary   move- 
Ships  equipped  to  as-  ments    in    several 

sist     the    revolted  Continental  Stat 

colonies  of  Spain. 

1817. 

War  in  India.  War   between   Spain 

British    troops     con-  and  her  American 

tinue     to     occupy  colonies. 

France.  Invasion    of    Monte 

Assistance  to  the  re-  Video  by  Portugal.; 

volted    colonies   of  Insurrections  in  Spain. 

Spain. 

leled  not  only  in  the  history  of  our  own 
country,  but  also  in  the  history  of  every  other 
country  which  has  been  important  enough  to 
play  a  leading  part  in  the  history  of  the 
world.  In  the  middle  ages  there  was  never  a 
week  without  war.  At  the  present  moment 
war  is  deemed  a  rare  and  singular  occur- 
rence."— Buckle's  History  of  Civilization,  vol.  L 
p.  173. 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


73 


Wars,  <fcc.  of  Great      Wars,  <kc.  of  Continental 

Britain.  States  of  Europe. 

1817. 

Revolutionary   move- 
ments in  Germany 
and  Sweden. 
Army  of   occupation 

in  France. 
1818. 

War  in  India.  War   between   Spain 

British     troops    con-        and  her  American 

tinue  in  France.  colonies. 

Assistance  to  the  re-     War  in  Turkey  with 
volted    colonies   of        the  Wahabies. 
Spain ;  Lord  Coch-     Disturbances  at  Con- 
rane  takes  command        stantinople. 
of  the  navy  of  the     Quarrel  between  Ba- 
patriots.  varia  and  Baden. 

1819. 

War  in  India  at  the  War  between  Spain 
commencement  of  and  her  American 
the  year.  colonies. 

Assistance  to  the  re-     Serious    disturbances 
volted    colonies   of        hi  Spain. 
Spain.  Insurrections  hi  Tur- 

key. 
1820. 

Lord  Cochrane  and  a  War  between  Spain 
body  of  British  sea-  and  her  American 
men  capture  Yaldi-  colonies, 
via,  and  make  an  War  between  the 
expedition  against  Dutch  and  Sumatra. 
Lima.  Revolutions  in  Spain 

and  Portugal. 
Insurrections  in  Pied- 
mont and  Naples. 
Revolt   of    Moldavia 

and  Wallachia. 
1821. 

Conflicts  in  India.  War    between    Spain 

Policy  of  Great  Britain        and   her  American 
adverse  to  the  Holy        colonies. 
Alliance.  War  between  Turkey 

Assistance  to  the  re-  and  Persia ;  also 
volted  colonies  of  between  Turkeyand 
Spain.  Greece. 

Revolutionary  move- 
ments in  Spain  and 
Italy. 

Austrian  military  ope- 
rations in  Italy.  . 
1822. 

Assistance  to  the  re-     Turkey  at  war  with 
volted    colonies   of        Persia  and  Greece. 
Spain.  Spain  at  war  with  her 

Quarrel  with  China.  colonies. 

French  army  marches 

to  the  Pyrenees. 
1823. 

Burmese  War.  War  between   Spain 

Imminent   danger  of        and  her  colonies. 

war  with  France.         War  between  Turkey 
Lord  Byron's  expedi-        and  Greece, 
tion  to  Greece.  Invasion  of  Spain  by 

_  u  a  French  army. 

Russia  makes  war  in 
Circassia. 


Wars,  &c.  of  Great       Wars,  <fcc.  of  Continental 
Britain.  States  of  Europe. 

1824. 

Burmese  War.  War  between  Turkey 

Ashantee  War.  and  Greece. 

Lord  Byron's  expedi-  War  between  Spain 
tion  against  Le-  and  the  South  Ame- 
panto.  rican  Republics. 

Recognition  of  the  in-     War     between     the 
dependence  of  the        Dutch  and  Celebes 
revolted  colonies  of        and  Sumatra. 
Spain. 

1825. 

Burmese  War.  War  between  Turkey 

Ashantee  War.  and  Greece. 

Siege  of  Bhurtpore.         Dutch  War  with  J  aya. 
Insurrections  in  Spain. 

1826. 

Burmese  War.  War  between  Turkey 

Ashantee  War.  and  Greece. 

War  in  India.  War  between  Russia 

Expedition  of  British        and  Persia, 
fleet  and  troops  to     Spain  prepares  for  war 
Portugal  with  Portugal ;  in- 

surrections in  both 
countries. 

1827. 

Rupture  with  Turkey.     War  between  Russia 
Operations  of  British        and  Turkey. 

army  hi  Portugal.        War  between  Turkey 

Dispute  with  Runjeet        and     Greece     (as- 

Singh.  sisted  by  the  Great 

Powers). 
Civil  War  in  Spain. 

1828. 

War  with  Turkey.          War  between  Russia 
British  army  in  Por-        and  Turkey, 
tugal.  Expedition  of  French 

troops  to  Greece. 
Civil  War   in   Spain 

and  Portugal. 
War  between  Naples 
and  Tripoli. 

1829. 
Dispute  with  China,        War  between  Russia 

and  Turkey. 
Russian    invasion    of 

Circassia, 
Civil  War  in  Portugal. 

1830. 

Dispute  with  China.       War  between  Holland 
and  Belgium. 

War  in  Poland. 

Russian  War  hi  the 
Caucasus. 

French  War  inAlgeria. 

Revolution  in  France. 

Civil  War  in  Spain 
and  Portugal. 

Insurrection  hi  Al- 
bania. 

Convulsions  hi  Ger- 
many, Italy,  an  J 
(Switzerland. 


74 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


Wars,  <kc.  of  Great 
Britain. 


Wars,  <kc.  of  Continental 
States  of  Europe. 


War  in  India. 
Expedition     to 

Scheldt. 
Dispute  with  China. 


1831. 

War  between  Holland 
the        and  Belgium. 

Hostilities     between 

France  and  Portugal. 
French       expedition 

against  Holland. 
War  in  Poland. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 

French  War  inAlgeria. 
Eevolt   of   Meheraet 

Ali. 

Civil  War  in  Portugal. 
Insurrections     in 

France,    Germany, 

and  Italy. 


1832. 


War  with  Holland. 


War  between  Holland 
and  Belgium  (as- 
sisted by  Great  Bri- 
tain and  France). 

War  between  Turkey 
and  Egypt. 

French  War  in  Algeria. 

Russian  War  in  the 
Caucasus. 

Insurrections  in  Italy ; 
Austrian  troops  oc- 
cupy Bologna. 

Civil  War  in  Portugal. 


1833. 


Dispute  with  France. 

Engli  sh  protestagainst 
Treaty  of  Constanti- 
nople between  Rus- 
sia and  Turkey. 

Dispute  with  the 
Caftres. 


War  between  Turkey 
and  Egypt. 

Cracow  occupied  by 
Russia  and  Austria. 

French  War  in  Algeria. 

Russian  War  in  the 
Caucasus. 

Civil  War  in  Spain 
and  Portugal. 

Insurrections  in  Ger- 
many and  Italy. 


1834. 


War  in  India. 


the 


Hostilities  with 
Caffres. 

Affray  with  the  Chi- 
nese. 

Disturbances  in  Ca- 
nada. 

Treaty  for  expulsion  of 
Don  Carlos  and  Don 
Miguel. 


French  War  in  Al- 
geria. 

Russian  War  in  the 
Caucasus. 

Civil  War  in  Portugal. 

Occupation  of  Ancona 
by  Austria. 


1835. 


British  troops  arrive 

in  Spain. 
Dispute  with  China. 


French  War  in  Algeria 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 

Civil  War  in  Spain. 
Insurrection  in  Alba- 


Wars,  <Lc.  of  Great       Wars,  dec.  of  Continental 
Britain.  States  of  Europe. 

1836. 
Battle   between   Bri-     Civil  War  in  Spain. 

French  War  in  Algeria. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 

Revolt  of  Cracow, 
crushed  by  Russia 
and  Austria. 


tish  troops  and  the 
Carlists. 

Rebellion  in  Canada. 

British  merchants  ex- 
pelled from  Canton. 


1837. 

War  in  Canada  with     Qivil  War  in  Spain, 
rebels     and    Ame-     French  War  in  Algeria, 
rican  sympathisers.      Russian  War  in  the 
British  troops  in  Spain.        Caucasus. 

1838. 

War  in  India.  War  between  France 

War  in  Canada.  and  Mexico. 

British  troops  in  Spain.     War  of  the  French  in 

Algeria. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 

Civil  War  in  Spain. 
1839. 

War  with  India.  War  between  France 

War  with  China.  and  Mexico. 

British troopsin  Spain.     Revolt   of   Pacha   of 

Egypt. 

Civil  War  in  Spain. 
French  War  in  Algeria. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
1840. 

War  between  Turkey 


Affghan  War. 
War  with  Egypt. 
War  with  China. 
Expedition  of  British 

fleet  to  Naples. 
British  troops  in  Spain. 
Disputes  with  France 

and  with  the  United 

States. 

1841. 


and  Egypt. 

Civil  War  in  Spain. 

French  War  in  Al- 
geria. 

Russian  War  in  the 
Caucasus. 


War  in  India. 
War  with  China. 
Dispute  with  the  Uni- 
ted States. 


War  in  India. 
Hostilities   with  the 

Boers  at  the  Cape. 
War  with  China. 


War  in  India. 
Annexation  of  Natal 
to  the  Cape. 


Civil  War  in  Spain. 

Civil  War  in  part  of 
the  Turkish  Empire. 

French  War   in   Al- 
geria. 

Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
1842. 

Civil  War  in  Spain. 

War  between  Turkey 
and  Persia. 

French  War   in   Al- 
geria. 

Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
1843. 

Otaheite  occupied  by 
the  French. 

Insurrections    in   the 
Turkish  Empire. 

Russian  War  in  the 
Caucasus. 

French  Wars  in  Al- 
geria, and  Senegal 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


75 


Wars,  <tc.  of  Great       Wars,  <kc.  of  Continental 
Britain.  States  of  Europe. 

1844. 

Insurrections  in  India.     War  between  France 
Quarrel  with  theSikhs.        and  Morocco. 
Arrest  by  the  French     Insurrection  in  Spain, 
of  the  English  Con-     Russian  War  in  the 
sul  at  Tahite.  Caucasus. 

French  Wars  in  Al- 
geria, and  Senegal. 
1845. 

Sikh  War.  Insurrections  in  Italy. 

Attack  on  the  pirates     French   War   in   AI- 

of  Borneo.  geria. 

Labuan   occupied  by     Russian  War  in  the 

the  British.  Caucasus. 

Dispute  with  the  Uni- 
ted States. 

1846. 

Sikh  War.  Civil  War  in  Portugal. 

Engagement  withNew     Annexation  of  and  in- 
ZeaJanders.  surrection  in  Cracow. 

Expedition     to     the     Agitation  in  Hungary. 
Tagus.  French  War   in  Al- 

Dissensions    with        geria. 
France    in     conse-     Russian  War  in  the 
quence  of  the  Spa-        Caucasus, 
nish  marriages  and     Revolt  of  Sleswig  and 
the  affairs  of  Greece.         Holstein      (encou- 
Revolt  of  Boers  at  the        raged   by    Prussia) 
Cape,  from  Denmark. 

Revolution  in  Switzer- 
land. 
QuarrelbetweenGreece 

and  Turkey. 
1847. 

War  with  Caffres  and     Civil  War  in   Spain, 
Boers.  •  Portugal,  and  Swit- 

War  with  China.  zerland. 

Insurrections  in  India.  Disturbances  in  Italy  ; 
Austria  occupies 
Ferrara. 

Insurrection  inPoland. 
French  War  in  Alge- 
ria, and  with  Cochin 
China. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
1848. 

War  in  India.  War    between    Den- 

Caffre  War.  mark  and  the  Du- 

English    Ambassador        chies  (aided  by  Prus- 

commanded  to  leave        sia). 

Madrid.  War  between  Austria 

and  Sardinia. 
War  in  Hungary. 
War  in  the  Duchy  of 

Posen. 

Revolutions  in  France, 

Austria,      Prussia, 

Italy,    and   several 

German  States. 

Insurrections  in  Spain 

and  Italy. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
French  War  in  Algeria. 


Wars,  <tc.  of  Great       Wars,d-c. of  Continental 
Britain.  Stales  of  Europe. 

1849. 

War  in  India.  French  occupy  Ciyita 

Disturbances   in  Ca-        Vecchia,  and  besiege 

nada.  and  storm  Roma 

Admiral  Parker  enters     War  in  Hungary. 
Besika  Bay.  War  in  the  Duchies  of 

Sleswig  and    Hol- 
stein. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 

French  WarinAlgeria. 
1850. 
Blockade  of  thePiraeus     War   in  the   Danish 

by  the  British  fleet.        Duchies. 
Caffre  War.  Insurrection   in  Ger- 

War  in  India.  many  and  Italy. 

Destruction  of  Chinese     Prussia  on  the  Drink 
junks.  of  war  with  Austria 

Dispute  with  France  ;        concerning     Hesse 
French  Ambassador        Cassel. 
recalled.  Russian  War  in  the 

Angry  .despatch    ad-        Caucasus, 
dressed  to  Great  Bri-     French   War   in  Al- 
tain  by  Russia.  geria. 

French  troops  occupy 

Rome. 
1851. 

Caffre  War.  Insurrection   in  Por- 

Insurrection  of  Hot-        tugal. 

tentots.  Coup  die" tat  of  Louis 

Expedition   to    Ran-        Napoleon, 
goon.  French  War   in   Al- 

geria. 
Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
French  troops  occupy 

Rome. 
1852. 

Second  Burmese  War.     French  War   in   Al- 
Caffre  War.  geria. 

Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
French      troops     in 

Rome. 
1853. 
Preparations  for  War     War  between  Russia 

with  Russia.  and  Turkey. 

Insult  to  British  sub-     French   War   in  Al- 
jects  at  Madrid.  geria. 

French      troops      in 

Rome. 
1854. 

War  with  Russia.  Russia  at  War  with 

Turkey,France,  and 
Great  Britain. 
Austrian  army  enters 

the  Principalities. 
Insurrections  in  Italy 

and  Spain. 

Rupture  between  Tur- 
key and  Greece. 
French  War  in   Al- 
geria. 

French      troops     in 
Rome. 


76 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  f 


Wars,  <kc.  of  Great       Wars,<tc.  of  Continental 
Britain.  States  of  Europe. 

1855. 

War  with  Russia  Russia  at  War  with 

Insurrection  of  Santals        Turkey,       France,, 
in  Bengal.  Sardinia,  and  Great 

Disturbances   at   the        Britain. 
Cape.  French  War   in  Al- 

geria. 

French      troops     in 
Rome. 


Peace  with  Russia  in 
March,  against  the 
wishes  of  the  British 
nation. 

War  with  Persia. 

War  with  China. 

Rupture  with  Naples. 

Oude  annexed. 


1856. 


Russian  War  hi  the 
Caucasus. 

Insurrections  in  Spain. 

Insurrectionary  move- 
ments in  Italy. 

Rupture  betweenPrus- 
sia  and  Neufchatel. 

French  troops  in 
Roma 

1857. 

War  with  China.  Russian  War  in  the 

Indian  Mutiny.  Caucasus. 

War,  in  the  early  part     French      troop     in 
of  the   year,  with        Rome. 
Persia. 

Insurrection  at  Sara- 
wak. 

1858. 

Serious  differences        Dispute    between 
with  France.  France  and  Portu- 

War  with  the  Sepoys.        gal. 
War  with  China.  French      fleet     des- 

Bombardment  of  Jed-        patched  to  Lisbon, 
dah.  Russian  War  in  the 

Caucasus. 
French      troops     in 

Rome. 
1859. 

Preparations   by   sea     France  and  Sardinia 
and    land    against        at  war  with  Austria, 
invasion ;  organiza-     Revolts     in    Central 
:  tion   of   Volunteer        Italy. 

Rifle  Corps.  France  and  Spain  at 

Rebel  army  in  Nepaul.        war    with    Cochin 
Hostilities   with   the        China. 

Chinese.  Russian  War  in  the 

Island  of   San  Juan        Caucasus, 
occupied  by  Ameri-     War   between    Spain 
can  troops.  and  Morocco. 

French  bombard  Te- 

tuan. 
French      troops     in 

Rome, 
1860. 

Expedition  to  China.       War "  between   Spain 
Distrust  of  the  designs        and  Morocco. 

of  France.  French  expedition  to 

Defensive  preparations        China, 
continue.  French  troops  in  Lom- 

bardy  and  Rome. 

Annexation  of  Savoy 

and  Nice  by  France. 

Carlist  rising  in  Spain. 

Insurrection  in  Sicily. 


Comparing  these  statistics  with,  ante- 
cedent periods  of  history,  it  does  not 
appear  that  there  is  evidence  of  a  gradual 
cessation  of  warfare  and  other  serious 
violations  of  the  peace  of  nations.  The 
table  does  not  exhibit  one  year  from 
1815  to  the  present  date  in  which  our  own 
country  has  not  been  either  engaged  in 
actual  hostilities  in  some  part  of  the  world, 
or  in  some  quarrel  or  proceeding  likely  to 
end  in'war.  Much  less  does  it  show  a 
single  year  in  which  all  Europe  was  at 
peace.  Nor  is  the  significance  of  recent 
wars  to  be  estimated  by  reference  solely 
to  the  amount  of  blood  and  treasure  they 
have  cost ;  for  the  struggles  of  Russia 
with  Turkey,  the  campaigns  of  the  French 
in  Algeria,  Senegal  and  Lombardy, 
the  conflicts  of  Great  Britain  in  India 
and  with  China,  and  the  aggressions  of 
Spain  upon  Morocco,  are  of  moment 
rather  as  prophetical  than  as  historical 
facts.  Besides,  it  should  be  remembered 
that  the  period  from  1815  to  1854, 
which  has  been  so  erroneously  referred 
to  as  giving  proof  of  the  peacefulness  of 
the  modern  spirit,  began  at  the  termina- 
tion of  the  greatest  war  in  the  history  of 
mankind ;  one  which  by  its  very  seve- 
rity necessitated  a  long  forbearance  from 
hostilities  on  a  great  scale,  adding  as  it 
did,for  example,  more  than£600,000,000 
to  the  debt  of  Great  Britain,  and  ex- 
hausting France  of  all  her  soldiers. 

Contrasting  one  age  with  another, 
Great  Britain  seems  never  to  have  been 
so  free  from  war  in  this  century  as  in 
Sir  Eobert  Walpole's  tune.  From  the 
treaty  of  Utrecht  in  1713  until  1739, 
the  peace  was  only  broken  by  occasional 
hostilities  with  Spain  of  no  considerable 
importance,  and  Walpole's  administra- 
tion is  commonly  regarded  as  crowned 
•by  almost  unbroken  peace.  But  the 
nineteenth  bears  in  this  respect  a  still  less 
favourable  comparison  with  the  seven- 
teenth century.  From  the  accession  of 
James  I.  until  the  civil  wars,  England  may 
be  said  to  have  enjoyed  continued  peace, 
for  such  operations  as  the  expedition  to 
Rochelle  scarcely  deserve  a  place  in  the 
history  of  war.  Going  farther  back  to  the 
hundred  years  between  the  battle  of  Bos- 
worth  and  the  commencement  of  the 


The  Question  of  the  Age — 7s  it  Peace  ? 


77 


struggle  with  Spain  in  Elizabeth's  time, 
considering  too  the  bloodless  and 
theatrical  character  of  Henry  the 
Eighth's  campaigns,  and  the  unimport- 
ance of  the  military  annals  of  the  two 
next  reigns,  we  hardly  exaggerate  in 
saying  that  England  was  free  from  war 
from  the  union  of  the  Eoses  until  the 
equipment  of  the  Spanish  Armada. 
Confining  ourselves  to  English  history, 
it  would  thus  appear  that  the  portion  of 
the  nineteenth  century  already  elapsed 
has  been  less  peaceful  than  the  corre- 
sponding period  of  each  of  the  two  pre- 
ceding ones.  And,  indeed,  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  any  prior  hundred 
and  twenty  years  since  the  Conquest 
produced  so  many  battles  as  were 
fought  between  1740  and  1860. 

A  writer,  already  referred  to,  remarks 
that,  "  in  the  middle  ages,  there  was 
never  a  week  without  war."  But  if  we 
are  to  reckon  all  the  feuds  of  the  barons 
and  squires  in  comparing  the  frequency 
of  mediaeval  with  modern  hostilities,  we 
must  weight  the  scale  of  the  latter  with 
all  the  bloody  revolutions,  rebellions, 
and  insurrections  of  modern  times,  and 
with  greater  justice  in  consequence  of 
the  tendency  of  these  elements  of  dis- 
order, peculiar  to  our  era,  to  produce 
international  strife  or  war  in  a  wider 
sphere. 

It  is  not  an  impertinent  fact  that  from 
1273  until  1339  England  remained 
throughout  at  peace  with  the  Continent, 
if  at  least  the  years  1293  and  1297  be 
excepted  ;  in  the  former  of  which  there 
was  a  collision  between  the  French  and 
English  fleets,  although  their  respective 
countries  were  not  otherwise  at  war; 
and  in  the  latter,  Edward  I.  conducted 
an  expedition  to  Flanders,  which  ended 
without  a  battle.  It  is  true  that  in  this 
period  there  were  intermittent  hostilities 
with  Wales  and  Scotland.  In  a  mili- 
tary sense  the  Welsh  wars  of  England 
hardly  deserve  more  notice  than  those  of 
the  Heptarchy.  But  there  is  a  point  of 
view  from  which  the  conflicts  with 
Wales  and  Scotland,  and  those  of  the 
Heptarchy,  alike  possess  political  import- 
ance, and  have  a  bearing  upon  the 
question  now  under  consideration,  be- 


cause of  their  analogy  to  a  process  which 
is  still  going  on  in  Europe,  and  still 
giving  rise  to  problems  of  which  no 
peaceful  solution  has  yet  been  found 
possible  for  the  most  part, — knots,  as 
it  were,  which  must  be  cut  with  the 
sword. 

The  efforts  of  the  English  sovereigns 
in  the  middle  ages  for  the  annexation  of 
Wales,  and  the  reduction  of  Scotland  to 
the  position  of  a  dependency,  were  the 
necessary  antecedents  of  a  political  unity 
of  Great  Britain,  corresponding  with  its 
natural  or  geographical  unity,  and  con- 
ducive both  to  the  internal  peace  of  the 
island,  and  to  its  security  from  foreign 
aggression.  It  was  absolutely  indispen- 
sable for  the  civilization  of  England 
that  the  Heptarchy  should  be  consoli- 
dated, and  it  was  equally  so  that  Ireland, 
Wales,  and  Scotland,  should  become 
integral  parts  of  a  united  kingdom.  It 
is  obvious  that  the  causes  and  chances 
of  war  would  be  infinitely  multiplied 
were  these  three  countries  still  separate 
and  independent  States,  and  that  their 
union  with  their  more  powerful  neigh- 
bour was  requisite  for  the  tranquillity 
and  improvement  of  all,  while  it  was  pre- 
ceded by  struggles  which,  so  far  from 
being  peculiar  to  barbarian  or  the  middle 
ages,  find  almost  exact  parallels  in  the 
latest  annals  of  human  progress.  Nor 
is  it  unworthy  of  remark  that  Edward  L, 
the  ablest  prince  since  the  Conquest, 
applied  himself  with  equal  zeal  and 
ambition  to  the  reduction  of  Wales  and 
Scotland,  and  to  the  establishment  of 
law  and  order  throughout  England.  In 
like  manner  the  complex  movement 
which  in  one  word,  fruitful  of  mistakes, 
we  call  civilization,  while  bearing  over 
the  globe  the  seeds  of  future  peace,  has 
entailed  all  the  maritime,  colonial,  and 
commercial  wars  of  modern  Europe. 
The  art  of  navigation  discovered  upon 
the  ocean  a  new  element  for  the  practice 
of  hostilities.  It  was  certainly  not  in  a 
barbarous  age,  or  by  barbarous  weapons, 
that  the  Colonial  Empire  of  Great 
Britain  was  established.  And  what  but 
the  commercial  spirit  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  carried  the  cannon  of  Great- 
Britain  into  China  ?  Surely  it  was  not 


78 


The,  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


the  genius  of  barbarism  that  urged  the 
American  colonists  to  win  their  indepen- 
dence with  the  sword,  nor  can  that  well 
be  called  an  uncivilized  impulse  which  has 
flushed  so  high  the  encroaching  pride  of 
the  United  States  at  the  present  hour. 

We  are  thus  driven  to  admit  that  we 
cannot  with  truth  assert  that  a  diminu- 
tion of  war  is  a  characteristic  of  our 
epoch ;  nor  that,  if  some  ancient  causes 
of  quarrel  have  disappeared  before  the 
progress  of  civilization,  it  has  imported 
no  new  germs  of  discord  into  the  bosom 
of  nations.  Our  survey  of  the  past  is 
far  from  warranting  the  prediction  that 
all  the  ends  which  are  for  the  ultimate 
benefit  of  mankind  will  be  henceforward 
accomplished  without  bloodshed.  Nor 
does  it  seem  to  entitle  the  warmest 
advocate  of  peace  to  stigmatize  a  martial 
spirit  as  barbarous  in  every  form,  and 
for  whatever  purpose  it  is  animated. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  may  glean  some 
reason  for  the  general  reflection,  that  it 
is  often  by  war  itself  that  future  wars 
are  made  impossible  or  improbable, 
while  peace  is  not  unfrequently  but  the 
gathering  time  for  hostile  elements.1 
And  the  particular  observation  in  refer- 
ence to  our  own  island  lies  upon  the 
surface,  that,  since  it  has  been  by  the  im- 
provements of  civilization  brought  into 
closer  contact  with  the  Continent,  the 
chances  of  collision  with  Continental 
States  are  multiplied,  and  military  insti- 
tutions and  ideas  seem  to  have  arisen 
among  us  pari  passu  with  increased 
proximity  to  our  military  neighbours. 
Again,  the  extension  of  our  empire  far 
beyond  the  confines  of  Europe,  has  given 
us  enemies  and  wars  in  lands  of  which 
our  mediaeval  ancestors  never  heard,  and 
which  uncivilized  men  would  have  never 
reached. 

These  inferences  are,  however,  drawn 

1  "  Ah,  we  are  far  from  Waterloo  !  We  are 
not  now  exhausted  and  ruined  by  twenty 
years  of  heroic  war.  We  have  taken  advan- 
tage of  the  twenty  years  of  peace  which  Provi- 
dence has  given  us,  to  recruit  our  forces,  and 
stimulate  our  patriotism.  We  have  an  army 
of  600,000  men ;  we  can  also  fight  at  sea.  We 
have  built  gigantic  ships,  cased  with  iron ;  we 
have  gun-boats  ;  in  short,  we  have  a  powerful 
navy,  which  formerly  we  had  not." — "  La 
Coalition."— Pom,  April  16,  1860. 


confessedly  from  partial  premises,  since 
we  have  up  to  this  point  regarded  only 
one  of  the  many  sides  which  the  modern 
world  presents  to  the  eye  of  the  states- 
man and  political  philosopher,  and  espe- 
cially omitted  one  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous and  important  phases  of  Euro- 
pean civilization.  Industry  and  commerce 
have  revolutionised  occidental  society, 
and  established  an  economical  alliance, 
as  it  were,  between  its  members.  One 
of  the  firmest  bases  of  the  feeling  of 
nationality  or  fellow-citizenship  may  be 
traced  at  bottom,  says  an  eminent 
traveller,  to  the  "  need  and  aid  of  each 
other  in  their  daily  life,1 "  felt  by  inha- 
bitants of  the  same  country.  Each  dis- 
trict, each  house,  each  man  has  a  demand 
for  what  another  district,  house,  or  man 
supplies ;  people  are  in  habitual  inter- 
course or  contact  of  an  amicable,  or  at 
least  pacific  character,  and  reciprocal 
obligations  and  conveniences  make  up 
the  sum  and  business  of  existence.  But 
this  mutual  interdependence  now  exists, 
as  it  is  urged,  between  nation  and  nation, 
and  all  Christendom  feels  itself  to  be 
literally  one  commonwealth.  And, 
besides  the  powerful  interests  altogether 
opposed  to  war,  which  have  arisen  in 
every  state,  men's  minds  are  habitually 
swayed  by  commonplace  and  unromantic 
ideas ;  and  the  presiding  idea  of  modern 
communities,  we  are  told,  is  the  alto- 
gether unwarlike  one  of  the  acquisition 
of  wealth. 

Even  France  is  said  to  afford  a  con- 
spicuous example  of  this;  and  there 
are  several  reasons  why  that  country 
may,  with  particular  propriety,  be  re- 
ferred to  in  connexion  with  our  present 
topic  of  inquiry.  At  this  moment  the 
peace  of  Europe  depends  mainly  upon 
French  policy.  France,  moreover,  boasts, 
and  with  reason,  of  being,  as  regards  the 
continent  of  Europe,  a  representative 
and  missionary  country  in  institutions 
and  ideas.  What  is  of  importance  here, 
moreover — in  France  and  over  most  of 
the  Continent  there  are  wanting  some 
peculiar  physical  and  historical  con- 
ditions which  contribute  to  make  pacific 

1  Notes  on  the  Social  and  Political  State  of 
Denmark,  by  Mr.  S.  Laing. 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  f 


79 


interests  and  sentiments  unquestionably 
predominant  in  Great  Britain,  the  ab- 
sence of  which  peculiarities  would  render 
any  estimate  of  the  prospects  of  Europe, 
that  might  be  founded  upon  a  mere 
extension  of  the  elements  of  our  own 
social  condition,  altogether  fallacious. 
On  the  other  hand  there  are  facts,  which 
have  grown  up  with  the  present  gene- 
ration, "  depriving  former  times  of 
analogy  with  our  own,"  and  obliging 
us  to  dispute  the  logic  which  infers  the 
character  of  future  international  relations 
from  their  past  type. 

Eight  years  before  his  arguments  were 
sanctioned  by  a  Treaty  of  Commerce, 
Mr.  Cobden  drew  public  attention  to 
new  features  of  the  industrial  economy 
of  the  world,  surely  calculated,  in  his 
opinion,  to  render  a  military  policy  un- 
congenial to  the  great  mass  of  the 
French  people,  and  a  rupture  with 
Great  Britain  particularly  improbable. 
Those  arguments  are  of  course  now 
entitled  to  additional  weight,  but  they 
could  hardly  be  more  forcibly  expressed 
by  Mr.  Cobden  himself  at  the  present 
moment  than  they  were  in  a  remark- 
able pamphlet  which  he  published  the 
year  before  the  Russian  War,  from  which 
we  reproduce  the  following  passage  : — 

"  I  come  to  the  really  solid  guarantee 
"  which  France  has  given  for  a  desire  to 
"preserve  peace  with  England.  As  a 
"  manufacturing  country  France  stands 
"  second  only  to  England  in  the  amount 
"  of  her  productions  and  the  value  of 
"  her  exports ;  but  the  most  important 
"  fact  in  its  bearings  on  the  question 
"  before  us  is  that  she  is  more  dependent 
"  than  England  upon  the  importation  of 
"  the  raw  materials  of  her  industry  ; 
"  and  it  is  obvious  how  much  this  must 
"  place  her  at  the  mercy  of  a  Power 
"  having  the  command  over  her  at  sea. 
"  This  dependence  upon  foreigners  ex- 
"  tends  even  to  those  right  arms  of  peace, 
"  as  wdl  as  of  war,  coal  and  iron. 
"  The  coal  imported  into  France  in 
"  1792,  the  year  before  the  war,  amounted 
"to  80,000. tons  only.  In  1851,  her 
"  importation  of  coal  and  coke  reached 
"  the  prodigious  quantity  of  2,841,900 
"  tons. 


"  In  the  article  of  iron  we  have 
"  another  illustration  to  the  same  effect. 
"  In  1792  pig  iron  does  not  figure  in 
"  the  French  tariff.  In  1851  the  im- 
"  portation  of  pig  iron  amounted  to 
"  33,700  tons.  The  point  to  which  I 
"  wish  to  draw  attention  is  that  so 
"  large  a  quantity  of  this  prime  neces- 
"  sary  of  life  of  every  industry  is  im- 
"  ported  from  abroad ;  and  in  propor- 
"  tion  as  the  quantity  for  which  she  is 
"  thus  dependent  upon  foreigners  has 
"  increased  since  1792,  in  the  same 
"  ratio  has  France  given  a  security  to 
"  keep  the  peace. 

"  Whilst  governments  are  preparing 
"  for  war,  all  the  tendencies  of  the  age 
"  are  in  the  opposite  direction ;  but 
"  that  which  most  loudly  and  con- 
"  stantly  thunders  in  the  ears  of  em- 
'  perors,  kings,  and  parliaments,  the 
'  stern  command,  '  You  shall  not  break 
'  the  peace,5  is  the  multitude  which  in 
1  every  country  subsists  upon  the  produce 
(  of  labour  applied  to  materials  brought 
1  from  abroad.  It  is  the  gigantic  growth 
"  which  this  manufacturing  system  has 
'  attained  that  deprives  former  times 
'  of  any  analogy  with  our  own,  and  is 
'  fast  depriving  of  all  reality  those 
'  pedantic  displays  of  diplomacy,  and 
'  those  traditional  demonstrations  of 
'  armed  force,  upon  which  peace  or  war 
'  formerly  depended."  * 

We  have  quoted  Mr.  Cobden' s  prin- 
cipal argument,  that  a  war  with  a  state 
possessing,  as  Great  Britain  does,  a 
superior  navy,  would  ruin  the  staple 
manufactures  of  France ;  but  he  has 
also  contended  that  a  great  military 
expenditure  would  entail  burdens  in- 
tolerable to  the  French  people.  If  it 
be  replied  to  this  latter  argument  that 
Government  loans  produce  no  imme- 
diate or  sensible  pressure,  and  are  rather 
popular  measures,  good  authority  is  not 
wanting  for  the  rejoinder  that  this 
State  mine  has  been  so  freely  worked 
by  French  financiers  that  it  must  be 
pretty  nearly  exhausted — the  public 
debt  of  France  having  grown  from 
£134, 184, 176,  in  181 8,  to  £301,662, 148 

i  "  1793  and  1853."  By  Richard  Cobden, 
M.P.  Ridgway. 


80 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


in  1858.2  To  this  it  is  added,  that, 
while  the  Government  has  become  yearly 
more  embarrassed,  the  nation  has  become 
richer,  more  comfortable,  and  less  ready 
for  military  life  and  pay  ;  and  that  the 
very  investments  which  have  been  so 
largely  made  by  all  classes  in  the  French 
funds  have  arrayed  interests  propor- 
tionately strong  against  any  course  of 
public  action  calculated  to  depreciate 
greatly  the  value  of  their  securities. 
In  short,  we  are  told  that  the  French 
Emperor  is  too  poor,  and  that  the  French 
people  are  too  rich,  for  war. 

These  are  considerations  which  deserve 
much  attention ;  but  they  are,  it  seems 
to  us,  insufficient  to  prove  that  France 
has  passed  out  of  the  military  into  the 
industrial  stage  of  national  development, 
or  that  its  economical  condition  is  such 
as  to  render  war  very  distasteful  to  the 
French  nation,  as  a  nation;  especially 
as  one  which  endures  in  time  of  peace, 
with  the  utmost  cheerfulness,  one  of  the 
heaviest  inflictions  of  a  great  and  pro- 
tracted Avar.  For  if  we  reflect  upon  the 
amount  of  wealth  and  industrial  power 
withdrawn  from  production  to  sustain 
an  army  of  600,000  soldiers,  besides  an 
enormous  fleet,  we  cannot  but  admit  that 
this  wonderful  people  bears,  not  only 
with  constancy,  but  with  pride,  one  of 
the  chief  economical  evils  of  hostilities 
on  a  gigantic  scale,  and  that  this  con- 
spicuous feature  of  French  society  suf- 
fices to  characterise  it  as  warlike  and 
wasteful,  rather  than  as  prudent  and 
pacific.  The  immense  increase  of  the 
national  debt  of  France  in  the  last 
forty  years,  if  it  shows  that  the  fund  of 
loanable  capital  has  been  largely  trenched 
on,  shows  also  the  facility  with  which 
this  financial  engine  has  been  worked 
hitherto  ;  while  the  admitted  augmenta- 
tion of  the  general  wealth  of  the  people 
appears  to  contain  an  implicit  answer  to 
any  conjecture  thai  their  capacity  to  lend 
has  been  nearly  exhausted.  Nor  is  it 
immaterial  to  observe,  that  the  debt  of 
France  has  been  contracted  mainly  for 
military  purposes,2  that  it  has  been 
considerably  added  to  by  the  Emperor 

1  Economist,  November  26,  1859. 

3  Tooke'a  History  of  Prices,  vL  pp.  7  and  13. 


for  actual  war,  and  that  his  popularity 
appears  to  be  now  much  greater  than  at 
his  accession,  in  a  large  measure  in  con- 
sequence of  the  manner  in  which  he  has 
employed  the  loans  he  has  raised.  We 
have,  indeed,  only  to  recollect  the  amount 
of  debt  incurred  by  our  own  Govern- 
ment in  the  last  war  with  France,  and 
the  opinion  entertained  by  the  highest 
authorities  of  its  overwhelming  magni- 
tude when  it  was  but  a  seventh  of  the 
sum  it  afterwards  reached,  to  see  the 
fallacy  of  prophecies  of  peace  based 
upon  the  supposition  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  a  country  in  the  condition  of 
France  plunging  into  a  great  contest, 
and  emerging  from  it  without  ruin. 
Moscow  and  Waterloo  have  been  fol- 
lowed by  Sebastopol  and  Solferino  ;  and 
of  disasters  befalling  his  country  from  a 
foreign  enemy  the  Frenchman  is,  we 
fear,  inclined  to  repeat : — 

"Merses  profundo,  pulchrior  evenit: 
"Luctere,  multa  proruet  integrum 
"  Cum  laude  victorem,  geretque 
"  Prcelia  conjugibus  loquenda." 

Neither  can  we  put  unreserved  confi- 
dence in  the  pledges  of  peace  afforded 
by  the  trade  and  manufactures  of  France, 
on  the  value  of  which  the  following 
figures  throw  a  light  which  has  probably 
escaped  Mr.  Cobden's  notice  : — 

EXPORTS  FROM  FRANCE.1 

(Expressed  in  millions  sterling  and  tenths.) 

Mill,  sterl. 

To  England 11  2 

United  States 73 

Belgium 50 

Sardinia 27 

Switzerland  ......    2  0 

Zollverein 19 

Turkey 10 

Russia — 

46  other  countries  and  places  12  5 

IMPORTS  INTO  FRANCE. 
(Expressed  in  millions  sterling  and  tenths.) 

Mill,  iterl. 

From  England 53 

United  States 77 

Belgium 53 

Sardinia 41 

Switzerland 14 

Zollverein 23 

Turkey     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    17 

Russia 18 

46  other  countries  and  places  13  5 

1  Tooke'a  History  of  Prices,  vL  652-3.    ' 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


81 


It  will  be  seen  from  this  table  that 
the  French  exports  to  England  are  larger 
than  to  any  other  country,  and  the  im- 
ports from  England  second  only  to  those 
from  America.  When  this  state  of  facts 
is  taken  in  connexion  with  the  common 
sentiments  of  the  French  towards  the 
English,  on  the  one  hand,  and  towards 
those  nations,  on  the  other,  with  which 
their  trade  is  comparatively  insignifi- 
cant— as,  for  example,  the  Russians, 
Spaniards,  and  Italians — we  are  led  to 
suspect  some  great  fallacy  in  a  theory 
which  presumes  that  national  friend- 
ships and  animosities,  and  international 
relations  and  differences,  are  adjusted 
mainly  by  reference  to  a  sliding  scale  of 
exports  and  imports ;  and  we  are  warned 
to  seek  for  some  other  indications  and 
guarantees  of  a  lasting  alliance. 

Again,   we    may    observe,  that    the 
European  trade    of  France   with  Bel- 
gium   ranks    next   in    importance     to 
that  with  England.     Now,  when  it  is 
suggested    that   France    depends   upon 
importation  for  those  prime  necessaries 
of  both  war  and  peace,  iron  and  coal, 
and  that  this   fact,    above   all   others, 
affords  security  against  French  aggres- 
sion, the  reminiscence  can  hardly  fail  to 
excite  some  inauspicious  recollections. 
Belgium  is  almost  traversed  from  west 
to  east  by  beds  of  coal,  from  which,  in 
1850,  nearly  six  million  tons  were  ex- 
tracted ;    and    in    the   same   year   the 
Belgian  mines  yielded  472,883  tons  of 
iron.     Give  Belgium  then  to  France,  or 
rather  let  France  take  Belgium,  and  she 
does  not  want  English  coal  and  iron  in 
time  of  war  for  her  steam  navy   and 
ordnance.     Is  it  towards  commercial  or 
warlike  enterprise — towards  the  annex- 
ation of  the  adjoining  land  of  coal  and 
iron,  or  peace  with  all  her  neighbours — 
that  the  mind  of  the  French  is  likely 
to  be  tempted  by  this   consideration  ? 
Which  policy  would  best  consort  with 
some  of  their  longest  treasured  aspira- 
tions, and  some  of  their  latest  anticipa- 
tions ?     Last  year  a  pamphlet,  entitled 
"  L' Avenir  de  1' Europe,"  passed  through 
several  editions  in  Paris.     The  future 
sketched  for  his  country  by  the  writer 
may  be  conjectured  from  the  following 
No.  7. — VOL.  ii. 


passage  : — "  De  merne  que  nous  decla- 
"  rons  la  Hollande  puissance  germanique, 
"  de  meme  aussi  n'hesitons-nous  pas  a 
"  regarder  la  Belgique  comme  franchise. 
"  Elle  vit  par  nous,  et  sans  la  pusiUani- 
"  mite"    du    dernier    roi    des    Fra^ais, 
"  T assimilation  serait   complete   depuis 
"  1830."     Perhaps  this  aUusion  to  the 
year  1830  may  derive  illustration  from 
the  inspirations   of  a  more  celebrated 
politician.     Among  the  works  of  Napo- 
leon III.  there  is  a  fragment,   entitled 
"  Peace  or  War,"  which  expresses  a  very 
decided  opinion  upon  the  policy  which 
became  the  Sovereign  of  France  in  1830, 
and    by  implication    upon  the   policy 
which  becomes  its  Sovereign  in  1860,  or 
"  whenever  moral  force  is  in  its  favour." 
It   is  in   these  terms: — "All   upright 
"  men,  all   firm  and  just  minds  agree, 
"  that  after  1 830  only  two  courses  were 
'  open   to  France, — a  proud  and  lofty 
'  one,  the  result  of  which  might  be  war ; 
or  a  humble  one,  but  which  would 
'  reward  humility  by  granting  to  France 
'  all  the  advantages  which  peace  engen- 
'ders  and  brings  forth.     Our  opinion 
'  has  always  been,  that  in  spite  of  all  its 
'  dangers,  a  grand  and  bold  policy  was 
'  the    only    one    which    became    our 
'country:  and  in  1830,   when   moral 
'  force  was  in  our  favour,  France  might 
'  easily  have  regained  the  rank  which  is 
"  hers  by  right." 

It  is  not  out  of  place,  perhaps,  to  re- 
mark here  that  the  hope  of  a  meek  and 
quiet,  but  remunerative,  policy  on  the 
part  of  France — rather  than  one  grand 
and  bold  but  perilous — which  Mr.  Cob- 
den  had  some  reason  to  form  in  1853 
from  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  mari- 
time commerce  of  France,  has  since  lost 
its  foundation  by  a  change  in  the  mari- 
time laws  of  war  brought  about  by 
Napoleon  III.  To  have  crippled  by 
hostilities  with  a  superior  naval  power 
the  sale  of  manufactures  to  the  value  of 
50,000,0002.  and  interrupted  the  im- 
portation of  more  than  40,000,000^. 
worth  of  the  materials  of  French  in- 
dustry, might  well  have  seemed  a  risk 
too  prodigious  even  for  a  sovereign  with 
magnificent  ideas  to  encounter.  But — 
not  to  speak  of  the  elforts  made  by  that 

o 


82 


The  Question  of  the  Age — 7s  it  Peace  ? 


Sovereign  to  place  France  without  a 
superior  on  the  seas — there  is,  since  the 
Eussian  War  and  the  Treaty  of  Paris, 
nothing  which  France  imports  from 
foreign  shores  which  she  could  not  con- 
tinue to  receive  during  a  war  with  Eng- 
land in  neutral  vessels.  Even  a  blockade 
of  the  whole  French  coast  would  only 
send  the  cargoes  round  by  the  Scheldt 
and  the  Gulf  of  Genoa ;  and  to  whatever 
extent  it  were  really  successful  in  ob- 
structing neutral  trade,  it  would  tend, 
on  peace  principles  themselves,  to  make 
America,  Sardinia,  Spain,  Russia,  and 
Turkey  the  enemies  of  the  blockading 
power,  in  the  ratio  of  the  intercept  of 
imports. 

It  is  by  no  means  intended  by  these 
observations  to  attenuate  the  truism  that 
the  material  interests  of  France  would 
counsel  a  pacific  policy  on  the  part  of 
its  Government,  but  only  to  show  that 
they  do  not  present  an  insuperable 
obstacle  to  a  warlike  one,  even  against 
ourselves,  and  therefore  do  not  relieve 
us  of  the  barbarous  onus  of  defensive 
preparations,  or  afford  us  much  security 
that  no  temptation  to  achieve  distinction 
by  the  sword  could  be  strong  enough  to 
divert  our  powerful  neighbours  from  the 
loom  and  the  spade. 

In  truth,  it  is  no  original  discovery  of 
our  era  that  the  commercial  demands  of 
France  and  England  make  them  natural 
allies.  It  was  seen  with  perfect  clear- 
ness by  that  statesman  who  led  them 
into  a  conflict  during  which,  on  each 
side  of  the  Channel,  infants  grew  to 
manhood,  seldom  hearing  of  an  overture 
for  peace,  and  personally  unacquainted 
with  any  human  world  but  one  of  per- 
petual war. 

When  laying  before  Parliament  the 
Treaty  of  Commerce  of  1786,  Mr.  Pitt 
expressed  a  confident  hope  that  the 
time  was  now  come  when  those  two 
countries  which  had  hitherto  acted  as  if 
intended  for  the  destruction  of  each 
other  would  "justify  the  order  of  the 
"  universe,  and  show  that  they  were 
"  better  calculated  for  friendly  inter- 
"  course  and  mutual  benevolence." 

That  generous  confidence  was  so  soon 
and  signally  frustrated,  not  because  of 


the  blindness  of  both  nations  to  the 
advantages  of  trade,  but  because  men 
are  sometimes  disposed  to  exchange 
blows  rather  than  benefits,  and  because 
they  have  passions,  affections,  and  aspi- 
rations both  higher  and  lower  than 
the  love  of  gold  or  goods.  Still,  in 
1860,  the  fiery  element  of  Avar  burns 
ardently  in  France,  because  the  desire 
of  wealth  is  not  the  one  ruling  thought 
which  moulds  the  currents  of  the  na- 
tional will.  There,  at  least,  the  econo- 
mical impulse  is  not  paramount  over 
every  other,  and  the  social  world  does 
not  take  all  its  laws  from  the  industrial ; 
of  which  in  politics  we  find  an  example 
in  the  insignificance  of  the  bourgeoisie, 
and,  in  common  life,  in  the  preference 
of  the  public  taste  for  the  ornamental 
rather  than  the  useful 

There  are  thinkers  who  not  only 
speculate  upon  the  future  of  our  own 
country  from  a  purely  English  point  of 
view,  and  take  'into  account  in  their 
predictions  of  its  destinies  no  forces 
save  those  visibly  in  action  in  ordinary 
times  inside  our  island  shores,  but  who 
measure  the  prospects  of  the  whole  hu- 
man race  according  to  principles  which 
would  be  valid  only  if  every  people  had 
an  English  history,  climate,  geographical 
position,  and  physical  and  moral  ^consti- 
tution. Yet,  in  fact,  some  of  the  proxi- 
mate dangers  of  war  arise  from  the  fact 
that  England  is  the  active  centre  of 
principles  which,  were  all  other  countries 
similarly  conditioned,  would  indeed  be 
favourable  to  the  maintenance  of  inter- 
national amity,  but  which,  being  domi- 
nant in  Britain  almost  alone,  come 
sometimes  into  violent  collision  with 
the  elements  of  national  life  that  are 
combined  elsewhere. 

The  mechanical  and  commercial  con- 
ditions common  to  the  modern  civilizjd 
world  have,  in  many  respects,  operated 
but  little  below  the  surface  to  modify 
diversities  created  by  nature  and  descent, 
and  betrayed  even  in  the  ordinary  round 
of  life.  The  likeness  between  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  the  Gaul  of  the  nineteenth 
century  lies  on  the  outside  ;  but  in  sym- 
pathies and  ideas,  in  heart  and  soul,  in 
the  inner  moral  life,  they  differ  funda- 


The  Question  of  the  Age — 7s  it  Peace  ? 


83 


mentally,  and  are  beings  representing 
two  distinct  phases  of  European  civili- 
zation. 

The  seas  kept  the  inhabitants  of  the 
British  Islands  for  centuries  aloof  from 
most  of  those  cruel  wars  which  have 
left  deep  marks  upon  the  institutions 
and  temper  of  Continental  Europe,  and 
protected  that  energetic  pursuit  of  ma- 
terial wealth  and  commercial  pre-emi- 
nence to  be  expected  from  the  first 
maritime  position  in  the  world,  from 
customs  at  once  free  and  aristocratic, 
and  not  least  from  a  climate  which  de- 
mands the  labour  which  it  renders 
easy,  while  precluding  foreign  modes 
of  existence  and  amusement. 

Twenty  Continental  summers,  follow- 
ing the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill, 
would  work  a  total  revolution  in  the 
social  economy  of  Britain.  They  would 
leave  us  a  gayer  and  pleasanter,  but 
a  vainer  and  an  idler  people.  They 
would  slacken  our  steps,  and  quicken 
our  eyes  and  tongues  ;  they  would  thin 
the  city  and  crowd  the  parks,  give  a 
holiday  air  to  English  life,  and  improve 
manners  and  the  art  of .  conversation 
amazingly.  We  should  lose  the  cold 
and  sedate  reserve,  the  calm  concentra- 
tion of  the  mind  on  serious  business, 
and  that  earnest,  patient,  and  practical 
character  which  our  history,  our  Puritan 
ancestry,  and  our  clouds,  have  formed 
for  us.  We  should  become  less  fond  of 
domestic  life,  less  engrossed  with  per- 
sonal and  family  interests,  living  more 
in  the  open  air,  and  abandoning  our- 
selves much  to  subjects  and  feelings  in 
which  passers-by  could  skare  and  sympa- 
thise. It  would  become  more  agreeable  to 
spend  than  to  get ;  accumulation  would 
pause  ;  people  would  love  most  to  shine 
in  society  and  at  the  table  (fhdte,  or  to 
see  splendid  spectacles.  In  the  end  per- 
haps London  might  be  so  like  Paris,  we 
should  have  found  so  many  of  the  ways 
of  our  lively  neighbours  worthy  of  our 
imitation,  that  we  might  enact  a  loi  de 
partition  and  a  conscription,  elect  an 
emperor,  place  an  immense  army  under 
his  command,  talk  about  natural  boun- 
daries, and  gladly  wear  red  ribbons  in 
our  button-holes.  Our  susceptibilities 


and  sense  of  honour  would  have  grown 
more  refined ;  the  press  and  the  courts 
of  law  might  fail  to  arrange  many  of 
our  differences  in  a  becoming  manner, 
and  we  might  find  it  imperative  to 
recur  to  the  chivalrous  arbitrament  of 
the  duel. 

This  may  perhaps  appear  a  grotesquely 
exaggerated  picture  ;  yet  in  America  the 
force  of  climate  and  circumstance  is  seen 
to  reproduce  in  a  few  generations  the 
lineaments  of  the  indigenous  inhabitant 
in  the  face  of  the  Saxon  settler,  and  to 
excite  an  eager  restlessness  of  tempera- 
ment wholly  foreign  to  the  ancestral 
type.  And  we  have  sketched  but  a  few 
of  the  influences  which  tend  in  France 
to  enervate  the  industrial  spirit,  and  to 
give  an  undue  force  and  direction  to 
other  impulses  and  motives  of  action. 
It  is  not  only  that  the  Frenchman 
naturally  seeks  the  ideal  more  and  the 
material  less  than  the  sober  English- 
man, but  that  his  country  affords  fewer 
avenues  for  advancement  and  enterprise 
in  civil  life,  and  scarcely  one  safe  pacific 
theme  of  politics.  Here  the  love  of 
change  and  excitement,  the  public  spirit 
of  the  citizen,  and  the  romantic  impulse 
of  the  man  to  transcend  the  narrow 
boundary  of  home,  and  to  become  an 
actor  on  a  greater  stage  than  the  market 
and  the  mill,  find  vent  and  exercise,  not 
only  in  the  discussions  of  a  free  press, 
but  in  the  possession  of  a  world-wide 
empire,  familiar  to  the  imagination  and 
yet  full  of  the  unknown — a  consideration 
the  more  operative  on  the  side  of  peace, 
that  the  magnitude  of  this  empire  is  felt 
to  be  largely  due  to  the  conquests 
of  industry,  not  of  arms,  and  that,  by 
universal  consent,  the  nation  may 
have  equals  in  war,  but  has  no  rival 
in  the  renown  and  blessings  of  wealth. 
The  Frenchman,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  but  a  soldier's  tent  abroad ;  he 
has  no  sphere  of  cosmopolitan  action 
save  the  campaign,  nor  anything  beside 
his  famous  sword  to  assure  him  of  a  con- 
spicuous figure  in  Europe  and  a  place 
in  history. 

Nor  let  us  suppose  entirely  spent 
the  original  forces  of  that  triumphant 
Jacquerie,  the  Revolution  of  1789, 

G  2 


84 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


which,  made  a  populace  of  serfs  a  people 
of  freedmen,  with  the  pride  and  spirit 
of  citizens  and  the  vanity  and  suspicions 
of  parvenus.  The  despot  said,  "L'Etat, 
c'est  moi;"  the  emancipated  slave 
awoke  to  the  intoxicating  reflection, 
"L'Etat,  c'est  moi"  Seldom,  since, 
has  an  idea  of  the  dignity  and  glory  of 
the  State  been  presented  to  the  popular 
mind  of  France  in  any  other  shape  than 
that  of  victory  and  military  precedence. 

Mr.  Buckle  has  been  led  far  astray 
when  he  maintains  that  every  great  step 
in  national  progress,  and  every  consi- 
derable increase  of  mental  activity,  must 
be  at  the  expense  of  the  warlike  spirit ; 
nor  could  he  have  happened  on  a  more 
unfortunate  reference  than  to  the  "mili- 
tary predilections  of  Eussia"1  for  an 
illustration  of  his  theory  that  a  dislike 
of  war  is  peculiar  to  a  people  whose  in- 
tellect has  received  an  extraordinary  im- 
pulse from  the  advancement  and  general 
diffusion  of  knowledge  and  civilization. 
"  It  is  clear,"  he  says,  "  that  Russia  is  a 
"warlike  country,  not  because  the  inha- 
"  bitants  are  immoral,  but  because  they 
"  are  unintellectual."  But,  in  fact,  what 
is  clear  is,  that  Russia  is  at  present  not 
a  warlike  country.  Its  situation,  climate, 
history,  and  institutions,  have  contri- 
buted to  make  its  inhabitants,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  best  authorities,  "the 
"  most  pacific  people  on  the  face  of  the 
"  earth."  2 

Never  in  Moscow  or  St.  Petersburgh 
would  you  hear  the  cry  of  War  for  ever  ! 

1  Buckle's  History  of  Civilisation,  voL  i. 
p.  178. 

*  "  Upon  this  point,  I  believe,  no  difference 
of  opinion  exists  among  all  observers.  Having 
lived  for  several  years  in  a  position  which 
enabled  me  to  mix  much  with  the  officers  and 
men  of  the  Russian  army,  such  is  my  strong 
opinion  of  the  Russian  character.  M.  Hax- 
thausen  mentions,  as  a  point  admitting  of  no 
doubt,  'the  absence  of  all  warlike  tendency 
among  the  Russian  people,  and  their  excessive 
fear  of  the  profession  of  a  soldier.'  The  Rus- 
sian people  have  no  pleasure  in  wearing  arms ; 
even  in  their  quarrels  among  themselves,  which 
are  rare,  they  hardly  ever  fight,  and  the  duel, 
which  now  often  takes  place  among  the  Russian 
officers,  is  contrary  to  the  national  manners, 
and  is  a  custom  imported  from  the  West." — 
Russia  on  the  Slack  Sea,  by  H.  D.  Seymour, 
p.  97. 


— Vive  la  guerre  ! — uttered  often  unre- 
buked  by  the  writer's  side,  as  the  army 
of  Italy  denied  through  the  streets  of 
Paris  on  the  14th  of  August,  1859.1 
]S"ever  during  the  Crimean  War  would 
you  have  seen  a  Russian  manufacturer 
join  the  army  as  a  volunteer,  confessing 
with  pride,  "Moi,  je  n'aime  pas  la 
paix."  2 

There  is,  in  truth,  a  natural  relation- 
ship between  the  economic  impulse,  or 
the  desire  of  a  higher  and  better  condi- 
tion, and  those  national  sentiments  to 
which,  in  France,  an  unfortunate  course 
of  circumstances  has  given  a  military 
direction.  Patriotic  pride  and  emulation 
are  personal  ambition  purified  and  ex- 
alted by  the  alliance  of  some  disinterested 
motives  and  affections.  I^or  can  that 
feeling  ordinarily  fail  to  have  an  ele- 
vating influence  on  the  character  of  a 
people  which  raises  the  aspirations  of 
the  multitude  above  selfish  ends  and 
material  gain,  and  infuses  some  measure 
of  enthusiasm  and  public  spirit  into  the 
mostvulgarminds.  Hence  political  econo- 
mists of  the  highest  philosophic  genius, 
such  as  Adam  Smith  and  William  Hum- 
boldt,  have  been  far  from  reprobating  a 
martial  temper  in  a  people  as  barbarous 
in  every  form  and  under  all  conditions. 
To  France,  xmhappily,  we  might  .apply 
Lord  Bacon's  lamentation  on  the  im- 
proper culture  of  the  seeds  of  patriotic 
virtue  :  "  But  the  misery  is  that  the 
"  most  effectual  means  are  applied  to  the 
"ends  least  to  be  desired."  It  is  not 
only  that  the  structure  of  the  French 
polity  is  such  that  the  ruling  classes  are 
those  least  fit  to  rule,  and  most  liable  to 
be  swayed  by  passion  and  caprice,  while 
there  is  no  percolation  through  succes- 

1  This  was  among  persons  who  were  able  to 
pay  twenty  francs  a-piece  for  their  seats. 

*  The  writer  met  returning  from  Solferino 
a  French  manufacturer,  who,  deserting  his 
business  for  the  campaign,  had  attached  him- 
self to  the  army  of  Italy,  in  which  he  bore  the 
rank  of  captain.  He  had  served  in  like  manner 
in  the  Crimea,  at  the  siege  of  Rome,  and  in 
Algeria.  This  individual  made  the  above 
declaration  of  his  disrelish  for  peace ;  yet, 
upon  the  truce,  he  quietly  resumed  his  busi- 
ness until  another  war,  which  he  anticipated 
the  following  spring,  should  relieve  him  of 
the  inglorious  occupation. 


The  Question  of  the  Age — 7s  it  Peace  ? 


85 


sive  grades,  as  in  England,  of  the  cooler 
views  and  habits  of  aristocratic  and 
educated  thought,  but  that  a  morbid 
intolerance  of  superiority  has  been  left 
by  the  remembrance  of  the  tyranny  of 
the  feudal  nobility.  As  Mr.  Mill  has 
observed,  "When  a  class,  formerly 
"  ascendant,  has  lost  its  ascendancy,  the 
"prevailing  sentiments  frequently  bear 
"  the  impress  of  an  impatient  dislike  of 
"  superiority." l  Among  the  French 
democracy  this  hatred  of  superior 
eminence,  being  carried  into  every  direc- 
tion of  the  popular  thought,  continually 
recurs  in  the  form  of  an  envious  and 
hostile  attitude  towards  Great  Britain. 
A  nation  prone  to  jealousy  is  placed  by 
the  side  of  another,  at  the  head  of  all 
peaceful  enterprise.  Whatever  envy  of 
English  fortune  might  thus  arise,  is 
aggravated  by  traditions  of  defeat  and 
injury,-— 

Ungentle  wishes  long  subdued, 
Subdued  and  cherished  long. 

France  has  now  no  colonies  save  a  few 
military  stations.  But  a  century  ago 
it  was  otherwise,  and  her  sons  might 
have  found  themselves  in  their  own 
country  from  Quebec  to  Pondicherry, 
and  from  the  Strait  of  Dover  to  the 
Strait  of  Magellan.  Why  are  they  now 
bounded  by  the  Bay  of  Biscay  and  the 
Gulf  of  Lyons  ]  How  is  it  that  Canada, 
Nova  Scotia,  Cape  Breton  and  Prince 
Edward's  Island,  the  Bahamas,  Tobago, 
Grenada  and  Dominica,  St.  Lucia  and 
St.  Vincent,  the  Falkland 2  Isles,  Malta, 
the  Ionian  Islands,  the  Mauritius,  Eod- 
rique  and  the  Seychelles,  and  India  from 
the  Kistna  to  Cape  Comocin,  once  held  or 
claimed  by  France,  are  now  undisputed 
fragments  of  the  British  Empire  ?  It  is  a 
question  which  calls  up  the  names  of 
Chatham  and  his  son,  of  Wolfe  and 
Clive,  of  Nelson  and  Wellesley,  and  other 
memories  retained  with  different  emotions 
at  each  side  of  the  Channel.  And  the 
answer  might  throw  some  light  upon 
the  source  of  the  popularity  at  one  side 
of  the  theory  of  natural  boundaries,  and 

1  Essay  on  Liberty. 

J  The  French  were  driven  from  the  Falk- 
land Isles  in  1766  by  the  Spaniards,  who  in 
1771  gave  place  to  the  British. 


the  eagerness  of  our  rivals  to  push  their 
frontiers  to  the  Scheldt,  the  Ehine,  and 
the  Alps,  and  to  live  in  a  larger  world 
of  their  own.1 

Let  us  not  be  too  severe  in  our  censure 
of  an  ambition,  which  we  must  at  the 
same  time  manfully  resist.  Suppose 
the  conditions  of  the  two  empires  to  be 
suddenly  reversed.  Suppose  England 
to  be  rankling  under  a  successful  inva- 
sion, and  a  long  occupation  by  a  foreign 
army.  Suppose  the  British  flag  to  have 
been  swept  from  every  sea,  and  almost 
every  distant  settlement  and  ancient 
dependency  transferred  to  the  domain  of 
France.  Suppose  at  the  same  time  that 
we  felt  or  imagined  our  ability  to  restore 
the  balance  and  resume  our  former  place 
upon  the  globe  ;  and  who  shall  say  that, 
less  sensitive  and  less  combative  as  we 
are,  we  should  not  be  eager  to  refer  the 
issue  to  the  trial  of  the  stronger  bat- 
talions once  more  ?  Or  who  shall  say 
that  the  ideas  of  glory  throughout  the 
civilized  world  are  not  such  at  this  hour 
that  the  defeat  of  England  by  sea  and 
land  would  add  immensely  to  the  pres- 
tige of  France,  to  the  personal  status 
of  all  her  citizens  in  the  maxima  civitas 
of  nations,  and  make  the  meanest  of 
them  feel  himself  conspicuous  in  the 
eyes  of  every  people  from  America  to 
China?  When,  after  such  reflections, 
we  imagine  the  many  roads  to  national 
distinction  upon  which  the  French 
might  occupy  the  foremost  place,  but  to 
which  they  give  little  heed;  when  we 
find  among  them  such  an  intense  appre- 
ciation, and  such  prodigious  sacrifices  for 
military  fame ;  when  the  accumulation 
of  capital  among  them,  and  the  conse- 
quent growth  of  a  pacific  political  power, 
is  prevented  by  the  fundamental  condi- 
tions of  their  polity ;  when  the  agrarian 
division  leaves  a  numerous  youth  of  the 
military  age  disposable  for  war,2  it  would 

1  Since  the  above  passage  was  in  the  press 
a  remarkable  map  has  been  published  in  Paris, 
entitled  "  L'Europe  de  1760  a  I860."  designed 
to  excite  attention  to  the  territorial  and  co- 
lonial losses  of  France  in  the  last  hundred 
years,  and  the   immense  aggrandizement   of 
Great  Britain  at  her  expense. 

2  See  Mr.  Laing's  Observations  on  the  State 
of  Europe.     Second  Series.    Pp.  104—8. 


86 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


seem  impossible  to  deny  that  the  latent 
force  of  the  warlike  element  in  France  is 
at  all  times  prodigious  ;  that  so  far  as  it 
M  latent  it  occupies  the  place  of  the 
deep  general  attachment  to  peace  which 
is  felt  in  England ;  and  that  its  actual 
ebullition  in  war  depends  partly  upon 
the  temper  and  life  of  a  single  indi- 
vidual, and  partly  on  the  occasions 
offered  by  the  state  of  Europe,  and  the 
weakness  of  neighbouring  powers.  But 
these  are  the  conditions  of  a  military 
age  and  society.  And  thus  it  is  that 
De  Tocqueville  has  described  his  coun- 
trymen :  "  Apt  for  all  things,  but  excel- 
"  ling  only  in  war ;  adoring  chance, 
"  force,  success,  splendour,  and  noise  more 
"  than  true  glory ;  more  capable  of 
"  heroism  than  of  virtue,  of  genius  than 
"  of  good  sense  ;  the  most  brilliant  and 
"the  most  dangerous  of  the  nations  of 
"  Europe  ;  and  that  best  fitted  to  become 
"by  turns  an  object  of  admiration,  of 
"hatred,  of  pity,  of  terror,  but  never  of 
"  indifference." 

It  is  this  people  which  has  elected 
an  absolute  monarch,  and  that  monarch 
is  Napoleon  III.  But  it  is  a  most  ob- 
vious inference  from  this  fact  alone,  that 
a  community,  which,  however  advanced 
in  some  of  the  arts  of  civilization,  has 
not  outgrown  the  superintendence  of 
despotic  government,  nor  learned  to 
govern  itself  or  to  trust  itself  with 
liberty,  has  not  arrived  at  that  stage  of 
progress  in  which  the  claims  of  industry 
and  peace  can  be  steadily  and  consis- 
tently paramount  in  the  councils  of  the 
state.  The  traditions  of  old,  and  still 
more  the  exigencies  and  ambitions  of 
new  imperial  dynasties,  are  incompatible 
with  the  conditions  of  the  greatest 
economical  prosperity.  Neither  are  the 
independence  and  robustness  of  thought 
educated  by  free  industrial  life  favour- 
able to  the  permanence  of  an  unlimited 
monarchy.  Let  us,  indeed,  ask  if  it  be 
auspicious  of  the  entry  of  Europe  upon 
the  industrial  and  pacific  stage,  and  the 
millennium  of  merchants,  that  the  trade 
of  the  world  has  hung  since  the  truce  of 
Villafranca  upon  the  tokens  of  peace, 
few  and  far  between,  that  have  fallen 
from  the  lips  of  a  military  chief  ? 


Yet  that  chief  has  deeply  studied 
history,  and  gathered  the  lesson  that 
monarchs  must  march  at  the  head  of 
the  ideas  of  their  age.1  And  there  are 
indications  that  the  vision  of  a  holy 
alliance  of  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  peace  and  bro- 
therhood of  nations  rose  before  his 
youthful  mind  as  one  of  such  ideas. 
In  1832,  he  mused  as  follows  : 2 — 

"We  hear  talk  of  eternal  wars,   of 

"  interminable    struggles,    and    yet    it 

"  would  be  an  easy  matter  for  the  sove- 

"  reigns  of  the  world  to  consolidate  an 

"  everlasting  peace.     Let  them  consult 

'  the   mutual   relations,   the  habits  of 

'  the  nations   among  themselves ;    let 

'  them  grant  the  nationality,  the  insti- 

'  tutions  which  they  demand,  and  they 

will  have  arrived  at  the  secret  of  a  true 
'  political  balance.  Then  will  all  nations 
'  be  brothers,  and  they  will  embrace 
'  each  other  in  the  presence  of  tyranny 
'  dethroned,  of  a  world  refreshed  and 
'  consolidated,  and  of  a  contented 
'  humanity." 

But  experience  has  not  increased  the 
confidence  of  the  wise  in  princes  or 
holy  alliances.  One  has  indeed  but 
to  glance  at  the  conditions  essential, 
in  the  mind  of  so  subtle  a  politician  as 
Napoleon  III.,  to  the  peace  of  Europe, 
and  their  inevitable  consequence,  to  rest 
assured  that  its  present  sovereigns  could 
hardly  grant  them  if  they  would,  and 
would  not  concur  to  yield  them  if  they 
could.  For  what  are  these  conditions  ? 
The  nationality  and  the  institutions 
which  the  nations  demand.  And  what 
is  to  be  the  consequence  ?  Tyranny 
dethroned. 

Such  really  are,  if  not  the  only  requi- 
sites to  "  consolidate  the  world  and 
content  humanity,"  the  indispensable 
supports  of  "a  true  political  balance." 
And  let  the  history  of  the  last  twelve 
years — let  the  war  in  Hungary  in  1849, 
and  the  war  in  Italy  in  1859 — let  the 
dungeons  of  Naples,  the  .people  of  Vene- 
tia,  the  Romagna,  Sicily,  and  Hungary 
in  1860  (should  we  not  add  Nice  and 

1  Historical  Fragments.  Works  of  Napo- 
leon III. 

1  Political  Reveries.  Works  of  Napoleon  III: 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


87 


Savoy  ?)  say  if  the  sovereigns  of  Europe 
are  ready  to  concede  without  a  struggle 
the  nationality  and  the  institutions  for 
which  the  nations  cry. 

Let  us  not,  however,  ungratefully  for- 
get that  the  year  1860  opened  with  an 
assurance  from  the  chief  of  the  sovereigns 
of  Europe,  of  his  desire,  "  so  far  as  de- 
pends on  him,  to  re-establish  peace  and 
confidence."  Yet  this  is  but  personal 
security  ,  for  our  confidence.  Should 
Napoleon  III.,  in  truth,  be  anxious  and 
resolute  for  peace,  yet  a  few  years,  and 
the  firmness  of  the  hand  which  controls 
an  impetuous  and  warlike  democracy 
must  relax,  and  afterwards  the  floods  of 
national  passion  may  come  and  beat 
against  a  house  of  peace  built  upon  the 
sand  of  an  Emperor's  words.  Gibbon 
has  remarked  upon  the  instability  of  the 
happiness  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the 
era  of  the  Antonines,  because  "  depend- 
ing on  the  character  of  a  single  man." 
The  son  and  successor  of  Marcus  Aure- 
lius  was  the  brutal  tyrant  Commodus. 
Besides,  we  cannot  forget  that  he  who 
"  dreamed  not  of  the  Empire  and  of 
"  war,"1  in  1848,  had,  "  at  the  end  of 
four  years,"  re-established  the  Empire  ; 
that  the  third  year  of  that  Empire  was 
the  beginning  of  strife  with  Russia,  and 
that  its  last  was  a  year  of  unfinished 
war  with  Austria.  Moreover,  under  the 
second  Empire,  all  France  is  assuming 
the  appearance  of  a  camp  in  the  centre 
of  Europe,  and  this  phenomenon  be- 
comes more  portentous  if  we  take  in 
connexion  with  it  the  Emperor's  opinion 
respecting  the  precautions  necessary  to 
preserve  the  honour  and  assert  the 
rightful  claims  of  France.  In  1843,  he 
wrote  :  "At  the  present  time  it  is  not 
'  sufficient  for  a  nation  to  have  a  few 
'  hundred  cavaliers,  or  some  thousand 
'  mercenaries  in  order  to  uphold  its  rank 
'  and  support  its  independence  ;  it  needs 
1  millions  of  armed  men.  .  .  .  The  ter- 
"  rible  example  of  Waterloo  has  not 

1  "  Je  ne  suis  pas  un  ambitieux  qui  re've 
1'Empire  et  la  guerre.  Si  j'etais  nomine" 
President  je  mettraia  mon  honneur  a  laisser  au 
but  de  quatre  ans  a  mon  successeur  le  pou- 
voir  affermi,  la  liberte  intacte."  Proclamation 
of  Louis  Napoleon,  December  10,  1848. 


"  taught  us.  .  .  .  The  problem  to  be 
"  resolved  is  this — to  resist  a  coalition 
"  France  needs  an  immense  army :  nay 
"more,  it  needs  a  reserve  of  trained 
"  men  in  case  of  a  reverse." 

We  must  infer,  either  that  in  1843 
Louis  Napoleon  foresaw  that  France 
was  destined  to  pursue  a  policy  which 
would,  to  a  moral  certainty,  bring  her 
into  conflict  with  the  other  powers ;  or 
that  in  his  deliberate  judgment  no  great 
European  state  is  secure  without  mil- 
lions of  disciplined  soldiers,  against  a 
coalition  of  other  states  for  its  destruc- 
tion. If  this  be  a  true  judgment,  in 
what  an  age  do  we  live  !  But,  at  least, 
the  armaments  of  France  prove  that  its 
sovereign  has  not  hesitated  to  employ 
its  utmost  resources  for  the  purpose  of 
enabling  it  to  "  resist  a  coalition ; " 
and  a  late  despatch  of  Lord  John 
Kussell  supplies  the  fitting  comment. 
'  M.  Thouvenel  conceives  that  Sardinia 
'  might  be  a  member  of  a  confederacy 
'  arrayed  against  France.  Now,  on  this 
'  Her  Majesty's  Government  would  ob- 
'  serve,  that  there  never  can  be  a  con- 
'  federacy  organized  against  France, 
'unless  it  be  for  common  defence 
'  against  aggressions  on  the  part  of 
'  France."  x  Another  natural  reflection 
presents  itself,  that  if  Napoleon  III. 
can  solve  "the  problem,"  and  make 
France  powerful  enough  to  defy  a  con- 
federacy, he  has  but  to  divide,  in  order 
to  tyrannize  over  Europe.  An  apology 
which  has  been  made  for  the  great 
military,  and  more  especially  the  great 
naval,  preparations  of  France — that  they 
indicate  no  new  or  Napoleonian  idea, 
but  are  simply  the  realization  of  plans 
conceived  under  a  former  government — 
may  be  well  founded.  But  then  the 
question  recurs — are  these  preparations 
necessary,  or  are  they  not  1  Does  France 
really  need  "  millions  of  armed  men," 
or  does  she  not?  If  she  does,  what 
conclusions  must  we  form  respecting 
the  character  of  the  age,  and  the 
theory  of  the  extinction  of  the  mili- 
tary element  in  modern  Europe  ?  Shall 

1  Further  Correspondence  relative  to  the 
Affairs  of  Italy,  Part  IV.  No.  2. 


88 


The  Question  of  the  Age — Is  it  Peace  ? 


we  say  that  it  is  an  economical,  in- 
dustrious, and  pacific  age,  or  one  of 
restlessness,  danger,  alarm  and  war  *? 
On  the  other  hand,  if  there  is  nothing 
in  surrounding  Europe  to  justify  the 
armaments  of  France,  what  must  we 
think  of  the  deliberate  schemes  of  the 
French  Government  and  the  probabilities 
of  peace  1  There  is,  too,  another  con- 
sideration— namely  that,  whatever  be  the 
reason  and  meaning  of  these  facts,  they 
are  facts  which  must  be  accepted  with 
their  natural  consequences.  You  cannot 
pile  barrels  of  gunpowder  round  your 
neighbour's  house  without  danger  of  a 
spark  falling  from  your  own  chimney  or 
his,  or  from  the  torch  of  some  fool  or 
incendiary.  In  the  presence  then  of 
these  phenomena,  indicating  what  they 
do  of  the  reciprocal  relations  and  atti- 
tude of  the  most  civilized  states,  can  we 
say  that  the  political  aspect  of  the  world 
and  the  condition  of  international  mo- 
rality would  be  unaptly  described  in  the 
language  applied  to  them  two  hundred 
years  ago  by  Hobbes  :  "Every  nation 
"  has  a  right  to  do  what  it  pleases  to 
"  other  commonwealths.  And  withal 
"  they  live  in  the  condition  of  perpetual 
"war,  with  their  frontiers  armed  and 
"  cannons  planted  against  their  neigh- 
"  hours  round  about.'"? 

There  are,  notwithstanding,  sanguine 
politicians,  who  look  upon  these  things 
as  transitional  and  well-nigh  past,  who 
view  the  darkest  prospects  of  the 
hour  as  the  passing  clouds  of  the  morn- 


ing of  peace,  and  the  immediate  heralds 
of  that  day  when  nation  shall  not  lift 
up  sword  against  nation,  neither  shall 
they  learn  war  any  more.  Of  the 
advent  of  that  period  not  one  doubt  is 
meant  to  be  suggested  here.  But  the 
measures  of  time  which  history  and 
philosophy  put  into  our  hands  are  dif- 
ferent from  those  which  the  statesman 
must  employ.  An  age  is  but  as  a  day 
to  the  eye  to  which  the  condition  of  the 
globe  when  it  was  first  trodden  by  savage 
men  is  present.  But  those  whose  vision 
is  confined  to  the  fleeting  moments  so 
important  to  themselves,  which  cover 
their  own  lifetime  and  that  of  their 
children,  will  deem  the  reign  of  peace 
far  distant  if  removed  to,  a  third  genera- 
tion. 

What,  then,  is  the  interpretation  of 
the  signs  of  the  times  on  which  a  prac- 
tical people  should  fix  its  scrutiny  ? 
To  this  question,  the  question  of  the  age 
— whether  it  means  peace  or  war — it  is 
believed  that  the  preceding  pages  supply 
a  partial  answer,  which  we  have  not 
here  room  to  make  more  full  and  defi- 
nite ;  or  it  could  be  shown  that  the 
form  and  spirit  of  the  age,  the  imper- 
fection of  the  mechanism  for  the  adjust- 
ment of  international  rights,  the  mal- 
organization  of  continental  polities,  the 
impending  repartition  of  Europe,  and 
the  aspect  of  remoter  portions  of  the 
globe  compose  a  political  horizon  charged 
with  the  elements  of  war. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


JUNE,  1860. 


THE  SUFFRAGE, 

CONSIDERED   IN   REFEEENCE   TO   THE  WORKING   CLASS,    AND   TO   THE 
PROFESSIONAL  CLASS. 

BY   THE   REV.    F.    D.    MAURICE. 


WHY  were  the  people  of  England  so 
earnest  on  behalf  of  the  Reform  Bill  of 
1831  ?  Why  are  the  people  of  England 
so  indifferent  about  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1860  1  We  have  all  asked  ourselves 
these  questions.  I  doubt  whether  party 
politicians  will  ever  find  the  answers  to 
them.  I  am  sure  that  those  who  are 
not  party  politicians  are  quite  as  much 
interested  in  the  answers  to  them  as 
they  can  be. 

So  far  as  those  whom  we  commonly 
describe  as  the  Working  Classes  are 
concerned,  an  a  priori  speculator  might 
have  looked  for  exactly  the  opposite 
result  to  that  which  he  witnesses. 
Those  classes  were  not  specially  con- 
sidered in  Lord  Grey's  Bill ;  the  classes 
with  which  they  had  least  sympathy, 
the  great  producers  and  the  shop- 
keepers, were  specially  considered  in  it. 
They  had  been  taught,  by  most  of  the 
speakers  and  writers  who  had  influence 
over  them,  to  suspect  the  Whigs ;  the 
Whigs  were  the  authors  of  the  measure. 
Nevertheless,  the  cry  for  the  bill,  and 
the  whole  bill,  went  through  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  land.  It  arose  from 
the  lowest  courts  and  alleys  ;  the  wisest 
confessed  it  to  be  indeed  a  national 
cry  ;  the  bravest,  with  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington at  their  head,  bowed  before  it. 

The  Bill  of  1860  does  contemplate 
these  working  classes ;  appears  designed 
especially  for  them.  The  popular  agi- 

No.  8. — VOL.  ii. 


tator  tells  them  that,  if  they  gain  so 
much,  all  else  they  want  will  follow. 
He  speaks  with  an  ability  and  an  elo- 
quence which  few  of  his  predecessors 
in  the  same  line  possessed.  He  addresses 
himself  directly  to  the  material  interests 
of  these  classes.  The  aristocrats,  he  says, 
are  taxing  them  cruelly ;  if  they  can 
procure  a  great  numerical  addition  to  the 
constituencies,  much  of  the  taxation  will 
be  unnecessary,  much  will  be  turned  in 
another  direction.  What  can  move  them 
if  these  arguments  do  not  1 

The  facts  say,  There  must  be  some 
arguments  which  move  the  hearts  of 
men  more  than  these.  And  ct  priori 
reasoning  must  bow  to  facts  in  a 
practical  country  like  England. 

It  may  sound  very  absurd,  to  say  that 
calculations  of  profit  and  loss  do  not 
affect  people  who  are  poor,  and  may 
starve,  as  much  as  appeals  to  their  con- 
science and  their  sympathy.  Young 
gentlemen  who  know  the  world  ar.e 
struck  at  once  with  the  folly  of  such  an 
assertion.  But  I  suspect  that  these  young 
gentlemen  fall  into  the  fallacy  of  con- 
founding the  stomach  with  reasonings 
about  the  stomach,  which  address  them- 
selves not  to  it,  but  to  the  brain.  The 
bakers'  shops  had  a  voice  for  the  hun- 
gry  crowds  who  poured  out  of  St. 
Antoine,  which  might  drown  discourses 
about  liberty  and  the  rights  of  man. 
But  discourses  about  liberty  and  the 


90 


The  Sufrage. 


rights  of  man  were  more  effective  upon 
those  crowds,  than  arguments  respect- 
ing the  price  of  the  luxuries  or  even  the 
necessaries  of  life.  In  times  of  revolu- 
tion, as  well  as  in  times  of  quiet,  the 
same  lesson  is  forced  upon  us.  Work- 
ing men — yes,  even  if  they  are  also 
suffering  men — demand  that  you  should 
do  homage  to  something  in  them  which 
is  not  material,  which  is  not  selfish. 
"When  they  claim  to  be-  adopted  as 
part  of  the  nation,  not  to  be  regarded  as 
standing  outside  of  it,  phantoms  of 
pecuniary  advantage  or  pecuniary  ex- 
emption may  float  before  their  eyes. 
You  may  possibly  be  able  to  persuade 
them  that  those  phantoms  are  all  that 
they  are  pursuing,  can  pursue,  ought  to 
pursue.  But  before  you  bring  theni  to 
that  conviction,  you  will  have  quite 
established  another  in  their  minds.  You 
will  have  left  them  in  no  doubt  that 
those  are  the  objects  you  are  following 
after ;  .that  you  identify  the  privilege  of 
belonging  to  a  nation — of  being  a  living 
and  governing  part  of  it — with  the 
outward  good  things  which  it  procures 
for  you.  And  they  will  despise  and 
hate  you  for  that  baseness  ;  will  despise 
and  hate  you  the  more  because  you 
give  them  credit  for  sharing  in  it. 

Any  one  who  recollects  the  kind  of 
feeling  which  was  at  work  in  1831  and 
1832  will  quickly  apply  this  remark  to 
that  time.  The  indignation  in  the 
people,  whether  justified  or  not,  was  a 
moral  indignation.  It  was  an  indignation 
against  the  upper  classes  as  caring  for 
their  material  interests  more  than  for 
the  well-being  of  the  nation.  The  cry 
was,  "  The  purse  is  supreme.  We  are 
"bought  and  sold.  These  peers  who 
"call  themselves  noble,  and  talk  about 
"  a  glorious  ancestry,  care  only  for  their 
"  acres.  These  clergy  who  tell  us  about 
"a  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  care  only  for 
"  their  livings  on  earth.  We  must  have 
"  all  that  set  right.  Three  cheers  for  the 
"bill"  I  am  not  saying  that  there 
was  not  great  unfairness  in  these  cries. 
I  am  saying  only  that  they  had  more 
weight  with  the  body  of  the  people, 
more  influence  in  securing  their  votes 
for  the  proposed  reform,  than  any 


reasonings  about  the  effect  of  admitting 
by  a  501.  franchise  in  the  counties  or 
a  10Z.  franchise  in  the  towns.  The 
scandal  and  the  shame  of  confounding 
high,  national,  divine  interests,  with 
low,  class,  material  interests,  struck  the 
conscience  of  men  who  could  not 
understand  nice  questions  about  re- 
presentation. And  that  conscience,  far 
more  than  all  the  skill  of  those  who 
framed  the  bill,  or  the  ingenuity  of 
those  "who  defended  it,  or  the  eagerness 
of  those  who  profited  by  it,  overcame 
an  opposition  that  was  formidable  not 
for  the  wealth  and  traditional  influence 
only,  but  for  the  character,  the  wisdom, 
and  the  earnestness  of  those  who  took 
part  in  it. 

I  do  not  allude  to  the  formal  opposi- 
tion in  either  House.  I  allude  to  those 
who  were  certain  never  to  be  members  of 
Parliament ;  to  some  of  the  most  mature 
thinkers  of  that  day.  A  few  of  my 
readers  will  have  heard  themselves,  all 
of  us  know  by  report,  the  eloquent 
discourses  which  Mr.  Wordsworth  was 
wont  to  pour  forth  against  the  BilL 
Yet  he  was  not  ashamed  of  his  early 
revolutionary  fervour ;  his  later  Toryism 
was  associated  with  profound  reverence 
for  the  lower  classes,  with  indepen- 
dence of  aristocratical  patronage.  Mr. 
Hallam,  born  and  bred  amongst  Whigs 
— living  amongst  them — expressed,  at 
a  time  when  the  weight  of  his  testi- 
mony as  a  constitutional  historian  would 
have  been  most  valuable  to  his  friends, 
what  must  have  been  a  most  serious,  be- 
cause a  most  reluctant,  disapprobation  of 
their  measure.  Can  it  be  doubted  that 
both  these  illustrious  men,  starting  from 
such  opposite  points,  with  characters 
and  education  so  dissimilar,  agreed  in 
their  conclusion,  because  both  equally 
dreaded  a  sacrifice  of  moral  and  intel- 
lectual to  material  interests,  from  the 
predominance  of  the  class  which  the 
bill  proposed  to  enfranchise  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  what  endeared  it  to  the 
younger  men  of  the  literary  and  pro- 
fessional class  who  reverenced  the  au- 
thority of  these  guides,  and  yet  could 
not  stoop  to  it,  but  the  experience 
which  they  had,  or  thought  they  had,  of 


The  Suffrage. 


91 


the  terrible  weight  of  those  same  mate- 
rial interests  in  the  system  which  the 
bill  disturbed  1  In  many  a  house,  where 
a  grave  and  righteous  father,  or  uncle, 
somewhere  on  the  wrong  side  of  sixty, 
met  a  son  or  nephew  just,  fresh  from 
college,  with  a  mind  which  he  had 
helped  to  form,  and  which  reflected  his 
own,  did  a  dialogue  take  place,  not  much 
varying  in  substance  from  this  : — 

Senex.  I  wish  you  could  tell  me  why 
you  have  fallen  in  love  with  this  new 
constitution  which  Lord  Grey  is  so  good 
as  to  devise  for  us. 

Juvenis.  You  remember  Johnson, 
sir;  he  passed  part  of  one  long  vacation 
with  me  at  your  house. 

Senex.  Of  course,  I  remember  him ; 
a  very  clever,  sparkling  fellow.  Absurdly 
liberal;  but  with  no  harm  in  him.  I 
shall  be  glad  to  see  him  again.  What 
has  that  to  do  with  my  question  ? 

Juvenis.  He  comes  in  for  the  borough 
of  Y on  Lord  P's  interest. 

Senex.  On  Lord  P's  interest !  one  of 
the  most  conspicuous  names  in  Schedule 
A.  Dead  against  the  bill ! 

Juvenis.  Just  so.  Johnson,  knowing 
all  the  arguments  for  it,  and  heartily 
sympathising  in  them,  can,  of  course, 
oppose  it  much  more  effectually  than 
those  who  have  only  learnt  by  heart  the 
common-places  on  the  other  side. 

Senex.  Humph  '  Some  who  think  as 
I  do  might  utter  words  of  triumph 
about  the  easy  virtue  of  Eadicals.  I  do 
not.  I  am  as  sorry  for  your  friend  as 
you  can  be. 

Juvenis.  Well,  sir  !  And  must  I  not 
hate  a  system  with  perfect  hatred  which 
reduces  a  man — one  with  whom  I  have 
exchanged  thoughts  and  hopes,  one  whom 
I  care  for,  in  all  respects  a  better  as  well 
as  a  wiser  man  than  I  am — into  a 
creature  whom  I  am  obliged  to  despise  ? 

Senex.  Be  true  to  thyself,  my  boy, 
and  then  thou  wilt  not  be  false  to  any 
man,  or  to  thy  country,  though  thou 
mayst  make  thousands  of  mistakes. 

Juvenis.  You  have  taught  me  not  to 
lie,  sir;  I  owe  therefore  to  you  my  hatred 
of  this  serpent  which  is  tempting  us  all 
to  lie.  I  do  not  understand,  let  me  say 
it  with  all  deference,  your  tolerance  of 


feudalism.  Of  all  persons  I  have  ever 
known,  you  abhor  money- worship  most, 
and  have  kept  your  soul  freest  from  it. 
How  can  you  endure  that  which  per- 
suades the  wise  and  the  unwise  that 
their  tongues,  their  hearts,  their  man- 
hood, are  all  articles  for  sale  1 

Senex.  t  My  respect  for  aristocracy  is 
increased,  not  diminished,  by  the  horror 
I  have  of  these  proceedings ;  by  my  cer- 
tainty that  they  will  bring  a  curse  upon 
those  who  commit  them,  and  upon  the 
land.  If  an  aristocracy  forgets  that  it  is  a 
witness  for  intellect  and  manhood,  and 
against  the  power  of  the  purse,  7  am 
not  to  forget  it.  I  am  not  to  endue 
with  power  those  who  believe  only  in 
the  purse,  who  think  that  all  institutions 
which  connect  us  with  the  past,  which 
tell  us  that  we  are  a  nation  of  men, 
are  hindrances  to  its  triumphs,  and 
therefore  should  be  swept  away.  The 
new  Eeform  Bill  means  that  for  me; 
therefore,  I  protest  against  it. 

Juvenis.  It  seems  to  me,  sir,  that  the 
incubus  which  is  pressing  upon  us 
must  be  got  rid  of  somehow,  and  that 
we  must  not  shrink  from  any  efforts, 
shun  any  allies,  fear  to  face  any  conse- 
quences, if  we  can  but  throw  it  oft 

I  wish  to  illustrate  by  this  dialogue 
the  common  feeling  which  was  at  work 
in  the  most  earnest  men  who  took  oppo- 
site sides  in  this  great  controversy.  I 
wish  to  show  that  that  common  feeling 
was  a  dread  lest  the  nation  should  perish 
through  the  idolatry  of  material  interests 
by  one  or  other  of  its  classes.  This 
feeling  was  stronger  than  all  questions 
of  detail ;  strong  enough  to  make  those 
who  accepted  the  bill  endure  many 
details  in  it  which  they  disliked — those 
who  rejected  it  fear  many  of  its  gifts 
which  they  might  have  been  glad  to 
receive.  And  this  feeling,  it  seems  to  me, 
won  the  triumph.  The  aristocracy  had 
committed  the  sin  with  which  they  were 
charged.  The  judgment  for  it  could  not 
be  delayed.  It  came  in  a  form  which 
averted  the  doom  of  which  many  sup- 
posed it  was  the  trumpet. 

The  wisdom  of  the  aged  could  not 
prevail  against  the  righteous  decrees  of 

H  2 


92 


The  Suffrage. 


Heaven.  It  did  make  itself  good  against 
many  of  the  dreams  and  hopes  of  the 
young  men,  in  which  heavenly  and 
earthly  elements  were  mixed.  Their  turn 
for  murmuring  against  the  ten-pound 
householders  of  the  town  was  to 
come.  The  complaints  were  repeated — 
loudly  repeated — by  the  working  men, 
who  had  joined  to  procure  for  the 
middle  class  its  new  position.  In  the 
case,  however,  of  the  professional  class, 
they  produced  what  was  called  a  "  Con- 
servative reaction ;"  in  the  other  case  they 
issued  in  a  fiercer  radicalism.  The  one 
talked  of  the  old  constitution,  dreamt  of 
times  when  men  cared  less  for  money 
than  they  do  now,  detected  some  truth 
in  what  they  had  been  used  to  describe 
as  platitudes  respecting  the  wisdom  of 
our  ancestors  ;  the  other  cried  for 
manhood-suffrage  and  the  points  of  the 
charter.  They  were  apparently,  there- 
fore, moving  farther  and  farther  from 
each  other ;  the  first  regretting  that  the 
aristocracy  had  conceded  so  much,  the 
other  saying  that  to  them  they  had  con- 
ceded nothing.  Meantime  a  victory  was 
won  by  that  class  of  which  both  were 
jealous  ;  a  victory  which  curiously  illus- 
trates the  subject  I  am  considering. 
The  Conservative  party  rose  to  power 
supported  by  the  cry  that  .the  new  class 
to  which  the  Eeform  BiH  had  given  so 
much  influence  would  sacrifice  all  old 
institutions  to  mere  immediate  material 
interests  if  they  were  not  withstood. 
The  Conservative  party  bound  itself  to 
the  preservation  of  an  immediate  ma- 
terial interest.  No  doubt  many  of  its 
members  looked  upon  the  Corn  Laws  in 
a  higher  light  than  this  ;  no  doubt  they 
regarded  them  as  sacred  ancient  institu- 
tions. But  the  conscience  of  the  country 
could  not  recognise  them  under  this 
name.  It  pronounced  them  a  selfish 
monopoly  contrived  for  the  good  of  a 
class ;  it  passed  sentence  upon  them. 
Sir  Robert  Peel,  noi  in  the  character  of 
a  representative  of  middle-class  feelings 
— however  he  may  deserve  on  some 
grounds  to  be  so  described — but  as  a 
practical  statesman,  confessed  a  power 
which  was  too  strong  for  him,  and  sacri- 
ficed to  it  his  party  and  his  reputation. 


Let  this  fact  be  remembered  by  the 
champions  of  that  cause.  Let  them 
laugh  as  they  like  at  a  national  con- 
science ;  but  let  them  know  that  their 
arguments,  their  eloquence,  their  con- 
spiracy would  have  been  utterly  inef- 
fectual if  they  had  not  enlisted  it  on 
their  side. 

Then  came  the  year  1848.  The 
throne  which  had  relied  most  upon  the 
support  of  the  middle  class,  the  throne 
which  had  aimed  most  steadily  and  ex- 
clusively at  the  promotion  of  material 
interests,  the  throne  which  enlightened 
doctrinaires  had  supported  mainly  be- 
cause they  looked  upon  it  as  the  one 
barrier  against  absolutism  and  demo- 
cracy, fell  down  as  if  it  had  been  a  house 
of  cards;  and  most  of  the  thrones  in 
Europe  shook  or  fell  as  if  they  were 
built  of  cards  also.  What  did  this 
earthquake  mean?  There  were  those 
who  interpreted  it  thus  :  "  Hitherto/' 
they  said,  "  democracy  has  been  invad- 
"  ing  only  institutions — monarchies,  aris- 
"tocracies,  churches.  Now  it  is  ap- 
"  proaching  the  heart  of  society.  Now 
'  it  is  threatening  property.  Now  then 
'  is  the  tune  for  ah1  who  have  property, 
'however  little  they  may  care  for 
'  any  of  these  institutions,  to  arm  them- 
selves. Upper  classes,  middle  classes, 
'  rally  in  this  name.  With  this  watch- 
'  word  go  forth  against  your  enemies." 
There  were  others  who  looked  at  this  re- 
volution as  having  a  different  and  some- 
what deeper  significance.  Beneath  the 
mad  cry,  La  Propriete  c'est  le  vol!  they 
heard  another  and  a  divine  voice  saying, 
"No  kingdom  can  stand  which  exalts 
'  the  thfngs  that  a  man  has  above  the 
'  man  himself.  Old  dynasties  have  fallen 
'  for  this  sin ;  this  young  dynasty  has 
'  fallen  for  it ;  democracies  will  fall  for 
'  it  just  as  much." 

The  practical  methods  which  these  two 
readings  of  the  same  events  have  sug- 
gested are  necessarily  opposite.  Let 
each  be  tried  by  its  results.  In  France 
the  necessity  of  enduring  anything  that 
the  risks  to  property  might  be  averted 
has  led  to  the  establishment  of  a  tyranny 
which  crushes  thought,  intelligence, 
manhood ;  do  those  who  care  only  for 


The  Su/rage. 


93 


prosperity,  and  for  peace  as  the  great 
instrument  of  prosperity,  feel  that  it 
makes  them  safe  1  In  England  how  far 
has  the  mere  fear  of  a  third  class  served 
to  hold  the  upper  class  and  the  middle 
class  in  union  ?  The  great  middle-class 
orator  is  the  person  who  is  causing  most 
alarm  to  the  upper  class  and  to  many  of 
his  own.  He  throws  himself  upon  the 
sympathies  of  the  working-class;  he  tells 
them  that  the  aristocracy  is  plotting 
their  ruin  ;  he  points  them  to  the  insti- 
tutions of  America  as  emphatically  the 
cheap  institutions.  If  these  are  rather 
ideals  to  be  admired  than  to  be  realized, 
at  least  by  a  great  addition .  to  the  suf- 
frage some  of  their  principal  advantages 
may  be  secured.  Such  statements  fill 
our  Conservative  politicians  with  terror. 
They  think  something  must  be  conceded 
to  these  dangerous  working  men.  How 
much  must  be  conceded,  how  much  can 
be  saved,  they  ask,  sometimes  with 
anxiety,  sometimes  with  a  sort  of  des- 
perate indifference.  They  appeal  to  the 
letter  of  Lord  Macaulay  respecting  Jef- 
ferson as  evidence  that  the  most  accom- 
plished and  philosophical  defender  of 
the  old  Reform  Bill  dreaded  any  exten- 
sion of  it  which  should  make  property  a 
less  necessary  element  in  a  constituency; 
that  he  regarded  the  want  of  reverence 
for  the  sacredness  of  property  as  the 
great  defect  and  danger  of  American 
institutions.  They  debate  languidly  and 
listlessly,  with  a  sort  of  resignation  to 
the  inevitable — yet  with  anger  at  each 
other  for  having  produced  the  inevit- 
able— how  many  of  what  they  regard  as 
the  old  safeguards  of  the  Constitution 
can  still  be  defended ;  beyond  what 
point  in  the  scale  of  poverty  it  is  possi- 
ble to  go,  with  only  a  moderate  risk  of 
confiscation. 

Those  who  take  the  other  view  of 
this  subject  cannot  help  being  struck 
with  the  fact,  which  I  noticed  at  the 
commencement  of  this  paper,  that  the 
working  classes  do  not  exhibit  that  pas- 
sionate sympathy  with  Mr.  Bright' s 
appeals  which  might  naturally  be  looked 
for;  at  all  events,  that  they  are  quite 
open  to  appeals  of  directly  the  opposite 
kind ;  that  they  are  more  moved  when 


they  are  told  that  the  soil  on  which  they 
dwell  is  a  precious  and  sacred  thing, 
which  it  is  their  duty  and  their  privilege 
to  defend.  That  they  may  become 
utterly  indifferent  to  such  words ;  that, 
if  those  who  use  them  merely  adopt 
them  for  their  own  selfish  ends,  they 
will  lose  all  their  weight,  and  that  then 
the  working  people  will  only  care  to 
think  of  themselves  as  a  class  which 
has  an  interest  at  war  with  the  other 
classes;  is  obvious  enough.  But  it  is 
not  so  yet.  It  is  evident  to  those  who 
look  upon  them  with  fair,  not  partial, 
eyes,  that  they  wish  to  be  recognised  as 
members  of  the  nation,  not  to  stand 
aloof  from  it ;  to  have  a  common  inte- 
rest with  the  other  classes,  not  an  interest 
which  is  opposed  to  theirs  or  destruc- 
tive of  theirs.  They  have  the  same 
temptations  to  be  a  self-seeking  class  as 
the  aristocracy  have,  as  the  shopkeepers 
have,  no  greater  temptation.  But  they 
must  desire,  in  proportion  as  they  are 
true  to  themselves,  to  maintain  that  the 
manhood  which  they  share  with  others 
is  greater  than  the  property  which  they 
do  not  share  with  them ;  that  this  is  a 
higher  title  to  belong  to  the  nation  than 
that ;  that  only  so  far  as  those  who  have 
property  have  also  manhood,  can  they 
be  honourable  or  useful  citizens.  Could 
Lord  Macaulay  think  that  America  was 
in  danger  from  holding  a  faith  of  this 
kind  ?  Surely,  if  he  did,  he  dissented 
from  the  great  majority  of  those  in  Eng- 
land, or  in  the  United  States,  who  mourn 
over  American  transgressions,  and  dread 
American  examples.  When  we  talk  of 
the  omnipotent  guinea,  we  surely  do  not 
mean  that  that  thriving  people  hold  the 
possession  or  the  acquisition  of  gold  in 
too  low  estimation.  When  we  allude  to 
their  defences  of  the  "  sacred  social  insti- 
tution," we  surely  do  not  mean  to  charge 
them  with  an  over-reverence  for  the 
human  being,  for  being  too  apt  to  con- 
sider the  mere  possession  of  a  body  and 
soul  a  qualification  for  citizenship.  . 

It  can  hardly  be  expected  that  the 
mere  politician  should  feel  the  force  of 
this  objection,  or  that  any  person  should, 
who  is  content  merely  to  call  himself  a 
member  of  the  upper  class  or  of  the 


94 


The  Suffrage. 


trading  class.  One  had  hoped  that  such 
a  man  as  Lord  Macaulay,  who  had 
relations  with  each  of  these,  but  who 
belonged  more  strictly  to  the  profes- 
sional or  the  literary  class,  than  to 
any  of  them,  would  have  felt  in  that 
character,  if  not  in  the  character  of  an 
old  anti-slavery  champion,  the  duty  of 
not  allowing  such  a  triumph  to  Jefferson 
and  his  school  as  is  implied  in  the  admis- 
sion that  their  constitution  rests  on 
manhood  and  ours  on  property.  Many 
circumstances  in  his  position  may  have 
made  him  less  able  to  perceive  the  peril 
of  this  stigma  upon  England  and  com- 
pliment to  America  than  many  inferior 
men  born  for  a  later  time.  It  seems  to 
me  of  infinite  importance  that  the  pro- 
fessional men  and  literary  men  of  our 
day  should  thoroughly  understand  them- 
selves on  this  point,  that  so  they  may 
be  able  thoroughly  to  understand  the 
working  classes.  They  ought  to  feel 
that  their  very  existence  as  members  of 
professions — their  work  as  men  o'f  letters 
— is  inseparable  from  the  belief  that  the 
accidents  of  position,  the  possession  of 
outward  wealth,  is  not  that  which  makes 
the  citizen.  Just  so  far  as  they  hold  fast 
this  faith,  just  so  far  will  they  be  free 
from  the  sordid  admiration  of  wealth — 
which  is  another  name  for  the  sordid 
envy  of  it — just  so  far  will  they  be  able 
to  show  the  possessors  of  wealth  what 
it  is  good  for,  because  they  do  not  crawl 
to  it  or  worship  it.  They  may  teach  the 
nobleman  to  reverence  his  position  as  a 
member  of  a  family,  as  the  inheritor  of 
glorious  memories  and  obligations.  They 
may  teach  the  member  of  the  trading 
class  to  feel  that  on  him  devolve  also 
high  memories  and  great  responsibi- 
lities ;  that  he,  as  the  maintainer  of 
municipal  rights  and  freedom,  has  not  a 
less  noble  position  than  the  greatest 
proprietor  of  the  soil  But  they  can  only 
do  this  while  they  maintain  their  own 
position  as  men  who,  not  in  virtue  of 
any  hereditary  title,  not  in  virtue  of  any 
mercantile  dignity,  deal  with  the  laws 
of  the  body,  of  the  mind,  of  the  spirit, 
and  with  those  by  which  society  is  go- 
Terned  and  upheld  from  age  to  age. 
If  they  take  this  ground,  they  must 


feel  that  their  closest  and  most  natural 
allies  are  in  that  class  which  stands  like 
theirs  upon  the  ground  of  manhood,  which 
cannot  stand  upon  the  ground  of  pos- 
session.    That  we  have  all  failed,  griev- 
ously and  disgracefully  failed,  in  taking 
up  this  position  and  doing  this  work, — 
that  we  have  more  to  answer  for  than 
all  politicians  for  the  ignorance  of  the 
working  people  respecting  their  political 
position  and   political   duties,  and  for 
any  errors   into  which   they  may  fall 
through  counsellors  who  will  lead  them 
to  think  unworthily  of  themselves  by 
stirring  them   up  to   unworthy  suspi- 
cions of  their  fellows, — we  are  bound 
always   to   confess.      But  this   confes- 
sion will  not  be  an  honest  and  practical 
one    if  we   fancy  that  we   can    make 
the   people   aware   of  these   duties  by 
merely  preaching  about  them  and  de- 
nouncing the   neglect   of  them.      The 
claim  of  the  people  to  a  share  in  the 
suffrage  is  an  honest  and  healthy  claim ; 
a  claim  to  have  a  part  in  the  interests 
of  the  nation — in  the  toils  and  suffer- 
ings of  the  nation.    They  have  not  been 
too    earnest    in    putting   forward   this 
claim  ;  they  have  been  too  indifferent 
about  it.     We  all  know  that  we  also 
have  been  careless  and  indifferent  about 
it  to  a  shameful  degree.    We   can  in- 
terpret    their    apathy    by    our     own. 
We  have  not  cared  to  use  the  rights 
which  we  have  actually  possessed,  be- 
cause we  have  not  understood  what  was 
the  worth  of  our  individual  votes.  They 
will  go  for  nothing,  we  have  said  ;  they 
will  be  utterly  swamped ;  we  shall  not 
be  represented  after  all ;  men  will  be 
returned  whom  we   do   not  wish  for ; 
men  who   are   put   forth  by   clubs   or 
parliamentary   agents ;    men   who    can 
bribe  ;    men  who  can  lie.     What  can 
we  do  against  these  ?     Cannot  we  sup- 
pose  that    an    honest  worker  feels    a 
like  despair  ?     The  despair  may  often 
take   the  form  with  him  of  tempting 
him  utterly  to  part  with  his  honesty ; 
of  leading  him  to  think  that  it  cannot 
be  a  sin  for  him  to  receive  what  it  is 
counted  no  sin  in  a  rich  man  to  offer  ; 
that   he   shall   do    no    more   harm   in 
entertaining  one  trafficker  with  his  con- 


The  Suffrage. 


95 


science  than  another.  Can  we  not  also 
imagine  that,  when  he  sees  all  the  de- 
gradation which  men  of  property  have 
inflicted  on  him,  and  on  his  class,  he 
should  cry  out  for  getting  rid  of  that 
influence  altogether.  "  Let  us  have 
manhood  suffrage,"  he  exclaims;  "no 
other  will  serve  our  turn." 

I  wish  the  professional  men  to  tell 
him  that  no  other  will  serve  his  turn  or 
their  turn  either.  To  get  t/tat—to  get 
all  the  manhood  we  can  into  our  consti- 
tuencies, and  into  our  representatives — 
this  must  be  our  common  object.  And  I 
am  not  playing  with  phrases  in  a  double 
sense.  I  am  not  meaning  one  thing  by 
the  Avords  while  he  means  another.  He 
means  what  I  mean.  He  finds  his  present 
position  an  unmanly  one,  and  he  wishes 
to  be  put  in  the  way  of  making  it  more 
manly.  He  wishes  to  feel  that  he  has 
a  distinct  place  in  the  commonwealth, 
and  that  no  power  of  purse  or  of  num- 
bers deprives  him  of  that  place.  They 
traffic  with  words  in  a  double  sense — 
they  cheat  him  with  fictions  in  place  of 
realities — who  would  persuade  him  that 
a  mere  large  numerical  addition  to  the 
constituency,  unaccompanied  with  other 
provisions,  will  give  him  more  of  a  dis- 
tinct position  than  he  has  already ;  will, 
in  any  degree  whatever,  emancipate  him 
from  the  influences  of  property,  or  pre- 
vent that  influence  from  being  exerted 
in  the  most  odious  way — to  the  damag- 
ing of  his  dignity  as  a  man.  Let  there 
be  three  OOO's  following  a  1  ;  you  call 
that  a  thousand  votes ;  let  there  be  six 
000,000's  following  a  1  ;  you  call  that 
a  million  votes.  But  this  is  not  man- 
hood suffrage.  Let  1  be  a  large  pro- 
prietor, they  are  his  votes.  Let  1  be 
a  priest,  they  are  his  votes.  The  agitator, 
perhaps,  cries,  "  Oh,  no  !  they  will  be 
mine."  Yes,  till  the  next  agitator 
comes.  But  there  will  be  no  manhood 
in  any  one  of  these  cases. 

That  our  old  constitution  did  aim,  by 
such  means  as  it  had,  at  finding  the 
manhood,  the  names  by  which  the 
voters  for  our  counties  and  towns  were 
of  old  designated  sufficiently  proves. 
The  one  was  a  holder  of  land ;  true ; 
but  a  free  holder ;  one  who  had  given 


pledges  that  he  was  able  to  emancipate 
that  holding  of  his  from  territorial  do- 
minion. The  other  was  emphatically  a 
free  man  ;  one  that  had  given  pledges, 
by  passing  through  an  apprenticeship, 
and  by  entering  into  some  local  commu- 
nity, of  which  he  was  a  bond  fide  mem- 
ber, that  he  had  a  capacity  for  obedience 
and  for  fellowship.  The  tests  have  be- 
come utterly  obsolete  ;  have  the  prin- 
ciples which  are  implied  in  the  tests 
become  obsolete  also  1  I  think  not ;  I 
think  the  great  question  must  still  be, 
Who  are  the  freeholders  ?  who  are  the 
freemen1?  Let  them  choose  our  repre- 
sentatives ;  ,all  others  will  be  slavish 
themselves,  and  will  be  likely  to  choose 
those  who  will  make  them  more  slavish. 
If  professional  men  and  literary  men, 
instead  of  treating  this  subject  as  one 
with  which  they  have  no  concern,  or 
which  only  offers  them  an  excuse  for 
writing  clever  articles  against  the  dif- 
ferent political  schools,  would  honestly 
apply  their  faculties  to  the  considera- 
tion of  these  questions,  I  belieye  they 
would  be  led  to  a  result  which  might 
be  most  beneficial  to  them,  to  the  work- 
ing classes,  and  to  the  whole  country. 
I  do  not  mean  that  they  should  make 
an  effort  to  procure  a  distinct  position 
for  themselves  in  the  constituency. 
That  proposal  was  made  two  or  three 
years  ago,  and  was  embodied  in  a  me- 
morial to  Lord  Palmerston,  which  re- 
ceived the  signatures  of  some  eminent 
men.  They  did  not,  I  believe,  hold  any 
common  deliberation  ;  even  friends  who 
put  down  their  names  to  the  document, 
did  not  talk  with  one  another  about 
their  reasons  for  doing  it.  It  "con- 
tained, therefore,  a  number  of  indepen- 
dent opinions  ;  but  there  was  not  that 
comparison  and  weighing  of  evidence 
which  ought  to  have  preceded  the  sug- 
gestion of  a  course  of  action.  As  a 
witness  against  a  constituency  which 
should  owe  all  its  force  either  to  its 
numbers  or  to  its  possessions,  the  memo- 
rial had  a  real  importance.  Few,  I 
think,  would  have  pledged  themselves 
then,  fewer  still  would  pledge  themselves 
now,  to  the  details  of  the  plan  which  it 
recommended.  Perhaps  it  was  better  to 


96 


The  Suffrage. 


show  that  some  plan  had  been  thought 
of;  its  very  deficiencies  were  sure  to 
provoke  criticism  and  inquiry.  If  the 
earlier  criticisms  rather  strengthened 
the  memorialists  in  their  scheme — if 
they  were  not  quite  persuaded  that  lite- 
rary and  professional  men  do  not  want 
to  be  more  interested  in  the  business  of 
the  country,  by  being  told  that  they 
were  likely  to  talk  of  triremes  when 
they  should  talk  of  gunboats — there 
have  been  later  comments  of  immense 
value,  comments  neither  scornful  nor 
merely  negative,  but  proceeding  from 
earnest  and  most  able  thinkers,  who 
believe  that  the  demands  of  professional 
men  for  an  increased  number  of  inde- 
pendent and  intelligent  voters,  and  of 
working  men  for  their  own  admission, 
in  the  fullest  and  largest  sense,  into  the 
commonwealth,  may  be  entirely  met — 
and  reconciled. 

Mr.  Mill's  "  Thoughts  on  Parliamen- 
tary Reform" 1  have  been  for  more  than  a 
year  before  the  public.  But  no  work  of 
his  can  become  out  of  date  in  one  year  or 
in  twenty  years  ;  this  one  has,  I  believe, 
gained  a  vast  additional  worth  by  the  ex- 
perience of  the  twelve  months  since  it  was 
brought  forth.  He  has  now  published  a 
new  edition  of  it,  which  contains  a  Sup- 
plement worthy  of  the  pamphlet  and  wor- 
thy of  the  author.  In  it  he  expresses, 
with  characteristic  modesty  and  gene- 
rosity, the  enlargement,  and  in  some 
particulars  the  change,  which  has  been 
made  in  his  views  by  reading  the 
"  Treatise  on  the  Election  of  Representa- 
tives, Parliamentary  and  Municipal," 
by  Thomas  Hare,  Esq.,  Barrister-at-Law.2 
The  following  remarks  introduce  Mr. 
Mill's  notice  of  that  work  : — 

•  "Though  Mr.  Hare  has  delivered  an 
opinion — and  generally,  in  our  judgment,  a 
wise  one  —on  nearly  all  the  questions  at  pre- 
sent in  issue  connected  with  representative 
government ;  the  originality  of  his  plan,  as 
well  as  most  of  the  effects  to  be  expected 
from  it,  turn  on  the  development  which  he 
has  given  to  what  is  commonly  called  the 
Representation  of  Minorities.  He  has  raised 
this  principle  to  an  importance  and  dignity 
which  no  previous  thinker  had  ascribed  to  it. 

1  J.  W.  Parker,  West  Strand. 

2  Longman,  Brown,  Green,   Longman  and 
Roberts,  1859. 


As  conceived  by  him,  it  should  be  called  the 
real,  instead  of  nominal,  representation  of 
every  individual  elector. 

"  That  minorities  in  the  nation  ought  in  prin- 
ciple, if  it  be  possible,  to  be  represented  by 
corresponding  minorities  in  the  legislative  as- 
sembly, is  a  necessary  consequence  from  all 
premises  on  which  any  representation  at  all 
can  be  defended.  In  a  deliberative  assembly 
the  minority  must  perforce  give  way,  because 
the  decision  must  be  either  ay  or  no  ;  but  it 
is  not  so  in  choosing  those  who  are  to  form 
the  deliberative  body  :  that  ought  to  be  the 
express  image  of  the  wishes  of  the  nation, 
whether  divided  or  unanimous,  in  the  desig- 
nation of  those  by  whose  united  counsels  it 
will  be  ruled;  and  any  section  of  opinion 
which  is  unanimous  within  itself,  ought  to  be 
able,  in  due  proportion  to  the  rest,  to  con- 
tribute its  elements  towards  the  collective 
deliberation.  At  present,  if  three-fifths  of  the 
electors  vote  for  one  person  and  two-fifths  for 
another,  every  individual  of  the  two-fifths  is, 
for  the  purposes  of  that  election,  as  if  he  did 
not  exist :  his  intelligence,  his  preference,  have 
gone  for  nothing  in  the  composition  of  the 
Parliament.  Whatever  was  the  object  designed 
by  the  Constitution  in  giving  him  a  vote,  that 
object,  at  least  on  the  present  occasion,  has 
not  been  fulfilled ;  and  if  he  can  be  reconciled 
to  his  position,  it  must  be  by  the  consideration 
that  some  other  time  he  may  be  one  of  a 
majority,  and  another  set  of  persons  instead  of 
himself  may  be  reduced  to  cyphers  :  just  as, 
before  a  regular  government  had  been  esta- 
blished, a  man  might  have  consoled  himself 
for  being  robbed,  by  the  hope  that  another 
time  he  might  be  able  to  rob  some  one  else. 
But  this  compensation,  however  gratifying, 
will  be  of  no  avail  to  him  if  he  is  everywhere 
overmatched,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the 
elector  who  is  habitually  outvoted. 

"  Of  late  years  several  modes  have"  been  sug- 
gested of  giving  an  effective  voice  to  a  minority; 
by  limiting  each  elector  to  fewer  votes  than 
the  number  of  members  to  be  elected,  or 
allowing  him  to  concentrate  all  his  votes  on 
the  same  candidate.  These  various  schemes 
are  praiseworthy  so  far  as  they  go,  but  they 
attain  the  object  very  imperfectly.  *  *  * 
"  Mr.  Hare  offers  an  outlet  from  this  diffi- 
culty. The  object  being  that  the  suffrages  of 
those  who  are  in  a  minority  locally,  should 
tell  in  proportion  to  their  number  on  the 
composition  of  the  Parliament;  since  this  is 
all  that  is  required,  why  should  it  be  impera- 
tive that  their  votes  should  be  received  only 
for  some  one  who  is  a  local  candidate  ?  Why 
might  they  not  give  their  suffrage  to  any  one 
who  is  a  candidate  anywhere,  their  number  of 
votes  being  added  to  those  which  he  may 
obtain  elsewhere  ?  Suppose  that  a  comparison 
between  the  number  of  members  of  the  House 
and  of  registered  electors  in  the  kingdom, 
gives  a  quotient  of  2,000  as  the  number  of 
electors  per  member,  on  an  average  of  the 
whole  country  (which,  according  to  Mr.  Hare's 


The  Suffrage. 


97 


calculation,  is  not  far  from  the  fact,  if  the 
existing  electoral  body  is  supposed  to  be  aug- 
mented by  200,000) :  why  should  not  any  can- 
didate, who  can  obtain  2,000  suffrages  in  the 
whole  kingdom,  be  returned  to  Parliament? 
By  the  supposition,  2,000  persona  are  sufficient 
to  return  a  member,  and  there  are  2,000  who 
unanimously  desire  to  have  him  for  their 
representative.  Their  claim  to  be  represented 
surely  does  not  depend  on  their  all  residing  in 
the  same  place.  Since  one  member  can  be 
given  to  every  2,000,  the  most  just  mode  of 
arrangement  and  distribution  must  evidently 
be,  to  give  the  member  to  2,000  electors  who 
have  voted  for  him,  rather  than  to  2,000  some 
of  whom  have  voted  against  him.  We  should 
then  be  assured  that  every  member  of  the 
House  has  been  wished  for  by  2,000  of  the 
electoral  body ;  while  in  the  other  case,  even 
if  all  the  electors  have  voted,  he  may  possibly 
have  been  wished  for  by  no  more  than  a  thou- 
sand and  one. 

"  This  arrangement  provides  for  all  the 
difficulties  involved  in  representation  of  mi- 
norities. The  smallest  minority  obtains  an 
influence  proportioned  to  its  numbers;  the 
largest  obtains  no  more.  The  representation 
becomes,  what  under  no  other  system  it  can 
be,  really  equal.  Every  member  of  Parlia- 
ment is  the  representative  of  an  unanimous 
constituency.  No  one  is  represented,  or  rather 
misrepresented,  by  a  member  whom  he  has 
voted  against.  Every  elector  in  the  kingdom 
is  represented  by  the  candidate  he  most  pre- 
fers, if  as  many  persons  in  the  whole  extent 
of  the  country  are  found  to  agree  with  him,  as 
come  up  to  the  number  entitled  to  a  represen- 
tative."— Thoughts,  pp.  41 — 44. 

I  have  made  this  long  extract  because 
my  first  knowledge  of  Mr.  Hare's  work 
was  derived  from  Mr.  Mill's  supple- 
ment, and  because  nothing  I  can  say  of 
it  can  possibly  induce  my  readers  to 
study  it,  if  such  an  account  of  it  coming 
from  such  an  authority  does  not.  That 
it  will  reward  those  who  give  their  minds 
to  it,  for  other  reasons  than  those  which 
Mr.  Mill  has  mentioned,  I  think  I  can 
promise.  I  have  read  no  book  for  a  long 
time  which  combines  so  much  noble- 
ness of  thought,  and  so  much  general 
philosophy  with  a  devotion  to  details,  and 
the  acuteness  of  a  practised  lawyer.  It 
is  delightful  to  find  one  who  proposes 
so  wide  a  representative  reform  sus- 
taining himself  by  the  weighty  words  of 
Burke,  the  enemy  throughout  his  life  of 
changes  in  the  representation ;  and  these 


words  taken  from  the  strongest  of  all 
his  later  writings,  the  "  Appeal  from  the 
New  to  the  Old  Whigs."  It  is  scarcely 
less  satisfactory  to  find  the  American 
statesman,  Mr.  Calhoun,  adduced  as  the 
able  protester  against  the  tyranny  of 
mere  majorities.  Mr.  Hare  is  an  excel- 
lent specimen  of  that  zeal  for  the  moral 
as  superior  to  the  material  interests  of 
the  community,  which  I  have  demanded 
of  professional  and  literary  men.  He 
has  given  a  proof,  not  only  to  lawyers, 
but  perhaps  still  more  to  clergymen, 
how  possible  it  is  to  combine  the  most 
energetic  desire  for  reform  with  the 
truest  Conservatism.  None  need  accept 
his  solution  of  the  puzzle ;  but  he  has 
proved  that  the  most  difficult  problems 
need  not  be  abandoned  as  desperate. 
Since  we  may  reasonably  conclude  that 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1860  is  now  practi- 
cally dead,  I  do  hope  and  trust  that 
instead  of  merely  singing  requiems  or 
songs  of  triumph  over  it,  instead  of 
making  its  failure  an  excuse  for  party 
recrimination  or  class  jealousies,  or  for 
the  indolent  conclusion  that  what  has 
not  been  done  cannot  be  done,  wise  men 
will  exert  themselves  to  devise  some 
measure  which  shall  meet  the  necessities 
of  this  time,  because  it  is  in  accord- 
ance with  principles  that  belong  to  all 
times ;  which  shall  not  satisfy  the  lust 
of  political  power  in  any  class,  because 
it  will  satisfy  the  honest  craving  for  a 
national  position  in  all.1 

1  To  utter  the  phrase,  "  The  Suffrage  is  not 
a  privilege  so  much  as  an  obligation "  is  easy ; 
to  awaken  the  sense  of  obligation  in  our  own 
minds  or  in  the  minds  of  working  men  is  the 
difficulty.  Mr.  Hare's  scheme  would  remove 
one  chief  hindrance  to  the  efforts  of  those 
who  try  to  awaken  it.  It  would  give  the 
suffrage  another  than  a  market  value.  Those 
pseudo-spiritualists,  who  say  that  no  moral 
change1  can  be  effected  by  a  mere  change  of 
machinery,  should  ask  themselves  whether 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  effected  no  moral 
change  by  reducing  the  days  of  polling.  Mr. 
Mill  has  replied  to  the  charge  against  his  pro- 
posals that  they  were  complicated.  The  Bill 
in  which  they  are  embodied  is  simpler,  he 
maintains,  than  that  which  it  would  repeal. 


98 


FOUK  SONNETS. 

BY  THE   BEV.  CHAELES  (TENNYSON)  TUBNER. 

SPRING. 

LATE  in  tlie  month  a  rude  East  Wind  came  down, 

A  roaring  wind,  which  for  a  time  had  sway  ; 

But  other  powers  possess' d  the  night  and  day, 

And  soon  he  found  he  could  not  hold  his  own. 

The  merry  ruddock  whistled  at  his  heart, 

And  strenuous  blackbirds  pierc'd  his  flanks  with  song ; 

Pert  sparrows  wrangled  o'er  his  every  part, 

And  through  him  shot  the  larks  on  pinions  strong  ; 

Anon,  a  sunbeam  brake  across  the  plain, 

And  the  wild  bee  went  forth  on  booming  wing ; 

Whereat  he  feeble  wax'd,  but  rose  again 

With  aimless  rage,  and  idle  blustering  : 

The  south  wind  touch'd  him  with  a  drift  of  rain, 

And  down  he  sank — a  captive  to  the  Spring  ! 


A  THOUGHT  FOE  MARCH,  1860. 

YON  blackbird's  merry  heart  the  rushing  wind 

Quells  not,  nor  disconcerts  his  golden  tongue, 

That  breaks  my  morning  dream  with  well-known  song. 

Full  many  a  breezy  March  I've  left  behind, 

Whose  gales,  all  spirited  with  notes  and  trills, 

Blew  over  peaceful  England ;  and,  ere  long, 

Another  March  will  come  these  hills  among, 

To  clash  the  lattices,  and  whirl  the  mills  ; 

But  what  shall  be  ere  then  ?     Ambition's  lust 

Is  broad  awake,  and,  gazing  from  a  throne 

But  newly-set,  counts  half  the  world  his  own  ; — 

All  ancient  covenants  aside  are  thrust — 

Old  land-marks  are  like  scratches  in  the  dust — 

His  eagles  wave  their  wings  and  they  are  gone  ! 


Four  Sonnets.  99 


SUNEISE 

As  on  my  bed  at  morn  I  nuts' d  and  prayM, 

I  saw  my  lattice  figur'd  on  the  wall, 

The  flaunting  leaves  and  flitting  birds  withal — 

A  sunny  phantom  interlac'd  with  shade  j 

"  Thanks  be  to  heaven  ! "  in  happy  mood  I  said ; 

"  What  sweeter  aid  my  matins  could  befal 

"  Than  this  fair  glory  from  the  east  hath  made  1 

"  What  holy  sleights  hath  God,  the  Lord  of  aU, 

"  To  make  us  feel  and  see  !     We  are  not  free 

"To  say  we  see  not,  for  the  glory  comes 

"  Nightly  and  daily  like  the  flowing  sea  ; 

"  His  lustre  pierceth  through  the  midnight  glooms, 

"  And,  at  prime  hour,  behold,  He  follows  me 

"  With  golden  shadows  to  my  secret  rooms  ! " 


EESUERECTIOK 

THOUGH  Death  met  Love  upon  thy  dying  smile, 

And  sta/d  him  there  for  hours,  yet  the  orbs  of  sight 

So  speedily  resign'd  their  azure  light, 

That  Christian  hope  fell  earthward  for  a  while, 

Appall' d  by  dissolution.     But  on  high 

A  record  lives  of  thine  identity ; — 

Thou  shalt  not  lose  one  charm  of  lip  or  eye  ; 

The  hues  and  liquid  lights  shall  wait  for  thee, 

And  the  fair  tissues,  wheresoe'er  they  be  ! 

Daughter  of  Heaven  !  our  stricken  hearts  repose 

On  the  dear  thought  that  we  once  more  shall  see 

Thy  beauty — like  Himself  our  Master  rose  : 

Then  shall  that  beauty  its  old  rights  maintain, 

And  thy  sweet  spirit  own  those  eyes  again. 


GBASBT  VICARAGE, 
May  12th. 


100 

4 

SHELLEY  IK  PALL  MALL. 

BY  EICHARD  GARNETT. 


A  COPY  of  "  Stockdale's  Budget,"  con- 
taining the  letters  by  Shelley  now  re- 
published,  was  purchased  by  the  British 
Museum  in  1859,  and  came  under  my 
notice  in  the  autumn  of  that  year. 
Struck  by  the  interesting  nature  of  this 
correspondence,  and  especially  by  the 
discovery  of  an  early  work  by  Shelley, 
previously  unknown  to  all  his  biogra- 
phers, I  lost  no  time  in  communicating 
the  circumstance  to  his  family,  whose 
acquaintance  it  was  already  my  privi- 
lege to  possess.  It  was  at  first  hoped 
that  these  letters  might  have  appeared 
in  the  second  edition  of  the  "  Shelley 
Memorials,"  but  it  was  found  that  the 
printing  of  that  work  was  already  too 
far  advanced  to  allow  of  their  being  in- 
serted in  their  proper  place.  They  were 
accordingly  reserved  for  the  third  edi- 
tion ;  but  the  prospect  of  this  being 
required  appearing  as  yet  somewhat  re- 
mote, it  has  been  finally  determined  to 
publish  them  in  a  separate  form.  I  have 
accordingly  copied  them  from  the  obscure 
periodical  in  which  they  originally  ap- 
peared, and  added  such  explanations  as 
seemed  needful  to  render  the  connexion 
of  the  whole  intelligible. 

Much  has  been  written  about  Shelley 
during  the  last  three  or  four  years,  and 
the  store  of  materials  for  his  biography 
has  been  augmented  by  many  particulars, 
some  authentic  and  valuable,  others 
trivial  or  mythical,  or  founded  on  mis- 
takes or  misrepresentations.  It  does 
not  strictly  fall  within  the  scope  of  this 
paper  to  notice  any  of  these,  but  some 
of  the  latter  class  are  calculated  to  mo- 
dify so  injuriously  what  has  hitherto 
been  the  prevalent  estimate  of  Shelley's 
character,  and,  while  entirely  unfounded, 
are  yet  open  to  correction  from  the 
better  knowledge  of  so  few,  that  it 
would  be  inexcusable  to  omit  an  oppor- 
tunity of  comment  which  only  chance 
has  presented,  and  which  may  not 
speedily  recur.  It  will  be  readily  per- 


ceived that  the  allusion  is  to  the  state- 
ments respecting  Shelley's  separation 
from  his  first  wife,  published  by  Mr. 
T.  L.  Peacock  in  F reiser's  Magazine  for 
January  last.  According  to  these,  the 
transaction  was  not  preceded  by  long- 
continued  unhappiness,  neither  was  it 
an  amicable  agreement  effected  in 
virtue  of  a  mutual  understanding.  The 
time  cannot  be  distant  when  these 
assertions  must  be  refuted  by  the  pub- 
lication of  documents  hitherto  withheld, 
and  Shelley's  family  have  doubted  whe- 
ther it  be  worth  while  to  anticipate  it. 
Pending  their  decision,  I  may  be  allowed 
to  state  most  explicitly  that  the  evi- 
dence to  which  they  would  in  such  a 
case  appeal,  and  to  the  nature  of  which 
I  feel  fully  competent  to  speak,  most 
de'cidedly  contradicts  the  allegations  of 
Mr.  Peacock. 

So  extensive  is  the  miscellaneous  bib- 
liographic and  literary  lore  lying  safely 
hidden  away  in  unsuspected  quarters, 
that  a  line  of  inquiry  in  Notes  and 
Queries  would  almost  certainly  elicit  some 
one  able  to  tell  \is  all  about  the  ancient 
publishing-house  of  the  Stockdales,  father 
and  son — to  inform  us  when  they  com- 
menced business,  and  where  and  what 
were  the  principal  books  they  published, 
and  in  what  years,  and  how  these  spe- 
culations respectively  turned  out — and 
so  trace  the  Pall  Mall  chameleon  through 
all  its  changes  from  original  whiteness 
to  the  undeniable  sable  of  the  publication 
we  are  about  to  notice. 

It  is  even  possible  that  a  moderate 
amount  of  laudable  industry  might  have 
enabled  us  to  do  all  this  ourselves,  and 
thus  to  present  the  grateful  or  ungrateful 
reader  with  a  complete  bibliopolic  mo- 
nography.  Feeling,  however,  for  our 
own  parts,  a  very  decided  distaste  to  the 
minute  investigation  of  unimportant 
matters,  and  interested  in  John  Joseph 
Stockdale  as  far  as,  and  no  further  than, 


Shelley  in  .Pall  Mall. 


101 


he  was  concerned  in  the  affairs  of  Percy 
Bysshe  Shelley,  we  have  chosen  to  as- 
sume that  the  reader's  feelings  are  the 
same,  and  that  he  will  be  content  Avith 
knowing  just  as  much  about  the  pub- 
lisher as  is  absolutely  necessary  to  ex- 
plain his  connexion  with  the  poet,  and 
the  circumstances  under  which  he  came 
to  print  the  notes  written  to  him  by  the 
latter.  During,  then,  the  last  twenty 
years  of  the  eighteenth  and  the  first 
twenty  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
Stockdales'  publishing-house  (located  for 
part  of  the  time  in  Pall  Mall,  and  part, 
if  we  mistake  not,  in  Piccadilly)  was 
resorted  to  by  novelists,  poets,  and  more 
particularly  dramatists.  It  was  the  chief, 
almost  the  sole  orthodox  and  accredited 
medium  for  perpetuating  the  transient 
applause  which  the  play-going  public 
vouchsafes  to  the  dramatist.  It  pur- 
veyed the  patrons  of  circulating  libraries 
with  a  mental  diet  as  light  as  Jndia- 
rubber,  and  no  less  wholesome  and 
digestible;  and  facilitated  the  ambition 
of  all  young  poets  willing  to  be  immortal- 
ised at  their  own  costs  and  charges.  As 
universally  known,  the  author  of  the 
"  Cenci"  never  had  a  chance  of  immor- 
tality on  easier  terms  ;  the  conditions 
on  which  "Paradise  Lost"  was  disposed 
of  were  princely  compared  to  any  which 
any  publisher  ever  thought  of  tendering 
to  him  ;  and  as  his  first  aspirations  after 
literary  renown  began  to  stir  within 
him  in  the  younger  Stockdale's  palmy 
days,  and  lay  altogether  within  the  scope 
of  the  tatter's  publishing  business,  it 
might  almost  have  been  predicted  that 
these  two  most  dissimilar  men  would 
not  pass  away  without  some  slight  con- 
tact or  mutual  influence.  In  fact, 
Shelley's  second  novel  bears  the  name 
of  Stockdale  as  the  publisher ;  and  the 
singular  discovery  of  a  portion  of  the 
business  correspondence  that  passed  be- 
tween the  two  respecting  this  publi- 
cation now  enables  us  not  merely  to 
write  the  history  of  the  connexion,  which 
might  probably,  be  acceptable  to  none 
but  a  thorough-going  hero-worshipper, 
but  perhaps  to  throw  some  light  on  the 
feelings  which  possessed,  and  the  influ- 
ences which  contributed  to  mould  one 


of  the  most  original  of  human  spirits,  at 
the  most  momentous,  if  not  the  most 
eventful  period  of  its  earthly  existence. 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  this 
correspondence  originally  appeared  in 
"  Stockdale's  Budget ; "  it  now  remains 
to  be  explained  what  Stockdale's  Budget 
was.  It  was  a  periodical,  issued  in 
1827  ;  a  sort  of  appendix  to  the  more 
celebrated  "Memoirs  of  Harriet  "Wilson," 
published  by  Stockdale  some  years  pre- 
viously, and  well  known  to  the  amateurs 
of  disreputable  literature.  The  present 
writer  has  never  seen  this  work,  and  for 
actual  purposes  it  will  be  quite  sufficient 
to  state  that  it  proved  the  soiirce  of 
infinite  trouble  to  the  unlucky  pub- 
lisher, not  on  account  of  its  immorality, 
which  seems  to  have  been  unquestion- 
able, but  from  its  attacks  on  private 
character.  Owing  to  these,  Stockdale  be- 
came the  object  of  a  succession  of  legal 
proceedings,  which  speedily  exhausted 
his  purse,  while  his  business  vanished, 
and  left  not  a  wreck  behind.  Such  a 
result  could  have  surprised  no  man  of 
ordinary  understanding,  but  the  united 
tongues  of  men  and  of  angels  would  fail 
in  conveying  any  adequate  notion  of  the 
publisher's  stolidity  and  obtuseness.  He 
really  considered  himself  an  injured  man, 
and  the  "  Budget"  was  established  as 
the  means  of  impressing  the  same  idea 
on  others.  Stockdale's  method  of  ratio- 
cination was  certainly  somewhat  peculiar. 
Peers,  he  argued,  do  not  always  live  hap- 
pily with  their  wives.  There  is  a  baro- 
net in  custody  in  the  midland  counties, 
charged  with  assault ;  have  they  not  just 
taken  the  Hon.  Wellesley  Pole's  chil- 
dren from  him  1  and  what  can  be  more 
shocking  than  that  abduction  case  of  the 
Wakefields1?  Argal,  I,  Stockdale,  was 
quite  justified  in  publishing  those  dis- 
agreeable particulars  about  Mr. , 

and  the  seizure  of  my  furniture  in  conse- 
quence was  an  act  of  worse  than  Eussian 
oppression. 

In  strict  conformity  with  the  princi- 
ples of  the  Baconian  philosophy,  this 
conclusion  was  based  on  a  wide  induc- 
tion, derived  from  all  the  instances  of 
aristocratic  frailty  on  which  the  pub- 
lisher could  possibly  lay  his  hands, 


102 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


accompanied  by  appropriate  comments, 
and,  when  the  supply  failed  to  meet  the 
demand,  eked  out  by  a  compilation  from 
the  ordinary  reports  of  the  police  courts. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  there  is  anything 
positively  immoral  or  libellous  in  the 
publication,  but  a  duller  or  more  un- 
inviting accumulation  of  garbage  it 
has  never  been  our  lot  to  see,  and  the 
only  circumstance  which  could  tempt 
any  one  to  examine  it,  is  the  fact  that 
Stockdale,  searching  among  his  MS. 
stores  for  letters  from  public  characters, 
calculated  to  lend  interest  to  his  publi- 
cation, stumbled  on  the  notes,  or  rather 
some  of  them,  addressed  to  him  by 
Shelley  during  their  brief  business  con- 
nexion. These  he  proceeded  to  publish, 
accompanied  by  a  highly  characteristic 
commentary,  from  which  some  particu- 
lars of  real  interest  may  be  gleaned. 
The  style  of  these  letters  sufficiently 
attests  their  genuineness ;  nor  can  we 
peruse  Stockdale' s  acknowledged  com- 
positions without  perceiving  that  the 
writer  was  in  every  sense  incapable  of  a 
forgery,  even  if,  in  1827,  it  had  been 
worth  any  one's  while  to  vilify  the  poet 
in  a  periodical. 

Shelley's  first  introduction  to  Stock- 
dale  was  verbal,  and  occurred  under 
singularly  characteristic  circumstances. 
In  the  autumn  of  1810  he  presented 
himself  at  the  publisher's  place  of  busi- 
ness, and  requested  his  aid  in  extricat- 
ing him  from  a  dilemma  in  which  he 
had  involved  himself  by  commissioning 
a  printer  at  Horsham  to  strike  off  four- 
teen hundred  and  eighty  copies  of  a 
volume  of  poems,  without  having  the 
wherewithal  to  discharge  his  account. 
He  could  hardly  have  expected  Stock- 
dale  to  do  it  for  him,  and  the  tatter's 
silence  is  conclusive  testimony  that  he 
contributed  no  pecuniary  assistance, 
liberal  as  he  doubtless  was  with  good 
advice.  By  some  means,  however,  the 
mute  inglorious  Aldus  of  Horsham  was 
appeased,  and  the  copies  of  the  work 
transferred  to  Stockdale,  who  proceeded 
to  advertise  them,  and  take  the  other 
usual  steps  to  promote  their  sale.  An 
advertisement  of  "Original  Poetry,  by 
Victor  and  Cazire,"  will  be  found  in 


the  Morning  Chronicle  of  September 
18,  1810,  and  the  assumed  duality  of 
authorship  was  not,  like  the  particular 
names  employed,  fictitious.  The  poems 
were  principally — Shelley  thought  en- 
tirely— the  production  of  himself  and 
a  friend,  and  it  becomes  a  matter  of 
no  small  interest  to  ascertain  who  this 
friend  was.  It  was  not  Mr.  Hogg, 
whose  acquaintance  Shelley  had  not 
yet  made,  nor  Captain  Medwin,  or  the 
circumstance  would  have  been  long 
since  made  public. 

A  more  likely  coadjutor  would  be 
Harriet  Grove,  Shelley's  cousin,  and  the 
object  of  his  first  attachment,  who  is 
said  to  have  aided  him  in  the  compo- 
sition of  his  first  romance,  "  Zastrozzi." 
Indeed,  "Cazire"  seems  to  be  intended  for 
a  female  name ;  perhaps  it  was  adopted 
from  some  novel.  However  this  may 
be,  the  little  book  had  evidently  been 
ushered  into  the  world  under  an  unlucky 
star;  few  and  evil  were  its  days.  It 
had  hardly  been  published  a  week  when 
Stockdale,  inspecting  it  with  more  at- 
tention than  he  had  previously  had  lei- 
sure to  bestow,  recognised  one  of  the 
pieces  as  an  old  acquaintance  in  the 
pages  of  M.  G.  Lewis,  author  of  "The 
Monk."  It  was  but  too  clear  that  Shel- 
ley's colleague,  doubtless  under  the  com- 
pulsion of  the  poet's  impetuous  solici- 
tations for  more  verses,  had  appropriated 
whatever  came  first  to  hand,  with  slight 
respect  for  pedantic  considerations  of 
meum  and  tuum.  Stockdale  lost-  no 
time  in  communicating  his  discovery  to 
his  employer,  whose  mortification  may 
be  imagined,  and  his  directions  for  the 
instant  suppression  of  the  edition  anti- 
cipated. By  this  time,  however,  nearly 
a  hundred  copies  had  been  put  into 
circulation,  so  that  we  will  not  alto- 
gether resign  the  hope  of  yet  recovering 
this  interesting  volume,  hitherto  totally 
unknown  to,  or  at  least  unnoticed  by 
all  Shelley's  biographers.  Only  one  of 
the  letters  relating  to  it  remains ; x  with 
the  exception  of  the  childish  note  printed 

1  We  have  not  scrupled  to  occasionally 
correct  an  obvious  clerical  error  in  these 
letters,  generally  the  result  of  haste,  some- 
times of  a  misprint. 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


103 


by  Medwin,  the  earliest  letter  of  Shelley 
that  has  been  preserved  : — 

"  FIELD  PLACE,  September  6th,  1810. 

"  SIR, — I  have  to  return  you  my 
thankful  acknowledgments  for  the  re- 
ceipt of  the  books,  which  arrived  as  soon 
as  I  had  any  reason  to  expect :  the 
superfluity  shall  be  balanced  as  soon  as 
I  pay  for  some  books  which  I  shall 
trouble  you  to  bind  for  me. 

"  I  enclose  you  the  title-page  of  the 
Poems,  which,  as  you  see,  you  have 
mistaken  on  account  of  the  illegibility 
of  my  handwriting.  I  have  had  the 
last  proof  impression  from  the  printer 
this  morning,  and  I  suppose  the  exe- 
cution of  the  work  will  not  be  long  de- 
layed. As  soon  as  it  possibly  can,  it 
shall  reach  you,  and  believe  me,  sir, 
grateful  for  the  interest  you  take  in  it. 

"  I  am,  sir, 
"  Your  obedient  humble  servant, 

"  PERCY  B.  SHELLEY." 


Shelley  soon  forgot  the  mishaps  of 
Victor  and  his  Cazire,  in  fresh  literary 
projects.  He  had  already  placed  the 
MS.  of  "  St.  Irvyne,  or  the  Kosicrucian," 
in  Stockdale's  hands,  and  on  September 
28th  he  offered  him  the  copyright  of  his 
schoolboy  epic,  written  in  conjunction 
with  Captain  Medwia,  "  The  Wandering 
Jew"  :— 

"FIELD  PLACE,  September  28<A,  1810. 

"  SIR, — I  sent,  before  I  had  the  plea- 
sure of  knowing  you,  the  MS.  of  a  poem 
to  Messrs.  Ballantyne  and  Co.  Edin- 
burgh ;  they  declined  publishing  it, 
with  the  enclosed  letter.  I  now  offer 
it  to  you,  and  depend  upon  your  honour 
as  a  gentleman  for  a  fair  price  for  the 
copyright  It  will  be  sent  to  you  from 
Edinburgh.  The  subject  is,  'The Wander- 
ing Jew.'  As  to  its  containing  atheistical 
principles,  I  assure  you  I  was  wholly 
unaware  of  the  fact  hinted  at.  Your 
good  sense  will  point  out  to  you  the 
impossibility  of  inculcating  pernicious 
doctrines  in  a  poem  which,  as  you  will 
see,  is  so  totally  abstract  from  any  cir- 


cumstances which  occur  under  the  possi- 
ble view  of  mankind. 

"I  am,  sir, 

"  Your  obliged  and  humble  servant, 
"  PERCY  B.  SHELLEY." 

The  enclosure — a  curiosity — is  as 
follows  : — 

"  EDINBURGH,  September  24<&,  1810. 

"  SIR, — The  delay  which  occurred  in 
our  reply  to  you  respecting  the  poem 
you  have  obligingly  offered  us  for  publi- 
cation, has  arisen  from  our.  literary 
friends  and  advisers  (at  least  such  as  we 
have  confidence  in)  being  in  the  country 
at  this  season,  as  is  usual,  and  the  time 
they  have  bestowed  in  its  perusal. 

"  We  are  extremely  sorry,  at  length, 
after  the  most  mature  deliberation,  to 
be  under  the  necessity  of  declining  the 
honour  of  being  the  publishers  of  the 
present  poem ; — not  that  we  doubt  its 
success,  but  that  it  is,  perhaps,  better 
suited  to  the  character  and  liberal  feel- 
ings of  the  English,  than  the  bigoted 
spirit  which  yet  pervades  many  culti- 
vated minds  in  this  country.  Even 
Walter  Scott  is  assailed  on  all  hands  at 
present  by  our  Scotch  spiritual  and 
Evangelical  magazines  and  instructors, 
for  having  promulgated  atheistical  doc- 
trines in  the  '  Lady  of  the  Lake.' 

"  We  beg  you  will  have  the  goodness 
to  advise  us  how  it  should  be  returned, 
and  we  think  its  being  consigned  to  the 
care  of  some  person  in  London  would 
be  more  likely  to  ensure  its  safety  than 
addressing  it  to  Horsham. 

"  We  are,  sir, 

"  Your  most  obedient  humble  servants, 
"  JOHN  BALLANTYNE  &  Co." 

Now,  had  Shelley  told  any  of  his 
friends  that  the  "Lady  of  the  Lake" 
had  been  assailed  in  Scotland  on  the 
ground  of  atheism,  and  professed  to  have 
derived  his  information  from  the  Bal- 
lanfynes,  the  circumstance  would  ere 
this  have  made  its  appearance  in  print 
as  a  proof  of  his  irresistible  tendency  to 
"hallucinations,"  and  his  "inability  to 
"relate  anything  exactly  as  it  hap- 
"  pened,"  Here,  however,  we  see  that 
he  would  not  have  spoken  without  au- 


104 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


thority.  It  is,  of  course,  quite  possible 
that  the  Ballantynes  may  themselves 
have  been  mystified  or  mystificators — 
otherwise  it  would  appear  that  it  had,  in 
that  fortunate  age,  been  vouchsafed  to 
certain  Scotch  clergymen  to  attain  the 
ne  plus  ultra  of  absurdity — 

"  Topmost  stars  of  unascended  heaven, 
Pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense  inane  " — 

or  insane,  whichever  may  be  the  cor- 
rect reading.  It  is  needless  to  add  that 
the  "  Wandering  Jew  "  is  quite  guiltless 
of  atheism,  or  any  "ism"  but  an  occa- 
sional solecism.  Whatever  precautions 
may  have  been  taken  to  ensure  the 
safety  of  the  MS.,  they  failed  to  bring 
it  into  Stockdale's  hands.  He  never 
received  it,  and  it  seems  to  "have  re- 
mained peaceably  at  Edinburgh  till  its 
discovery  in  1831,  when  a  portion  of 
it  appeared  in  Fraser's  Magazine,  and 
has  since  been  reprinted  in  one  of  the 
many  unauthorised  editions  of  Shelley's 
works.  According  to  Captain  Medwin, 
indeed,  Shelley  left  it  at  his  lodgings  in 
Edinburgh  in  1811.  But  the  Captain 
evidently  knew  nothing  of  the  negotia- 
tion with  the  Ballantynes,  which  affords 
a  much  more  plausible  explanation  of 
the  discovery  of  the  MS.  in  the  Scotch 
metropolis.  He  adds,  indeed,  that  the 
young  authors  were  induced  to  lay  aside 
all  thoughts  of  publication  by  the  ad- 
verse judgment  of  Campbell,  who  re- 
turned the  MS.  submitted  for  his  in- 
spection with  the  remark  that  there 
were  only  two  good  lines  in  the  whole, 
naming  a  pair  of  exceedingly  common- 
place ones.  Whatever  the  effect  on  his 
coadjutor,  it  is  now  clear  that  Shelley 
was  not  to  be  daunted  by  the  condemna- 
tion even  of  a  poet  he  admired,  though, 
doubtless,  he  would  have  himself  ad- 
mitted in  after  life  that  the  quest  after 
tolerable  lines  in  the  "  Wandering  Jew  " 
might  scarcely  be  more  hopeful  than 
that  undertaken  of  old  after  righteous 
men  in  the  Cities  of  the  Plain. 

Poetry  like  Shelley's  is  not  to  be 
produced  except  under  the  immediate 
impulse  of  lively  emotion,  or  without  a 
long  preliminary  epoch  of  mental  excite- 


ment and  fermentation.  The  ordinary 
interchange  of  sunshine  and  shower  suf- 
fices for  the  production  of  mustard, 
cress,  and  such-like  useful  vegetables; 
but  Nature  must  have  been  disturbed  to 
her  centre  ere  there  can  be  a  Stromboli 
for  Byron  to  moor  his  bark  by  for  a  long 
summer's  night,  and  meditate  a  new 
canto  of  "Childe  Harold."  Shelley's 
mind  was  never  in  a  more  excited  con- 
dition than  during  the  autumn  of  1810, 
and,  at  that  time,  like  Donna  Inez, 
"his  favourite  science  was  the  meta- 
physical"— he  reasoned  of  matters  ab- 
struse and  difficult,  "  of  fate,  free-will, 
"  foreknowledge  absolute,"  of 

"Names,    deeds,    grey    legends,    dire 

events,  rebellions, 
Majesties,  sovran  voices,  agonies, 
Creations  and  destroyings." 

No  other  mental  process  could  have 
equally  developed  the  unparalleled 
glories  of  his  verse.  The  enchanted 
readers  of  "Prometheus  Unbound"  and 
"  Hellas  "  must  admit  that  if  Kant  and 
Berkeley  had  not  much  poetry  in  them- 
selves, they  were  at  all  events  the  cause 
of  transcendent  poetry  in  others.  But 
for  his  own  ease  and  comfort  it  would 
certainly  have  been  better  if  he  could 
have  agreed  with  Goethe  that 

"  Ein  Mensch,  der  spekulirt, 
1st  wie  ein  Thier,  auf  diirrer  Haide 
Von   einern  bb'sen  Geist   im   Kreis' 

herum  gefiihrt, 
Und  rings  herum  ist  schbne,   griine 

Weide." 

On  November  12th  he  wrote  to 
Stockdale  : — 

"  OXFORD,  Sunday. 

"SiR, — I  wish  you  to  obtain  for  rne 
a  book  which  answers  to  the  following 
description.  It  is  a  Hebrew  essay,  de- 
monstrating that  the  Christian  religion 
is  false,  and  is  mentioned  in  one  of  the 
numbers  of  the  Christian  Observer, 
last  spring,  by  a  clergyman,  as  an  un- 
answerable, yet  sophistical  argument. 
If  it  is  translated  in  Greek,  Latin,  or 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


105 


any  of  the  European  languages,  I  would 
thank  you  to  send  it  to  me. 

"  I  am,  sir,  your  humble  servant, 

"PERCY  B.  SHELLEY." 

We  have  searched  the  Observer  in 
vain  for  the  notice  referred  to.  The 
letter,  according  to  Stockdale,  "  satisfied 
"  me  that  he  was  in  a  situation  of  im- 
"  pending  danger,  from  which  the  most 
"friendly  and  cautious  prudence  alone 
"  could  withdraw  him."  We  shall  see 
in  due  course  what  line  of  conduct  the 
worthy  "bookseller  considered  answerable 
to  this  definition.  Two  days  later 
Shelley  wrote : — 

"UNIVERSITY  COLL.  Nov.  14tk,  1810. 

"  DEAR  SIR, — I  return  you  the  Ro- 
mance  [St.  Irvyne]  by  this  day's  coach. 
I  am  much  obligated1  by  the  trouble  you 
have  taken  to  fit  it  for  the  press.  I  am 
myself  by  no  means  a  good  hand  at  cor- 
rection, but  I  think  I  have  obviated  the 
principal  objections  which  you  allege. 

"  Ginotti,  as  you  will  see,  did  not  die 
by  Wolfstein's  hand,  but  by  the  influ- 
ence of  that  natural  magic  which,  when 
the  secret  was  imparted  to  the  latter, 
destroyed  him.  Mountfort  being  a  cha- 
racter of  inferior  interest,  I  did  not 
think  it  necessary  to  state  the  cata- 
strophe of  him,  as  it  could  at  best  be  but 
uninteresting.  Eloise  and  Fitzeustace 
are  married,  and  happy,  I  suppose,  and 
Megalena  dies  by  the  same  means  as 
Wolfstein.  I  do  not  myself  see  any 
other  explanation  that  is  required.  As 
to  the  method  of  publishing  it,  I  think, 
as  it  is  a  thing  which  almost  mecJiani- 
cally  sells  to  circulating  libraries,  &c., 
I  would  wish  it  to  be  published  on  my 
own  account, 

"  I  am  surprised  that  you  have  not 
received  the  'Wandering  Jew,'  and  in 
consequence  write  to  Mr.  Ballantyne  to 
mention  it ;  you  will  doubtlessly,  there- 
fore, receive  it  soon. — Should  you  still 
perceive  in  the  romance  any  error  of 
flagrant  incoherency,  &c.  it  must  be 
altered,  but  I  should  conceive  it  will 

i  Not  a  vulgarism  in  Shelley's  day,  any 
more  than  "ruinated."  Both  may  be  found 
in  good  writers  of  the  18th  century. 

No.  8. — VOL.  II. 


(being  wholly  so   abrupt)  not  require 
it. 

"lam 
"  Your  sincere  humble  servant, 

"PERCY  B.  SHELLEY. 

"  Shall  you  make  this  in  one  or  two 
volumes'?  Mr.  Robinson,  of  Paternoster 
Row,  published  '  Zastrozzi.'  " 

Certainly  the  faults  of  "St.  Irvyne" 
were  of  the  kind  best  amended  by  una 
litura.  Nevertheless,  it  is  as  much 
better  than  "Zastrozzi"  as  one  very 
bad  book  can  be  better  than  another. 
"  Zastrozzi "  is  an  absolute  chaos ;  in 
"St.  Irvyne"  there  is  at  least  the  trace 
of  an  effort  after  organisation  and  inner 
harmony.  Shelley's  whole  literary  career 
was,  viewed  in  one  of  its  aspects,  a  con- 
stant struggle  after  the  symmetry  and 
command  of  material  which  denote  the 
artist.  The  exquisiteness  of  his  later 
productions  shows  that  at  last  he  had 
little  to  learn,  and  worthless  as  "St. 
Irvyne "  is  in  itself,  it  becomes  of  high 
interest  when  regarded  as  the  first  feeble 
step  of  a  mighty  genius  on  the  road  to 
consummate  excellence.  Considered  by 
themselves,  "Zastrozzi "and  "St.  Irvyne" 
will  appear  the  sort  of  production  which 
clever  boys  often  indite,  and  from  which 
it  is  impossible  to  arrive  at  any  sound 
conclusion  as  to  the  future  eminence  or 
obscurity  of  the  writer.  Their  incohe- 
rency is  an  attribute  which  should  not, 
their  prolific  imagination  one  which 
often  cannot,  survive  the  period  of  ex- 
treme youth. 

On  November  20th,   Shelley  wrote 
thus  : — 

"UNI.  COLL.  Monday. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR, — I  did  not  think  it 
possible  that  the  romance  would  make 
but  one  small  volume.  It  will  at  all 
events  be  larger  than  'Zastrozzi'  What 
I  mean  as  '  Rosicrucian '  is,  the  elixir 
of  eternal  life  which  Ginotti  had  ob- 
tained. Mr.  Godwin's  romance  of  'Si 
Leon'  turns  upon  that  superstition. 
I  enveloped  it  in  mystery  for  the  greater 
excitement  of  interest,  and,  on  a  re- 
examination,  you  will  perceive  that 
Mountfort  did  physically  kill  Ginotti, 

i 


106 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


which  will  appear  from  the  latter' s  pale- 
ness. 

"  Will  you  have  the  goodness  to  send 
me  Mr.  Godwin's  '  Political  Justice '  1 

"When  do  you  suppose  'St.  Irvyne' 
will  be  out  ?  If  you  have  not  yet  got 
the  'Wandering  Jew'  from  Mr.  B.,  I 
will  send  you  a  MS.  copy  which  I 
possess. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"P.  B.  SHELLEY." 

It  appears  from  the  next  note  that 
this  copy  was  sent,  hut  it  miscarried  : — 

"OXFORD,  December  2d,  1810. 

"BEAR  SIR,— Will  you,  if  you  have 
got  two  copies  of  the  '  Wandering  Jew,' 
send  one  of  them  to  me,  as  I  have 
thought  of  some  corrections  which  I 
wish  to  make  ?  Your  opinion  on  it  will 
likewise  much  oblige  me. 

"  When  do  you  suppose  that  Southey's 
*  Curse  of  Kehama ;  will  come  out  1  I 
am  curious  to  see  it,  and  when  does  '  St. 
Irvyne '  come  out  ] 

"  I  shall  be  in  London  the  middle  of 
this  month,  when  I  will  do  myself  the 
pleasure  of  calling  on  you. 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"  P.  B.  SHELLEY." 

«F[IELD]  P[LACE], 

December  18th,  1810. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR, — I  saw  your  adver- 
tisement of  the  Eomance,  and  appjove 
of  it  highly ;  it  is  likely  to  excite  curi- 
osity. I  would  thank  you  to  send 
copies  directed  as  follows  : — 

Miss  Marshall,  Horsham,  Sussex. 

T.  Medwin,  Esq.,  Horsham,  Sussex. 

T.  J.  Hogg,  Esq.,  Eev. — DayrelTs, 
Lynnington  Dayrell,  Buckingham, 
and  six  copies  to  myself.  In  case  the 
'  Curse  of  Kehama' x  has  yet  appeared, 
I  would  thank  you  for  that  likewise. 
I  have  in  preparation  a  novel ;  it  is 
principally  constructed  to  convey  meta- 
physical and  political  opinions  by  way 

1  It  thus  appears  that  "  Kehama"  cannot 
have  been  the  poem  with  the  MS.  of  which 
Southey  is  related  to  have  read  Shelley  to 
•leep.  To  us,  the  whole  anecdote  seems  to 
come  in  a  very  questionable  shape. 


of  conversation.  It  shall  be  sent  to  you 
as  soon  as  completed,  but  it  shall  receive 
more  correction  than  I  trouble  myself  to 
give  to  wild  romance  and  poetry. 

"Mr.  Munday,  of  Oxford,  will  take 
some  romances  ;  I  do  not  know  whether 
he  sends  directly  to  you,  or  through  the 
medium  of  another  bookseller.  I  will 
enclose  the  printer's  account  for  your 
inspection  in  another  letter. 
"  Dear  sir, 

"Yours  sincerely, 

"P.  B.  SHELLEY. 

Up  to  this  date,  then,  Scythrop  had 
only  found  three  of  the  seven  gold 
candlesticks.  Mr.  Hogg  and  Captain 
Medwin,  as  is  well  known,  continued 
burning  and  shining  lights;  Miss  Mar- 
shall, of  whom  we  now  hear  for  the 
first  time,  would  appear  to  have  been 
speedily  extinguished.  Speedy  extinc- 
tion, too,  was  the  fate  of  the  MS. 
novel,  of  which  the  above  is  the  first 
and  last  mention. 

Sir  (then  Mr.)  Timothy  Shelley,  the 
poet's  uncongenial  father,  now  appears 
upon  the  scene.  At  the  date  of  the 
next  letter,  he  had  already  several  times 
called  at  Stockdale's  shop  in  the  company 
of  his  son,  and  thus  afforded  the  pub- 
lisher an  opportunity  of  contributing 
the  result  of  his  own  observation  to  the 
universal  testimony  respecting  the  dispo- 
sitions of  the  two,  and  the  relation  in 
which  they  stood  to  each  other.  Percy 
Shelley  captivated  all  hearts;  the  rough- 
est were  subdued  by  his  sweetness,  the 
most  reserved  won  by  his  affectionate 
candour.  No  man  ever  made  more 
strange  or  unsympathetic  friends,  and 
they  who  may  seem  to  have  dealt  most 
hardly  with  his  memory  since  his  death 
are  chiefly  the  well-meaning  people 
whose  error  it  has  been  to  mistake  an 
accidental  intimacy  with  a  remarkable 
character  for  the  power  of  appreciating  it. 
Among  these,  Stockdale  cannot  be  refused 
a  place,  for  it  would  be  unjust  not  to 
recognise,  amid  all  his  pomposity  and 
blundering,  traces  of  a  sincere  affection 
for  the  young  author  whose  acquaintance 
was  certainly  anything  but  advantageous 
to  him  in  a  pecuniary  point  of  view. 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


107 


An  equal  unanimity  of  sentiment  pre- 
vails respecting  Sir  Timothy;  he  un- 
doubtedly meant  well,  but  had  scarcely 
a  single  prominent  trait  of  character 
which  would  not  of  itself  have  unfitted 
him  to  be  the  father  of  such  a  son. 
Stockdale  had  frequent  opportunities 
of  observing  the  uneasy  terms  on  which 
the  two  stood  towards  each  other,  and 
unhesitatingly  throws  the  entire  blame 
upon  the  father,  whom  he  represents 
as  narrow-minded  and  wrong-headed, 
behaving  with  extreme  niggardliness  in 
money  matters,  and  at  the  same  time 
continually  fretting  Shelley  by  harsh  and 
unnecessary  interference  with  his  most 
indifferent  actions.  According  to  the 
bookseller,  he  ineffectually  tried  his 
best  at  once  to  "dispose  Sir  Timothy  to 
a  more  judicious  line  of  conduct,  and  to 
put  him  on  his  guard  against  his  son's 
speculative  rashness.  The  following  note 
is  probably  in  answer  to  some  communi- 
cation of  this  character. 

"FIELD  PLACE,  23d December,  1810. 

"  SIB, — I  take  the  earliest  oppor- 
tunity of  expressing  to  you  my  best 
thanks  for  the  very  liberal  and  hand- 
some manner  in  which  you  imparted  to 
me  the  sentiments  you  hold  towards  my 
son,  and  the  open  and  friendly  com- 
munication. 

"  I  shall  ever  esteem  it,  and  hold  it 
in  remembrance.  I  will  take  an  oppor- 
tunity of  calling  on  you  again,  when  the 
call  at  St.  Stephen's  Chapel  enforces  my 
attendance  by  a  call  of  the  House. 

"My  son  begs  to  make  his  compli- 
ments to  you. 

"  I  have  the  honour  to  be,  sir, 
"Your  very  obedient  humble  servant, 
"T.  SHELLEY." 

On  January  llth,  1811,  Shelley  wrote 
as  follows  : — 

"  DEAR  SIR, — I  would  thank  you  to 
send  a  copy  of  'St.  Irvyne'  to  Miss 
Harriet  Westbrook,  10,  Chapel  Street, 
Grosvenor  Square.  In  the  course  of  a 
fortnight  I  shall  do  myself  the  pleasure 
of  calling  on  you.  With  respect  to  the 
printer's  bill,  I  made  him  explain  the 


distinctions  of  the  costs,  which  I  hope 
are  intelligible. 

"Do  you  find  that  the  public  are  capti- 
vated by  the  title-page  of  '  St.  Irvyne  1 ' 
"  Your  sincere 

"  P.  B.  SHELLEY." 

This  is  interesting,  in  so  far  as  it  assists 
us  in  determining  the  date  of  Shelley's 
first  acquaintance  with  Harriet  West- 
brook.  Had  he  known  her  on  December 
18th,  he  would  probably  have  included 
her  among  those  to  whom  he  on  that 
day  desired  that  copies  of  his  novel 
should  be  sent.  It  may  then  be  inferred 
with  confidence,  that  he  first  became 
interested  in  her  between  December 
18th,  and  January  llth,  and  as  there 
appears  no  trace  of  his  having  visited 
town  during  that  period,  his  knowledge 
of  her,  when  he  wrote  the  second  of  these 
letters,  was  most  likely  merely  derived 
from  the  accounts  of  his  sisters,  her 
schoolfellows.  This  accords  with  the 
assertion,  made  in  an  interesting  but 
unpublished  document  in  the  writer's 
possession,  that  he  first  saw  her  in  Ja- 
nuary, 1811.  Whenever  this  and  similar 
MSS.  are  made  public,  it  will  for  the 
first  time  be  clearly  understood  how 
slight  was  the  acquaintance  of  Shelley 
with  Harriet,  previous  to  their  marriage  ; 
what  advantage  was  taken  of  his  chivalry 
of  sentiment,  and  her  compliant  disposi- 
tion, and  the  inexperience  of  both ;  and 
how  little  entitled  or  disposed  she  felt 
herself  to  complain  of  his  behaviour. 

This  was  the  last  friendly  communica- 
tion between  Shelley  and  his  publisher. 
Three  days  later  we  find  Tiim  writing  thus 
to  his  friend  Hogg  (Hogg's  "Life  of 
Shelley,"  vol.  I.  p.  171)  :— 

"  S —  [Stockdale]  has  behaved  in- 
famously to  me :  he  has  abused  the 
confidence  I  reposed  in  him  in  sending 
hinr  my  work ;  and  he  has  made  very 
free  with  your  character,  of  which  he 
knows  nothing,  with  my  father.  I  shall 
call  on  S —  on  my  way  [to  Oxford],  that 
he  may  explain." 

The  work  alluded  to  was  either  the 
unlucky  pamphlet  which  occasioned 
Shelley's  expulsion  from  Oxford,  or  some- 
thing of  a  very  similar  description.  After 

i  2 


108 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mail. 


Mr.  Hogg's  account  of  it,  it  is  sufficiently 
clear  that  this  alarming  performance  was 
nothing  else  than  a  sqUib,  prompted 
perhaps  by  the  decided  success  of  the  bur- 
lesque verses  the  friends  had  published 
in  the  name  of  "  My  Aunt  Margaret 
Nicholson ; "  at  all  events  a  natural  corol- 
lary from  Shelley's  inconvenient  habit  of 
writing  interminable  letters  to  everybody 
about  everything.  Of  course  Stockdale 
declined  to  print  it  himself,  and  we  can 
readily  believe  that  he  employed  his 
best  efforts  to  dissuade  Shelley  from 
having  it  printed  by  another.  There  the 
matter  might  have  rested,  but,  unluckily, 
in  spite  of  Shelley's  anticipations,  the 
public  had  not  been  captivated  by  the 
title-page  or  any  other  portion  of  "  St. 
Irvyne,"  and  the  bookseller  was  begin- 
ning to  feel  uneasy  about  his  bill  Shel- 
ley was  a  minor,  dependent  on  a  father 
persuaded  that  short  allowances  make 
good  sons,  and  who,  on  the  subject  being 
delicately  mooted  to  him,  had  less  mildly 
than  firmly  declared  his  determination 
not  to  pay  one  single  farthing.  In  this 
strait,  Stockdale  seems  to  have  argued 
that  he  should  best  earn  his  claim  by 
rendering  the  Shelleys  an  important 
service,  which  might  be  accomplished 
by  preventing  the  appearance  of  Percy's 
adventurous  pamphlet.  At  the  same 
time,  it  was  essential  that  his  merits 
should  be  recognised  by  Sir  Timothy, 
which  could  not  well  be,  if  he  were 
scrupulous  in  respecting  his  son's  con- 
fidence. Yet  it  was  equally  necessary  to 
avoid  creating  an  irreparable  breach 
between  the  two,  and  therefore  highly 
desirable  to  find  some  one  to  whose  evil 
communications  the  deterioration  of  Shel- 
ley's patrician  manners  might  be  plau- 
sibly ascribed.  Such  a  scape-goat  provi- 
dentially presented  itself  in  the  person  of 
Mr.  Jefferson  Hogg,  who,  happening  to 
be  in  town  about  the  beginning  of  1811, 
had  several  times  called  upon  Stockdale 
on  Shelley's  business,  and  at  his  request 
The  absurdity  of  the  insinuation  he 
nevertheless  did  not  scruple  to  make 
seems  not  to  have  altogether  escaped  the 
publisher  himself,  and  must  be  perfectly 
apparent  to  us  who  have  had  the  advan- 
tage of  perusing  Mr.  Hogg's  straightfor- 


ward and  unaffected  account  of  his  Uni- 
versity acquaintance  with  his  illustrious 
friend.  In  fact,  he  was  then  doing  for 
Shelley  what  the  University  ought  to 
have  done,  and  did  not.  "  The  use  of 
the  University  of  Oxford,"  remarked  an 
Oxonian  to  Mr.  Bagehot,  "  is  that  no 
"  one  can  overread  himself  there.  The 
"  appetite  for  indiscriminate  know- 
ledge is.  repressed.  A  blight  is 
"thrown  over  the  ingenuous  mind," 
&c.  Mr.  Hogg's  companionship  was 
doing  the  same  thing  for  Shelley 
in  a  different  way,  not  quelling  his 
friend's  thirst  for  interminable  discussion 
by  repulsion,  but  by  satiety.  The  entire 
character  of  their  intimacy  is  faithfully 
miniatured  in  the  celebrated  story  of  the 
dog  that  tore  Shelley's  skirts,  whereupon 
the  exasperated  poet  set  off  to.  his 
College  for  a  pistol.  "I  accompanied 
"  him,"  says  Mr.  Hogg,  "  but  on  the 
'  way  took  occasion  to  engage  him  in 
'  a  metaphysical  discussion  on  the  nature 
'  of  anger,  in  the  course  of  which  he 
'condemned  that  passion  with  great 
'  vehemence,  and  could  hardly  be 
'  brought  to  allow  that  it  could  be  justi- 
'  fiable  in  any  instance."  It  is  needless 
to  add  that  the  dog  went  unpunished; 
and,  had  the  Oxford  authorities  possessed 
the  slightest  insight  into  Shelley's  pecu- 
liarities of  disposition,  and  Mr.  Hogg's 
merits  as  a  safety-valve,  they  might 
have  preserved  an  illustrious  modern 
ornament  of  their  University.  Stock- 
dale,  as  we  have  seen,  was  all  anxiety 
to  frame  a  bill  of  indictment ;  and,  his 
wife  chancing  to  have  relations  in  the 
part  of  Buckinghamshire  where  Mr. 
Hogg  had  been  residing,  he  availed 
himself  of  the  circumstance  to  make 
inquiries.  In  those  days  Mr.  Hogg's 
"Life  of  Shelley"  was  not,  and  the 
world  had  not  learned  on  his  own 
authority  that  not  only  "  he  would  not 
"walk  across  Chancery  Lane  in  the 
"narrowest  part  to  redress  all  the 
"  wrongs  of  Ireland,  past,  present,  and 
"  to  come,"  but,  which  is  even  more  to 
the  purpose,  that  "he  has  always  been 
"totally  ignorant  respecting  all  the 
"  varieties  of  religious  dissent."  It  was 
therefore  easier  for  Mrs.  Stockdale  to 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


109 


collect,  with  incredible  celerity,  full 
materials  for  such  a  representation  of 
Shelley's  honest  but  unspeculative  friend 
as  suited  the  views  of  her  husband,  who 
immediately  transmitted  the  account  to 
Sir  Timothy.  Sir  Timothy  naturally 
informed  his  son,  who  informed  Mr. 
Hogg,  who  immediately  visited  the  de- 
linquent publisher  with  two  most  indig- 
nant letters,  which  that  pachydermatous 
personage  has  very  composedly  repro- 
duced in  his  journal  exactly  as  they 
were  written.  Shelley  does  not  appear 
to  have  fulfilled  his  intention  of  calling 
upon  Stockdale  in  London;  but,  the 
latter's  replies  to  Mr.  Hogg  proving  enii 
nently  unsatisfactory,  with  his  wonted 
chivalry  of  feeling  he  addressed  him 
the  following  letter  from  Oxford  : — 

"OXFORD,  28$.  of  January,  1811. 

"  SIR, — On  my  arrival  at  Oxford,  my 
friend  Mr.  Hogg  communicated  to  me 
the  letters  which  passed  in  consequence 
of  your  misrepresentations  of  his  cha- 
racter, the  abuse  of  that  confidence  which 
he  invariably  reposed  in  you.  I  now, 
sir,  demand  to  know  whether  you  mean 
the  evasions  in  your  first  letter  to  Mr. 
Hogg,  your  insulting  attempted  cool- 
ness in  your  second,  as  a  means  of 
escaping  safely  from  the  opprobrium 
naturally  attached  to  so  ungentlemanly 
an  abuse  of  confidence  (to  say  nothing 
of  misrepresentations) '  as  that  which 
my  father  communicated  to  me,  or  as  a 
denial  of  the  fact  of  having  acted  in 
this  unprecedented,  this  scandalous  man- 
ner. If  the  former  be  your  intention, 
I  will  compassionate  your  cowardice, 
and  my  friend,  pitying  your  weakness, 
will  take  no  further  notice  of  your  con- 
temptible attempts  at  calumny.  If  the 
latter  is  your  intention,  I  feel  it  my  duty 
to  declare,  as  my  veracity  and  that  of 
my  father  is  thereby  called  in  question, 
that  I  will  never  be  satisfied,  despicable 
as  I  may  consider  the  author  of  that 
affront,  until  my  friend  has  an  ample 
apology  for  the  injury  you  have  at- 
tempted to  do  him.  I  expect  an  imme- 
diate, and  demand  a  satisfactory  letter. 

"  Sir,  I  am,  • 

"  Your  obedient  humble  servant, 

"PERCY  B.  SHELLEY." 


On  receiving  this,  Stockdale  wrote 
Sir  Timothy  a  letter,  which  the  baronet, 
like  Dr.  Folliott,  in  "  Crotchet  Castle," 
appears  to  have  considered  "  deficient  in 
"  the  two  great  requisites  of  head  and 
"tail:"— 

"FIELD  PLACE,  30<£  of  January,  1811. 
"  SIR, — I  am  so  surprised  at  the  re- 
ceipt of  your  letter  of  this  morning,  that 
I  cannot  comprehend  the  meaning  of 
the  language  you  use.  I  shall  be  in 
London  next  week,  and  will  then  call 
on  you. 

"  I  am,  sir, 
"Your  obedient  humble  servant, 

"T.  SHELLEY." 

Sir  Timothy  did  call,  and  Stockdale 
"  gave  him  such  particulars  as  the 
"  urgency  of  the  case  required.  The 
"  consequence  was,"  he  continues,  with 
touching  simplicity,  "  that  all  concerned 
became  inimical  to  me." 

Shelley's  expulsion  took  place  on  the 
25th  of  March.  He  immediately  came 
to  town,  and  on  April  llth  addressed 
this  note  to  Stockdale  : — 

"  15,  POLAND  STREET,  OXFORD  STREET. 
"  SIR, — Will  you  have  the  goodness  to 
inform  me  of  the  number  of  copies  which 
you  have  sold  of  '  St.  Irvyne  1'  Circum- 
stances may  occur  which  will  oblige  me 
to  wish  for  my  accounts  suddenly  ;  per- 
haps you  had  better  make  them  out. 

"  Sir, 
"  Your  obedient  humble  servant, 

"P.  B.  SHELLEY." 

Stockdale  delayed  to  act  upon  this 
suggestion  ;  and,  when  he  at  length  sent 
in  his  account,  Shelley  had  quitted 
London.  The  bill,  however,  overtook 
him  in  Radnorshire  : — 

"SiR, — Your  letter  has  at  length 
reached  me  ;  the  remoteness  of  my  pre- 
sent situation  must  apologize  for  my 
apparent  neglect.  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
in  answer  to  your  requisition,  that  the 
state  of  my  finances  renders  immediate 
payment  perfectly  impossible.  It  is  my 
intention,  at  the  earliest  period  in  my 
power  to  do  so,  to  discharge  your  ac- 


110 


Shelley  in  Pall  Mall. 


count.  I  am  aware  of  the  imprudence  of 
publishing  a  book  so  ill-digested  as  '  St. 
Irvyne;'  but  are  there  no  expectations 
on  the  profits  of  its  sale  ?  My  studies 
have,  since  my  writing  it,  been  of  a 
more  serious  nature.  I  am  at  present 
engaged  in  completing  a  series  of  moral 
and  metaphysical  essays — perhaps  their 
copyright  would  be  accepted  in  lieu  of 
part  of  my  debt  ? 

"  Sir,  I  have  the  honour  to  be, 
"  Your  very  humble  servant, 

"PERCY  B.  SHELLEY. 

"  CWMELAN,  RHATADER,  RADNORSHIRE, 
August  1st,  1811." 

The  offer  of  "moral  and  metaphysical 
essays"  from  one  in  Shelley's  circum- 
stances could  not  well  appear  very 
inviting,  and  so  the  acquaintance  of 
author  and  publisher  ended  in  an  unpaid 
bill  This  account,  which  cannot  have 
been  a  large  one,  soon  escaped  Shelley's 
memory,  and,  when  better  tunes  arrived, 
Stockdale  did  nothing  to  remind  him  of 
it — an  unaccountable  oversight,  unless 
we  can  suppose  him  ignorant  of  the 
circumstances  of  one  whose  writings  and 
proceedings  were  provoking  so  much 
public  comment.  In  spite  of  his  dis- 
appointment, Stockdale,  who  really 
appears  to  have  been  captivated  by 
Shelley,  and  to  have  been  not  more 
forcibly  impressed  by  the  energy  of  Ms 
intellect  than  by  the  loveliness  of  his 
character,  emphatically  expresses  "My 
"  fullest  assurance  of  his  honour  and  rec- 
"  titude,  and  my  conviction  that  he  would 
"  vegetate,  rather  than  live,  to  effect  the 
"  discharge  of  every  honest  claim  upon 
"  him."  In  default  of  having  given  him 
the  opportunity,  he  endeavours,  with  full 
success,  to  extract  the  largest  possible 
amount  of  self-glorification  from  his 
subject.  Had  he  but  had  his  own  way, 
"  What  degradation  and  self-abasement 
"  might  have  been  spared  to  the  widowed 
"wife  and  fatherless  orphans,  who,  per- 
"  haps,  at  last,  may  be  indebted  to  my  brief 
"  memoirs  for  the  only  ray  of  respect  and 
"  hope  which  may  illumine  their  recollec- 
"  tions  of  a  fatherwhen  they  have  attained  • 


"  an  age  for  reflection,  and  shed  a  gleam 
"of  ghastly  light  athwart  the  palpable 
"obscurity  of  his  tomb."  It  must  be 
acknowledged  that  Stockdale's  eloquence, 
like  Pandemonium,  is  rather  sublime  than 
luminous  ;  it  must  ever  remain  uncertain 
whether  the  "ghastly  light"  is  supposed 
to  be  derived  from  the  respect,  or  the 
hope,  or  the  wife,  or  the  orphans,  or  the 
"  brief  memoirs,"  or  any  two  or  more  of 
these,  or  all  five  at  once;  and  what 
follows  about  the  prayer  of  a  hope  of  a 
possibility  is  even  more  unintelligible. 
But  those  were  days  in  which  men  dis- 
paraged the  character  and  genius  of 
Shelley  as  a  matter  of  course,  without 
the  remotest  idea  of  the  ridicule  and 
contempt  they  •  were  meriting  at  the 
hands  of  succeeding  generations.  Only 
six  years  previously,  a  writer  in  the 
Literary  Gazette  had  expressed  the  dis- 
appointment he  had  felt,  in  common 
with  all  right-minded  people,  on  learning 
that  the  author  of  "Queen  Mab"  pos- 
sessed neither  horns,  tail,  hoofs,  or  any 
other  outward  and  visible  sign  of  the 
diabolical  nature.1  The  progress  of 
public  opinion  respecting  Shelley  has 
imitated  the  famous  variations  of  the 
Moniteur  on  occasion  of  Napoleon's 
escape  from  Elba.  "The  tiger  has 
"  broken  loose,  the  monster  has  landed, 
"  the  traitor  is  at  Grenoble,  the  enemy  at 
"Lyons,  Napoleon  is  at  Fontainebleau, 
"  the  emperor  is  in  Paris  ! "  Stookdale 
flourished  in  the  tigrine  era,  when  it 
was  perfectly  natural  that  he  should 
terminate  his  articles  by  an  invocation 
of  "  the  seven  other  spirits,  more  wicked 
than  himself" 

1  This  will  be  thought  a  parable  or  an  extra- 
vaganza, and  is,  nevertheless,  simple,  serious, 
literal  truth.  There  is  a  curious  illustration  of 
the  slight  recognition  Shelley's  writings  had 
obtained  so  late  as  1828,  in  Platen's  exquisitely 
classical  address  to  his  friend  Rumohr,  whom 
he  invites  to  visit  him  at  his  residence  on  an 
island  in  the  Gulf  of  Spezzia,  telling  him 
that  he  will  see,  among  other  things,  the  spot 

Wo  der  Freund 
Jenes  Dichters  ertranlc, 

without  the  slightest  allusion  to  Shelley's  own 
achievements  aa  a  poet ! 


Ill 


THE   KAMSGATE   LIFE-BOAT:    A  RESCUE.1 


CHAPTEE  I. 

A   WRECK   OFF   MARGATE. 

THE  night  of  Sunday,  the  twelfth  of 
February,  in  the  present  year,  was  what 
sailors  call  a  very  dirty  night.  Heavy 
masses  of  ^clouds  skirted  the  horizon  as 
the  sun  set ;  and,  as  the  night  drew  on, 
violent  gusts  of  wind  swept  along,  accom- 
panied with  snow  squalls.  It  was  a  dan- 
gerous time  for  vessels  in  the  Channel, 
and  it  proved  fatal  to  one  at  least. 

Before  the  light  broke  on  Monday 
morning,  the  thirteenth,  the  Margate 
lugger,  Eclipse,  put  out  to  sea  to 
cruise  around  the  sands  and  shoals  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Margate,  on  the 
look  out  for  any  disasters  that  might 
have  occurred  during  the  night.  The 
«rew  soon  discovered  that  a  vessel 
was  ashore  on  the  Margate  Sands,  and 
directly  made  for  her.  She  proved  to 
be  the  Spanish  brig  Samaritano,  of 
one  hundred  and  seventy  tons,  bound 
from  Antwerp  to  Santander,  and  laden 
with  a  valuable  and  miscellaneous  cargo. 
Her  crew  consisted  of  Modeste  Crispo, 
captain,  and  eleven  men.  It  seems  that 
during  a  violent  squall  of  snow  and 
wind  the  vessel  was  driven  on  the  sands 
at  about  half-past  five  in  the  morning ; 
the  crew  attempted  to  put  off  in  -the 
ship's  boats,  but  in  vain ;  the  oars  were 
broken  in  the  attempt,  and  the  boats 
stove  in. 

The  lugger,  Eclipse,  as  she  was  run- 
ning for  the  brig,  spoke  a  Whitstable 
smack,  and  borrowed  two  of  her  men 
and  her  boat.  They  boarded  the  vessel 
as  the  tide  went  down,  and  hoped  to  be 
able  to  get  her  off  at  high  water.  For 
this  purpose  six  Margate  boatmen  and 
two  of  the  Whitstable  men  were  left  on 
board.  But,  with  the  rising  tide,  the 

1  The  following  narrative  is  by  one  who 
had  the  best  local  opportunities  of  being 
accurate,  and  of  receiving  accounts  of  every 
detail  of  the  rescue  from  the  lips  of  the  men 
who  were  engaged  in  it. 


gale  came  on  again  in  all  its  fury,  and 
they  soon  gave  up  all  hopes  of  saving 
the  vessel.  They  hoisted  their  boat  on 
board,  and  all  hands  began  to  feel  that 
it  was  no  longer  a  question  of  saving 
the  vessel,  but  of  saving  their  own  lives. 
The  sea  began  to  break  furiously  over 
the  wreck,  lifting  her,  and  then  bumping 
her  with  crushing  force  upon  the  sands. 
Her  timbers  did  not  long  withstand  this 
trial  of  their  strength  ;  a  hole  was  soon 
knocked  in  her ;  she  filled  with  water, 
and  settled  down  upon  the  sand.  The 
waves  began  now  to  break  over  the  deck  ; 
the  boat  was  speedily  knocked  to  pieces 
and  swept  overboard ;  the  hatches  were 
forced  up,  and  some  of  the  cargo  floated 
on  deck,  and  was  washed  away.  The 
brig  began  to  roll  fearfully  as  the  waves 
one  after  another  crashed  over  her;  and 
the  men,  fearing  that  she  would  be 
forced  on  her  broadside,  cut  the  weather 
rigging  of  the  mainmast,  and  it  was 
speedily  swept  overboard.  All  hands 
now  sought  refuge  in  the  forerigging. 
Nineteen  lives  had  then  no  other 
hope  between  them  and  a  terrible 
death  than  the  few  shrouds  of  that 
shaking  mast.  The  wind  swept  by  them 
with  hurricane  force ;  each  wave  that 
broke  upon  the  vessel  sprang  up  into 
columns  of  foam,  and  drenched  them  to 
the  skin  ;  the  air  was  full  of  spray  and 
sleet,  which  froze  upon  them  as  it  fell 
And  thus  they  waited,  hour  after  hour, 
and  no  help  came,  until  one  and  all 
despaired  of  life. 

In  the  meanwhile,  news  of  the  wreck 
had  spread  like  wildfire  through  Mar- 
gate. In  spite  of  the  gale  and  the 
blinding  snow  squalls,  many  struggled 
to  the  cliff,  and  with  spyglasses  tried  to 
penetrate  the  flying  scud,  or  to  gain, 
through  the  breaks  in  the  storm,  glimpses 
of  the  wreck. 

As-  soon  as  they  saw  the  peril  the 
crew  of  the  brig  were  in,  the  smaller  of 
the  two  Margate  life-boats  was  manned, 
and  made  to  the  rescue.  But  all  the 
efforts  of  her  crew  were  in  vain ;  the  gale 


112 


Hie  Eamsgate  Life-Boat. 


was  furious,  and  the  seas  broke  over  and 
filled  the  boat.  This  her  gallant  crew 
heeded  little  aj;  first,  for  they  had  every 
confidence  in  the  powers  of  the  boat  to 
ride  safely  through  any  storm,  her  air- 
tight compartments  preventing  her  from 
sinking ;  but  to  their  dismay  they  found 
that  she  was  losing  her  buoyancy  and 
fast  becoming  unmanageable ;  she  was 
filling  with  water,  which  came  up  to  the 
men's  waists.  The  air-boxes  had  evi- 
dently filled ;  and  they  remembered,  too 
late,  that  the  valves  with  which  each  box 
is  provided,  in  order  to  let  out  any 
water  that  may  leak  in,  had  in  the  ex- 
citement of  starting  been  left  unscrewed. 
Their  boat  was  then  no  longer  a  life- 
boat, and  the  struggle  became  one  for 
their  own  safety.  Although  then  within 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the  brig,  there  was 
no  help  for  it ;  the  boat  was  unmanage- 
able, and  the  only  chance  of  life  left  to 
the  boatmen  was  to  run  her  ashore  as 
soon  as  possible  on  the  nearest  part  of 
the  coast.  It  was  doubtful  whether 
they  would  be  able  to  do  even  this,  and 
it  was  not  until  after  four  hours'  battling 
with  the  sea  and  gale  that  they  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  ashore  in  Westgate 
Bay.  There  the  coast-guard  were  ready 
to  receive  them,  and  did  their  best  to 
revive  the  exhausted  men.  As  soon  as 
it  was  discovered  that  the  first  life-boat 
had  become  disabled,  the  big  life-boat 
(The  Friend  of  all  Nations)  was  got 
ready.  With  much  trouble  it  was  drag- 
ged round  to  the  other,  side  of  the  pier, 
and  there  launched.  Away  she  started, 
her  brave  crew  doing  their  utmost  to 
battle  with  the  gale,  and  work  their  way 
out  to  the  brig ;  but  all  their  efforts  were 
in  vain.  The  tremendous  wind  and  sea 
overpowered  them  ;  the  tiller  gave  way ; 
and,  after  a  hard  struggle,  this  life-boat 
was  driven  ashore  about  a  mile  from  the 
town. 

With  both  their  life-boats  wrecked, 
the  Margate  people  gave  up  all  hopes  of 
saving  the  crew  of  the  vessel.  There 
seemed  no  hope  for  it ;  they  must  be 
content  to  let  them  perish  within  their 
sight.  But  this  should  not  be  the 
case  until  every  possible  effort  had 
been  made ;  and  two  luggers,  The 


Nelson  and  The  Lively,  undaunted  by 
the  fate  of  the  life-boats,  put  off  to 
the  rescue.  The  fate  of  one  was  soon 
settled ;  a  fearful  squall  of  wind  caught 
her  before  she  had  got  many  hundred 
yards  clear  of  the  pier,  and  swept  her 
foremast  out  of  her ;  and  her  crew,  in 
turn,  had  to  make  every  possible  effort 
to  avoid  being  driven  on  the  shore-rocks 
and  wrecked.  The  Lively  was  more 
fortunate  ;  she  got  to  sea,  but  could  not 
cross  the  sand,  or  get  to  the  wreck. 
The  Margate  people  began  to  despair; 
and,  when  the  tidings  passed  among  the 
crowd  that  the  lieutenant  of  the  Mar- 
gate coast-guard  had  sent  an  express 
over  to  Eamsgate  for  the  Raiusgate 
steamer  and  life-boat,  it  was  thought 
impossible,  on  the  one  hand,  that  they 
could  make  their  way  round  the  North 
Foreland  in  the  teeth  of  so  tremendous 
a  gale,  or,  on  the  other,  that  the  ship 
could  hold  together,  or  the  crew  live, 
exposed  as  they  were  in  the  rigging, 
during  the  time  it  would  of  necessity 
take  for  the  steamer  and  boat  to  get  to 
them. 

We  now  change  the  scene  to  Rams- 
gate. 


CHAPTER  II. 

MAKING   FOR   THE  WRECK. 

FROM  an  early  hour  on  the  Monday 
morning,  groups  of  boatmen  had  as- 
sembled on  the  pier  at  Eamsgate,  occa- 
sionally joined  by  some  of  the  most  hardy 
of  the  townspeople,  or  by  a  stray  visitor, 
attracted  out  by  the  wild  scene  that  the 
storm  presented.  In  the  intervals  be- 
tween the  snow  squalls,  they  could 
faintly  discern  a  vessel  or  two  in  the 
distance  running  before  the  gale ;  and 
they  were  all  keenly  on  the  look  out 
for  signals  of  distress,  that  they  might 
put  off  to  the  rescue.  But  no  such 
signal  was  given.  Every  now  and  then, 
as  the  wind  boomed  by,  some  landsman 
thought  it  the  report  of  a  gun  from  one 
or  other  of  the  three  light-vessels 
which  guard  the  dangerous  Goodwin 
Sands;  but  the  boatmen  shook  their 


The  Eamsgate  Life-Boat. 


113 


heads,  and  those  who  with  spyglasses 
kept  a  look-out  in  the  direction  of  the 
light-vessels  confirmed  them  in  their 
disbelief. 

About  nine  o'clock,  tidings  came  that 
a  brig  was   ashore   on   the   Woolpack 
Sands,  off  Margate.     It  was  of  course 
concluded   that  the  two   Margate  life- 
boats  would  go   to   the   rescue ;    and, 
although  there  was  much  anxiety  and 
excitement   as    to    the   result    of    the 
attempt   the   Margate   boatmen   would 
make,  no  one  had  the  least  idea  that 
the  services  of  the  Eamsgate  boat  would 
be   required.      Thus    time    passed   on, 
until  twelve  o'clock,  when  most  of  the 
men  went  away  to  dinner,  leaving  a  few 
only  on  watch.    Shortly  after  twelve,  the 
coast-guard  man  from  Margate  hastened 
breathless  to  the  pier  and  to  the  har- 
bour-master's  office,  saying,  in  answer 
to   eager  inquiries,   as  he  hurried  on, 
that  the  two  Margate  life-boats  had  been 
wrecked,  and  that  the  Ramsgate  boat 
was  wanted.     The  harbour-master  im- 
mediately gave  the  order  to  man  the 
life-boat.     No    sooner   had   the   words 
passed   his  lips,  than  the  sailors  who 
had   crowded  around  the  door  of  the 
office    in    expectation    of    the    order, 
rushed  away  to  the  boat.     First  come, 
first  in ;    not   a   moment's   hesitation, 
not  a  thought  of  farther  clothing  !    The 
news  soon  spread  ;  each  boatman  as  he 
heard  it  made  a  hasty  snatch  at  his 
south-wester  cap  and  bag  of  waterproof 
overalls,  and  raced  down  to  the  boat; 
and  for  some  time  boatman  after  boat- 
man was  to  be  seen  rushing  down  the 
pier,  hoping  to  find  a  place  still  vacant 
for   him.      If   the   race    had  been   to 
save  their  own  lives,  instead  of  to  risk 
them,  it  could  scarcely  have  been  more 
hotly  contested.    Some  of  those  who  had 
won  the  race,    and  were  in  the  boat, 
were  ill-prepared  with  clothing  for  the 
hardships  they  would  have  to  endure ; 
for,  if  they  had  not  their  things  at  hand, 
they   would    not   delay   a  moment   to 
obtain    them,   fearing    that    the    crew 
might  be    made    up    before    they  got 
there.      These  were   supplied    by   the 
generosity  of    their   friends,   who   had 
come   down  better  prepared,  although 


too  late  for  the  enterprise ;   the   cork' 
jackets  were  thrown  into  the  boat,  and 
put    on   by  the  men.     The  powerful 
steam-tug,  Aid,  belonging  to   the  har- 
bour,   and  which   has    her    steam  up 
night  and  day  ready  for  any  emergency 
that  may  arise,  got  her   steam  to  full 
power,  and,  with  her  brave  and  skilful 
master,   Daniel  Eeading,  in  command, 
took  the  boat  in  tow,   and  made  her 
way  out  of  the  harbour.  James  Hogben, 
who,  with  Eeading,  has  been  in  many 
a  wild  scene  of  danger,  commanded  the 
life-boat.     It  was  nearly  low  water  at 
the  time,  but  the  force  of  the  gale  was 
such   that  a  good  deal   of   spray  was 
dashing  over  the  pier,  and  the  snow, 
which  was  falling  in  blinding   squalls, 
had   drifted  and  eddied  in  every  pro- 
tected nook  and  corner,  making  it  hard 
work  for   the  excited  crowd  who  had 
assembled  to  see  the  life-boat  start,  to 
battle  their  way  through  the  drifts  and 
against  the  wind,   snow  and  foam,  to 
the  head  of  the  pier.    There  at  last  they 
assembled,  and  many  a  heart  failed  as 
they  saw  the  steamer  and  boat  clear  the 
pier  and  encounter  the  first  rush  of  the 
wind  and  sea  outside.   "  She  seemed  to  go 
out  under  water,"  said  one  old  fellow ; 
"I  wouldn't  have  gone  in  her  for  the 
universe  ;"  and  those  who  did  not  know 
the    heroism    that   such   scenes   called 
forth  in  the  breasts  of  our  watermen, 
could  not  help  wondering  somewhat  at 
the  eagerness  that  had  been  displayed 
to  get  a  place  in  the  boat — and  this 
although    they    knew    that    the    two 
Margate    life-boats   had   been    already 
wrecked  in  the  attempt  to  get  the  short 
distance  which  separated  Margate  from 
the  wreck,  while  they  would  have  to 
battle  their  way  through  the  gale  for 
ten  or  twelve  miles  before  they  could 
get  even  in  sight  of  the  vessel.     It  says 
nothing  against  the  daring  or  skill  of 
the  Margate  boatmen,  or  the  efficiency 
of  their  boats  that  they  failed.     In  such 
a  gale   success  was   almost   impossible 
without   the   aid   of  steam.     With    it 
they  would  probably  have   succeeded  ; 
without  it   the   Eamsgate  boat  would 
certainly  have  failed. 

As  soon  as  the  steamer  and  boat  got 


114 


The  Ramsgate  Life-Boat. 


clear  of  the  pier  they  felt  the'  full  force 
of  the  storm,  and  it  seemed  almost 
doubtful  whether  they  could  make  any 
progress  against  it.  Getting  out  of  the 
force  of  the  tide  as  it  swept  round  the 
pier,  they  began  to  move  ahead,  and 
were  soon  ploughing  their  way  through 
a  perfect  sea  of  foam.  The  steamer, 
with  engines  working  full  power,  plunged 
along ;  every  wave,  as  it  broke  over  her 
bows,  flying  up,  sent  its  spray  mast  bigh, 
and  deluged  the  deck  with  a  tide  of 
water,  which,  as  it  swept  aft,  gave  the 
men  on  board  enough  to  do  to  hold  on. 
The  life-boat  was  towing  astern,  with 
fifty  fathom  of  five-inch  hawser — an 
enormously  strong  rope,  about  the  thick- 
ness of  a  man's  wrist.  Her  crew  already 
experienced  the  dangers  and  discomforts 
they  were  ready  to  submit  to  without  a 
murmur,  perhaps  for  many  hours,  in 
their  effort  to  save  life.  It  would  be 
hard  to  give  a  description  to  enable  one 
to  realize  their  position  in  the  boat. 
The  use  of  a  life-boat  is,  that  it  will 
live  where  other  boats  would  of  neces- 
sity founder;  they  are  made  for,  and 
generally  only  used  on,  occasions  of 
extreme  danger  and  peril,  for  terrible 
storms  and  wild  seas.  The  water  flows 
in  the  boat  and  over  it,  and  it  still  floats. 
Some  huge  rolling  wave  will  break  over 
it  and  for  a  moment  bury  it,  but  it  rises 
in  its  buoyancy,  and  shakes  itself  free ; 
beaten  down  on  its  broadside  by  the 
waves  and  wind,  it  rises  on  its  keel 
again,  and  defies  them  to  do  their  worst. 
Such  was  the  noble  boat  of  which  we 
are  writing.  The  waves  that  broke  over 
her  drenched  and  deluged,  and  did 
everything  but  drown,  her.  The  men, 
from  the  moment  of  their  clearing  the 
pier  to  that  of  their  return,  were  up  to 
their  knees  in  water.  They  bent  forward 
as  much  as  they  could,  each  with  a  firm 
hold  upon  the  boat.  The  spray  and 
waves  beat~and  broke  upon  their  backs ; 
and,  although  it  could  not  penetrate 
their  waterproof  clothing,  it  chilled  them 
to  the  bone — for,  as  it  fell,  it  froze.  So 
bitter  was  the  cold  that  their  very  mit- 
tens were  frozen  to  their  hands.  After 
a  tremendous  struggle,  the  steamer 
seemed  to  be  making  head  against  the 


storm  ;  they  were  well  clear  of  the  pier, 
settled  to  their  work,  and  getting  on 
gallantly.  They  passed  through  the  cud 
channel,  and  had  passed  the  black  and 
white  buoys,  so  well  known  to  Ranis- 
gate  visitors,  when  a  fearful  sea  came 
heading  towards  them.  It  met  and  broke 
over  the  steamer,  buried  her  in  foam, 
and  swept  along.  The  life-boat  rose  to 
it,  and  then,  as  she  felt  the  strain  on  the 
rope,  plunged  into  it  stem  on,  and  was 
for  a  moment  nearly  buried.  The  men 
were  almost  washed  out  of  her ;  but  at 
that  moment  the.  tow-rope  gave  way  to 
the  tremendous  strain ;  the  boat,  lifted 
with  a  jerk,  was  flung  round  by  the 
force  of  i  the  wave,  and  for  a  moment 
seemed  at  the  mercy  of  the  sea  which 
broke  over  her  amidships.  "  Oars  out ! " 
was  the  cry  as  soon  as  the  men  had 
got  their  breath.  They  laboured  and 
laboured  to  get  the  boat's  head  to  the 
wind,  but  in  vain  ;  the  force  of  the  gale 
was  too  much  for  them,  and,  in  spite  of 
all  their  efforts,  they  drifted  fast  to  the 
Broke  Shoal,  over  which  the  sea  was 
beating  heavily  ;  but  the  steamer,  which 
throughout  was  handled  most  admirably, 
both  as  regards  skill  and  bravery,  was 
'  put  round  as  swiftly  as  possible,  and  very 
cleverly  brought  within  a  yard  or  two 
to  windward  of  the  boat  as  she  lay 
athwart  the  sea.  They  threw  a  hawling- 
line  on  board,  to  which  was  attached  a 
bran-new  hawser,  and  again  took  the 
boat  in  tow. 

The  tide  was  still  flowing,  and,  as  it 
rose,  the  wind  came  up  in  heavier  and 
heavier  gusts,  bringing  with  it  a  blind- 
ing snow  and  sleet,  which,  with  the 
foam,  flew  through  the  boat,  still  freez- 
ing as  it  fell,  till  the  men  looked,  as 
one  remarked  at  the  time,  like  a  body 
of  ice.  They  could  not  look  to  wind- 
ward for  the  drifting  snow  and  heavy  seas 
continually  running  over  them ;  but  not 
one  heart  failed,  not  one  repented  of 
winning  the  race  to  the  life-boat.  Off 
Broadstairs  they  suddenly  felt  the  way 
of  the  boat  stop.  "The  rope  broken 
again,"  was  the  first  thought  of  all ;  but, 
on  looking  round,  as  they  were  then 
enabled  to  do,  the  boat  being  no  longer 
forced  through  the  seas,  they  discovered 


The  Ramsgate  Life-Boat 


115 


to  their  utter  dismay  that  the  steamer 
had  stopped.  They  thought  that  her 
machinery  had  broken  down,  and  at 
once  despaired  of  saving  the  lives  of 
the  shipwrecked  ;  but  soon  they  dis- 
covered, to  their  joy,  that  the  steamer 
had  merely  stopped  to  let  out  more 
cable,  fearful  lest  it  might  break  again, 
as  they  fought  their  way  round  the 
North  Foreland.  It  was  another  hour's 
struggle  before  they  reached  the  North 
Foreland.  There  the  sea  was  running 
tremendously  high.  The  gale  was  still 
increasing  ;  the  snow,  and  sleet,  and 
spray  rushed  by  with  hurricane  speed. 
Although  it  was  only  the  early  after- 
noon, the  air  was  so  darkened  with 
the  storm,  that  it  seemed  a  dull  twi- 
light. The  captain  of  the  boat  was 
steering ;  he  peered  out  between  his 
coat-collar  and  cap,  but  looked  in  vain 
for  the  steamer.  He  knew  that  she 
was  all  right,  for  the  rope  kept  tight; 
but  many  times,  although  she  was  only 
one  hundred  yards  ahead,  he  could  see 
nothing  of  her.  Still  less  able  were  the 
men  on  board  the  steamboat  to  see  the 
life-boat.  Often  did  they  anxiously 
look  astern  and  watch  for  a  break  in 
the  drift  and  scud  to  see  that  she  was 
all  right ;  for,  although  they  still  felt 
the  strain  upon  the  •  rope,  she  might  be 
towing  along  bottom  up,  or  with  every 
man  washed  out  of  her.  for  anything 
they  could  tell.  Several  times  the  fear 
that  the  life-boat  was  gone  came  over 
the  master  of  the  steamer.  Still  steamer 
and  boat  battled  stoutly  and  success- 
fully against  the  storm. 

As  soon  as  they  were  round  the 
North  Foreland,  the  snow  squall  cleared, 
and  they  sighted  Margate,  all  anxiously 
looking  for  the  wreck  ;  but  nothing  of 
her  was  to  be  seen.  They  saw  a  lugger 
riding  just  clear  of  the  pier,  with  fore- 
mast gone,  and  anchor  down,  to  prevent 
her  being  driven  ashore  by  the  gale. 
They  next  sighted  the  Margate  life-boat, 
abandoned  and  washed  ashore,  in  West- 
gate  Bay,  looking  a  complete  wreck,  the 
waves  breaking  over  her.  A  little  beyond 
this,  they  caught  sight  ef  the  second 
life-boat,  also  ashore ;  and  then  they 
learnt  to  realize  to  the  full  the  gallant 


efforts  that  had  been  made  to  save  the 
shipwrecked,  and  the  destruction  that 
had  been  wrought,  as  effort  after  effort 
had'  been  overcome  by  the  fury  of  the 
gale. 

But  where  was  the  wreck?  They 
could  see  nothing  of  her  :  had  she  been 
beaten  to  pieces,  all  lives  lost,  and  were 
they  too  late  1  A  heavy  mass  of  cloud 
and  snow-storm  rolled  on  to  windward 
of  them,  in  the  direction  of  the  Margate 
sands,  and  they  could  not  make  out  any 
signs  of  the  wreck  there.  There  was 
just  a  chance  that  it  was  the  Woolpack 
Sand  that  she  was  on.  They  thought  it 
the  more  likely,  as  the  first  intelligence 
which  came  of  the  wreck  declared  that 
such  was  the  case ;  and  accordingly  they 
determined  to  make  for  the  Woolpack 
Sand,  which  was  about  three  miles  farther 
on.  They  had  scarcely  decided  upon 
this,  when,  most  providentially,  there 
was  a  breaks  in  the  drift  of  snow  to 
windward,  and  they  suddenly  caught 
sight  of  the  wreck.  But  for  this  sudden 
clearance  in  the  storm  they  would  have 
proceeded  on,  and,  before  they  could 
have  found  out  their  mistake  and  got 
back,  every  soul  must  have  perished. 
The  master  of  the  steamboat  made  out 
the  flag  of  distress  flying  in  the  rigging, 
the  ensign  union  downwards;  she  was 
doubtless  the  vessel  they  were  in  search 
of.  But  still  it  was  a  question  how 
they  could  get  to  her,  as  she  was  on  the 
other  side  of  the  sand.  To  tow  the 
boat  round  the  sand  would  be  a  long 
job  in  the  face  of  such  a  gale  ;  and  for 
the  boat  to  make  across  the  sand  seemed 
almost  impossible,  so  tremendous  was 
the  sea  which  was  running  over  it. 
Nevertheless,  there  was  no  hesitation 
on  the  part  of  the  life-boat  crew.  It 
seemed  a  forlorn  hope,  a  rushing  upon 
destruction,  to  attempt  to  sail  through 
such  a  surf  and  sea ;  but  to  go  round 
the  sands  would  occasion  a  delay  which 
they  could  not  bear  to  think  of.  Without 
hesitation,  then,  they  cast  off  the  tow- 
rope,  and  were  about  setting  sail,  when 
they  found  that  the  tide  was  running  so 
furiously  that  it  would  be  necessary  for 
them  to  be  towed  at  least  three  miles  to 
the  eastward,  before  they  would  be  suf- 


116 


The  Ramsgate  Life-Boat. 


ficiently  far  to  windward  to  fetch  the 
wreck.  It  was  a  hard  struggle  to  get 
the  tow-rope  on  board  again,  and  a 
heavy  disappointment  to  all  to  find 
that  an  hour  or  so  more  of  their 
precious  time  must  be  consumed  before 
they  could  get  to  the  Tescue  of  their 
perishing  brother  seamen;  but  there 
was  no  help  for  it;  and  away  they 
went  again  in  tow  of  the  steamer. 
The  snow  squall  came  on,  and  they 
lost  sight  of  the  vessel ;  but  all  were 
anxiously  on  the  look  out ;  and  now 
and  then  in  a  lift  of  the  squall  they 
could  catch  a  glimpse  of  her.  They 
could  see  that  she  was  almost  buried 
in  the  sea,  which  broke  over  her  in 
great  clouds  of  foam;  and  again  many 
and  weary  were  the  doubts  and  specu- 
lations as  to  whether  or  no  any  one  on 
board  the  wreck  could  still  be  alive. 

For  twenty  minutes  or  so  they  battled 
against  the  wind  and  tide.  The  gale, 
which  had  been  steadily  increasing  since 
the  morning,  came  on  heavier  than  ever; 
and  the  sea  was  running  so  furiously, 
that  even  the  new  rope  with  which  the 
boat  was  being  towed  could  not  resist 
the  increasing  strain,  and  suddenly 
parted  with  a  tremendous  jerk.  There 
was  no  thought  of  picking  up  the  cable 
again.  They  could  stand  no  farther  delay, 
and  one  and  all  rejoiced  to  hear  the  cap- 
tain give  orders  to  set  the  sail. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

THE  RESCUE  AND  THE  RETURN. 

HARDER  still  the  gale,  and  the  rush 
of  the  sea,  and  the  blinding  snow — the 
storm  was  at  its  height.  As  they  headed 
for  the  sands,  a  darkness  as  of  night 
seemed  to  settle  down  upon  them  ;  they 
could  scarcely  see  each  other  ;  but  on 
through  the  raging  sea  they  drove  the 
gallant  boat.  As  they  approached  the 
shallow  water, — the  high  part  of  the 
sand,  where  the  heaviest  sea  was  break- 
ing,— they  could  see  spreading  itself  be- 
fore them,  standing  out  in  the  gloom,  a 
barrier-wall  of  foam ;  for,  as  the  waves 
broke  on  the  sand,  and  clashed  together 


in  their  recoil,  they  mounted  up  in 
columns  of  foam,  which  was  caught  by 
the  wind,  and  carried  away  in  white 
streaming  clouds  of  spray,  and  the  fear- 
ful roar  of  the  beating  waves  could  be 
heard  above  the  gale.  But  straight  for 
the  breakers  they  made.  No  wavering, 
no  hesitation ;  not  a  heart  failed  ! 

The  boat,  although  under  only  her 
double-reefed  foresail  and  niizen — as 
little  sail  as  she  could  possibly  carry — 
was  driven  on  by  the  hurricane  force  of 
the  wind.  On  through  the  outer  range 
of  breakers  she  plunged,  and  then  came 
indeed  a  struggle  for  life.  The  waves  no 
longer  rolled  on  in  foaming  ranks,  but 
leapt,  and  clashed,  and  battled  together 
"in  a  raging  boil  of  sea.  They  broke 
over  the  boat ;  the  surf  poured  in  first 
on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other ;  some 
waves  rushed  over  the  boat,  threatening 
to  sweep  every  man  out  of  her.  "  Look 
out,  my  men  !  hold  on  !  hold  on  !"  was 
the  cry  when  this  happened ;  and  each 
man  threw  himself  down  with  his  breast 
on  the  thwart,  and,  with  both  arms 
clasped  round  it,  hugged  it,  and  held  to 
it  against  the  tear  and  wrestle  of  the 
wave,  while  the  rush  of  water  poured 
over  their  backs  and  heads  and  buried 
them  in  its  flood.  Down  for  a  moment 
boat  and  men  all  -seemed  to  sink ;  but 
the  splendid  boat  rose  in  her  buoyancy 
and  freed  herself  of  the  water  which 
had  for  a  moment  buried  her,  and  her 
crew  breathed  again.  A  cry  of  triumph 
arose  from  them — "All  right!  all  right! 
now  she  goes  through  it ;  hold  on,  my 
boys  !"  A  moment's  lull ;  she  glided 
•on  the  crest  of  a  huge  wave,  or  only 
smaller  ones  tried  their  strength  against 
her ;  then  the  monster  fellows  came 
heading  on  ;  again  the  warning  cry 
was  given,  "Look  out!  hold  on,  hold 
on ! "  Thus,  until  they  got  clear  of 
the  sands,  the  fearful  struggle  was  often 
repeated.  But  at  last  it  ended,  and 
they  got  into  deep  water,  leaving  the 
breakers  behind  them.  They  had  then 
only  the  huge  rolling  waves  to  contend 
with,  and  they  seemed  but  as  little  in 
comparison  to  the  broken  water  they 
had  just  passed  through  and  escaped 
from.  The  boat  was  put  before  the 


The  Ramsgate  Life-Boat. 


117 


wind,  and  every  man  was  on  the  look 
out  for  the  wreck.  For  a  time  it  re- 
mained so  thick  that  there  was  no 
chance  of  finding  her,  when  again,  the 
second  time,  a  sudden  break  in  the  storm 
evealed  her.  She  was  about  half  a  mile 
to  leeward.  They  shifted  their  foresail 
with  some  difficulty,  and  again  made  in 
for  the  sands  to  the  vessel.  The  appear- 
ance of  the  wreck  made  even  the  boat- 
men shudder.  She  had  settled  down 
by  the  stern  upon  the  sands,  the  sea 
making  a  clear  breach  over  her.  The 
starboard-bow  was  the  only  part  of  the 
hull  visible ;  the  mainmast  was  gone ; 
the  foresail  and  foretopsail  blown  adrift ; 
and  great  columns  of  foam  were  mount- 
ing up,  flying  over  her  foremast  and 
bow.  They  saw  a  Margate  lugger  lying 
at  anchor,  just  clear  of  the  sand,  and 
made  close  to  her.  As  they  shot  by 
they  could  just  make  out  through  the 
roar  of  the  storm  a  hail — "  Eight  of  our 
men  on  board .;"  and  on  they  flew  into 
a  sea  which  would  in  a  moment  have 
swamped  the  lugger,  noble  boat  though 
she  was.  Approaching  the  wreck,  it 
was  with  terrible  anxiety  they  strained 
their  sight,  trying  to  discover  whether 
there  were  still  any  men  left  in  the 
tangled  mass  of  rigging,  over  which  the 
sea  was  breaking  so  furiously.  By  de- 
grees they  made  them  out.  "  I  see  one, 
two,  three  !  The  rigging  is  full  of 
them  !"  was  the  cry  ;  and,  with  a  cheer 
of  triumph  at  being  still  in  time,  they 
settled  to  their  work. 

The  wreck  of  the  mainmast,  and  the 
tremendous  wash  of  the  sea  over  the 
vessel,  prevented  their  going  to  the  lee 
of  the  wreck.  This  increased  the  danger 
tenfold,  as  the  result  proved.  About 
forty  yards  from  the  wreck,  they  low- 
ered their  sails,  and  cast  the  anchor 
over  the  side.  The  moment  for  which 
the  boat  had  so  gallantly  battled  for 
four  hours,  and  the  shipwrecked 
waited,  in  almost  despair,  for  eight, 
had  at  last  arrived.  No  shouting,  no 
whisper  beyond  the  necessary  orders ; 
the  suspense  and  risk  are  too  terrible ! 
Yard  by  yard  the  cable  is  cautiously 
payed  out,  and  the  great  rolling  seas 
are  allowed  to  carry  the  boat  little  by 


little  to  the  vessel.  The  waves  break  over 
them — for  a  moment  bury  the  boat ;  and 
then,  as  they  break  upon  the  vessel,  the 
spray  hides  the  men,  lashed  to  the  rigging, 
from  their  sight.  They  hoist  up  the  sail  a 
little  to  help  the  boat  sheer,  and  soon  a 
huge  wave  lifts  them  ;  they  let  out  a 
yard  or  two  more  cable  by  the  run,  and 
she  is  alongside  the  wreck  !  With  a  cry, 
three  men  jump  from  the  rigging,  and 
are  saved.  The  next  instant  they  see  a 
huge  wave  rolling  towards  them,  and 
might  and  main,  hand  over  hand,  all 
haul  in  the  cable,  and  draw  the  boat 
away  from  the  wreck,  and  thus  escape 
being  washed  against  her,  and  perhaps 
over  her,  to  certain  destruction.  Again 
they  watch  their  chance  and  get  along- 
side. This  time  they  manage  to  remain  a 
little  longer  than  before  ;  and,  one  after 
another,  thirteen  of  the  shipwrecked  leap 
from  the  rigging  to  the  boat ;  and  away 
she  is  again.  ' '  Are  they  all  sa  ved  ? "  ]S"o'; 
three  of  the  Spaniards  are  still  left  in 
the  rigging  ;  they  seem  almost  dead,  and 
can  scarcely  unlash  themselves  from 
the  shrouds,  and  crawl  down,  ready  for 
the  return  of  the  boat.  This  time  the 
peril  is  greater  than  ever.  They  have  to 
go  quite  close  to  the  vessel,  for  the  men 
are  too  weak  to  leap  ;  they  must  remain 
longer,  for  the  men  have  to  be  lifted  on 
board  ;  but  as  before,  coolly  and  determi- 
nately  they  go  to  their  work ;  the  cable 
is  veered  out,  the  sail  manreuvred  to 
make  the  boat  sheer,  and  again  she  is 
alongside  ;  the  men  are  grasped  by  their 
clothes,  and  dragged  into  the  boat. 
The  last  in  the  rigging  is  the  cabin-boy ; 
he  seems  entangled  in  the  shrouds.  (The 
poor  little  fellow  had  a  canvas  bag  of 
trinkets  and  things  he  was  taking  home ; 
it  had  caught  in  the  rigging ;  and  his 
cold,  half-dead  hands  could  not  free 
it.)  A  strong  hand  grasps  him,  and 
tears  him  down  into  the  boat ;  for 
a  moment's  delay  may  be  death  to 
all.  A  tremendous  wave  rushes  on 
them ;  hold,  anchor  !  hold,  cable  !  give 
but  a  yard,  and  all  are  lost !  The 
boat  lifts,  is  washed  into  the  fore- 
rigging  ;  the  sea  passes  ;  and  she  settles 
down  again  upon  an  even  keel !  If 
one  stray  rope  of  all  the  tangled  rig- 


118 


The  Ramsgate  Life-Boat. 


ging  of  the  vessel  had  caught  the 
boat,  she  would  have  capsized,  and 
every  man  in  her  have  been  in  a  mo- 
ment shaken  out  into  the  sea.  The 
boat  is  very  crowded  ;  no  fewer  than 
thirty-two  men  now  form  her  precious 
freight.  They  haul  in  cable  and  draw  up 
to  the  anchor  as  quickly  as  they .  can, 
to  get  clear  of  the  wreck ;  an-  anxious 
time  it  is.  At  last  they  are  pretty  clear, 
and  hoist  the  sail  to  draw  still  farther 
away.  There  is  no  thought  of  getting  th  e 
anchor  up  in  such  a  gale  and  sea.  "  She 
draws  away,"  cries  the  captain;  "pay 
out  the  cable ;  stand  by  to  cut  it ;  pags 
the  hatchet  forward ;  cut  the  cable ; 
quick,  my  men,  quick  !"  There  is  a  mo- 
ment's delay.  A  sailor  takes  out  his 
knife,  and  begins  gashing  away  at  the 
thick  rope.  Already  one  strand  out  of  the 
three  is  severed,  when  a  fearful  gust  of 
wind  rushes  by ;  a  crash  is  heard,  and 
the  mast  and  sail  are  blown  clean  out  of 
the  boat.  Never  was  a  moment  of  greater 
peril.  Away  with  the  rush  of  the  wave 
the  boat  is  again  carried  straight  for  the 
fatal  wreck  ;  the  cable  is  payed  out,  and 
is  slack ;  they  haul  it  in  as  fast  as  they 
can ;  but  on  they  go  swiftly,  apparently 
to  certain  destruction.  Let  them  hit  the 
wreck  full,  and  the  next  wave  must 
wash  them  over  it,  and  all  perish  ;  let 
them  but  touch  it,  and  the  risk  is  fear- 
ful. On  they  are  carried  ;  the  stern  of 
the  boat  just  grazes  the  bow  of  the  ship. 
Some  of  the  crew  are  ready  for  a  spring 
into  the  bowsprit,  to  prolong  their  lives 
a  few  minutes.  Mercifully,  the  cable 
at  that  moment  taughtens  :  another 
yard  or  two  and  the  boat  must  have 
been  dashed  to  pieces.  Might  and 
main  they  continue  to  haul  in  the 
cable,  and  again  draw  away  from  the 
wreck ;  but  they  do  it  with  a  terrible 
dread,  for  they  remember  the  cut 
strand  of  the  rope.  Will  the  remaining 
two  strands  hold  ?  The  strain  is  fearful ; 
each  time  the  boat  lifts  on  a  wave,  the 
cable  tightens  and  jerks,  and  they  think 
it  breaking ;  but  it  still  holds,  and  a 
thrill  of  joy  passes  through  the  hearts 
of  all  as  they  hear  that  the  cut  part  is  in. 
The  position  is  still  one  of  extreme 
peril.  The  mast  and  sail  have  been  drag- 


ging over  the  side  all  this  time ;  with 
much  difficulty  they  get  them  on  board. 
The  mast  had  broke  short  off,  about 
three  feet  from  the  heel.  They  chop  a 
new  heel  to  it,  and  rig  it  up  again 
as  speedily  as  possible ;  but  it  takes  long 
to  do  so.  The  boat  is  lying  in  the  trough 
of  the  sea,  the  waves  breaking  over  her ; 
the  gale  blowing  as  hard  as  ever ;  the 
boat  so  crowded  that  they  can  scarcely 
move ;  the  Spaniards  clinging  to  each 
other,  the  terrors  of  death  not  having  yet 
passed  away  from  them.  They  know 
nothing  of  the  properties  of  the  life-boat, 
and  cannot  believe  that  it  will  live 
long  in  such  a  sea.  As  the  huge  waves 
break  over  the  boat  and  fill  it,  they 
imagine  that  it  is  going  to  founder ; 
and,  besides  this,  for  nearly  four  hours 
had  they  been  lashed  to  the  rigging  of 
their  vessel,  till  the  life  was  nearly 
beaten  and  frozen  out  of  them  by  the 
waves  and  bitter  wind.  One  of  them, 
seeing  a  life-belt  lying  under  a  thwart, 
which  one  of  the  crew  had  thrown 
off  in  the  hurry  of  his  work,  picked  it 
up  and  sat  upon  it,  by  way  of  making 
himself  doubly  safe.  But  the  work 
went  on  ;  at  last  the  mast  is  fitted  and 
raised.  No  unnecessary  word  is  spoken 
all  this  time,  for  the  life  and  death 
struggle  is  not  yet  over,  nor  can  be 
until  they  are  well  away  from  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  wreck;  but,  as 
they  hoist  the  sail,  the  boat  gradually 
draws  away,  the  cable  is  again  payed 
out  little  by  little,  and,  as  soon  as  they 
are  well  clear  of  the  vessel,  they  cut  it, 
and  away  they  go. 

The  terrible  suspense — when  each 
moment  was*  a  moment  of  fearful  risk — 
from  the  time  they  let  go  their  anchor  to 
the  time  they  were  clear  of  the  vessel  was 
over.  It  had  lasted  nearly  an  hour.  The 
men  could  now  breathe  freely;  their  faces 
brightened;  and  from  one  and  all  there 
arose,  spontaneously,  a  pealing  cheer. 
They  were  no  longer  face  to  face  with 
death,  and  joyfully  and  thankfully  they 
sailed  away  from  the  breakers,  the  sands, 
and  the  wreck.  The  gale  was  still  at 
its  height,  but  the  peril  they  were  in 
then  seemed  as  nothing  compared  to 
that  which  they  had  left  behind.  In 


The  Ramsgate  Life-Boat. 


119 


the  great  reaction  of  feeling,  the  freezing 
cold  and  sleet,  the  driving  foam  and 
sea  were  all  forgotten:  and  they  felt  as 
light-hearted  as  if  they  were  out  on  a 
pleasant  summer's  cruise.  They  could 
at  last  look  around  and  see  whom  they 
had  in  the  boat  Of  the  saved  were 
eleven  Spaniards — the  master  of  the 
brig,  the  mate,  eight  seamen  and  a  boy ; 
six  Margate  boatmen, "and  two  Whit- 
stable  fishermen.  They  then  proceeded 
in  search  of  the  steamer,  which,  after 
casting  the  life-boat  adrift,  had  made  for 
shelter  to  the  back  of  the  Hook  Sand, 
not  far  from  the  Eeculvers,  and  there 
waited,  her  crew  anxiously  on  the  look 
out  for  the  return  of  the  life-boat.  As 
they  were  making  for  the  steamer,  the 
lugger,  Eclipse,  caine  in  chase,  to  hear 
whether  all  hands,  and  especially  her 
men,  had  been  saved.  They  welcomed 
the  glad  tidings  with  three  cheers  for 
the  life-boat  crew.  Soon  after,  the 
Whitstable  smack  stood  towards  them 
on  the  same  errand,  and,  after  speaking 
them,  tacked  in  for  the  land.  The 
night  was  coming  on  apace.  It  was  not 
until  they  had  run  three  or  four  miles 
that  they  sighted  the  steamer ;  and,  when 
they  got  alongside  it,  was  a  difficult  mat- 
ter to  get  the  saved  crew  on  board.  The 
gale  was  as  hard  as  ever,  and  'the  steamer 
rolled  heavily ;  the  men  had  almost  to 
be  lifted  on  board  as  opportunities  oc- 
curred ;  and  one  poor  fellow  was  so 
thoroughly  exhausted  that  they  had  to 
haul  him  into  the  steamer  with  a  rope. 

Again  the  boat  was  taken  in  tow, 
almost  all  her  crew  remaining  in  her ; 
and  they  commenced  their  return  home. 
The  night  was  very  dark,  although  clear; 
the  sea  and  gale  had  lost  none  of  their  force ; 
and,  until  they  got  well  round  the  North 
Foreland,  the  struggle  to  get  back  was 
just  as  hard  as  it  had  been  to  get  there. 
Once  round  the  Foreland,  the  wind  was 
well  aft,  and  they  made  easier  way  ;  light 
after  light  opened  to  them ;  Kingsgate, 
Broadstairs,  were  passed ;  and,  at  last, 
the  Eamsgate  pier-head  light  shone 
forth  its  welcome,  and  they  began  to 
feel  that  their  work  was  nearly  over. 

A  telegram  had  been  sent  from  Mar- 
gate, in  the  afternoon,  stating  that  the 


Eamsgate  life-boat  had  been  seen  to 
save  the  crew ;  but  nothing  more  had 
been  heard,  and  the  suspense  of  the 
boatmen  at  Ramsgate,  as  they  waited 
for  the  life-boat's  return,  was  terrible. 
Few  hoped  to  see  them  again,  and,  as 
hour  after  hour  passed  Avithout  tidings, 
they  were  almost  given  up.  During 
the  whole  of  the  afternoon  and  evening, 
anxious  eyes  were  constantly  on  the 
watch  for  the  first  signs  of  the  boat's 
coming  round  the  head  of  the  cliff.  As 
the  tide  went  down,  and  the  sea  broke 
less  heavily  over  the  pier,  the  men  could 
venture  farther  along  it,  until,  by  the 
time  of  the  boat's  return,  they  were 
enabled  to  assemble  at  the  end  of  the 
pier.  When  the  steamer  was  first  seen 
with  the  life-boat  in  tow,  the  lookers  out 
shouted  for  very  joy ;  and,  as  they  en- 
tered the  harbour,  and  hailed,  "AH 
saved  !  "  cheer  after  cheer  for  the  life- 
boat's crew  broke  from  the  crowd. 

The  Spaniards  had  somewhat  recovered 
from  their  exhaustion  under  the  care  of 
the  steamboat  crew,  and  were  farther 
well  cared  for  and  supplied  with  clothes 
by  the  orders  of  the  Spanish  Consul; 
and  the  hardy  English  boatmen  did 
not  take  long  to  recover  their  exposure 
and  fatigues,  fearful  as  they  had  been. 
The  captain  of  the  Spaniard,  in  speaking 
of  the  rescue,  was  almost  overcome  by 
Ids  feelings  of  gratitude  and  wonder. 
He  had  quite  made  up  his  mind  to 
death,  believing  that  no  boat  could  by 
any  possibility  come  to  their  rescue  in 
such  a  fearful  sea.  He  took  with  him 
to  Spain,  to  show  to  the  Spanish  govern- 
ment, a  painting  of  the  rescue,  executed 
by  Mr.  Ifold,  of  Eamsgate. 

There  is  an  interest  even  in  reading 
the  names  of  those  (however  unknown 
to  us)  who  have  done  gallant  deeds ;  we 
give  therefore  the  names  of  the  crew  of 
the  life-boat,  and  of  the  steamer.  Of 
the  life-boat :  James  Hogben,  captain ; 
Charles  Meader,  Thomas  Tucker,  Philip 
Goodchild,  Edward  Stock,  William 
Penny,  William  Priestley,  George  Hog- 
ben,  William  Solly,  George  Forwood, 
John  Stock,  Eobert  Solly.  Of  the 
steam-tug :  Daniel  Eeading,  J.  Simpson, 
W.  Wharrier,  T.  ^Nichols,  J.  Denton, 


120 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


J.  Freeman,  T.  Larkins,  "W.  Penman, 
W.  Matson,  W.  Solly.  Other  fearful 
scenes  have  most  of  these  men,  espe- 
cially the  captains  of  the  life-boat  and 
steam-tug,  passed  through  in  their  efforts 
to  save  life  ;  one  so  terrible  that  two  out 
of  the  crew  of  the  life-boat  never  reco- 
vered the  shock  given  to  their  nerves. 
One  died  a  few  months  after  the  event, 
and  the  other  to  this  day  is  ailing,  and 
subject  to  fits.  Of  the  splendid  life- 
boat too  much  cannot  be  said  ;  no  fewer 
than  eighty-eight  lives  have  been  saved 
by  her  during  the  last  five  years.  De- 
signed and  built  by  J.  Beeching  and 


Sons,  boat-builders,  &c.,  of  Yarmouth, 
she  won  the  Northumberland  prize  of 
one  hundred  guineas  in  a  competition 
of  two  hundred  and  eighty  boats.  Each 
time  the  men  go  out,  their  confidence 
in  her  increases,  and  they  are  now 
ready  to  dare  anything  in  the  Northum- 
berland prize  life-boat.  It  is  pleasing 
to  be  able  to  add,  by  way  of  postscript, 
that  the  Board  of  Control  has  presented 
each  man  engaged  in  this  rescue  with  a 
medal  and  21.,  and  that  the  Spanish 
Government  has  also  gratefully  acknow- 
ledged the  heroism  of  the  men,  and  sent 
to  each  a  medal  and  31. 


THE  SLEEP  OF  THE   HYACINTH. 

AN   EGYPTIAN   POEM.      BY   THE   LATE   DR.  GEORGE   WILSON,    OF   EDINBURGH. 
(Concluded  from  No.  6.) 


IV.  THE  ENTOMBMENT  OF  THE  QUEEN  AND 
THE   FLOWER. 

There  is  mourning  in  the  land  of  Pharaoh 
over  the  dead  Princess,  whose  swathing  and 
entombment,  Egyptian-wise,  with  the  hya- 
cinth-bulb in  her  hand,  are  described — the 
description  leading  to  a  glimpse  of  the  Royal 
Necropolis,  or  Burying-place,  with  its  rows  of 
the  dead  who  had  preceded  her,  and,  then,  by 
transition,  to  an  address  of  the  Mummy  to' its 
departed  soul. 

Woe  was  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  . 

Grief  was  on  the  monarch's  throne ; 
Aged  Pharaoh,  sad  and  childless, 

Uttered  sob  and  uttered  groan ; 
Death  had  won  his  dearest  treasure, 

Desolate  he  stood  alone. 
From  his  hand  he  thrust  the  sceptre, 

From  his  brow  he  plucked  the  crown; 
Royal  robe  and  priestly  vesture, 

Warrior  sword,  he  flung  them  down; 
Sackcloth  round  his  loins  was  girt, 

Ashes  on  his  head  were  strown. 

Woe  was  in  the  land  of  Egypt, 
On  the  loftiest  and  the  least ; 

Woe  on  king  and  woe  on  people, 

Bond  and  freeman,  prince  and  priest ; 

Day  and  night  they  uttered  wailings, 
Lamentations  never  ceased. 


At  length  the  king  rose,  and  he  lifted 

his  head, 
And  he  spake  but  three  words,  "Bury 

my  dead." 
Her    delicate    body  with   water    they 

bathed, 
And  they  combed  the  long  locks  of 

her  hair, 
And  her  marble-like  limbs  with  linen 

they  swathed, 
Imbued  with  rich  spices,  and  unguents 

rare 

To  keep  off  the  breath  of  the  envious 
air. 

They  folded  her  hands  for  their  age- 
long prayer ; 
They  laid  on  her  breast, 
For  its  age-long  rest, 
The  bulb  of  the  hyacinth  root ; 
And,  with  pious  intent  and  reverend 

care, 
They  wound  from  the  head  to  the 

foot 
The  long  linen  bandages,  crossing  them 

round, 
Till  each  motionless  limb  in  its  vestment 

was  bound, 

And  she  lay  folded  up, 
Like  a  flower  in  its  cup 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


121 


Which  has  never  awakened,  and  knows 

but  repose, 
Like  the  bud  never  blown  of  the  sleeping 

white  rose. 

So  they  embalmed  that  lovely  form, 
And  made  that  queenly  face  immortal, 
Shutting  from  his  prey  the  worm, 
And     barring    close    the    admitting 

portal ; 
And  Decay  could  not  enter. 

The  sycamore  tree  in  the  garden  fell, 
She  would  love  it  they  thought  in 

,the  tomb  ; 

They  hollowed  it  out,' a  gloomy  deep  cell, 
A  dark,  dreary  lodge  where  no  queen 

would  dwell ; 
But  she  made  no  complaint,  it  suited 

her  well ; 
There  was  small  enough  space,  and 

yet  wide  enough  room  ; 
The  dead  are   content   with   a  narrow 

freehold, 

And  they  are  not  afraid  of  the  gloom. 
*  *  *  * 

There  were  no  tossing  arms 

And  no  aching  heads  ; 
All  their  pillows  were  soft 

And  downy  their  beds. 
None  weary  and  wakeful  lay 

Counting  each  hour, 
Missing  the  drowsy  juice 

Wrung  from  the  poppy  flower. 
None  looked  for  the  light ; 

None  longed  for, the  day, 
Grew  tired  of  their  couches, 

Or  wished  them  away. 

The  babe  lay  hushed  to  a  calmer  rest 
Than  ever  mother's  loving  breast 
Or  fondling  arms  in  life  had  given, 
Or  lullaby  that  rose  to  heaven 
And  brought  the  angels  down  to  guard 

the  cradle-nest. 
The  husband  and  the  wife, 
As  once  in  life, 
Slept  side  by  side, 
Undreaming  of  the  cares  the  morning 

might  betide. 
The  bridegroom  and  the  bride 

Their  fill  of  love  might  take  ; 
None  kept  the  lovers  now  apart ; 

Yet  neither  to  the  other  spake, 

No.  8. — VOL.  n. 


And  heart  leapt  not  to  heart : 
Death  had  wooed  both, 

And  come  in  room 
To  him  of  loving  bride, 

To  her  of  fond  bridegroom; 
Yet  they  slept  sweetly 

With  closed  eyes, 

And   knew  not  Death  had  cheated 
both, 

And  won  the  prize. 

None  knelt  to  the  king,  yet  none  were 

ashamed  ; 
None   prayed   unto   God,   yet  no    one 

blamed ; 
None   weighed   out   silver   or  counted 

gold; 

Nothing  was  bought,  and  nothing  sold  ; 
None  would  give,  and  none  would  take, 
No  one  answered,  and  no  one  spake. 
There  were  crowds  on  crowds,  and  yet 

no  din, 

Sinner  on  sinner,  and  yet  no  sin ; 
Poverty  was  not,  nor  any  wealth, 
None  knew  sickness,  and  none  knew 

health ; 

None  felt  blindness,  and  none  saw  light, 
There  were  millions  of  eyes  and  yet  no 

sight ; 

Millions  of  ears  and  yet  no  hearing, 
Millions  of  hearts,  and  yet  no  fearing ; 
None  knew  joy,  and  none  knew  sorrow; 
Yesterday  was  the  same  as  to-day  and 

to-morrow. 

None  felt  hunger,  none  felt  thirst, 
No  one  blessed,  and  no  one  cursed, 
None  wasted  the  hours,  and  none  saved 

time, 

None  did  any  good,  or  committed  crime  ; 
Grief  and  woe,  and  guilt  and  care, 
Fiery  passion  and  sullen  despair, 
Were  all  unknown  and   unthought  of 

there  : 

Joy  and  love,  and  peace  and  bliss, 
Holy  affection  and  kindly  kiss, 
Were  strangers  there  to  all,  I  wiss. 
The  soldier  laid  aside  his  spear, 

And  was  a  man  of  peace  ; 
The  slave  forgot  to  fear, 

And  sighed  not  for  release  ; 
The  widow  dried  her  tear 

And  thought  not  of  her  lord's  decease. 
The  subtle  brain 

Of  the  c\irious  priest, 


122 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


To  strive  and  strain 

With  thought  had  ceased. 
Lips  that  like  angels'  sung 

Moved  not  the  air, 
And  the  eloquent  tongue 

Lay  dumb  in  its  lair, 
Behind  the  closed  gate  of  the  teeth  : 

The  flute-like  throat 

Uttered  no  note, 

And  the  bosom  swelled  not  with  the 
breath. 

No  mourning  nor  crying, 

No  sobbing  nor  sighing, 

None  weeping  over  the  dead  or  the 

dying, 
Were  heard  on  the  way  : 

No  singing,  no  laughing, 

No  joying,  no  daffing, 

No  reveller's  glee  when  carousing  and 

quaffing, 

Nor  children  at  play  : 
None  shouted,  none  whispered ;  there 

rose  not  a  hum 

In  that  great  city  of  the  deaf  and  dumb. 
They  left  her  there  among  the  rows 
Of  royal  dead  to  find  repose, 
Where  Silence  with  her  soundless  wings 
Hovers  o'er  sleeping  queens  and  kings, 

And  each  in  dumbness  steeps  : 
And  Darkness  with  her  sightless  eye, 
Grazes  down  through  a  starless  sky, 

And  all  from  waking  keeps. 

*  *  *  * 

Soul,  I  loved  thee ; 

Thou  wert  beautiful : 
Soul,  I  served  thee ; 

I  was  dutiful : 

We  had  been  so  long  together, 
In  the  fair  and  the  foul  weather ; 
We  had  known  such  joys  and  tears 
That  my  love  grew  with  the  years. 

I  was  not  an  enemy 

Unto  thy  salvation  ; 
If  I  sinned,  I  sinred  with  thee, 

Yielding  to  temptation  ; 
Thou  wert  wiser, 

Thou  wert  stronger ; 
I  was  never  thy  despiser  ; 

Wilfully  I  was  no  wronger — 
Wronging  thee  I  wronged  myself. 

I  am  but  a  broken  cage, 
And  the  eagle's  fled ; 


Think  you  he  will  quell  his  rage, 

Bend  his  high  ,and  haughty  head, 
Leave  the  air  at  one  fell  swoop, 
And  with  folded  pinions  stoop 
Underneath  these  bars  ;  to  droop 
Once  again,  with  sullen  eye 
Gazing  at  the  far-off  sky  ? 
He  has  gone  his  way,  and  I 
Grudge  him  not  his  liberty. 

Does  the  wanton  butterfly 
Long  for  her  au.relia  sleep, 

Sicken  of  the  sunlit  sky, 

Shrivel  up  her  wings  and  creep 

From  the  untasted  rose's  chalice, 

Back  into  her  chrysalis  ? 

Does  she  on  the  wing  deplore 

She  can  be  a  worm  no  more  1 

The  melodious,  happy  bee, 

Will  she  backward  ring  her  bell, 

Grieving  for  a  life  so  free, 

Wishing  back  the  narrow  cell 

Where  a  cloistered  nun  she  lay, 

Knowing  not  the  night  from  day  1 

Lithe  and  subtle  serpents  turning 

Wheresoe'er  they  will, 
Are  they  full  of  sad  repining 

That  they  cannot  now  be  still, 
Coiled  in  the  maternal  prison 
Out  of  which  they  have  arisen  ? 

Earth  to  earth,  and  dust  to  dust, 
Ashes  unto  ashes  must ; 

Death  precedeth  birth. 
Infant  gladness 
Ends  in  madness, 
And  from  blackest  roots  of  sadness 

Rise  the  brightest  flowers  of  mirth. 

I  am  but  the  quiver,  useless 

When  the  bolts  are  shot ; 
But  the  dangling  mocking  scabbard 

Where  the  sword  is  not. 
I  am  like  a  shattered  bark 

Flung  high  up  upon  the  shore  ; 
Gone  are  streamers,  sails,  and  mast, 

Steering  helm  and  labouring  oar. 
Eiver-joys,  ye  all  are  past; 

I  shall  breast  the  Nile  no  more. 

I  was  once  a  lamp  of  life, 
Shining  in  upon  the  soul ; 

But  I  was  a  lamp  of  clay  : 
Death  and  I  had  bitter  strife  ; 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


123 


He  hath  pierced  the  golden  bowl, 

And  he  sent  my  soul  astray. 
It  is  an  immortal  thing, 
Far  beyond  his  venomed  sting, 
But  my  life  was  his  to  win, 

And  I  must  the  forfeit  pay ; 
So  he  poured  the  precious  oil 
Of  my  very  life  away. 

If  my  soul  should  seek  for  me, 

It  would  find  me  dark  ; 
In  my  leaking  cup  would  see 

Death  the  quencher's  mark : 
Angels  could  not  light  in  me 

Now  the  feeblest  spark  : 
I  am  broken,  empty,  cold  ; 
Oil  of  life  I  could  not  hold. 

Soul  and  body  cannot  mate, 

Unless  Life  doth  join  their  hands  ; 
And  the  fell  divorcer  sweareth 
By  the  royal  crown  he  weareth 
And  the  awful  sword  he  beareth, 

That  a  king's  are  his  commands. 
"  Soul  and  body,  Life  shall  never, 
"  When  my  smiting  sword  doth  sever, 

"  Join  again  in  wedlock's  bands." 

I  was  once  the  trusted  casket 
Of  a  priceless,  wondrous  gem  : 
With  closed  lid 
I  kept  it  hid, 
Till  God  wanted 
It  for  his  own  diadem. 
Unto  Death  He  gave  the  key, 

But  he  stayed  not  to  unlock  it ; 
If  the  jewel  were  but  free, 
He,  the  fierce  one,  what  cared  he 
For  the  casket,  though  he  broke  it? 

Mortal  throes  and  ciuel  pangs 

Tore  me  open  with  their  fangs, 
And  God  took  the  gem  to  set : 

But  to  put  his  mark  on  me 
Death  did  not  forget 

With  his  crushing,  cruel  heel, 

He  impressed  on  me  his  seal, 
And  on  it  these  words  were  cut, 
"  When  I  open,  none  may  shut 
"  Save  the  King,  whose  key  I  hear." 

If  that  gem  again  from  heaven 
Were  entrusted  to  my  care, 


I  could  not  enfold  and  keep  it 

From  the  chill,  corrupting  air  ; 
Could  not  hide  it  out  of  sight 
Of  the  peering  prying  light : — 
Crushed  and  shattered,  mean  and  vile, 
I  am  fit  only  for  the  funeral  pile. 

I  am  not  a  harp  whose  strings 

Wait  but  for  the  quivering  wings 

Of  the  breathing  Spirit- wind 

Over  them  its  way  to  find, 

Thrilling  them  with  its  fond  greeting 

Till  they  answer  back  ....  repeating 

Tone  for  tone ; 

Adding  others  of  their  own. 

All  my  chords  are  tangled,  broken, 

And  their  breaking  is  a  token 

That,  if  now  the  wind-like  spirit 

Should  come  longing  back  to  me, 
It  would  vainly  try  to  elicit 

Note  or  any  melody. 

Life  once  by  me  stood  and  wound 
Each  string  to  its  sweetest  sound, :  >.**i£ 
But  Death  stole  the  winding  key, 
And  it  would  be  woe  to  me 
If  my  soul  from  heaven  should  come 

But  to  find  me  hushed  and  mute, 
Soundless  as  a  shattered  drum, 
Voiceless  as  an  unblown  flute, 

Speechless  as  a  tongueless  bell, 
Silent  as  an  unstrung  lute, 

Dumber  than  a  dead  sea  shell ; 
I  could  not  even  as  a  lisper 
Utter  back  the  faintest  whisper, 
Were  it  but  to  say  farewell. 

Archangelic  trumpet  sounding, 

Thou  shalt  wake  us  all ; 
On  the  startled  universe 

Shall  thy  summons  fall ; 
And  the  sympathising  planets 

Shall  obey  thy  call, 
Weeping  o'er  their  sinful  sister, 

Stretched  beneath  her  funeral  palL 
Earth,  thou  wert  baptized  in  light, 

When  the  Spirit  brooded  o'er  thee  ; 
Fair  thou  wert  in  God's  own  sight, 

And  a  life  of  joy  before  thee ; 
But  thy  day  was  turned  to  night, 

And  an  awful  change  came  o'er  thee. 
Then  thou  wert  baptized  again ; 

In  the  avenging,  cleansing  flood, 
Afterward  for  guilty  men 

Christ  baptized  thee  with  his  blood  ; 
K  2 


124 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


Yet  to  efface  the  stain  of  crime 
God  shall  light  thy  funeral  pyre, 

And  the  fourth  and  final  time 
Thou  shalt  be  baptized  with  fire. 


V.    THE   SLEEP. 

Over  the  Necropolis  and  the  land  of  Egypt, 
the  seasons  and  the  centuries  pass,  producing 
their  changes  in  Nature,  celestial  and  terres- 
trial, and  in  all  human  history ;  everywhere 
there  is  the  same  unvarying  alternation  of  Life 
and  Death  ;  and  through  all  this  monotony  of 
change  the  Dead  sleep,  awaiting  with  irrepres- 
sible yearnings  their  Resurrection. 

The  shadow  of  the  pyramids 
Fled  round  before  the  sun  : 
By  day  it  fled, 
It  onward  sped '; 

And  when  its  daily  task  was  done 
The  moon  arose,  and  round  the  plain 
The  weary  shadow  fled  again. 

The  sphinx  looked  east, 

The  sphinx  looked  west, 
And  north  and  south  her  shadow  fell ; 

How  many  times  she  sought  for  rest 
And  found  it  not,  no  tongue  may  tell. 

But  much  it  vexed  the  heart  of  greedy 

Time 
That  neither  rain  nor  snow,  nor  frost 

nor  hail, 

Trouble  the  calm  of  the  Egyptian  clime  ; 
For   these  for  him,  like  heavy  iron 

flail, 
And  wedge  and  saw,  and  biting  tooth 

and  file, 

Against  the  palaces  of  kings  prevail, 
And  crumble  down  the  loftiest  pile, 
And  eat  the  ancient  hills  away, 
And  make  the  very  mountains  know 
decay. 

And  sorely  he  would  grudge,  and  much 

would  carp, 
That  he  could  never  keep  his  polished 

blade, 

His  mowing  sickle  keen  and  sharp, 
For  all  the  din  and  all  the  dust  he 

made. 
He  cursed  the  mummies  that  they  would 

not  rot, 
He  cursed  the  paintings  that  they  faded 

not, 


And  swore  to  tumble  Memnon  from  his 

seat; 
But,  foiled   awhile,  to    hide   his   great 

defeat, 
With  his  wide  wings  he  blew  the  Libyan 

sand 
And  hid  from  mortal  eyes  the  glories  of 

the  land. 

Then  he  would  hie  away 

With  many  a  frown, 
And  whet  his  scythe 

By  grinding  Babylons  down  ; 1 
And  chuckle  blithe, 

As,  with  his  hands 

Sifting  the  sands, 

He  meted  in  his  glass 

How  centuries  pass, 
And  say,  "  I  think  this  dust  doth  tell 
Whoever  faileth,  I  work  well." 

*•«.»* 

Round  the  great  dial  of  the  year 

The  seasons  went  and  struck  the  quarters, 

Whilst  the  swift  months,  like  circling 

hours, 

Told  the  twelve  changes  by  their  chang- 
ing flowers ; 

And  the  great  glaciers  from  the  moun- 
tain tops, 

Where  the  bold  chamois  dare  not  climb, 
Silently  sliding  down  the  slopes, 

Marked  the  slow  years  upon  the  clock 
of  Time. 

The  burst  of  revelry  was  heard  no  more 
Along  the  Nile  ;  nor  near  its  reedy  shore 
The  pleasant  plashing  of  the  dipping  oar : 
Nor  cry  of  sailor  unto  sailor  calling, 
Nor  music  of  the  hammer  on  the  anvil 

falling, 

Nor  song  of  women  singing  in  the  sun, 
Nor  craftsmen  merry  when  their  work 

is  done : 
The  trumpet  all  was  hushed,  the  harp 

was  still, 
And  ceased  the  hum  of  the  revolving 

mill: 

The  sound  of  solitude  alone  was  there, 
And  solemn  silence  reigning  everywhere. 

The  sun,  the  mighty  alchymist, 
With  burning  ardour  daily  kissed 

1  Similar  reference  in  Hood's  poems. 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


125 


Earth's  dusky  bosom  into  gold  : 
And  when  at  eve 
He  took  his  leave, 
Again  his  eager  lips  grew  bold, 
And  on  her  dark'ning  brow  and  breast 
His  strange  transmuting  kiss  impressed. 

The  moon  !  she  hath  hermetic  skill, 
As  nightly  every  shadow  told ; 
She  cannot  change  all  things  to  gold, 
But  she  hath  skill,  and  she  hath  will, 
To  turn  to  silver  blackest  hill 

And  deepest  shade  and  darkest  pile  ; 
And  night  by  night, 
The  gloomy  Kile, 
A  sea  of  light, 

Smiled  to  her  smile. 


A  million  times,  by  days  of  men, 
The  earth  her  silver  robes  put  off, 
Only  her  golden  train  to  doff 

In  shortest  time  again. 


Link  by  link,  and  ring  by  ring, 
Each  day  and  night  a  link  would  bring  : 
The  sun  !  a  ring,  all  golden-bright, 
The  moon  !  a  link,  all  silver  white ; 

And  so  the  twain 

Wove  at  the  chain 
Which  they  have  woven  all  the  way, 
Since  first  was  night,  and  first  was  day. 
It  girdleth  round  the  earth,  and  then, 
Swift  passing  from  the  abodes  of  men, 
It  all  transcendeth  human  ken 
To  trace  it  back,  it  goes  so  far, 
Up  to  the  dawn  of  time, 
Beyond  the  farthest  star. 

In  the  lost  past 

It  hangeth  fast, 
Held  by  the  hand  of  God  ; 
And  angels,  when  they  wish  to  know 
How  time  is  moving  here  below, 
Come  floating  down  on  half-spread  wings, 
And  see  the  steps  our  earth  has  trod, 
By  counting  the  alternate  rings 
That  mark  the  day 

And  mark  the  night, 
Since  God  said  "Be" 

And  there  was  light. 
The  azure  sky  a  garden  lay, 

In  which  at  mid-day  seed  was  sown  ; 

It  peeped  at  eve,  at  twilight  budded, 


And,  when  the  day  had  passed  away, 
The  buds  were  burst,  the  leaves  were 

blown, 

And  starry  flowers  the  midnight 
studded : 

Quick  bloomed  they  there, 
Too  bright  and  fair 
Not  to  be  taken  soon  away  : 
Thick  through  the  air 

Rained  they, 
In  blazing  showers, 
Their  meteor-flowers, 
And  withered  at  the  dawn  of  day. 
They  were  not  blotted  from  the  sky ! 
They  faded,  but  they  did  not  die  : 
Each  in  its  azure-curtained  bed 
In  stillest  slumber  slept ; 
Whilst,  glancing  far, 
The  evening  star 
A  wakeful  vigil  kept, 
Till,  when  the  setting  sun  withdrew, 

The  appointed  sign  was  given, 
And  each  grew  up  and  bloomed  anew, 
And  glorified  the  face  of  heaven. 

Swift  comets  fled  across  the  sky, 

Like  murderers  from  the  wrath  of  God, 
With  frenzied  look,  and  fiery  eye 

(For  swift  behind  the  avenger  trod), 
And  long,  dishevelled,  trailing  hair, 
Seeking  in  vain  to  find  a  lair, 
Where  they  could  hide  their  great  de- 
spair. 
They  sought  the  very  bounds  of  space, 

But  dared  not  for  a  moment  stay  ; 
The  dread  Avenger's  awful  face 

Waited  before  them  on  the  way  :     . 
They  turned,  their  footsteps  to  retrace  ; 
They  thought  they  flagged  not  in  the  race, 
But  shuddered  as  a  mighty  force, 

Which  none  could  see,  but  all  could 

feel, 
Checking  their  wild  eccentric  course, 

Bade  them  in  lesser  circles  wheel : 
The  judgment  had  gone  forth  that  they 

Should  feed  the  burning  sun  : 

They  felt  that  vengeance  had  begun 
Which,  though  it  suffered  long  delay, 

Would  sternly  smite  and  surely  slay 

When  their  appointed  race  was  run. 
And  some  there  were  of  gentler  sort, 
With  slower  step,  of  lowlier  port, 
With  smoother  locks  and  calmer  eye, 
Who,  shooting  by  the  startled  sky, 


126 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


Or  gleaming  through  the  midday  blue, 
On  errands  sent  which  no  one  knew, 
Came — none  knew  whence ;  went — none 

knew  where, 
The  gipsies  of  the  upper  air. 

So  whirled  those  stars,  whilst  worlds  of 

men 

Died  ere  the  time  of  their  returning ; 
Yet  they  failed  not  to  come  again, 
"With  unquenched  tresses  fiercely  burn- 
ing, 

And,  round  a  smaller  area  turning, 
Flew  like  doomed  things  to  meet 

the  ire 
That  gave  them  to  eternal  fire. 

And,  as  they  left  the  sleeping  pair, 
They  found  them  still  at  each  return- 
ing 

Down  in  the  darkness,  keeping  there 
An  everlasting  mourning. 

They  would  have  thought  the  baleful 

light 

Of  comets  a  delightful  sight, 
And  joyed  to  gaze  up  at  their  hair, 
Waving  malignant  in  the  air. 
But  not  the  faintest  flickering  gleam 

Of  all  their  blinding  glare, 
Not  one  adventurous  errant  beam, 

Could  grope  its  way  adown  the  stair 
That  led  to  their  sepulchral  room, 
Or  find  a  chink  within  their  tomb, 
By  which  to  show  to  spell-bound  eyes 
The  terrors  of  the  midnight  skies. 

The  ibis  gravely  stalking 

As  a  self-appointed  warden, 
Through  every  valley  walking, 

Went  through  and  through  the  gar- 
den; 
And  with  his  curved  bill, 

Like  a  reaper's  sickle  hook, 
On  every  noxious  thing 

A  speedy  vengeance  took. 
White  pelicans  came  sailing 

Like  galleys  down  the  stream  ; 
And  the  peacock  raised  the  wailing 

Of  his  melancholy  scream, 
From  the  lofty  temple-summits 

Where  he  loved  to  take  his  stand, 
As  if  to  catch  a  glimpse 

Of  his  far-distant  land. 


And  the  sober  matron  geese, 

Now  swimming  and  now  wading, 
Now  paddling  in  the  mud, 

And  now  on  shore  parading, 
Moved,  discoursing  to  each'  other 

With  their  mellow  trumpet- voices, 
Each  with  native  music  telling 

Of  a  creature  that  rejoices ; 
Till  some  leader's  shrillest  signal, 

As  of  sudden  foe  invading, 
Stopped  the  babble  of  their  tongues, 

And  their  careless  promenading, 
And  they  rose  in  steady  phalanx 

Unfurling  in  the  air, 
Like  the  banners  of  an  army 

When  they  hear  the  trumpet's  blare; 
And  now  they  kept  together 

Like  a  fleet  of  ships  at  sea, 
When  they  fear  not  stormy  weather 

Or  foe  from  whom  to  flee  ; 
And  then  they  scattered  far  and  wide, 

Like  ships  before  a  gale, 
When  naked  masts  stand  up  on  deck 

With  scarce  a  single  sail ; 
And  now  their  phalanx  like  a  wedge 

Went  cleaving  through  the  air, 
And  then  it  was  a  hollow  ring, 

And  then  a  hollow  square. 
So !  free  through  sea,  and  earth,  and 
sky, 

With  web,  and  foot,  and  wing, 
They  lowly  walked,  or  soared  on  high, 

And  none  disturbed  their  travelling. 


They  wandered  at  their  own  wild  will 
Till  daylight  died  and  all  was  still, 
And  then  a  summons  clear  and  shrill 
Led  them  all  back  with  weary  wing, 
To  rest  in  peace 
Till  night  should  cease, 
Lulled  by  the  Nile's  low  murmuring ; 
And  in  the  garden's  ample  ground 
They  each  a  welcome  haven  found.  ?roH 


The  garden  was  all  full  of  life, 

All  filled  with  living  things ; 
Life  in  the  earth  and  air, 

On  bird  and  insect  wings ; 
Life  swimming  in  the  river, 

Life  walking  on  the  land. 
The  life  of  eye  arid  ear, 

And  heart,  and  brain,  and  hand. 


The  Sleep  of  the  Hyacinth. 


127 


Life  !  in  the  lichen  sleeping, 

Life  !  in  the  moss  half-waking, 
A  drowsy  vigil  keeping  ; 

Life  !  in  the  green  tree  taking 
Its  free  course  as  a  river  ; 
Life,  making  each  nerve  quiver 
In  the  eagle  upward  soaring  ; 

Life,  flowing  on  for  ever, 
Its  waters  ever  pouring 
Into  that  grave  of  death,  which  we 
Count  as  an  all-devouring  sea ; 

Dark  are  its  depths,  but  they  cannot  retain 
Aught  that  was  living ;  it  will  not  re- 
main : 

Down  in  the  darkness  it  hateth  to  stay  ; 
Upward  it  riseth,  and  cleaveth  its  way 
Out  of  Death's  midnight  into  Life's  day. 
Fire    from   God's   altar   rekindleth   its 

flame, 
Effaceth  Death's  mark  and  removeth 

his  stain, 

Clothes  it  afresh  and  changeth  its  name, 
Nerves  it  anew  to  pleasure  and  pain, 
And  sendeth  it  back  to  the  place  whence 

it  came  : — 

Thither  it  speeds  and  returneth  again, 
Like  the  wave  of  the  lake 

And  the  foam  of  the  river, 
Which  as  clouds  from  the  sea 

The  sun  doth  dissever. 
He  bathes  them  in  glory, 

He  clothes  them  in  light, 
He  weaves  for  them  garments  of  every 

hue  : 
They  tire  of  the  glory, 

They  steal  from  his  sight, 
They  drop  on  the  earth  as  invisible  dew. 
They  return  to  the  lake, 
They  revisit  the  river, 
Like  arrows  shot  up 

Which  come  back  to  their  quiver. 
As  the  cloud  was  the  sea,  • 

And  the  sea  was  the  cloud, 
So  the  cradle  of  Life 

Is  wrapped  in  Death's  shroud. 
The  Life  cometh  down 

As  the  rain  comes  from  heaven ; 
To  flow  is  its  law  ; 

To  Death  it  is  given. 
The  Life  riseth  up 

As  a  cloud  from.  Death's  sea ; 
It  changeth  its  robe, 
From  decay  it  is  free  ; 


It  mocketh  at  Death, 

It  breaketh  his  chain  ; 
And  the  clouds  in  the  sky     , 
Come  after  the  rain. 
Life's  a  spender, 

Death's  a  keeper; 
Life's  a  watcher, 

Death's  a  sleeper ; 
Life  s  a  sower, 

Death's  a  reaper ; 
Life's  a  laugher, 

Death's  a  weeper ; 
Life's  an  ever-flowing  river, 

Death's  an  ever-filling  sexa ; 
Death  is  shackled, 

Life  is  free  ; 
Death  is  darkness, 

Life  is  light ; 
Death  is  blindness, 

Life  is  sight; 
Life  is  fragrant, 

Death  is  noisome ; 
Death  is  woeful, 

Life  is  joy  some  ; 
Life  is  music, 

Death  is  soundless  ; 
Death  is  bounded, 

Life  is  boundless ; 
Death  is  lowly, 

Life  hath  pride ; 
Death's  a  bridegroom, 

Life's  the  bride ; 
Death's  the  winter, 

Life's  the  spring ; 
Life's  a  queen, 

But  Death's  a  king ; 
Life's  a  blossom, 

Death's  its  root ; 
Death's  a  seed, 

And  life's  its  fruit ; 
Death  is  sown, 

And  life  upsprings ; 
Death  hath  fetters, 

Life  hath  wings. 


So  in  endless  iteration, 

Through  the  long  protracted  ages> 
Eose  their  wailing  alternation ; 
Like  the  murmur  that  presages 
Eising  tempests,     ere    their  fullest 

fury  rages, 
Eose  and  fell 
Its  plaintive  swell, 


128 


Poets  Corner  ;  or,  an  English  Writers  Tomb. 


Like  the  mourning  one  doth  hear, 
Listening  with  attentive  ear 
To  the  sighing  of  a  shell, 

Orphaned  from  its  mother  sea, 
Where  it  longs  again  to  dwell, 
Weary  of  its  liberty. 

So  they  panted  for  the  light ; 

Yearned  for  the  living  day, 
Sick  of  silence,  tired  of  darkness, 

Chafing  at  the  long  delay ; 
Till,  when  thrice  a  thousand  years 

Drearily  had  passed  away, 


Hope  and  faith  fled  with  them  too, 
And  they  ceased  to  pray. 

No  one  seemed  to  love  or  heed  them, 
And  in  dull  despair  they  waited, 
To  a  hopeless  bondage  fated, 

Till  the  Archangel's  voice  should  bid 
them 

Rise  upon  the  Judgment  Day. 


[Here  the  Author's  MS.  ends — the  intended 
final  part,  to  be  called  the  "  Awaking,"  never 
having  been  written.] 


POET'S   COENEE;    OE  AX  ENGLISH  WEITEE'S   TOMB. 

BY    CHARLES   ALLSTON   COLLINS. 
"  Died,   at  his  lodgings  in  Bond  Street,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Sterne." 


THE  first  shadows  of  a  dreary  and  sun- 
less evening  in  May  were  preparing  to 
descend  upon  the  earth ;  the  wind  was 
blowing  from  the  east ;  the  bells  were 
just  beginning  to  toll  for  a  Thursday 
evening  lecture ;  and  Messieurs  Ma- 
thews  and  Fudge  were  sitting  at  an 
enormous  dining-table  in  the  house  of 
the  first  named  of  these  gentlemen,  and 
were  drinking  their  wine  in  silence  and 
depression. 

And  why  in  depression  ?  Who  knows  1 
Who  will  ever  know  the  reasons  that 
account  for  that  mysterious  ebb  and 
flow  in  the  animal  spirits  which  we  feel 
but  cannot  explain  1  A  change  in  the 
wind,  in  the  moon,  a  rise  or  fall  of  the 
quicksilver  in  the  weather-glass,  the 
number  of  sovereigns  in  your  pocket — 
all  these  things  will  affect  you.  So  will 
the  sights  and  sounds  about  you,  the 
locality  in  which  you  find  yourself,  the 
dress  you  have  on.  The  influence  of  a 
dress-coat  upon  the  mind,  sometimes  for 
good,  sometimes  for  evil,  is  a  subject  on 
which  treatises  might  be  written ;  and 
as  to  that  of  places,  the  present  writer 
would  have  but  a  poor  opinion  of  that 
man  whose  spirits  did  not  sink  when  he 
had  crossed  the  Thames  and  found  him- 
self in  the  Waterloo  Eoad,  or  who  could 


retain  any  gaiety  of  soul  in  the  purlieus 
of  Pentonville. 

But  our  two  friends  were  neither  in 
the  Waterloo  Eoad  nor  in  Pentonville. 
They  had  dined  well.  There  was  plenty 
of  good  wine  before  them.  The  almond 
and  the  raisin  were  there  to  flank  the 
juice  of  the  grape.  The  date  of  Tafilat 
itself,  and  the  well-known  plum  of 
France,  were  not  unrepresented.  Whence, 
then,  this  gloom,  and  why  especially  is 
the  brow  of  Mr.  Fudge  clouded  as  with 
the  umbrage  of  a  nascent  desperation  1 
Who  can  tell  ?  Haply  these  gentlemen 
began  their  dinners  too  cheerfully,  and 
have  now  run  themselves  out.  Haply 
Mr.  Mathews  is  haunted  by  the  thought 
that  he  has  made  a  mistake  in  com- 
mencing his  meal  with  crab  salad,  and 
ending  it  with  stewed  cheese,  and  that 
for  a  dyspeptic  man  this  is  a  bad  look- 
out. Haply  Mr.  Fudge  is  reminded  by 
a  little  monitor  within  him  (who  is  for 
ever  suggesting  to  him  pleasant  subjects 
for  thought)  that  he  has  got  to  pay  two 
hundred  pounds  away  next  October,  and 
that  he  has  only  saved  up  two  hundred 
shillings  towards  it  in  that  present 
month  of  May.  Perhaps,  again,  these 
gentlemen  are  both  affected  by  having 
dined  an  hour  too  early  (for  there  is  no 


Poet's  Corner  ;  or,  an  English  Writer  s  Tomb. 


129 


mind  so  well-regulated  as  not  to  feel 
the  ill  effects  of  a  five  o'clock  dinner) ; 
or,  possibly,  the  sound  of  the  bell  be- 
fore alluded  to  may  have  a  share  in 
the  despondency  which  has  settled  down 
upon  them. 

At  all  events,  it  is  so.  Mr.  Mathews 
leans  his  head  "upon  his  hand,  and  his 
elbow  upon  the  table,  and  fixing  his 
eyes  upon  the  ceiling,  merely  says  at 
intervals,  "Help  yourself;"  and  Mr. 
Fudge  does  help  himself,  and  with  every 
fresh  glass  gets  so  additionally  unhappy, 
that  at  last  he  pushes  away  the  decanter, 
and  says,  in  the  tone  of  a  man  lashed 
up  to  some  tremendous  course,  "  I'll  tell 
you  what,  Mathews,  this  will  not  DO." 

"  It  will  NOT  do,"  shouted  Mr.  Ma- 
thews, echoing  his  friend's  words  with 
a  variation  in  the  emphasis,  and  smiting 
the  table  with  his  fist ;  "  but  the  ques- 
tion is,  what  will  do  1 " 

"  We  must  go  out,"  said  Mr.  Fudge. 

"  We  must,"  replied  his  compliant 
host. 

"  Where  shall  we  go  1 "  was  the  next 
question.  It  emanated  from  the  lips  of 
Mr.  Fudge. 

"What  do  you  say  to  the  Park?" 
inquired  Mathews  ;  "  there  is  a  cheerful 
(and  wholesome)  walk  by  the  Serpen- 
tine." 

"  I  don't  want  a  cheerful  walk,"  said 
Mr.  Fudge. 

"  Gracious  heavens  !  what  do  you 
want,  then  ! "  cried  his  companion,  with 
alarm  depicted  in  his  countenance. 

"  I  want  a  gloomy  walk,"  was  the 
awful  reply. 

A.  long  pause  succeeded  this  tremen- 
dous announcement,  and  then  it  was 
that  Mr.  Mathews,  after  gazing  steadily 
for  some  seconds  at  his  friend  in  silence, 
performed  the  following  manoeuvres. 
He  rose  slowly  from  his  chair,  drawing, 
as  he  did  so,  a  bunch  of  keys  from  his 
pocket,  with  a  subdued  and  reverent 
jingle;  then  he  advanced  with  measured 
steps  towards  a  very  old  cabinet,  or 
carved  press,  which  stood  in  the  corner 
of  the  room,  and  which  seemed  to  have 
got  into  a  dark  nook  behind  the  curtains, 
that  it  might  end  its  days  quietly  in  the 
shade.  Having  tried  every  one  of  his 


keys  in  the  lock  of  this  venerable  piece 
of  furniture,  and  having  found  the 
seventeenth  (and  last)  upon  the  bunch 
to  answer  his  purpose,  Mr.  Mathews 
opened,  with  great  caution,  one  door  of 
the  cabinet,  and  disclosed  to  view  several 
rows  of  books,  not  one  of  which  was 
less  than  half  a  century  old,  and  some 
of  them  much  more.  Mr.  Mathews 
selected  one  volume  from  among  these, 
and,  having  blown  the  dust  from  off  the 
top  of  the  leaves,  returned  with  it,  still 
very  solemnly  and  slowly,  and  still  in 
profound  silence,  and,  seating  himself, 
placed  the  book  upon  the  table,  and 
spread  it  open  with  his  hands. 

It  was  then  that  Mr.  Fudge,  who  was 
burning  with  curiosity  to  know  what  all 
this  meant,  looking  at  the  title-page  from 
where  he  sat,  and  reading  it  upside 
down,  made  out  first  the  word  "  Tris- 
tram," and  then,  as  Mr.  Mathews  turned 
over  the  leaf,  he  supplied  the  dissyllable 
"  Shandy "  from  his  imagination,  and 
determined  that  the  book  which  had 
been  taken  down  with  such  ceremony 
from  the  old  bookcase  was  no  other  than 
"  Tristram  Shandy."  We  have  said  that 
Mr.  Mathews  turned  over  a  leaf.  Having 
done  this  he  paused,  and  his  companion 
saw,  still  upside  down,  "  Biographical 
Notice  of  the  Author."  Having  spelt 
this  out,  he  next  observed  that  Mr. 
Mathews  turned  over  two  more  leaves, 
and  that  the  Biographical  Notice  must 
be  a  very  short  one,  for  at  the  bottom 
of  the  third  page  it  came  to  an  end. 
He  had  just  noticed  these  matters,  and 
was  wondering  what  was  to  come  next, 
and  what  all  this  had  to  db  with  the 
proposed  walk,  when  Mr.  Mathews, 
clearing  his  throat  in  a  prefatory  man- 
ner, began,  without  a  word  of  explana- 
tion, to  read  the  following  sentence  : — 

"  Mr.  Sterne  died  as  he  lived,  the 
same  indifferent  careless  creature  ;  as,  a 
day  or  two  before  his  death,  he  seemed 
not  in  the  least  affected  by  his  approach- 
ing dissolution.  He  Avas  buried  pri- 
vately in  a  new  burying-ground  belong- 
ing to  the  parish  of  St.  George's,  Hanover 
Square,  at  twelve  o'clock  at  noon,  at- 
tended only  by  two  gentlemen  in  a 
mourning  coach,  no  bell  tolling.  His 


130 


Poet's  Corner ;  or,  an  English  Writer's  Tomb. 


death  was  announced  in  the  news- 
papers of  March  22,  1768,  by  the 
following  paragraph  : — 

"  '  Died  at  his  lodgings  in  Bond- 
street,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Sterne.5  " 

The  profound  silence  which  followed 
the  reading  of  this  quotation,  and  which 
lasted  till  the  clock  upon  the  chimney- 
piece  had  ticked  away  two  minutes  of 
life,  as  if  it  tried  to  stop  each  cog  of  the 
wheels  as  it  passed,  and  failing  to  arrest 
them  noted  every  one  that  broke  away 
in  its  resistless  strength  with  an  excla- 
mation of  sorrow — this  silence  was  at 
length  interrupted  by  the  voice  of  Mr. 
Mathews. 

"  We  will  go  there,"  he  said. 

"Go,  where?  "  asked  Mr.  Fudge. 

"To  '  the  new  burial-ground  belonging 
to  the  parish  of  St.  George's,  Hanover- 
Square,'  "  was  Mr.  MatheVs  answer. 

"  Where  is  it  1 "  again  inquired  the 
startled  Fudge. 

"  In  the  Bayswater  Road,"  said  Mr. 
Mathews ;  "  you  wanted  a  gloomy  walk, 
and — you  shall  have  it." 

It  was  a  gray  and  cheerless  evening, 
and  the  month,  as  has  been  said,  was  the 
month  of  May.  The  sun  should  always 
come  out  in  the  evening  whatever  the 
day  has  been.  However  well  you  may 
get  through  a  cloudy  day,  you  will  al- 
ways feel  the  influence  of  a  dull  evening 
upon  your  spirits.  I  think  there  is  no 
person  who  fails  to  notice  and  to  regret 
it.  It  is  like  a,  gloomy  old  age.  But  then 
it  was  May,  and  is  there  any  person 
living  who  believes  in  that  treacherous 
month  ?  To  the  present  writer  there  is 
something  heartless  and  cold  even  in  its 
brightest  sunshine. 

There  was,  however,  no  sunshine, 
heartless  or  otherwise,  on  the  particular 
evening  with  which  we  are  at  present 
occupied.  The  wind,  too,  was  blowing 
from  the  east.  Not  a  bracing  invigo- 
rating breeze  that  brought  the  colour  to 
your  cheek.  Not  even  a  hurricane  such 
as  you  get  in  March,  and  which  it  is 
some  excitement  to  straggle  against. 
No,  it  was  a  stealthy  creeping  sinister 
wind,  that  made  people  look  like  the 
evening,  pale  and  cloudy  ;  a  wind  that 
did  not  content  itself  with  puffing  up 


against  you  and  then  passing  on  as  a 
well  conditioned  wind  should,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  a  wind  that  found  out  all 
the  weak  points  of  your  attire;  a  wind 
that  crept  in  and  stuck  to  you,  and 
stealing  in  among  your  ribs  remained 
there  ;  a  wind  that  in  its  sulky  chill  was 
not  even  glad  when  it  had  gained  its 
object,  but  was  just  as  dull  and  spirit- 
less when  it  had  given  you  cold,  as  it 
was  before.  Out  upon  such  a  wind  as 
that ! 

A  long  brick  building — not  red  brick ; 
that  would  have  been  too  hilarious — a 
building  that  looked  something  between 
a  dwarfish  factory  and  a  gigantic  coach- 
house, with  a  slight  touch  of  the  work- 
house, and  just  a  hint  of  the  conventicle, 
imparted  by  the  belfry  which  contained 
the  bell  which  did  not  ring  for  Mr. 
Sterne's  funeral.  Such  an  edifice  as 
this,  set  back  from  the  road  in  an  in- 
closed space,  and  with  a  knocker  on  its 
huge  central  door,  was  just  the  kind  of 
building  to  tell  to  advantage  on  such  an 
evening  as  has  just  been  described.  It 
stands  in  the  Bayswater  Road,  about  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  west  from  Tyburn- 
gate.  It  gives  admission  to  the  burying- 
ground  belonging  to  the  parish  of  St. 
George's,  Hanover-Square,  and  before  its 
gloomy  gates  the  two  friends,  whose 
footsteps  we  are  following,  arrested  their 
course.  The  sight  of  this  melancholy 
structure  might,  one  would  have  thought, 
have  daunted  them  and  deterred  them 
from  pursuing  their  pilgrimage  farther. 
We  have,  indeed,  the  best  reason  to 
know  that  the  younger  of  the  two  gentle- 
men, Mr.  David  Fudge  to  wit,  was 
daunted;  and  we  have  cause  to  believe 
that  he  woidd  have  turned  and  fled  at 
once  had  he  not  been  stimulated  and 
kept  up  by  the  example  of  his  com- 
panion, the  courageous  Mr.  Mathews, 
a  gentleman  who  is  such  an  inveterate 
sight-seer,  and  who,  in  the  pursuit  of 
his  antiquarian  researches,  is  so  com- 
pletely a  stranger  to  fear,  that  he  would 
make  nothing  of  knocking  at  the  door 
of  a  house  in  St.  James's  Square  and 
requesting  admission  if  he  thought  that 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  had  ever  supped 
in  the  back  dining-room. 


Poet's  Corner;  or,  an  English  Writer's  Tomb. 


131 


Mr.  Mathews,  then,  strong  in  his 
determination  to  discover  the  tonib  of 
his  favourite  author,  undaunted  by  the 
forbidding  aspect  of  the  chapel  that 
looked  like  a  coach-house,  or  by  the 
observant  gaze  of  two  London  boys 
who,  remaining  outside  the  iron-railings, 
watched  the  proceedings  of  the  two 
gentlemen  with  eager  curiosity — Mr. 
Mathews,  undismayed  by  these  matters, 
advanced  along  the  inclosed  space  with 
a  confident  step,  closely  imitated  by  his 
companion,  and,  as  he  knocked  at  the 
door  of  the  chapel — fancy  knocking  at 
the  door  of  a  burying-ground — was  en- 
couraged by  the  two  London  boys  from 
without  with  the  comfortable  assurance 
that  "  he'd  be  safe  to  find  'em  at  home." 
An  allusion,  it  may  be  supposed,  to  the 
occupants  of  the  graves  at  the  back  ! 

This  appeal  to  the  knocker  was  in- 
stantly responded  to  by  a  tall  man  in 
a  dress  coat,  and  drab  trousers,  who 
admitted  without  question  the  two 
gentlemen  whose  fortunes  we  are  follow- 
ing, and,  closing  the  door  behind  them, 
shut  out  the  Bayswater  Road,  the  two 
London  boys,  and  the  view  of  Hyde 
Park,  as  rapidly  as  if  the  place  had  been 
in  a  state  of  siege,  or  as  if  he  thought 
Messieurs  Mathews  and  Fudge  had 
come  to  be  buried,  and  might  repent 
and  go  away  if  they  were  not  humoured 
at  once. 

He  was  a  meek  and  subdued  personage, 
this  tall  man  in  the  swallow-tailed  coat, 
and  the  drab  trousers;  -he  was  also  a 
polite  man  and  a  pale.  One  whole  wing 
of  the  building  into  which  our  two 
friends  were  now  admitted  was  allotted 
to  him  for  a  dwelling  house,  while  the 
other  was  devoted  to  a  chapel  for  the 
dead,  a  dreadful  place,  whose  walls  had 
never  echoed  any  other  sounds  than  the 
hollow  bumping  of  coffins,  the  shuffling 
of  feet,  and  the  words  of  the  funeral 
service.  What  a  place  for  a  tall  thin 
man  to  live  in — a  tall  thin  man  in  a 
swallow-tailed  coat ! 

The  influence  of  this  ghostly  building 
upon  the  sensitive  nerves  of  Mr.  Fudge 
was  such,  that  he  conveyed  to  his  friend 
a  whispered  suggestion,  that  he  thought 
it  would  be  better  that  they  should  come 


again  on  another  and  a  sunnier  day. 
Mr.  Mathews,  however,  would  not  hear 
of  this.  That  heroic  man  betrayed  his 
emotion  by  nothing  but  a  slight  pallor 
and  a  nervous  cough,  indulged  in  in  a 
secret  manner  behind  the  tips  of  his 
fingers.  The  tall  man  seemed  to  have  a 
respect  for  Mr.  Mathews,  and  inquired 
without  waiting  to  hear  what  was  the 
object  of  his  visit,  whether  he  had  come 
to  see  the  grave  of  Sir  Thomas  Picton, 
or  that  of  Mrs.  Eadcliffe  the  Authoress, 
or — 

"  That  of  Lawrence  Sterne,"  said  Mr. 
Mathews,  interrupting  him. 

The  tall  man  bowed,  and  retired  into 
his  private  apartments  to  fetch  his  hat. 
Mr.  Fudge,  looking  into  the  room  after 
him,  observed  a  vast  chamber,  bare  of 
all  furniture,  except  one  wooden  chair 
and  a  deal  table,  on  which  was  a  black 
tea-tray  with  a  black  tea-pot  upon  it,  a 
yellow  cup  and  saucer,  a  half-quartern 
loaf,  and  a  knife  with  a  black  handle. 

"  I  shall  never  get  over  this,"  whisper- 
ed Mr.  Fudge  to  his  companion, 

The  burying-ground,  into  which  our 
friends  were  conducted  by  the  tall  man 
in  the  dress  coat,  was  an  unhappy 
specimen  of  its  class.  Without  one 
beautiful  monument,  without  one  feature 
in  its  larger  aspect  to  diminish  the 
horror  that  death  inspires,  or  one  at- 
tempt to  give  a  hopeful  look  to  that 
which  without  hope  must  not  be  thought 
of,  stretched  out  in  grim  and  ghastly 
fact,  a  piece  of  ground  in  whose  sodden 
trenches  the  dead  are  packed  in  rows, 
hemmed  in  all  rpund  by  houses  whose 
inhabitants  have  used  the  place  as  a 
dust-hole  into  which  to  fling  their  offal, 
this  grave-yard  spreads  its  broad  expanse 
of  tombs,  a  sight  to  make  a  good  man 
shudder,  and  a  saint  afraid  to  die. 

In  this  desolate  place  the  neglected 
paths  had  got,  from  long  disuse,  to  be 
so  choked  with  the  rank  growth  that 
had  accumulated  upon  them,  as  to  be 
only  distinguishable  in  those  parts  where 
the  gravel  happening  to  be  composed  of 
larger  and  heavier  stones  offered  greater 
resistance  to  the  upward  springing  of 
the  weeds.  Our  two  friends  had,  how- 
ever, little  to  do  with  such  pathways, 


132 


Poet's  Corner ;  or,  an  English  Writer  s  Tomb. 


for  their  conductor  led  them,  across  the 
burying-ground  in  a  diagonal  line, 
stepping  from  grave  to  grave  with  his 
long  thin  legs,  and  preceding  them  with 
a  tremulous  stride. 

Across  the  graves,  and  winding  in  and 
out  among  ricketty  tombstones,  some  of 
which  had  fallen  to  one  side,  and  wore 
a  waggish  look,  while  some  leant  help- 
lessly back  or  tipsily  forward,  having 
cracked  the  ground  open  with  their 
weight,  and  made  it  gape  to  such  a 
width  and  depth,,  that  Mr.  Fudge  was 
afraid  to  look  into  the  chasm,  lest  he 
should  see  some  sight  of  horror — across 
the  graves,  and  passing  by  unheeded 
these  mute  appeals  which  pressed  upon 
their  notice  the  virtues  of  the  dead, — 
across-  the  graves,  dipping  down  into 
little  valleys,  where  the  ground  had  sunk 
as  with  the  collapse  of  some  bulk  that 
lay  beneath  (perhaps  it  had),  mounting 
up  as  some  more  substantial  heap  came 
in  their  way,  and  nearly  tumbling  head- 
long once,  where  a  half-finished  grave, 
left  incomplete  for  years,  yawned  sud- 
denly beneath  their  feet, — why  a  half- 
finished  grave  1 — Had  ithe  man  come  to 
life  again  for  whom  it  was  begun,  or  had 
the  sexton  lit  upon  something  that  told 
him  he  must  dig  no  further  1 — across 
the  graves,  and  among  such  places  as  we 
have  described,  the  pale  man  led  the 
way  to  the  extremity  of  this  grim 
cemetery  where  it  is  bounded  by  its 
western  wall,  and,  stopping  before  a 
shabby  head-stone  of  the  common  kind 
stuck  upright  in  the  earth,  informed 
Mr.  Mathews,  to  whom  he  directed  all 
his  remarks,  that  the  object  of  his 
visit  was  there  before  him,  and  that 
this  was  the  monument  of  Lawrence 
Sterne ! 

It  has  been  said  above  that  this 
burying-ground  was  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  houses,  the  inhabitants  of  which 
had  regarded  the  vacant  space  appropri- 
ated to  the  dead,  as  a  convenient  place 
into  which  to  fling  the  rubbish  that 
encumbered  them.  Now  this  poor  grave- 
stone of  Mr.  Sterne's  being  so  near  the 
wall,  it  happened  that  plenty  of  such 
refuse  had  accumulated  around  and  about 
it,  giving  to  this  corner  a  more  shameful 


aspect  than  perhaps  to  any  other  part  of 
this  most  sordid  cemetery.  Yes,  there  lay 
the  remains  of  this  luxurious  gentleman, 
among  fragments  of  broken  bottles,  old 
tin  pots,  among  egg-shells,  and  oyster- 
shells,  and  every  valueless,  decaying 
form  of  rotten,  useless  garbage  that  could 
be  collected  to  make  this  place  detest- 
able. Beneath  all  this  there  lay  the 
bones  of  that  keen  and  witty  face,  the 
dust  of  that  lean  and  pampered  body. 
It  was  very  shocking.  There  might  not 
be  much  to  like  in  this  man;  perhaps 
there  was  nothing  but  his  genius  to 
admire  in  him  ;  but  still  this  was  very 
dreadful.  A  common  paltry  head-stone 
with  a  wretched  vulgar  inscription  put 
up  by  two  strangers  (free-masons),  and 
even  this  not  certainly  above  the  grave 
where  the  unfortunate  gentleman  lay; 
for  it  merely  stated  that  his  remains 
were  buried  "  near  this  place,"  and  left 
it  to  be  inferred  that  the  grave  had  been 
for  some  time  left  without  any  mark  at 
all,  so  that  when  the  stone  was  raised 
at  last,  it  had  become  difficult  to  know 
(to  a  yard  or  two)  where  to  put  it ! 

The  effect  of  this  termination  to  their 
expedition  upon  the  minds  of  the  two 
gentlemen,  who  had  come  to  this  grave- 
yard in  expectation  of  finding  something 
so  utterly  different,  was  a  very  marked 
one.  It  showed  itself  in  a  long,  long 
silence,  and  when  this  was  at  length 
broken  the  two  friends  spoke  at  first  in 
an  under  tone  little  above  a  whisper. 
The  tall  man  stood  by  at  a  little  distance, 
slowly  rubbing  his  hands  in  a  depre- 
catory manner,  which  seemed  to  say, 
"Yes ;  I  know  that  this  is  not  satisfactory, 
but  it  is  not  my  fault,  gentlemen — is 
it?" 

"And  so,"  said  Mr.  Mathews  at 
length,  in  a  hoarse  whisper,  "and  so 
the  fashionable  people,  who  could  send 
eight  or  ten  invitations  a  day  to  the 
great  man  who  is  buried  in  this  hole, 
cared,  in  reality,  so  little  about  him  that 
they  could  not  manage  among  them  to 
erect  a  decent  monument  to  his  memory, 
to  follow  him  to  the  grave  in  decent 
numbers,  or  to  pay  the  bell-ringers  to 
toll  the  bell  for  a  decent  number  of 
minutes." 


Poet's  Corner  ;  or  an  English  Writers  Tomb. 


133 


"  It  is  pretty  obvious  that  they  asked 
him  simply  because  he  amused  them, 
and  that  he  left  neither  respect  nor  love 
behind  him,"  said  Mr.  Fudge. 

"I  can  fancy,"  Mr.  Mathews  went 
on  to  say,  "the  small  amount  of  sensa- 
tion made  at  the  time  by  his  death.  I 
can  fancy  some  man  coming  to  announce 
it  to  an  assembly  of  wits  and  belles  of 
the  period,  saying, 

" '  I  hear  that  the  ingenious  Mr. 
Sterne  hath  departed  this  life.' 

" '  And  left  a  plentiful  crop  of  debts 
behind  him/  says  Lady  Betty. 

"  '  They  do  tell  me/  continues  the  first 
speaker,  '  that  there  is  not  wherewithal 
to  pay  for  his  funeral,  or  the  rent  of  his 
lodgings  in  Bond  Street.' 

" '  He  was,  indeed,  shamefully  ex- 
travagant and  selfish/  says  somebody 
else. 

"  '  And  little  mindful  of  his  duties  as 
a  clergyman/  puts^in  another." 

"And  then  I  can  fancy,"  continued 
the  imaginative  Mr.  Mathews ;  "I  can 
fancy  a  certain  just  and  merciful 
personage  who  has  been  sitting  by,  and 
who  all  this  time  has  been  swaying  his 
body  backwards  and  forwards,  and 
making  many  uncouth  sounds  as  if 
about  to  speak.  I  can  imagine  his 
bursting  out  at  last : — 

" '  Sir,  sir,  let  us  hear  no  more  of 
this.  This  disparagement  of  the  dead 
is  mighty  offensive.' " 

The  tall  man  in  the  dress  coat,  who 
has  drawn  nearer  when. Mr.  Mathews 
began  to  speak,  seems  vastly  interested 
in  this  imaginary  dialogue,,  which  was 
given  latterly  in  a  loud  key.  He  is 
evidently  much  disappointed  at  Mr. 
Mathews'  next  remark. 

"  This  is  very  shocking,"  says  that 
gentleman.  "  Let  us  go." 

"By  all  means,"  answers  Mr.  Fudge, 
with  astonishing  alacrity. 

The  tall  man  is  evidently  sorry  to 
lose  these  two  gentlemen,  and  to  be  left 
to  the  deadly  solitude  in  which  he  lives. 
He  presses  other  graves  upon  their 
attention,  is  liberal  in  his  offer  of  in- 
teresting epitaphs,  and  will,  especially, 
scarcely  take  "no"  for  an  answer  in 
the  matter  of  Sir  Thomas  Picton.  But 


it  is  getting  dark,  and  Mr.  Fudge  is 
especially  resolved  on  flight.  They 
reach  once  more  the  chapel  which  looks 
like  a  coach-house,  and  Mr.  Fudge  has 
his  hand  upon  the  lock  to  let  himself 
out,  when  the  tall  man  makes  a  last 
attempt.  "The  monument  of  Mrs. 
Radcliffe,"  he  says,  or  rather  sighs  in 
the  distance. 

"  No,"  shudders  Mr.  Fudge,  who  has 
by  this  time  rushed  into  the  Bayswater 
Road.  "  No — an  east  wind — the  even- 
ing closing  in — nearly  dark — a  tall  thin 
man  in  a  swallow-tailed  coat — a  burying 
ground — and  the  tomb  of  Ann  Radcliffe 
— these  things  taken  all  together  would 
be  more  than  mortal  nerves  could  stand." 

A  curious  circumstance  in  connexion 
with  the  subject  of  the  foregoing  paper 
has  just  been  brought  before  the  notice 
of  the  writer.  In  the  life  of  Edmond 
Malone,  by  Sir  James  Prior,  which  has 
recently  appeared,  there  occurs  the 
following  paragraph,  bearing  reference 
to  Lawrence  Sterne  : — 

"  He  was  buried  in  a  grave-yard  near 
'Tyburn,  belonging  to  the  parish  of 
'Marylebone,  and  the  corpse,  being 
'marked  by  some  of  the  resurrection 
'  men  (as  they  are  called),  was  taken  up 
'soon  afterward,  and  carried  to  an 
'anatomy  professor  of  Cambridge.  A 
'gentleman  who  was  present  at  the 
'  dissection,  told  me  he  recognised 
'  Sterne's  face  the  moment  he  saw  the 
'body." 

It  would  surely  be  very  interesting 
if  any  light  could  be  thrown  on  this 
mysterious  affair.  The  body  of  the  un- 
fortunate Mr.  Sterne  was  but  a  poor 
prize  for  purposes  of  dissection.  He 
speaks  of  his  spider  legs  himself,  and 
the  portrait  and  description  of  him  give 
one  the  idea  of  a  lean  and  emaciated 
presence.  Can  any  one  tell  who  was 
this  anatomy  professor  of  Cambridge, 
who  had  so  ardent  a  desire  to  examine 
Sterne's  remains  that  he  employed  re- 
surrection men  to  exhume  the  deceased 
gentleman's  body  1  Is  there  any  one  at 
Cambridge  who  could  afford  informa- 
tion on  this  subject?  It  must  at  least 
be  possible  to  find  out  who  were  the 


134 


The  Boundaries  of  Science. 


anatomy  professors  at    the  University 
in  the  year  of  Sterne's  decease. 

It  would,  indeed,  be  a  curious  thing, 
if  the  information  contained  in  the 
above-quoted  paragraph  should  really 
prove  to  be  true  ;  and  it  would  add  one 
more  ghastly  element  to  the  already 


melancholy  tale  of  Sterne's  death  and 
burial,  if  we  should  ascertain  that  the 
body  which  was  deposited  in  the  grave 
with  so  small  an  amount  of  ceremonial, 
was  not  even  allowed  to  rest  there,  but 
was  handed  over  to  the  surgeons  after 
all 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF  SCIENCE. 

A  DIALOGUE. 

Philocalos.     Philalethes. 


Philoc.  So,  Philalethes,  it  is  true  that 
you  are  a  convert  to  this  new  theory ! 
You  are  a  believer  in  a  doctrine 
which  makes  the  struggle  of  a  selfish 
competition  the  sole  agency  in  nature — 
which,  taking  one  of  the  most  unfor- 
tunate, if  inevitable,  results  of  an  old 
civilization,  transfers  it  to  that  world 
where  we  hoped  to  find  a  beauty  and 
order  to  which  civilization  has  not  yet 
attained  !  Poets  have  spoken  of  the  face 
of  nature  as  serene  and  tranquil;  you 
paint  it  scarred  by  conflict  and  furrowed 
by  sordid  care  !  You  turn  the  pure 
stream  where  we  have  been  accustomed 
to  find  the  reflection  of  heaven,  into  a 
turbid  current  where  we  can  perceive 
nothing  but  the  dark  hues  of  earth  ! 

Philal.  If  I  did  not  happen  to  know 
what  book  you  had  been  reading,  my 
dear  Philocalos,  I  should  have  some 
difficulty  in  guessing  your  meaning. 
Not  that  you  can  have  read  much  of 
any  book  so  widely  removed  from  all 
your  subjects  of  interest. 

Philoc.  That  a  man  feels  but  slight 
interest  in  tracing  the  ramifications  of 
science  is  no  proof  that  he  may  not 
wish  to  ascend  to  the  fountain  head.  I 
confess,  however,  that  I  did  not  read 
the  whole  book, — that  I  did  not  master 
all  the  details,  but  I  made  out  quite 
enough  of  the  scope  of  each  chapter  to 
leave  little  room  for  doubt  as  to  the 
general  purport  of  the  whole  work. 
And  have  I  misrepresented  it  in  what  I 
said  just  now  ? 


Philal.  That  may  admit  of  question ; 
it  is  not  a  theory  which  can  be  fairly 
judged  from  a  single  point  of  view. 
But  if  I,  looking  at  the  theory  in  a 
different  light,  learn  from  it  to  regard 
the  strife  which  unquestionably  exists 
in  nature  as  the  fire  in  which  her  master- 
pieces are  to  be  tested,  her  failures 
destroyed,  will  you  deny  that  this  is 
also  a  fair  version  of  the  author's 
doctrine  ? 

Philoc.  I  should  not  need  to  do  so  in 
order  to  justify  my  horror  of  such  a 
creed.  For,  Philalethes,  on  this  hypo- 
thesis, selfishness  and  progress  are  in- 
separably linked.  Every  self-sacrificing 
impulse,  every  generous  care  for  the 
sick  or  infirm,  every  pause  in  the  selfish 
struggle  for  ascendancy,  are  so  many 
drags  on  the  wheels  of  progress ;  and  if 
that  day  ever  arrives  on  earth  when  the 
love  of  self  shall  be  swallowed  up  in 
wider  and  deeper  love, — then  those 
wheels  will  be  finally  arrested.  The 
death  of  selfishness  will  be  the  barrier 
beyond  which  the  human  race  will 
remain  for  ever  stationary. 

Philal.  You  overlook  considerations 
which  materially  interfere  with  the 
operation  of  the  principle  in  regard  to 
man. 

Philoc.  I  am  astonished  at  such  hesi- 
tation in  one  of  your  logical  mind ! 
What  does  the  theory  make  of  man  but 
a  superior  vertebrate  animal  ? 

Philal.  Do  you  not  see  that  a  discus- 
sion concerning  the  tools  of  the  builder 


The  Boundaries  of  Science. 


135 


affords  no  legitimate  inference  as  to 
the  plan  of  the  architect  1 — that  an 
examination  of  the  workshop  of  nature 
includes  no  notice  of  the  models  which 
have  been  set  before  her  to  copy  1 

Philoc.  The  workshop  of  nature  !  Is 
that  the  quarter  to  which  we  should 
look  for  the  origin  of  man  1 

Philal.  The  very  point  I  am  so 
anxious  to  impress  upon  you.  I  look 
to  the  plan  of  the  architect  for  the 
origin  of  a  house,  not  to  the  tools  of  the 
builder. 

Philoc.  Are  we  then  twice  removed 
from  our  Creator1?  Is  creation  so  analo- 
gous to  the  laborious  efforts  of  man  1 

Philal.  Let  me  answer  you  in  the 
words  of  Bacon  :  "  For  as  in  civil  actions 
'  he  is  the  greater  and  deeper  politique 
'  that  can  make  other  men  the  instru- 
'  ments  of  his  will  and  ends,  and  yet ' 
'  never  acquaint  them  with  his  purpose, 
.  .  so  is  the  wisdom  of  God  more 
'  admirable  when  nature  intendeth  one 
'  thing,  and  Providence  draweth  forth 
'  another,  than  if  He  had  communicated 
'  to  particular  creatures  and  motions 
'  the  characters  and  impressions  of  His 
'  providence. 

Philoc.  But,  tell  me,  how  does  your 
view  of  the  theory  admit  of  the  excep- 
tion which  you  claim  for  the  case  of 
man1? 

Philal.  Because  I  believe  it  to  be 
part  of  the  plan  of  man  laid  down  by 
the  great  Architect,  that  there  should  be 
that  within  him  which,  holding  commu- 
nion with  the  supernatural,  raises  him 
above  the  influence  of  mere  natural 
powers. 

Philoc.  And  does  not  that  very  fact 
supply  a  confutation  of  the  theory? 
Nature,  working  by  a  system  of  anta- 
gonistic influences,  produces  an  agent 
whose  highest  glory  it  is  to  set  those 
influences  at  defiance.  The  typical 
man — the  highest  ideal  of  manhood — 
acts  upon  motives  not  only  different 
from,  but  utterly  opposed  to  those 
which  have  made  him  what  he  is. 
Must  there  not  be  some  flaw  in  the 
premisses  from  which  such  a  conclusion 
may  be  derived  ? 

Philal.  I  see  no  reductio  ad  absur- 


dum  in  your  inference.  In  crossing  the 
barrier  which  separates  matter  from 
spirit,  you  introduce  a  new  element,  to 
which  the  former  grounds  of  reasoning 
will  no  longer  apply. 

Philoc.  But  is  it  true  that  the  theory 
of  natural  selection  does  apply  to  mate- 
rial creation  alone  ?  It  professes,  at 
least,  to  account  for  instinct ;  and  it 
must  be  admitted  that  instinct  and 
reason  blend  insensibly  into  each  other. 
How  then  is  it  possible  to  draw  any  line 
which  shall  cut  off  man  from  the  influ- 
ences which  have  been  omnipotent  over 
his  ancestors  ? 

Philal.  My  dear  Philocalos,  I  am  far 
from  asserting  that  that  objection  is  un- 
important ;  but  I  want  you  to  feel  that,  in 
making  it,  you  are  transplanting  the  dis- 
cussion to  a  region  where  the  author  of 
the  hypothesis  is  not  bound  to  follow 
you.  All  that  he  is  bound  to  do,  is  to 
show  that  his  hypothesis  supplies  an 
adequate  explanation  of  all  facts  lying 
within  the  science  which  it  professes  to 
explain.  For  him  to  adjust  it  to  other 
views  of  truth,  would  be  as  if  the  maker 
of  this  microscope  had  endeavoured  to 
contrive  such  a  combination  of  lenses 
as  should  allow  of  its  being  used,  under 
certain  circumstances,  as  a  telescope. 
We  may  rest  assured  that,  in  the  one 
case,  our  knowledge  of  the  stars  and  the 
infusoria  would  suffer  equally ;  and  in 
the  other,  that  we  should  have  a  medley 
of  very  poor  moral  philosophy,  and  very 
poor  natural  science. 

Philoc.  Without  being  prepared  with 
a  logical  reply  to  such  a  vindication,  I 
must  confess  that  kind  of  argument  is 
always  unsatisfactory  to  me.  It  seems 
to  me  like  saying  that  a  certain  proposi- 
tion may  be  true  in  one  language  and 
not  in  another;  surely,  Truth  is  one 
harmonious  whole. 

Philal.  Your  objection  is  one  with 
which  I  have  the  greatest  sympathy. 
No  doubt  all  the  lines  of  Truth  converge, 
but  it  is  at  too  small  an  angle,  and  too 
vast  a  distance,  for  us  to  be  able  in  all 
cases  to  perceive  the  tendency  to  unite. 
Moreover,  it  is  the  indispensable  requi- 
site of  the  man  of  science — not  that 
he  should  ignore  or  forget  this  com- 


136 


The  Boundaries  of  Science. 


munity  of  direction  in  all  the  clues 
of  Truth — but  that  he  renounce  any 
attempt  at  making  his  own  investiga- 
tions subordinate  to  the  proof  of  that 
conclusion.  I  do  not  decide  whether 
such  a  subject  is  capable  of  proof;  I 
only  say  that,  when  the  student  of 
physical  science  undertakes  it,  he  is 
renouncing  his  own  proper  study  as 
effectually  as  the  pilot  who  should 
attempt  to  decide  on  the  most  favour- 
able market  for  the  goods  with  which 
his  vessel  is  freighted.  I  must  repeat 
in  another  form  what  I  said  just  now. 

You  know  it  is  a  law  of  physiology 
that,  as  any,  animal  ascends  in  the  scale 
of  being,  all  its  organs  become  more  and 
more  specialized  to  their  peculiar  func- 
tions. Thus,  the  four  hands  of  the 
monkey  are  used  indifferently  as  organs 
of  prehension  or  locomotion,  while  in 
man,  at  the  summit  of  the  scale,  each 
function  has  its  proper  organ  exclusively 
appropriated  to  it.  Now  this  fact  is  the 
expression  of  a  law  which  is  universal 
No  machine  which  is  adapted  to  two 
purposes  will  fulfil  either  of  them  so 
perfectly  as  one  which  should  be  con- 
structed solely  with  a  view  to  that  one. 
No  man  who  combines  the  professions 
of  a  lawyer  and  a  physician  will  make 
so  able  a  lawyer,  so  skilful  a  physician, 
as  one  who  should  have  devoted  his  life 
to  the  study  of  either  profession.  And 
science,  believe  me,  is  not  less  exacting 
than  physic  or  law.  The  researches  of 
the  man  of  science  must  not  be  cramped 
by  fears  of  trespassing  on  the  entangled 
boundary  of  a  neighbouring  domain. 
If  he  allow  his  course  to  be  broken  by 
claims  on  behalf  of  a  superior  authority 
to  exclusive  occupancy  of  the  ground, 
not  only  will  the  powers  be  distracted 
which,  when  in  perfect  harmony,  are  not 
more  than  adequate  to  the  work  before 
them — not  only  will  his  step  be  feeble 
and  uncertain  on  his  own  special  pro- 
vince, but  his  conviction  of  the  har- 
mony of  the  creation  will  be  destroyed ; 
the  suspicion,  fatal  to  all  science,  will  be 
forced  upon  him,  that  truth  can  ever  be 
inconsistent  with  truth. 

Philoc.  Of  course,  truth  can  never  be 
inconsistent  with  truth,  but  a  partial 


view  of  truth  may  be  inconsistent  with 
the  whole.  The  statement  of  one  fact, 
apart  from  others,  may  give  as  false  an 
impression  as  the  sense  of  sight  might 
give  of  the  external  world,  if  it  could 
not  be  corrected  by  that  of  touch. 

Philal.  But  you  do  not,  therefore, 
attempt  to  make  the  eye  the  medium  of 
touch.  You  do  not  suppose  there  can  be 
such  a  thing  as  an  excess  of  sight.  The 
impressions  of  the  external  world  are 
truest  when  all  the  senses  are  in  their 
fullest  exercise,  and,  even  if  some  are 
absent  or  feeble,  you  gain  nothing  by 
diminishing  the  rest.  I  do  not  cease  to 
see  that  round  table  oblong  when  I  look 
at  it  obliquely,  by  becoming  short- 
sighted. 

Philoc.  What  I  cannot  agree  to,  is  that 
parcelling-out  of  truth  into  divisions, 
between  which  no  communication  is 
possible;  least  of  all,  when  the  instance 
is  one  which  concerns  the  nature .  of 
man.  That  any  ingenuous  mind  should 
deny  an  antagonism  between  his  spiritual 
nature  and  any  hypothesis  which  ignores 
his  distinct  creation — this  I  cannot 
readily  believe. 

Philal.  There  is  an  antagonism,  I 
believe,  in  all  the  views  of  man's  spi- 
ritual and  physical  nature.  Let  me 
illustrate  what  I  mean  by  a  fact  of  my 
own  experience. 

I  have  often  thought,  as  I  stood 
beside  a  death-bed — still  more,  when 
I  was  consulted  by  a  patient  for  whom 
I  foresaw  that  death-bed  within  the  space 
of  a  few  months — how  strange  is  the 
opposition  between  the  spiritual  and 
bodily  life  of  man.  I  see  a  fellow- 
creature  on  the  point  of  being  submitted 
to  the  most  momentous  change,  but 
wholly  ignorant  of  the  brief  period  still 
allowed  for  preparation.  To  me,  the 
contracted  limits  of  the  course  by  which 
my  patient  is  separated  from  the  great 
ordeal  is  matter  of  absolute  certainty. 
And  yet  that  knowledge,  which  for 
myself  I  should  desire  above  many 
added  years  of  life,  I  must  not  only 
not  communicate  to  the  one  so  deeply 
interested,  but  (within  the  limit  of 
actual  deception)  studiously  withhold. 
I  have  undertaken  to  give  advice  with 


The  Boundaries  of  Science. 


137 


reference  to  bodily  health,  and  I  feel, 
as  I  suppose  you  would  feel  in  my 
place,  no  hesitation  as  to  the  neglect  of 
any  consideration,  however  superior  in 
intrinsic  importance,  calculated  to  inter- 
fere with  the  object  concerning  which 
my  advice  is  sought. 

Philoc.  No  doubt  you  are  called  in  as 
a  physician,  and  you  must  not,  as  an 
honest  man,  act  as  a  priest. 

Philal.  You  have  expressed  in  a  few 
words  the  substance  of  what  I  have 
been  urging  all  along.  You  cannot, 
then,  ask  of  the  physician,  in  a  larger 
sense,  to  act  otherwise  than  as  a  phy- 
sician 1 

Philoc.  If,  only,  he  does  not  forget 
that  the  priest  has  his  appointed  part 
also  ! 

Philal.  There  is  the  danger  of  my  pro- 
fession, and  still  more  that  of  my  fellow- 
students.  I  do  not  underrate  it.  But, 
just  as  I  am  certain  that,  in  a  world  of 
order  and  law,  it  must  be  better  for  the 
whole  being  of  man  that  one  class 
should  attend  exclusively  to  his  physical 
sufferings,  so  I  believe  that  it  is  advan- 
tageous to  truth,  that  one  set  of  thinkers 
should  attend  exclusively  to  physical 
truths. 

Philoc.  Oh,  Philalethes,  I  cannot 
answer  such  arguments  otherwise  than 
by  the  protest  of  my  whole  nature  !  If 
the  study  of  the  creation  is  to  lead  us 
away  from  the  Creator  ;  if  the  observa- 
tion of  law  obliterates  the  view  of  the 
Lawgiver ;  if  "ex  majore  lumine  na- 
"  turae  et  reseratione  viarum  sensus 
"  aliquid  incredulitatis  et  noctis  animis 
"nostris  erga  divina  mysteria  oboria- 
"  tur  ;"  then,  I  can  only  say,  the  sooner 
that  study  is  abandoned,  the  sooner  that 
path  is  closed,  the  better. 

Philal.  A  danger  which  I  and  my 
fellow-students  cannot  contemplate  too 
anxiously !  But  for  you,  and  men  of 
your  tastes  and  interests,  it  is  needful  to 
look  to  the  other  side  of  the  question. 
You,  who  look  at  nature  simply  for  the 
beauty  of  nature,  have  you  ever  reflected 
what  a  different  world  you  would  in- 
habit but  for  the  labours  of  the  man  of 
science  1  I  am  not,  of  course,  speaking 
of  material  advantage.  But  take  the 

No.  8. — VOL.  u. 


oldest  and  most  complete  of  the  sciences 
— astronomy,  and  compare  the  objects 
which  every  night  presents  to  our  eyes, 
as  seen  with  and  without  its  illumination. 
What  were  they  to  the  eye  of  the  wisest 
man  of  antiquity?  Read  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  eight  whorls  of  the  distaff 
of  the  universe,  in  the  Eepublic  of 
Plato,  and  remember  that  where  he  saw 
this  confusion  of  concentric  whorls  and 
unknown  impulses,  you  explore  depths 
of  space  the  remoteness  of  which  thought 
refuses  to  conceive,  and  find  those 
abysses  filled  with  innumerable  worlds, 
moved  by  the  same  power  which  de- 
taches the  withered  leaf  from  its  stalk, 
which  moulds  the  faintest  streak  of 
vapour  that  we  can  scarcely  distinguish 
against  the  sky.  That  he  needed  no 
such  symbol  as  the  law  of  gravitation  to 
embody  a  conviction  of  one  ruling  power 
which 

"Spreads  undivided,  operates  unspent" — 

I  readily  believe ;  but,  having  that 
inward  conviction,  do  we  gain  nothing 
by  the  outward  type  ?  In  one  word, 
does  it  make  no  difference  whether 
we  are  shackled  by  a  delusion  of  man, 
or  in  contact  with  an  idea  of  God? 
Now  this  Divine  idea  is  to  you,  and  to 
men  far  less  scientific  than  you,  a 
material  of  thought,  a  belief  which  there 
is  no  more  choice  about  receiving  than 
there  is  about  breathing  oxygen.  What 
was  confused  and  indistinct  to  the 
finest  genius  of  antiquity  is  orderly 
and  harmonious  to  the  most  ordinary 
mind  of  to-day.  I  do  not  say  that  the 
deep  significance  of  the  law  which  is 
thus  revealed  to  us  is  appreciated  by 
every  one  who  even  reflects  upon  it ; 
but  I  do  assert  that  no  mind  can  receive 
so  grand  an  idea,  even  partially,  without 
being  in  some  degree  enlarged  by  it, 
even  if  they  do  not  see  in  it,  what  it 
seems  to  me  to  contain,  a  type  and  pro- 
phecy of  the  obedience  which  man  shall 
yield  to  his  Creator  when  harmony  with 
the  will  of  the  Creator  shall  become  the 
triumphant  motive  of  his  whole  being, 
and  law  shall  reign  as  certainly  over 
every  movement  of  his  spirit,  as  over 
the  orbits  of  the  planets. 

L 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


Philoc.  But  that  idea  is  no  offspring 
of  science,  Philalethes. 

Phildl.  Not  the  idea,  but  the  sym- 
bol in  which  it  is  embodied. 

Philoc.  But  it  is  exactly  that  habit 
of  mind,  that  readiness  to  find  the 
spiritual  in  the  material,  that  seems  to 
me  wanting  in  scientific  men.  They 
look  at,  not  through,  the  window. 

Philal.  The  window  is  their  work. 
What  lies  beyond  is  without  the  bound- 
aries of  science.  The  tendency  of  early 
science  is.  to  forget  those  boundaries ;  the 
science  of  our  day,  in  guarding  perhaps 
too  anxiously  against  this  error,  refuses 
to  take  cognizance  of  what  lies  beyond 
them.  I  anticipate  for  the  maturity 
of  thought  a  combination  of  what  is 
right  in  both  these  tendencies,  as  I 
hope  in  my  own  age,  to  return  to  what 
was  most  precious  in  the  feelings  of  the 
child,  without  losing  anything  of  what 
was  gained  by  the  experience  of  the 
man.  Meantime,  do  not  forget  that  our 
debt  is  not  small  to  those  scientific  men 
who  possess  least  of  this  spirit — who 
would  regard  any  inclination  to  look 


upon  the  material  world  as  the  expres- 
sion and  symbol  of  the  spiritual,  as 
mere  idle  dreaming.  You  owe  them 
this,  that,  while  they  spend  laborious 
years  in  the  painful  elaboration  of  some 
new  view  of  nature,  they  are  translating 
for  you  a  symbol,  in  which  you  may  be 
most  certain  no  conception  of  their  own 
has  mingled.  If  the  result  of  their 
operations  contain  an  element  so  care- 
fully eliminated  from  the  crucible  in 
which  the  fusion  was  made,  we  may 
be  perfectly  certain  that  that  element 
was  a  constituent  part  of  the  original 
materials. 

Philoc.  But  tell  me  how  you  would 
reconcile  with  other  and  more  important 
views  of  truth  any  theory  which  makes 
man  the  product  of  the  lower  tendencies 
of  the  animal  world1?  Suppose  it  granted 
that  the  author  of  such  a  hypothesis  is 
not  bound  to  follow  me  to  that  ground, 
still,  as  I  know  you  must  be  ready  to 
take  that  point  of'  view,  do  you  not 
refuse  to  accompany  me  there. 

Philal.  On  a  future  occasion  I  shall 
be  very  happy  to  do  so. 


TOM  BROWN  AT  OXFORD. 

BY   THE   AUTHOR   OP    "  TOM   BBOWN's   SCHOOL-DAYS.' 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

A   PBOMISE    OP    FAIRER    WEATHER. 

ALL  dwellers  in  and  about  London 
are,  alas,  too  well  acquainted  with  that 
never-to-be-enough-hated  change  which 
we  have  to  undergo  once  at  least  in 
every  spring.  As  each  succeeding  win- 
ter wears  away,  the  same  thing  happens 
to  us. 

For  some  time  we  do  not  trust  the 
fair  lengthening  days,  and  cannot  believe 
that  the  dirty  pair  of  sparrows  who  live 
opposite  our  window  are  really  making 
love  and  going  to  build,  notwithstanding 
all  their  twittering.  But  morning  after 
morning  rises  fresh  and  gentle  ;  there  is 
no  longer  any  vice  in  the  air  ;  we  drop 
our  over-coats  ;  we  rejoice  in  the  green 


shoots  which  the  privet  hedge  is  making 
in  the  square  garden,  and  hail  the  re- 
turning tender-pointed  leaves  of  the 
plane  trees  as  friends  ;  we  go  out  of 
our  way  to  walk  through  Covent  Garden 
market  to  see  the  ever-brightening  show 
of  flowers  from  the  happy  country. 

This  state  of  things  goes  on  sometimes 
for  a  few  days  only,  sometimes  for  weeks, 
till  we  make  sure  that  we  are  safe  for 
this  spring  at  any  rate.  Don't  we  wish  we 
may  get  it !  Sooner  or  later,  but  sure — 
sure  as  Christmas  bills,  or  the  income- 
tax,  or  anything,  if  there  be  anything, 
surer  than  these — conies  the  morning 
when  we  are  suddenly  conscious  as  soon 
as  we  rise  that  there  is  something  the 
matter.  We  do  not  feel  comfortable  in  our 
clothes  ;  nothing  tastes  quite  as  it 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


139 


should  at  breakfeast ;  though  the  day 
looks  bright  enough,  there  is  a  fierce 
dusty  taint  about  it  as  we  look  out 
through  windows,  which  no  instinct 
now  prompts  us  to  throw  open,  as  it  has 
done  every  day  for  the  last  month. 

But  it  is  only  when- we  open  our  doors 
and  issue  into  the  street,  that  the  hateful 
reality  comes  right  home  to  us.  All 
moisture,  and  softness,  and  pleasantness 
has  gone  clean  out  of  the  air  since  last 
night ;  we  seem  to  inhale  yards  of  horse- 
hair instead  of  satin  ;  our  skins  dry  up  ; 
our  eyes,  and  hair,  and  whiskers,  and 
clothes  are  soon  filled  with  loathsome 
dust,  and  our  nostrils  with  the  reek  of 
the  great  city.  We  glance  at  the  weather- 
cock on  the  nearest  steeple  and  see  that 
it  points  N.E.  And  so  long  as  the 
change  lasts  we  carry  about  with  us 
a  feeling  of  anger  and  impatience  as 
though  we  personally  were  being  ill- 
treated.  We  could  have  borne  with  it 
well  enough  in  November ;  it  would 
have  been  natural,  and  all  in  the  day's 
work,  in  March  ;  but  now,  when  Rotten- 
row  is  beginning  to  be  crowded,  when 
long  lines  of  pleasure-vans  are  leaving 
town  on  Monday  mornings  for  Hampton 
Court  or  the  poor  remains  of  dear  Ep- 
ping  Forest,  when  the  exhibitions  are 
open  or  about  to  open,  when  the  reli- 
gious public  is  up,  or  on  its  way  up, 
for  May  meetings,  when  the  Thames 
is  already  sending  up  faint  warnings  of 
what  we  may  expect  as  soon  as  his 
dirty  old  life's  blood  shall  have  been 
thoroughly  warmed  up,  and  the  Ship, 
and  Trafalgar,  and  Star  and  Garter  are 
in  full  swing  at  the  antagonist  poles  of 
the  cockney  system,  we  do  feel  that  this 
blight  which  has  come  over  us  and 
everything  is  an  insult,  and  that  while 
it  lasts,  as  there  is  nobody  who  can  be 
made  particularly  responsible  for  it,  we  are 
justified  in  going  about  in  general  dis- 
gust, and  ready  to  quarrel  with  anybody 
we  may  meet  on  the  smallest  pretext. 

This  sort  of  east- windy  state  is  per- 
haps the  best  physical  analogy  for  'that 
mental  one  in  which  our  hero  now  found 
himself.  The  real  crisis  was  over ;  he 
had  managed  to  pass  through  the  eye  of 
the  storm,  and  drift  for  the  present  at 


least  into  the  skirts  of  it,  where  he  lay 
rolling  under  bare  poles,  comparatively 
safe,  but  without  any  power  as  yet  to 
get  the  ship  well  in  hand,  and  make 
her  obey  her  helm.  The  storm  might 
break  over  him  again  at  any  minute, 
and  would  find  him  almost  as  helpless 
as  ever. 

For  he  could  not  follow  Drysdale's 
advice  at  once,  and  break  off  his  visits 
to  "The  Choughs"  altogether.  He 
went  back  again  after  a  day  or  two, 
but  only  for  short  visits ;  he  never 
stayed  behind  now  after  the  other 
men  left  the  bar,  and  avoided  interviews 
with  Patty  alone  as  diligently  as  he  had 
sought  them  before.  .She  was  puzzled 
at  his  change  of  manner,  and,  not  being 
able  to  account  for  it,  was  piqued,  and 
ready  to  revenge  herself  and  pay  him  out 
in  the  hundred  little  ways  which  the 
least  practised  of  her  sex  know  how  to 
employ  for  the  discipline  of  any  of  the 
inferior  or  trousered  half  of  the  creation. 
If  she  had  been  really  in  love  with  him, 
it  would  have  been  a  different  matter ; 
but  she  was  not.  In  the  last  six  weeks 
she  had  certainly  often  had  visions  of 
the  pleasures  of  being  a  lady  and  keep- 
ing servants,  and  riding  in  a  carriage 
like  the  squires'  and  rectors'  wives  and 
daughters  about  her  home.  She  had  a 
liking,  even  a  sentiment  for  him,  which 
might  very  well  have  grown  into  some- 
thing dangerous  before  long ;  but  as  yet 
it  was  not  more  than  skin  deep.  Of  late, 
indeed,  she  had  been  much  more  fright- 
ened than  attracted  by  the  conduct  of  her 
admirer,  and  really  felt  it  a  relief,  not- 
withstanding her  pique,  when  he  retired 
into  the  elder  brother  sort  of  state.  Eut 
she  would  have  been  more  than  woman 
if  she  had  not  resented  the  change ;  and 
so,  very  soon  the  pangs  of  jealousy  were 
added  to  his  other  troubles.  Other  men 
were  beginning  to  frequent  "  The 
Choughs"  regularly.  Drysdale,  besides 
dividing  with  Tom  the  prestige  of  being  an 
original  discoverer,  was  by  far  the  largest 
.customer.  St.  Cloud  came,  and  brought 
Chanter  with  him,  to  whom  Patty*  was 
actually  civil,  not  because  she  liked  him 
at  all,  but  because  she  saw  that  it  made 
Tom  furious.  Though  he  could  not  fix 

L2 


140 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


on  any  one  man  in  particular,  lie  felt 
that  mankind  in  general  were  gaining  on 
him.  In  his  better  moments  indeed  he 
often  wished  that  she  would  take  the 
matter  into  her  own  hands  and  throw 
him  over  for  good  and  all ;  but  keep 
away  from  the  place  altogether  he  could 
not,  and  often,  when  he  fancied  himself 
on  the  point  of  doing  it,  a  pretty  toss  of 
her  head  or  kind  look  of  her  eyes  would 
scatter  all  his  good  resolutions  to  the 
four  winds. 

And  so  the  days  dragged  on,  and  he 
dragged  on  through  them;  hot  fits  of 
conceit  alternating  in  him  with  cold  fits 
of  despondency  and  mawkishness  and 
discontent  with  everything  and  every- 
body, which  were  all  the  more  intoler- 
able from  their  entire  strangeness.  In- 
stead of  seeing  the  bright  side  of  all 
things,  he  seemed  to  be  looking  at  crea- 
tion through  yellow  spectacles,  and  saw 
faults  and  blemishes  in  all  his  acquaint- 
ance which  had  been  till  now  invisible. 

But,  the  more  he  was  inclined  to  de- 
preciate all  other  men,  the  more  he  felt 
that  there  was  one  to  whom  he  had  been 
grossly  unjust.  And,  as  he  recalled  all 
that  had  passed,  he  began  to  do  justice  to 
the  man  who  had  not  flinched  from 
warning  him  and  braving  him,  who  he 
felt  had  been  watching  over  him,  and 
trying  to  guide  him  straight  when  he 
had  lost  all  power  or  will  to  keep 
straight  himself. 

From  this  time  the  dread  increased 
on  him  lest  any  of  the  other  men  should 
find  out  his  quarrel  with  Hardy.  Their 
utter  ignorance  of  it  encouraged  him  in 
the  hope  that  it  might  all  pass  off  like 
a  bad  dream.  While  it  remained  a  mat- 
ter between  them  alone,  he  felt  that  all 
might  come  straight,  though  he  could 
not  think  how.  He  began  to  loiter  by 
the  entrance  of  the  passage  which  led  to 
Hardy's  rooms ;  sometimes  he  would 
find  something  to  say  to  his  scout  or 
bedmaker  which  took  him  into  the  back 
regions  outside  Hardy's  window,  glancing 
at  it  sideways  as  he  stood  giving  his 
orders.  There  it  was,  wide  open,  gene- 
rally— he  hardly  knew  whether  he  hoped 
to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  owner,  but  he 
did  hope  that  Hardy  might  hear  his 


voice.  He  watched  him  in  chapel  and 
hall  furtively,  but  constantly,  and  was 
always  fancying  what  he  was  doing  and 
thinking  about.  Was  it  as  painful  an 
effort  to  Hardy,  he  wondered,  as  to  him 
to  go  on  speaking,  as  if  nothing  had 
happened,  when  they  met  at  the  boats, 
as  they  did  now  again  almost  daily  (for 
Diogenes  was  bent  on  training  some  of 
the  torpids  for  next  year),  and  yet  never 
to  look  one  another  in  the  face;  to  live 
together  as  usual  during  part  of  every 
day,  and  yet  to  feel  all  the  time  that  a 
great  wall  had  arisen  between  them, 
more  hopelessly  dividing  them  for  the 
time  than  thousands  of  miles  of  ocean 
or  continent  1 

Amongst  other  distractions  which 
Tom  tried  at  this  crisis  of  his  life,  was 
reading.  For  three  or  four  days  run- 
ning he  really  worked  hard — very  hard, 
if  we  were  to  reckon  by  the  number  of 
hours  he  spent  in  his  own  rooms  over 
his  books  with  his  oak  sported, — hard, 
even  though  we  should  only  reckon  by 
results.  For,  though  scarcely  an  hour 
passed  that  he  was  not  balancing  on  the 
hind  legs  of  his  chair  with  a  vacant 
look  in  his  eyes,  and  thinking  of  any- 
thing but  Greek  roots  or  Latin  con- 
structions, yet  on  the  whole  he  managed 
to  get  through  a  good  deal,  and  one 
evening,  for  the  first  time  since  his 
quarrel  with  Hardy,  felt  a  sensation  of 
real  comfort — it  hardly  amounted  to 
pleasure — as  he  closed  his  Sophocles 
some  hour  or  so  after  hall,  having  just 
finished  the  last  of  the  Greek  plays 
which  he  meant  to  take  in  for  his  first 
examination.  He  leaned  back  in  his 
chair  and  sat  for  a  few  minutes,  letting 
his  thoughts  follow  their  own  bent. 
They  soon  took  to  going  wrong,  and  he 
jumped  up  in  fear  lest  he  should  be 
drifting  back  into  the  black  stormy  sea 
in  the  trough  of  which  he  had  been 
labouring  so  lately,  and  which  he  felt 
he  was  by  no  means  clear  of  yet.  At 
first  he  caught  up  his  cap  and  gown  as 
though  he  were  going  out.  There  was 
a  wine  party  at  one  of  Ms  acquaintance's 
rooms ;  or  he  could  go  and  smoke  a 
cigar  in  the  pool  room,  or  at  any  one 
of  a  dozen  other  places.  On  second 


Tom  Broum  at  Oxford. 


141 


thoughts,  however,  he  threw  his  acade- 
micals back  on  to  the  sofa,  and  went 
to  his  book-case.  The  reading  had  paid 
so  well  that  evening  that  he  resolved  to 
go  on  with  it.  He  had  no  particular 
object  in  selecting  one  book  more  than 
another,  and  so  took  down  carelessly 
the  first  that  came  to  hand. 

It  happened  to  be  a  volume  of  Plato, 
and  opened  of  its  own  accord  in  the 
Apology.  He  glanced  at  a  few  lines. 
What  a  flood  of  memories  they  called 
up  !  This  was  almost  the  last  book  he 
had  read  at  school ;  and  teacher,  and 
friends,  and  lofty  oak-shelved  library 
stood  out  before  him  at  once.  Then 
the  blunders  that  he  himself  and  others 
had  made  rushed  through  his  mind,  and 
he  almost  burst  iflto  a  laugh  as  he 
wheeled  his  chair  round  to  the  window, 
and  began  reading  where  he  had  opened, 
encouraging  every  thought  of  the  old 
times  when  he  first  read  that  marvellous 
defence,  and  throwing  himself  back  into 
them  with  all  his  might.  And  still,  as  he 
read,  forgotten  words  of  wise  comment, 
and  strange  thoughts  of  wonder  and 
longing,  came  back  to  him.  The  great 
truth  which  he  had  been  led  to  the  brink 
of  in  those  early  days  rose  in  all  its  awe 
and  all  its  attractiveness  before  him. 
He  leant  back  in  his  chair,  and  gave 
himself  up  to  his  thought ;  and  how 
strangely  that  thought  bore  on  the  strug- 
gle which  had  been  raging  in  him  of 
late  ;  how  an  answer  seemed  to  be  trem- 
bling to  come  out  of  it  to  all  the  cries, 
now  defiant,  now  plaintive,  which  had 
gone  up  out  of  his  heart  in  this  time  of 
trouble  !  For  his  thought  was  of  that 
spirit,  distinct  from  himself,  and  yet 
communing  with  his  inmost  soul,  always 
dwelling  in  him,  knowing  him  better 
than  he  knew  himself,  never  mislead- 
ing him,  always  leading  him  to  light 
and  truth,  of  which  the  old  philosopher 
spoke.  "The  old  heathen,  Socrates,  did 
actually  believe  that — there  can  be  no 
question  about  it;"  he  thought,  "Has 
not  the  testimony  of  the  best  men  through 
these  two  thousand  years  borne  witness 
that  he  was  right — that  he  did  not  be- 
lieve a  lie  ?  That  was  what  we  were 
told.  Surely  I  don't  mistake  !  Were 


we  not  told,  too,  or  did  I  dream  it,  that 
what  was  true  for  him  is  true  for  every 
man — for  me?  That  there  is  a  spirit 
dwelling  in  me,  striving  with  me,  ready 
to  lead  me  into  all  truth  if  I  will  submit 
to  his  guidance  V 

"  Ay  !  submit,  submit,  there's  the 
rub  !  Give  yourself  up  to  his  guidance  ! 
Throw  up  the  reins,  and  say,  you've 
made  a  mess  of  it.  Well,  why  not? 
Haven't  I  made  a  mess  of  it?  Am  I 
fit  to  hold  the  reins  ? " 

"  Not  I,"  he  got  up  and  began  walk- 
ing about  his  rooms,  "  I  give  it  up." 

"  Give  it  up!"  he  went  on  presently; 
"  yes,  but  to  whom  ?  Not  to  the  demon, 
spirit,  whatever  it  was,  who  took  up  his 
abode  in  the  old  Athenian — at  least  so 
he  said,  and  so  I  believe.  No,  no ! 
Two  thousand  years  and  all  that  they 
have  seen  have  not  passed  over  the  world 
to  leave  us  just  where  he  was  left.  We 
want  no  daemons  or  spirits.  And  yet 
the  old  heathen  was  guided  right,  and 
what  can  a  man  want  more  ?  and  who 
ever  wanted  guidance  more  than  I  now 
— here — in  this  room — at  this  minute  ? 
I  give  up  the  reins ;  who  will  take  them  ? " 
And  so  there  came  on  him  one  of  those 
seasons  when  a  man's  thoughts  cannot 
be  followed  in  words.  A  sense  of  awe 
came  on  him,  and  over  him,  and  wrap- 
ped him  round ;  awe  at  a  presence  of 
which  he  was  becoming  suddenly  con- 
scious, into  which  he  seemed  to  have 
wandered,  and  yet  which  he  felt  must 
have  been  there,  around  him,  in  his 
own  heart  and  soul,  though  he  knew  it 
not.  There  was  hope  and  longing  in 
his  heart  mingling  with  the  fear  of  that 
presence,  but  withal  the  old  reckless 
and  daring  feeling  which  he  knew  so 
well,  still  bubbling  up  untamed,  un- 
tamable it  seemed  to  him. 

The  room  stifled  him  now;  so  he 
threw  on  his  cap  and  gown,  and  hurried 
down  into  the  quadrangle.  It  was  very 
quiet ;  probably  there  were  not  a  dozen 
men  in  college.  He  walked  across  to  thn 
low  dark  entrance  of  the  passage  which 
led  to  Hardy's  rooms,  and  there  paused. 
Was  he  there  by  chance,  or  was  he 
guided  there  ?  Yes,  this  was  the  right 
way  for  him,  he  had  no  doubt  now  as  to 


142 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


that ;  down  the  dark  passage,  and  into 
the  room  he  knew  so  well — and  what 
then  ?  He  took  a  short  turn  or  two 
before  the  entrance.  How  could  he  he 
sure  that  Hardy  was  alone1?  And,  if 
not,  to  go  in  would  be  worse  than  use- 
less. If  he  were  alone,  what  should  he 
say?  After  all,  must  he  go  in  there? 
was  there  no  way  but  that  ? 

The  college  clock  struck  a  quarter  to 
seven.  It  was  his  usual  time  for  "  The 
Choughs ;"  the  house  would  be  quiet 
now ;  was  there  not  one  looking  out  for 
him  there  who  would  be  grieved  if  he 
did  not  come?  After  all,  might  not 
that  be  his  way,  for  this  night  at  least  ? 
He  might  bring  pleasure  to  one  human 
being  by  going  there  at  once.  That  he 
knew;  what  else  could  he  be  sure  of? 

At  this  moment  he  heard  Hardy's 
door  open,  and  a  voice  saying,  "  Good 
night,"  and  the  next  Grey  came  out  of 
the  passage,  and  was  passing  close  to 
him. 

"  Join  yourself  to  him."  The  impulse 
came  so  strongly  into  Tom's  mind  this 
time,  that  it  was  like  a  voice  speaking  to 
him.  He  yielded  to  it,  and,  stepping 
to  Grey's  side,  wished  him  good  even- 
ing. The  other  returned  his  salute  in 
his  shy  way,  and  was  hurrying  on,  but 
Tom  kept  by  him. 

"  Have  you  been  reading  with 
Hardy?"  . 

«  Yes." 

"  How  is  he?  I  have  not  seen  any- 
thing of  him  for  some  time." 

"  Oh,  very  well,  I  think,"  said  Grey, 
glancing  sideways  at  his  questioner,  and 
adding,  after  a  moment,  "  I  have  won- 
dered rather  not  to  see  you  there  of 
late." 

"  Are  you  going  to  your  school  ?"  said 
Tom,  breaking  away  from  the  subject. 

"  Yes,  and  I  am  rather  late ;  I  must 
make  haste  on  ;  good  night." 

"Will  you  let  me  go  with  you  to- 
night? It  would  be  a  real  kindness. 
Indeed,"  he  added,  as  he  saw  how 
embarrassing  his  proposal  was  to  Grey, 
"  I  will  do  whatever  you  tell  me — you 
don't  know  how  grateful  I  shall  be  to 
you.  Do  let  me  go — just  for  to-night. 
Try  me  once." 


Grey  hesitated,  turned  his  head  sharply 
once  or  twice  as  they  walked  on  together, 
and  then  said  with  something  like  a 
sigh— 

"  I  don't  know,  I'm  sure.  Did  you  ever 
teach  in  a  night-school  ? " 

"  .No,  but  I  have  taught  in  the  Sunday- 
school  at  home  sometimes.  Indeed,  I 
will  do  whatever  you  tell  me." 

"  Oh !  but  this  is  not  at  all  like  a 
Sunday-school.  They  are  a  very  rough, 
wild  lot." 

"The  rougher  the  better,"  said  Tom; 
"I  shall  know  how  to  manage  them  then." 

"  But  you  must  not  -really  be  rough 
with  them." 

"No,  I  won't;  I  didn't  mean  that," 
said  Torn  hastily,  for  he  saw  his  mistake 
at  once.  "  I  shall  takfe  it  as  a  great  favour, 
if  you  will  let  me  go  with  you  to-night. 
You  won't  repent  it,  I'm  sure." 

Grey  did  not  seem  at  all  sure  of  this, 
but  saw  no  means  of  getting  rid  of  his 
companion,  and  so  they  walked  on  to- 
gether and  turned  down  a  long  narrow 
court  in  the  lowest  part  of  the  town.  At 
the  doors  of  the  houses  labouring  men, 
mostly  Irish,  lounged  or  stood  about, 
smoking  and  talking  to  one  another,  or 
to  the  women  who  leant  out  of  the  win- 
dows, or  passed  to  and  fro  on  their 
various  errands  of  business  or  pleasure. 
A  group  of  half-grown  lads  were  playing 
at  pitch-farthing  at  the  farther  end,  and 
all  over  the  court  were  scattered  chil- 
dren of  all  ages,  ragged  and  noisy  little 
creatures  most  of  them,  on  whom  paternal 
and  maternal  admonitions  and  cuffs  were 
constantly  being  expended,  and  to  all 
appearances  in  vain. 

At  the  sight  of  Grey  a  shout  arose 
amongst  the  smaller  boys,  of  "  Here's 
the  teacher  ! "  and  they  crowded  round 
him  and  Tom  as  they  went  up  the  court. 
Several  of  the  men  gave  him  a  half- 
surly  half-respectful  nod,  as  he  passed 
along,  wishing  them  good  evening. 
The  rest  merely  stared  at  him  and  his 
companion.  They  stopped  at  a  door 
which  Grey  opened,  and  led  the  way 
into  the  passage  of  an  old  tumble-down 
cottage,  on  the  ground  floor  of  which 
were  two  low  rooms  which  served  for 
the  school-rooms.  .!•*•.'' 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


143 


A  hard-featured,  middle-aged  woman, 
who  kept  the  house,  was  waiting,  and 
said  to  Grey,  "Mr.  Jones  told  me  to 
say,  sir,  he  would  not  be  here  to-night, 
as  he  has  got  a  bad  fever  case — so  you 
was  to  take  only  the  lower  classes,  sir,  he 
said ;  and  the  policeman  would  be  near 
to  keep  out  the  big  boys  if  you  wanted 
him ;  shall  I  go  and  tell  him  to  step 
round,  sir?" 

Grey  looked  embarrassed  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  then  said,  "  No,  never  mind, 
you  can  go  ;"  and  then  turning  to  Tom, 
added,  "Jones  is  the  curate ;  he  won't 
be  here  to-night ;  and  some  of  the  bigger 
boys  are  very  noisy  and  troublesome, 
and  only  come  to  make  a  noise.  How- 
ever, if  they  come  we  must  do  our 
best." 

Meantime,  the  crowd  of  small  ragged 
urchins  had.  filled  the  room,  and  were 
swarming  on  to  the  benches  and  squab- 
bling for  the  copy-books  which  were 
laid  out  on  the  thin  desks.  Grey  set  to 
work  to  get  them  into  order,  and  soon 
the  smallest  were  draughted  off  into  the 
inner  room  with  slates  and  spelling- 
books,  and  the  bigger  ones,  some  dozen 
in  number,  settled  to  their  writing. 
Tom  seconded  him  so  readily,  and 
seemed  so  much  at  home,  that  Grey  felt 
quite  relieved. 

"  You  seem  to  get  on  capitally,"  he 
said  ;  "  I  will  go  into  the  inner  room  to 
the  little  ones,  and  you  stay  and  take 
these.  There/are  the  class-books  when 
they  have  done  their  copies,"  and  so 
went  off  into  the  inner  room  and  closed 
the  door. 

My  readers  must  account  for  the  fact 
as  they  please ;  I  only  state  that  Tom, 
as  he  bent  over  one  after  another  of  the 
pupils,  and  guided  the  small  grubby 
hands,  which  clutched  the  inky  pens 
with  cramped  fingers,  and  went  splutter- 
ing and  blotching  along  the  lines  of  the 
copy-books,  felt  the  yellow  scales  drop- 
ping from  his  eyes,  and  more  warmth 
coming  back  into  his  heart  than  he  had 
known  there  for  many  a  day. 

All  went  on  well  inside,  notwith- 
standing a  few  small  outbreaks  between 
the  scholars,  but  every  now  and  then 
mud  was  thrown  against  the  window,  and 


noises  outside  and  in  the  passage  threat- 
ened some  interruption.  At  last,  when 
the  writing  was  finished,  the  copy-books 
cleared  away,  and  the  class-books  dis- 
tributed, the  door  opened,  and  two  or  three 
big  boys  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  lounged 
in,  with  their  hands  in  their  pockets 
and  their  caps  on.  There  was  an  in- 
solent look  about  them,  which  set  Tom's 
back  up  at  once ;  however,  he  kept  his 
temper,  made  them  take  their  caps  off, 
and,  as  they  said  they  wanted  to  read 
with  the  rest,  let  them  ta:ke  their  places 
on  the  benches. 

But  now  came  the  tug  of  war.  He 
could  not  keep  his  eyes  on  the  whole 
lot  at  once,  and,  no  sooner  did  he  fix 
his  attention  on  the  stammering  reader 
for  the  time  being  and  try  to  help  him, 
than  anarchy  broke  out  all  round  him. 
Small  stones  and  shot  were  thrown 
about,  and  cries  arose  from  the  smaller 
fry,  "Please,  sir,  he's  been  and  poured 
some  ink  down  my  back,"  "  He's  stole 
my  book,  sir,"  He's  gone  and  stuck  a 
pin  in  my  leg."  The  evil-doers  were  so 
cunning  that  -it  was  impossible  to  catch 
them ;  but,  as  he  was  hastily  turning 
in  his  own  mind  what  to  do,  a  cry  arose, 
and  one  of  the  benches  went  suddenly 
over  backwards  on  to  the  floor,  carrying 
with  it  its  whole  freight  of  boys,  except 
two  of  the  bigger  ones,  who  were  the 
evident  authors  of  the  mishap. 

Tom  sprang  at  the  one  nearest  him, 
seized  him  by  the  collar,  hauled  him 
into  the  passage,  and  sent  him  out  of 
the  street-door  with  a  sound  kick ;  and 
then,  rushing  back,  'caught  hold  of  the 
second,  who  went  down  on  his  back  and 
clung  round  Tom's  legs,  shouting  for 
help  to  his  remaining  companions,  and 
struggling  and  swearing.  It  was  all  the 
work  of  a  moment,  and  now  the  door 
opened,  and  Grey  appeared  from  the 
inner  room.  Tom  left  off  hauling  his 
prize  towards  the  passage,  and  felt' and 
looked  very  foolish. 

"This  fellow,  and  another  whom  I 
have  turned  out,  upset  that  form  with 
all  the  little  boys  on  it,"  he  said  apolo- 
getically. 

"  It's  a  lie,  'twasn't  me,"  roared  the 
captive,  to  whom  Tom  administered  a 


144 


Tom  Broum  at  Oxford. 


sound  box  on  the  ear,  while  the  small 
boys,  rubbing  different  parts  of  their 
bodies,  chorused,  "'Twas  him,  teacher, 
'twas  him,"  and  heaped  further  charges 
of  pinching,  pin-sticking,  and  other 
atrocities  on  him. 

Grey  astonished  Tom  by  his  firmness. 
"  Don't  strike  him  again,"  he  said.  "Kow, 
go  out  at  once,  or  I  will  send  for  your 
father."  The  fellow  got  up,  and,  after 
standing  a  moment  and  considering  his 
chance  of  successful  resistance  to  phy- 
sical force  in  the  person  of  Tom,  and 
moral  in  that  of  Grey,  slunk  out.  "  You 
must  go  too,  Murphy,"  went  on  Grey  to 
another  of  the  intruders. 

"Oh,  your  honour,  let  me  bide.  I'll 
be  as  quiet  as  a  mouse,"  pleaded  the 
Irish  boy ;  and  Tom  would  have  given 
in,  but  Grey  was  unyielding. 

"  You  were  turned  out  last  week,  and 
Mr.  Jones  said  you  were  not  to  come 
back  for  a  fortnight." 

"  "Well,  good  night  to  your  honour," 
said  Murphy,  and  took  himself  off. 

"The  rest  may  stop,"  said  Grey.  "You 
had  better  take  the  inner  room  now ;  I 
will  stay  here." 

"  I'm  very  sorry,"  said  Tom. 
"  You  couldn't  help  it ;  no  one  can 
manage   those   two.     Murphy  is  quite 
different^  but  I  should  have  spoiled  him 
if  I  had  let  him  stay  now." 

The  remaining  half  hour  passed  off 
quietly.  Tom  retired  into  the  inner 
room,  and  took  up  Grey's  lesson,  which 
he  had  been  reading  to  the  boys  from  a 
large  Bible  with  pictures.  Out  of  con- 
sideration for  their  natural  and  acquired 
restlessness,  the  little  fellows,  who  were 
all  between  eight  and  eleven  years  old, 
were  only  kept  sitting  at  their  pot- 
hooks and  spelling  for  the  first  hour, 
and  then  were  allowed  to  crowd  round 
the  teacher,  who  read  and  talked  to  them 
and  showed  them  the  pictures.  Tom 
found  the  Bible  open  at  the  story  of  the 
prodigal  son,  and  read  it  out  to  them 
as  they  clustered  round  his  knees. 
Some  of  the  outside  ones  fidgeted 
about  a  little,  but  those  close  round 
him  listened  with  ears,  and  eyes,  and 
bated  breath;  and  two  little  blue-eyed 
boys  without  shoes — their  ragged  clothes 


concealed  by  long  pinafores  which  their 
widowed  mother  had  put  on  clean  to  send 
them  to  school  in — leaned  against  him 
and  looked  up  in  his  face,  and  his  heart 
warmed  to  the  touch  and  the  look. 
"  Please,  teacher,  read  it  again,"  they 
said  when  he  finished ;  so  he  read  it 
again,  and  sighed  when  Grey  came  in 
and  lighted  a  candle  (for  the  room  was 
getting  dark)  and  said  it  was  time  for 
prayers. 

A  few  collects,  and  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
in  which  all  the  young  voices  joined, 
drowning  for  a  minute  the  noises  from 
the  court  outside,  finished  the  evening's 
schooling.  The  children  trooped  out, 
and  Grey  went  to  speak  to  the  woman 
who  kept  the  house.  Tom,  left  to  him- 
self, felt  strangely  happy,  and,  for  some- 
thing to  do,  took  the  snuffers  and  com- 
menced a  crusade  against  a  large  family 
of  bugs,  who,  taking  advantage  of  the 
quiet,  came  cruising  out  of  a  crack  in 
the  otherwise  neatly  papered  wall. 
Some  dozen  had  fallen  on  his  spear 
when  Grey  re-appeared,  and  was  much 
horrified  at  the  sight.  He  called  the 
woman,  and  told  her  to  have  the  hole 
carefully  fumigated  and  mended. 

"  I  thought  we  had  killed  them  all 
long  ago,"  he  said ;  "  but  the  place  is 
tumbling  down." 

"  It  looks  well  enough,"  said  Tom. 

"  Yes,  we  have  it  kept  as  tidy  as 
possible.  It  ought  to  be  at  least  a  little 
better  than  what  the  children  see  at 
home."  And  so  they  left  the  school 
and  court  and  walked  up  to  college. 

"  Where  are  you  going  ? "  Tom  said, 
as  they  entered  the  gate. 

"To  Hardy's  rooms  ;  will  you  come  1" 

"No,  not  to-night,"  said  Tom,  "I 
know  that  you  want  to  be  reading ;  I 
should  only  interrupt." 

"  Well,  good-night  then,"  said  Grey, 
and  went  on,  leaving  Tom  standing  in 
the  porch.  On  the  way  up  from  the 
school  he  had  almost  made  up  his  mind 
to  go  to  Hardy's  rooms  that  night.  He 
longed,  and  yet  feared  to  do  so  ;  and,  on 
the  whole,  was  not  sorry  for  an  excuse. 
Their  first  meeting  must  be  alone,  and 
it  would  be  a  very  embarrassing  one  for 
him  at  any  rate.  Grey,  he  hoped,  would 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


145 


tell  Hardy  of  his  visit  to  the  school, 
and  that  would  show  that  he  was  com- 
ing round,  and  make  the  meeting  easier. 
His  talk  with  Grey,  too,  had  removed 
one  great  cause  of  uneasiness  from  his 
mind.  It  was  now  quite  clear  that  he 
had  no  suspicion  of  the  quarrel,  and,  if 
Hardy  had  not  told  him,  no  one  else 
could  know  of  it. 

Altogether,  he  strolled  into  the 
quadrangle  a  happier  and  sounder  man 
than  he  had  been  since  his  first  visit  to 
the  Choughs,  and  looked  up  and  an- 
swered with  his  old  look  and  voice  when 
he  heard  his  name  called  from  one  of  the 
first-floor  windows. 

The  hailer  was  Drysdale,  who  was 
leaning  out  in  lounging  coat  and  velvet 
cap,  and  enjoying  a  cigar  as  usual,  in 
the  midst  of  the  flowers  of  his  hanging 
garden. 

"  You've  heard  the  good  news,  I  sup- 
pose ?" 

"No,  what  do  you  mean  ?" 

"  Why,  Blake  has  got  the  Latin  verse." 

"  Hurra  !     I'm  so  glad." 

"  Come  up  and  have  a  weed."  Tom 
ran  up  the  staircase  and  into  Drysdale' s 
rooms,  and  was  leaning  out  of  the  win- 
dow at  his  side  in  another  minute. 

"  What  does  he  get  by  it  ?"  he  said, 
"  do  you  know?" 

"  No,  some  books  bound  in  Russia,  I 
dare  say,  with  the  Oxford  arms,  and 
'Dominus  illuminatio  mea'  on  the  back." 

"No  money?" 

"  Not  much — perhaps  a  ten'ner,"  an- 
swered Drysdale,  "  but  no  end  of  KV$OQ 
I  suppose." 

"  It  makes  it  look  well  for  his 
first,  don't  you  think  1  But  I  wish  he 
had  got  some  money  for  it.  I  often 
feel  very  uncomfortable  about  that  bill, 
don't  you  ?" 

"  Not  I,  what's  the  good?  It's  nothing 
when  you  are  used  to  it.  Besides,  it 
don't  fall  due  for  another  month." 

"But  if  Blake  can't  meet  it  then?" 
said  Tom. 

"Well,  it  will  be  vacation,  and  I'll 
trouble  greasy  Benjamin  to  catch  me 
then." 

"But  you  don't  mean  to  say  you 
won't  pay  it  ?"  said  Tom  in  horror. 


"  Pay  it !  You  may  trust  Benjamin 
for  that.  He'll  pull  round  his  little  usuries 
somehow." 

"  Only  we  have  promised  to  pay  on 
a  certain  day,  you  know." 

"  Oh,  of  course,  that's  the  form.  That 
only  means  that  he  can'tpinchus  sooner." 

"  I  do  hope,  though,  Drysdale,  that 
it  will  be  paid  on  the  day,"  said  Tom, 
who  could  not  quite  swallow  the  notion 
of  forfeiting  his  word,  even  though  it 
were  only  a  promise  to  pay  to  a  scoundrel. 

"All  right.  You've  nothing  to  do 
with  it,  remember.  He  won't  bother 
you.  Besides,  you  can  plead  infancy, 
if  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst.  There's 
such  a  queer  old  bird  gone  to  your  friend 
Hardy's  rooms." 

The  mention  of  Hardy  broke  the  dis- 
agreeable train  of  thought  into  which 
Tom  was  falling,  and  he  listened  eagerly 
as  Drysdale  went  on. 

"  It  was  about  half  an  hour  ago.  I 
was  looking  out  here,  and  saw  an  old 
fellow  come  hobbling  into  quad  on  two 
sticks,  in  a  shady  blue  uniform  coat 
and  white  trousers.  The  kind  of  old 
boy  you  read  about  in  books,  you  know : 
Commodore  Trunnion, .  or  Uncle  Toby, 
or  one  of  that  sort.  Well,  I  watched 
him  backing  and  filing  about  the  quad, 
and  trying  one  staircase  and  another ; 
but  there  was  nobody  about.  So  down 
I  trotted,  and  went  up  to  him  for  fun, 
and  to  see  what  he  was  after.  It  was  as 
good  as  a  play,  if  you  could  have  seen 
it.  I  was  ass  enough  to  take  off  my 
cap  and  make  a  low  bow  as  I  came  up  to 
him,  and  he  pulled  oif  his  uniform  cap 
in  return,  and  we  stood  there  bowing  to 
one  another.  He  was  a  thorough  old 
gentleman,  and  I  felt  rather  foolish  for 
fear  he  should  see  that  I  expected  a  lark 
when  I  came  out.  But  I  don't  think 
he  had  an  idea  of  it,  and  only  set  my 
capping  him  down  to  the  wonderful  good 
manners  of  the  college.  So  we  got  quite 
thick,  and  I  piloted  him  across  to  Hardy's 
staircase  in  the  back  quad.  I  wanted 
him  to  come  up  and  quench,  but  he 
declined,  with  many  apologies.  I'm 
sure  he  is  a  character." 

"He  must  be  Hardy's  father,"  said 
Tom. 


146 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


"  I  shouldn't  wonder.  But  is  his 
father  in  the  navy  1" 

"  He  is  a  retired  captain." 

"  Then  no  doubt  you're  right.  What 
shall  we  do  1  Have  a  hand  at  picquet. 
Some  men  will  be  here  directly.  Only 
for  love." 

Tom  declined  the  proffered  game,  and 
went  off  soon  after  to  his  own  rooms,  a 
happier  man  than  he  had  been  since  his 
first  night  at  the  Choughs. 

CHAPTER  XX. 

THE    RECONCILIATION. 

TOM  rose  in  the  morning  with  a  pre- 
sentiment that  all  would  be  over  now 
before  long,  and,  to  make  his  presenti- 
ment come  true,  resolved,  before  night, 
to  go  himself  to  Hardy  and  give  in. 
All  he  reserved  to  himself  was  the 
liberty  to  do  it  in  the  manner  which 
would  be  least  painful  to  himself.  He 
was  greatly  annoyed,  therefore,  when 
Hardy  did  not  appear  at  morning  chapel ; 
for  he  had  fixed  on  the  leaving  chapel 
as  the  least  unpleasant  time  in  which 
to  begin  his  confession,  and  was  going 
to  catch  Hardy  then,  and  follow  him  to 
his  rooms.  All  the  morning,  too,  in 
answer  to  his  inquiries  by  his  scout 
Wiggins,  Hardy's  scout  replied  that  his 
master  was  out,  or  busy.  He  did  not  come 
to  the  boats,  he  did  not  appear  in  hall ; 
so  that,  after  hall,  when  Tom  went  back 
to  his  own  rooms,  as  he  did  at  once,  in- 
stead of  sauntering  out  of  college,  or 
going  to  a  wine  party,  he  was  quite  out 
of  heart  at  his  bad  luck,  and  began  to 
be  afraid  that  he  would  have  to  sleep  on 
his  unhealed  wound  another  night. 

He  sat  down  in  an  arm-chair,  and  fell 
to  musing,  and  thought  how  wonderfully 
his  life  had  been  changed  in  these  few 
short  weeks.  He  could  hardly  get  back 
across  the  gulf  which  separated  him  from 
the '  self  who  came  back  into  those  rooms 
after  Easter,  full  of  anticipations  of  the 
pleasures  and  delights  of  the  coming 
summer  term  and  vacation.  To  his 
own  surprise  he  didn't  seem  much  to 
.regret  the  loss  of  his  didteaux  en  Espqgne, 
and  felt  a  sort  of  grim  satisfaction  in 
their  utter  overthrow. 


While  occupied  with  these  thoughts, 
he  heard  talking  on  his  stairs,  accom- 
panied by  a  strange  lumbering  tread. 
These  came  nearer ;  and  at  last  stopped 
just  outside  his  door,  which  opened  in 
another  moment,  and  Wiggins  an- 
nounced— 

"  Capting  Hardy,  sir." 

Tom  jumped  to  his  legs,  and  felt 
himself  colour  painfully.  "  Here,  Wig- 
gins," said  he,  "  wheel  round  that  arm- 
.chair  for  Captain  Bardy.  I  am  so  very 
glad  to  see  you,  sir,"  and  he  hastened 
round  himself  to  meet  the  old  gentle- 
man, holding  out  his  hand,  which  the 
visitor  took  very  cordially,  as  soon  as 
he  had  passed  his  heavy  stick  to  his 
left  hand,  and  balanced  himself  safely 
upon  it. 

"  Thank  you,  sir ;  thank  you,"  said 
the  old  man  after  a  few  moments'  pause, 
"  I  find  your  companion  ladders  rather 
steep;"  and  then  he  sat  down  with 
some  difficulty. 

Tom  took  the  Captain's  stick  and 
undress  cap,  and  put  them  reverentially 
on  his  sideboard ;  and  then,  to  get  rid 
of  some  little  nervousness  which  he 
couldn't  help  feeling,  bustled  to  his 
cupboard,  and  helped  Wiggins  to  place 
glasses  and  biscuits  on  the  table. 
"  Now,  sir,  what  will  you  take  1  I  have 
port,  sherry,  and  whiskey  here,  and  can 
get  you  anything  else.  -  Wiggins,  run 
to  Hinton's  and  get  some  dessert." 

"No  dessert,  thank  you,  for  me," 
said  the  Captain ;  "  I'll  take  a  cup  of 
coffee,  or  a  glass  of  grog,  or  anything 
you  have  ready.  Don't  open  wine  for 
me,  pray,  sir." 

"  Oh,  it  is  all  the  better  for  being 
opened,"  said  Tom,  working  away  at  a 
bottle  of  sherry  with  his  corkscrew — 
"  and,  Wiggins,  get  some  coffee  and  an- 
chovy toast  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour ; 
and  just  put  out  some  tumblers  and 
toddy  ladles,  and  bring  up  boiling 
water  with  the  coffee." 

While  making  his  hospitable  prepa- 
rations, Tom  managed  to  get  many  side- 
glances  at  the  old  man,  who  sat  looking 
steadily  and  abstractedly  before  him 
into  the  fireplace,  and  was  much  struck 
and  touched  by  the  picture.  The  sailor 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


147 


wore  a  well-preserved  old  undress  uni- 
form coat  and  waistcoat,  and  white  drill 
trousers ;  he  was  a  man  of  middle 
height,  but  gaunt  and  massive,  and 
Tom  recognised  the  framework  of  the 
long  arms  and  grand  shoulders  and  chest 
which  he  had  so  often  admired  in  the 
son.  His  right  leg  was  quite  stiff  from 
an  old  wound  on  the  kneecap  ;  the  left 
eye  was  sightless,  and  the  scar  of  a  cut- 
las  travelled  down  the  drooping  lid  and 
on  to  the  weather-beaten  cheek  below. 
His  head  was  high  and  broad,  his  hair 
and  whiskers  silver  white,  while  the 
shaggy  eyebrows  were  scarcely  grizzled. 
His  face  was  deeply  lined,  and  the  long 
clean-cut  lower  jaw,  and  drawn  look 
about  the  mouth,  gave  a  grim  expres- 
sion to  the  face  at  the  first  glance, 
which  wore  off  as  you  looked,  leaving, 
however,  on  most  men  who  thought 
about  it,  the  impression  which  fastened 
on  our  hero,  "  An  awkward  man  to  have 
met  at  the  head  of  boarders  towards  the 
end  of  the  great  war." 

In  a  minute  or  two  Tom,  having  com- 
pleted his  duties,  faced  the  old  sailor, 
much  reassured  by  his  covert  inspection ; 
and,  pouring  himself  out  a  glass  of 
sherry,  pushed  the  decanter  across,  and 
drank  to  his  guest. 

"  Your  health,  sir,"  he  said,  "  and 
thank  you  very  much  for  coming  up  ta 
see  me." 

"  Thank  you,  sir,"  said  the  Captain, 
rousing  himself  and  filling,  "  I  drink  to 
you,  sir.  The  fact  is,  I  took  a  great 
liberty  in  coming  up  to  your  rooms  in 
this  off  hand  way,  without  calling  or 
sending  up,  but  you'll  excuse  it  in  an 
old  sailor."  Here  the  captain  took  to 
his  glass,  and  seemed  a  little  embarrassed. 
Tom  felt  embarrassed  also,  feeling  that 
something  was  coming,  and  could  only 
think  of  asking  how  the  captain  liked 
the  sherry.  The  captain  liked  the 
sherry  very  much.  Then,  suddenly  clear- 
ing his  throat,  he  went  on.  "  I  felt,  sir, 
that  you  would  excuse  me,  for  I  have  a 
favour  to  ask  of  you."  He  paused  again, 
while  Tom  muttered  something  about 
great  pleasure,  and  then  went  on. 
"You  know  my  son,  Mr.  Brown?" 
"  Yes,  sir ;  he  has  been  my  best  friend 


up  here  ;  I  owe  more  to  him  than  to  any 
man  in  Oxford." 

The  Captain's  eye  gleamed  with  plea- 
sure as  he  replied,  "Jack  is  a  noble 
fellow,  Mr.  Brown,  though  I  say  it  who 
am  his  father.  I've  often  promised  my- 
self a  cruize  to  Oxford  since  he  has  been 
here.  I  came  here  at  last  yesterday,  and 
have  been  having  a  long  yarn  with  him. 
I  found  there  was  something  on  his 
mind.  He  can't  keep  anything  from  his 
old  father :  and  so  I  drew  out  of  him 
that  he  loves  you  as  David  loved  Jona- 
than. He  made  'my  old  eye  very  dim 
while  he  was  talking  of  you,  Mr.  Brown. 
And  then  I  found  that  you  two  are  not 
as  you  used  to  be.  Some  coldness 
sprung  up  between  you ;  but  what  about 
I  couldn't  get  at !  Young  men  are  often 
hasty — I  know  I  was,  forty  years  ago — 
Jack  says  he  has  been  hasty  with  you. 
Now,  that  boy  is  all  I  have  in  the 
world,  Mr.  Brown.  I  know  my  boy's 
friend  will  like  to  send  an  old  man 
home  with  a  light  heart.  So  I  made 
up  my  mind  to  come  over  to  you  and 
ask  you  to  make  it  up  with  Jack.  I 
gave  him  the  slip  after  dinner  and  here 
I  am." 

"Oh,  sir,  did  he  really  ask  you  to 
come  to  me  ?" 

"ISTo,  sir,"  said  the  Captain,  "he  did 
not — I'm  sorry  for  it — I  think  Jack 
must  be  in  the  wrong,  for  he  said 
he  had  been  too  hasty,  and  yet  he 
wouldn't  ask  me  to  come  to  you  and 
make  it  up.  But  he  is  young,  sir ;  young 
and  proud.  He  said  he  couldn't  move 
in  it,  his  mind  was  made  up ;  he  was 
wretched  enough  over  it,  but  the  move 
must  come  from  you.  And  so  that's 
the  favour  I  have  to  ask,  that  you  will 
make  it  up  with  Jack.  It  isn't  often  a 
young  man  can  do  such  a  favour  to  an 
old  one — to  an  old  father  with  one  son. 
You'll  not  feel  the  worse  for  having 
done  it,  if  it's  ever  so  hard  to  do,  when 
you  come  to  be  my  age."  And  the  old 
man  looked  wistfully  across  the  table,  the 
muscles  about  his  mouth  quivering  as 
he  ended. 

Tom  sprang  from  his  chair,  and 
grasped  the  old  sailor's  hand,  as  he' felt 
the  load  pass  out  of  his  heart.  "  Favour, 


148 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


sir  !"  he  said,  "  I  have  been  a  mad  fool 
enough  already  in  this  business — I 
should  have  been  a  double-dyed  scoun- 
drel, like  enough,  by  this  time  but  for 
your  son,  and  I've  quarrelled  with  him 
for  stopping  me  at  the  pit's  mouth. 
Favour  !  If  God  will,  I'll  prove  some- 
how where  the  favour  lies,  and  what  I 
owe  to  him  ;  and  to  you,  sir,  for  coming 
to  me  to-night.  Stop  here  two  minutes, 
sir,  and  I'll  run  down  and  bring  him 
over." 

Tom  tore  away  to  Hardy's  door  and 
knocked.  There  was  no  pausing  in  the 
passage  now.  "  Come  in."  He  opened 
the  door  but  did  not  enter,  and  for  a 
moment  or  two  could  not  speak.  The 
rush  of  associations  which  the  sight  of 
the  well-known  old  rickety  furniture,  and 
the  figure  which  was  seated,  book  in 
hand,  with  its  back  to  the  door  and  its 
feet  up  against  one  side  of  the  mantel- 
piece, called  up,  choked  him. 

"  May  I  come  in  1"  he  said  at  last. 

He  saw  the  figure  give  a  start,  and  the 
book  trembled  a  little,  but  then  came 
the  answer,  slow  but  firm — 

"  I  have  not  changed  my  opinion." 

"  No ;  dear  old  boy,  but  I  have,"  and 
Tom  rushed  across  to  his  friend,  dearer 
than  ever  to  him  now,  and  threw  his' 
arm  round  his  neck ;  and,  if  the  un- 
English  truth  must,  out,  had  three  parts 
of  a  mind  to  kiss  the  rough  face  which 
was  now  working  with  strong  emotion. 

"  Thank  God !  "  said  Hardy,  as  he 
grasped  the  hand  which  hung  over  his 
shoulder. 

"  And  now  come  over  to  my  rooms  ; 
your  father  is  there  waiting  for  us." 

"  What,  the  dear  old  governor  1  That's 
what  he  has  been  after,  is  it?  I  couldn't 
think  where  he  could  have  hove  to,  as 
he  would  say." 

Hardy  put  on  his  cap,  and  the  two 
hurried  back  to  Tom's  rooms,  the  lightest 
hearts  in  the  University  of  Oxford. 

CHAPTER  XXL 

CAPTAIN   HARDY   ENTERTAINED   BY 
ST.  AMBROSE. 

THERE  are  moments  in  the  life  of  the 
most  self-contained  and  sober  of  us  all, 


when  we  fairly  bubble  over,  like  a  full 
bottle  of  champagne  with  the  cork  out ; 
and  this  was  one  of  them  for  our 
hero,  who,  however,  be  it  remarked, 
was  neither  self-contained  nor  sober  by 
nature.  When  they  got  back  to  his 
rooms,  he  really  hardly  knew  what  to  do 
to  give  vent  to  his  lightness  of  heart ; 
and  Hardy,  though  self-contained  and 
sober  enough  in  general,  was  on  this 
occasion  almost  as  bad  as  his  friend. 
They  rattled  on,  talking  out  the  thing 
which  -came  uppermost,  whatever  the 
subject  might  chance  to  be ;  but,  whether 
grave  or  gay,  it  always  ended  after  a 
minute  or  two  in  jokes  not  always  good, 
and  chaff,  and  laughter.  The  poor  cap- 
tain was  a  little  puzzled  at  first,  and 
made  one  or  two  endeavours  to  turn  the 
talk  into  improving  channels.  But  very 
soon  he  saw  that  Jack  was  thoroughly 
happy,  and  that  was  always  enough  for 
him.  So  he  listened  to  one  and  the 
other,  joining  cheerily  in  the  laugh 
whenever  he  could ;  and,  when  he 
couldn't  catch  the  joke,  looking  like  a 
benevolent  old  lion,  and  making  as  much 
belief  that  he  had  understood  it  all  as 
the  simplicity  and  truthfulness  of  his 
character  would  allow. 

The  spirits  of  the  two  friends  seemed 
inexhaustible.  They  lasted  out  the 
bottle  of  sherry  which  Tom  had  un- 
corked, and  the  remains -of  a  bottle  of 
his  famous  port.  He  had  tried  hard  to 
be  allowed  to  open  a  fresh  bottle,  but 
the  captain  had  made  such  a  point  of 
his  not  doing  so,  that  he  had  given  in 
for  hospitality's  sake.  They  lasted  out 
the  coffee  and  anchovy  toast ;  after 
which  the  captain  made  a  little  effort 
at  moving,  which  was  supplicatingly 
stopped  by  Tom. 

"  Oh,  pray  don't  go,  Captain  Hardy. 
I  haven't  been  so  happy  for  months. 
Besides,  I  must  brew  you  a  glass  of 
grog.  I  pride  myself  on  my  brew. 
Your  son  there  will  tell  you  that  I  am 
a  dead  hand  at  it.  Here,  Wiggins,  a 
lemon  !  "  shouted  Tom. 

"  Well,  for  once  in  a  way,  I  suppose. 
Eh,  Jack  ?"  said  the  captain,  looking  at 
his  son. 

"  Oh  yes,  father.     You  mayn't  know 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


149 


it  Brown,  but,  if  there  is  one  thing 
harder  to  do  than  another,  it  is  to  get 
an  old  sailor  like  my  father  to  take  a 
glass  of  grog  at  night." 

The  captain  laughed  a  little  laugh, 
and  shook  his  thick  stick  at  his  son,  who 
went  on. 

"And  as  for  asking  him  to  take  a 
pipe  with  it — " 

"  Dear  me,"  said  Tom,  "  I  quite  for- 
got. I  really  beg  your  pardon,  Captain 
Hardy  ; "  and  he  put  down  the  lemon 
he  was  squeezing,  and  produced  a  box 
of  cigars. 

"It's  all  Jack's  nonsense,  sir,"  said 
the  captain,  holding  out  his  hand, 
nevertheless,  for  the  box. 

"  Now,  father,  don't  be  absurd,"  inter- 
rupted Hardy,  snatching  the  box  away 
from  him.  "  You  might  as  well  give 
him  a  glass  of  absinthe.  He  is  church- 
warden at  home,  and  can't  smoke  any- 
thing but  a  long  clay." 

"  I'm  very  sorry  I  haven't  one  here, 
but  I  can  send  out  in  a  minute."  And 
Tom  was  making  for  the  door  to  shout 
for  "Wiggins. 

"  No,  don't  call.  I'll  fetch  some  from 
my  rooms." 

When  Hardy  left  the  room,  Tom 
squeezed  away  at  his  lemon,  and  was 
preparing  himself  for  a  speech  to  Cap- 
tain Hardy  full  of  confession  and  grati- 
tude. But  the  captain  was  before  him, 
and  led  the  conversation  into  a  most 
unexpected  channel. 

"I  suppose,  now,  Mr.  Brown,"  he 
began,  "  you  don't  find  any  difficulty  in 
construing  your  Thucydides  1 " 

"  Indeed  I  do,  sir,"  said  Tom,  laugh- 
ing. "  I  find  him  a  very  tough  old  cus- 
tomer, except  in  the  simplest  narrative." 

"  For  my  part,"  said  the  captain,  "  I 
can't  get  on  at  all,  I  find,  without  a  trans- 
lation. But  you  see,  sir,  I  had  none  of 
the  advantages  which  you  young  men 
have  up  here.  In  fact,  Mr.  Brown,  I 
didn't  begin  Greek  till  Jack  was  nearly 
ten  years  old."  The  captain  in  his 
secret  heart  was  prouder  of  his  partial 
victory  over  the  Greek  tongue  in  his  old 
age,  than  of  his  undisputed  triumphs 
over  the  French  in  his  youth,  and  was 
not  averse  to  talking  of  it. 


"  I  wonder  that  you  ever  began  it  at 
all,  sir,"  said  Tom. 

'•  "  You  wouldn't  wonder  if  you  knew 
how  an  uneducated  man  like  me  feels, 
when  he  comes  to  a  place  like  Oxford." 

"  Uneducated,  sir  ! "  said  Tom.  "Why 
your  education  has  been  worth  twice  as 
much,  I'm  sure,  as  any  we  get  here." 

"  No,  sir ;  we  never  learnt  anything 
in  the  navy  when  I  was  a  youngster, 
except  a  little  rule-of-thumb  mathe- 
matics. One  picked  up  a  sort  of  smat- 
tering of  a  language  or  two  knocking 
about  the  world,  but  no  grammatical 
knowledge,  nothing  scientific.  If  a  boy 
doesn't  get  a  method,  he  is  beating  to 
windward  in  a  crank  craft  all  his 
life.  He  hasn't  got  any  regular  place 
to  stow  away  what  he  gets  into  his 
brains,  and  so  it  lies  tumbling  about  in 
the  hold,  and  he  loses  it,  or  it  gets 
damaged  and  is  never  ready  for  use. 
You  see  what  I  mean,  Mr.  Brown1?" 

"  Yes,  sir.  But  I'm  afraid  we  don't 
all  of  us  get  much  method  up  here.  Do 
you  really  enjoy  reading  Thucydides  now, 
Captain  Hardy?" 

"  Indeed  I  do,  sir,  very  much,"  said 
the  Captain.  "  There's  a  great  deal  in 
his  history  to  interest  an  old  sailor,  you 
know.  I  dare  say,  now,  that  I  enjoy 
those  parts  about  the  sea-fights  more 
than  you  do."  The  Captain  looked  at 
Tom  as  if  he  had  made  an  audacious 
remark. 

"  I  am  sure  you  do,  sir,"  said  Tom, 
smiling. 

"  Because  you  see,  Mr.  Brown,"  said 
the  Captain,  "  when  one  has  been  in 
that  sort  of  thing  oneself,  one  likes  to 
read  how  people  in  other  times  managed, 
and  to  think  what  one  would  have 
done  in  their  place.  I  don't  believe 
that  the  Greeks  just  at  that  time  were 
very  resolute  fighters,  though.  Nelson 
or  Collingwood  would  have  finished  that 
war  in  a  year  or  two." 

"  Not  with  triremes,  do  you  think, 
sir  V  said  Tom. 

"  Yes,  sir,  with  any  vessels  which 
were  to  be  had,"  said  the  Captain. 
"  But  you  are  right  about  triremes. 
It  has  always  been  a  great  puzzle  to 
me  how  those  triremes  could  have  been 


150 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


worked.  How  do  you  understand  the 
three  banks  of  oars,  Mr.  Brown?" 

"  Well,  sir,  I  suppose  they  must  have 
been  one  above  the  other  somehow." 

"  But  the  upper  bank  must  have  had 
oars  twenty  feet  long  and  more  in  that 
case,"  said  the  Captain.  "  You  must 
allow  for  leverage,  you  see." 

"  Of  course,  sir.  When  one  comes 
to  think  of  it,  it  isn't  easy  to  see  how 
they  were  manned  and  worked,"  said 
Tom. 

"  Now  my  notion  about  triremes — " 
began  the  Captain,  holding  the  head  of 
Ms  stick  with  both  hands,  and  looking 
across  at  Tom. 

"  Why,  father !"  cried  Hardy,  re- 
turning at  the  moment  with  the  pipes, 
and  catching  the  Captain's  last  word, 
"  on  one  of  your  hobby  horses  already ! 
You're  not  safe ! — I  can't  leave  you 
for  two  minutes.  Here's  a  long  pipe 
for  you.  How  in  the  world  did  he  get 
on  triremes  1" 

"  I  hardly  know,"  said  Tom,  "  but  I 
want  to  hear  what  Captain  Hardy  thinks 
about  them.  You  were  saying,  sir,  that 
the  upper  oars  must  have  been  twenty 
feet  long  at  least." 

"  My  notion  is — "  said  the  Captain, 
taking  the  pipe  and  tobacco-pouch  from 
his  son's  hand. 

"  Stop  one  moment,"  said  Hardy  ; 
"  I  found  Blake  at  my  rooms,  and 
asked  him  to  come  over  here.  You 
don't  object?" 

"  Object,  my  dear  fellow  !  I'm  much 
obliged  to  you.  Now,  Hardy,  would 
you  like  to  have  any  one  else  ?  I  can 
send  in  a  minute." 

"  No  one,  thank  you." 

"  You  won't  stand  on  ceremony  now, 
will  you,  with  me  ?"  said  Tom. 

"  You  see  I  haven't." 

"  And  you  never  will  again?" 

"  No,  never.  Now,  father,  you  can 
heave  ahead  about  those  oars." 

The  Captain  went  on  charging  his 
pipe,  and  proceeded  :  "  You  see,  Mr. 
Brown,  they  must  have  been  at  least 
twenty  feet  long,  because,  if  you  allow 
the  lowest  bank  of  oars  to  have  been 
three  feet  above  the  water-line,  which 
even  Jack  thinks  they  must  have  been — " 


"  Certainly.  That  height  at  least  to 
do  any  good,"  said  Hardy. 

"  Not  that  I  think  Jack's  opinion 
worth  much  on  the  point,"  went  on  his 
father. 

"  It's  very  ungrateful  of  you,  then,  to 
say  so,  father,"  said  Hardy,  "  after  all 
the  time  I've  wasted  trying  to  make  it 
all  clear  to  you." 

"  I  don't  say  that  Jack's  is  not  a  good 
opinion  on  most  things,  Mr.  Brown," 
said  the  Captain ;  "  but  he  is  all  at  sea 
about  triremes.  He  believes  that  the 
men  of  the  uppermost  bank  rowed 
somehow  like  lightermen  on  the  Thames, 
walking  up  and  down." 

"  I  object  to  your  statement  of  my 
faith,  father,"  said  Hardy. 

"  Now  you  know,  Jack,  you  have  said 
so,  often." 

"I  have  said  they  must  have  stood 
up  to^ow,  and  so — " 

"  You  would  have  had  awful  con1- 
fusion,  Jack.  You  must  have  order  be- 
tween decks  when  you' re  going  into  action. 
Besides,  the  rowers  had  cushions." 

"  That  old  heresy  of  yours  again." 

"  Well,  but  Jack,  they  had  cushions. 
Didn't  the  rowers  who  were  marched 
across  the  Isthmus  to  man  the  ships 
which  were  to  surprise  the  PiraBiis, 
carry  their  oars,  thongs,  and  cushions  ?" 

"  If  they  did,  your  conclusion  doesn't 
follow,  father,  that  they  sat  on  them  to 
row." 

"  You  hear,  Mr.  Brown,"  said  the 
Captain;  "he  admits  my  point  about 
the  cushions." 

"  Oh  father,  I  hope  you  used  to  fight 
the  French  more  fairly,"  said  Hardy. 

"  But,  didn't  he  ?  Didn't  Jack  admit 
my  point  ? " 

"  Implicitly,  sir,  I  think,"  said  Tom, 
catching  Hardy's  eye,  which  was  danc- 
ing with  fun. 

"Of  course  he  did.  You  hear  that, 
Jack.  Now  my  notion  about  triremes — " 

A  knock  at  the  door  interrupted  the 
captain  again,  and  -Blake  came  in  and 
was  introduced. 

"  Mr.  Blake  is  almost  our  best  scholar, 
father  ;  you  should  appeal  to  him  about 
the  cushions." 

"  I   am  very  proud  to   make    your 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


acquaintance,  sir,"  said  the  captain;  "I 
have,  heard  niy  son  speak  of  you  often." 

"  We  were  talking  about  triremes," 
said  Tom  ;  "  Captain  Hardy  thinks  the 
oars  must  have  been  twenty  feet  long." 

"  Not  easy  to  come  forward  well  with 
that  sort  of  oar,"  said  Blake ;  "  they 
must  have  pulled  a  slow  stroke." 

"  Our  torpid  would  have  bumped  the 
best  of  them,"  said  Hardy. 

"  I  don't  think  they  could  have  made 
more  than  six  knots,"  said  the  captain; 
"  But  yet  they  used  to  sink  one  another, 
and  a  light  boat  going  only  six  knots 
couldn't  break  another  in  two  amid- 
ships. It's  a  puzzling  subject,  Mr. 
Blake." 

"  It  is,  sir,"  said  Blake ;  "  if  we  only 
had  some  of  their  fo' castle  songs  we 
should  know  more  about  it.  I'm  afraid 
they  had  no  Dibdin." 

"  I  wish  you  would  turn  one  'of  my 
father's  favourite  songs  into  anapaests 
for  him,"  said  Hardy. 

"  What  are  they  1 "  said  Blake. 

"  '  Tom  Bowling,'  or  '  The  wind  that 
blows,  and  the  ship  that  goes,  and  the 
lass  that  loves  a  sailor.' " 

"By  the  way,  why  shouldn't  we  have 
a  song  1 "  said  Torn.  "  What  do  you 
say,  Captain  Hardy  1  " 

The  captain  winced  a  little  as  he  saw 
his  chance  of  expounding  his  notion  as 
to  triremes  slipping  away,  but  answered, 

"  By  all  means,  sir  ;  Jack  must  sing 
for  me,  though.  Did  you  ever  hear  him 
sing  '  Tom  Bowling '  ? " 

"No,  never,  sir.  Why,  Hardy,  you 
never  told  me  you  could  sing." 

"  You  never  asked  me,"  said  Hardy, 
laughing ;  "  but,  if  I  sing  for  my  father, 
he  must  spin  us  a  yarn." 

"  Oh  yes ;  will  you,  sir  1 " 

"  I'll  do  my  best,  Mr.  Brown;  but  I 
don't  know  that  you'll  care  to  listen  to 
my  old  yarns.  Jack  thinks  everybody 
must  like  them  as  well  as  he,  who  used 
to  hear  them  when  he  was  a  child." 

"Thank  you,  sir;  that's  famous — now 
Hardy,  strike  up." 

"After  you.  You  must  set  the  ex- 
ample in  your  own  rooms." 

So  Tom  sang  his  song.  And  the  noise 
Drought  Drysdale  and  another  man  up, 


who  were  loitering  in  quad  on  the  look- 
out for  something  to  do.  Drysdale  and 
the  Captain  recognised  one  another,  and 
were  friends  at  once.  And  then  Hardy 
sang  "Tom  Bowling,"  in  a  style  which 
astonished  the  rest  not  a  little,  and  as 
usual  nearly  made  his  father  cry  ;  and 
Blake  sang,  and  Drysdale,  and  the  other 
man.  And  then  the  captain  was  called 
on  for  his  yarn ;  and,  the  general  voice 
being  for  "  something  that  had  happened 
to  him,"  "  the  strangest  thing  that  had 
ever  happened  to  him  at  sea,"  the  old 
gentleman  laid  down  his  pipe  and  sat 
up .  in  his  chair  with  his  hands  on  his 
stick  and  began. 

THE  CAPTAIN'S  STORY. 

It  will  be  forty  years  ago  next  month 
since  the  ship  I  was  then  in  came  home 
from  the  West  Indies  station,  and  was 
paid  off.  I  had  nowhere  in  particular 
to  go  just  then,  and  so  was  very  glad  to 
get  a  letter,  the  morning  after  1  went 
ashore  at  Portsmouth,  asking  me  to  go 
down  to  Plymouth  for  a  week  or  so. 
It  came  from  an  old  sailor,  a  friend  of 
my  family,  who  had  been  Commodqre  of 
the  fleet.  He  lived  at  Plymouth;  he 
was  a  thorough  old  sailor — what  you 
young  men  would  call  'an  old  salt' — and 
couldn't  live  out  of  sight  of  the  blue 
sea  and  the  shipping.  It  is  a  disease 
that  a  good  many  of  us  take  who  have 
spent  our  best  years  on  the  sea.  I  have 
it  myself — a  sort  of  feeling  that  we  must 
be  under  another  kind  of  Providence, 
when  we  look  out  and  see  a  hill  on  this 
side  and  a  hill  on  that.  It's  wonderful 
to  see  the  trees  come  out  and  the  corn 
grow,  but  then  it  doesn't  come  so  home 
to  an  old  sailor.  I  know  that  we're  all 
just  as  much  under  the  Lord's  hand  on 
shore  as  at  sea ;  but  you  can't  read  in  a 
book  you  haven't  been  used  to,  and  they 
that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  they 
see  the  works  of  the  Lord  and  His 
wonders  in1  the  deep.  It  isn't  their 
fault  if  they  don't  see  His  wonders  on 
the  land  so  easily  as  other  people. 

But,  for  all  that,  there's  no  man  enjoys 
a  cruize  in  the  country  more  than  a 
sailor.  It's  forty  years  ago  since  I  started 
for  Plymouth,  but  I  haven't  forgotten 


152 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


the  road  a  bit,  or  how  beautiful  it  was ; 
all  through  the  New  Forest,  and  over 
Salisbury  Plain,  and  then  on  by  the 
mail  to  Exeter,  and  through  Devonshire. 
It  took  me  three  days  to  get  to  Ply- 
mouth, for  we  didn't  get  about  so  quick 
in  those  days. 

The  Commodore  was  very  kind  to  me 
when  I  got  there,  and  I  went  about  with 
him  to  the  ships  in  the  bay,  and  through 
the  dock-yard,  and  picked  up  a  good 
deal  that  was  of  use  to  me  afterwards. 
I  was  a  lieutenant  in  those  days,  and 
had  seen  a  good  deal  of  service,  and  I 
found  the  old  Commodore  had  a  great 
nephew  whom  he  had  adopted,  and  had 
set  his  whole  heart  upon.  He  was  an 
old  bachelor  himself,  but  the  boy  had 
come  to  live  with  him,  and  was  to  go  to 
sea ;  so  he  wanted  to  put  him  under 
some  one  who  would  give  an  eye  to  him 
for  the  first  year  or  two.  He  was  a 
light  slip  of  a  boy  then,  fourteen  years 
old,  with  deep  set  blue  eyes  and  long 
eyelashes,  and  cheeks  like  a  girl's,  but  as 
brave  as  a  lion  and  as  merry  as  a  lark. 
The  old  gentleman  was  very  pleased  to 
see  that  we  took  to  one  another.  We 
used  to  bathe  and  boat  together ;  and 
he  was  never  tired  of  hearing  my  stories 
about  the  great  admirals,  and  the  fleet, 
and  the  stations  I  had  been  on. 

Well,  it  was  agreed  that  I  should 
apply  for  a  ship  again  directly,  and  go 
up  to  London  with  a  letter  to  the  Ad- 
miralty from  the  Commodore,  to  help 
things  on.  After  a  month  or  two  I  was 
appointed  to  a  brig,  lying  at  Spithead ; 
and  so  I  wrote  off  to  the  Commodore, 
and  he  got  his  boy  a  midshipman's  berth 
on  board,  and  brought  him  to  Ports- 
mouth himself,  a  day  or  two  before  we 
sailed  for  the  Mediterranean.  The  old 
gentleman  came  on  board  to  see  his  boy's 
hammock  slung,  and  went  below  into 
the  cockpit  to  make  sure  that  all  was  right. 
He  only  left  us  by  the  pilot-boat,  when 
we  were  well  out  in  the  Channel  He 
was  very  low  at  parting  from  his  boy, 
but  bore  up  as  well  as  he  could ;  and  we 
promised  to  write  to  him  from  Gibraltar, 
and  as  often  afterwards  as  we  had  a  chance. 

I  was  soon  as  proud  and  fond  of  little 
Tom  Holdsworth  as  if  he  had  been  my 


own  younger  brother;  and,  for  that 
matter,  so  were  all  the  crew,  from  our 
captain  to  the  cook's  boy.  He  was  such 
a  gallant  youngster,  and  yet  so  gentle. 
In  one  cutting-out  business  we  had,  he 
climbed  over  the  boatswain's  shoulders, 
and  was  almost  first  on  deck;  how  he 
came  out  of  it  without  a  scratch  I  can't 
think  to  this  day.  But  he  hadn't  a  bit 
of  bluster  in  him,  and  was  as  kind  as 
a  woman  to  any  one  who  was  wounded 
or  down  with  sickness. 

After  we  had  been  out  about  a  year 
we  were  sent  to  cruise  off  Malta,  on  the 
look-out  for  the  French  fleet.  It  was  a 
long  business,  and  the  post  wasn't  so 
good  then  as  it  is  now.  We  were  some- 
times for  months  without  getting  a  letter, 
and  knew  nothing  of  what  was  happen- 
ing at  home,  or  anywhere  else.  We  had 
a  sick  tune  too  on  board,  and  at  last  he 
got  a  fever.  He  bore  up  against  it  like 
a  man,  and  wouldn't  knock  off  duty  for 
a  long  time.  He  was  midshipman  of  my 
watch ;  so  I  used  to  make  him  turn  in 
early,  and  tried  to  ease  things  to  him  as 
much  as  I  could ;  but  he  didn't  pick 
up,  and  I  began  to  get  very  anxious 
about  him.  I  talked  to  the  doctor,  and 
turned  matters  over  in  my  own  mind, 
and  at  last  I  came  to  think  he  wouldn't 
get  any  better  unless  he  could  sleep  out 
of  the  cockpit.  So,  one  night,  the  20th 
of  October  it  was — I  remember  it  well 
enough,  better  than  I  remember  any 
day  since  ;  it  was  a  dirty  night,  blowing 
half  a  gale  of  wind  from  the  southward, 
and  we  were  under  close-reefed  topsails — 
I  had  the  first  watch,  and  at  nine  o'clock 
I  sent  him  down  to  my  cabin  to  sleep 
there,  where  he  would  be  fresher  and 
quieter,  and  I  was  to  turn  into  his  ham- 
mock when  my  watch  was  over. 

I  was  on  deck  three  hours  or  so  after 
he  went  down,  and  the  weather  got 
dirtier  and  dirtier,  and  the  scud  drove 
by,  and  the  wind  sang  and  hummed 
through  the  rigging — it  made  me  melan- 
choly to  listen  to  it.  I  could  think  of 
,  nothing  but  the  youngster  down  below, 
and  what  I  should  say  to  his  poor  old 
uncle  if  anything  happened.  Well,  soon 
after  midnight  I  went  down  and  turned 
into  his  hammock.  I  didn't  go  to  sleep 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


153 


at  once,  for  I  remember  very  well  listen- 
ing to  the  creaking  of  the  ship's  timbers 
as  she  rose  to  the  swell,  and  watching 
the  lamp,  which  was  slung  from  the 
ceiling,  and  gave  light  enough  to  make 
out  the  other  hammocks  swinging  slowly 
all  together.  At  last,  however,  I  dropped 
off,  and  I  reckon  I  must  have  been 
asleep  about  an  hour,  when  I  woke 
with  a  start.  For  the  first  moment  I 
didn't  see  anything  but  the  swinging 
hammocks  and  the  lamp  ;  but  then  sud- 
denly I -became  aware  that  some  one 
was  standing  by  my  hammock,  and  I  saw 
the  figure  as  plainly  as  I  see  any  one  of 
you  now,  for  the  foot  of  the  hammock 
was  close  to  the  lamp,  and  the  light 
struck  full  across  on  the  head  and  shoul- 
ders, which  was  all  that  I  could  see  of 
him.  There  he  was,  the  old  Commodore ; 
his  grizzled  hair  coming  out  from  under  a 
red  woollen  night-cap,  and  his  shoulders 
wrapped  in  an  old  threadbare  blue  dress- 
ing-gown which  I  had  often  seen  him  in. 
His  face  looked  pale  and  drawn,  and  there 
was  a  wistful  disappointed  look  about  the 
eyes.  I  was  so  taken  aback  I  couldn't 
speak,  but  lay  watching  bim.  He  looked 
full  at  my  face  once  or  twice,  but  didn't 
seem  to  recognise  me  ;  and,  just  as  I  was 
getting  back  my  tongue  and  going  to 
speak,  he  said  slowly  :  'Where's  Tom  1 
this  is  his  hammock.  I  can't  see  Tom;' 
and  then  he  looked  vaguely  about  and 
passed  away  somehow,  but  how  I 
couldn't  see.  In  a  moment  or  two  I 
jumped  out  and  hurried  to  my  cabin, 
but  young  Holdsworth  was  fast  asleep. 
I  sat  down,  and  wrote  down  just  what  I 
had  seen,  making  a  note  of  the  exact 
time,  twenty  minutes  to  two.  I  didn't 
turn  in  again,  but  sat  watching  the 
youngster.  When  he  woke  I  asked  him 
if  he  had  heard  anything  of  his  great 
uncle  by  the  last  mail.  Yes,  he  had 
heard;  the  old  gentleman  was  rather 
feeble,  but  nothing  particular  the  matter. 
I  kept  my  own  counsel  and  never  told  a 
soul  in  the  ship ;  and,  when  the  mail  came 
to  hand  a  few  days  afterwards  with  a  letter 
from  the  Commodore  to  his  nephew,  dated 
late  in  September,  saying  that  he  was 
well,  I  thought  the  figure  by  my  ham- 
mock must  have  been  all  my  own  fancy. 
No.  8. — VOL.  n. 


However,  by  the  next  mail  came  the 
news  of  the  old  Commodore's  death. 
It  had  been  a  very  sudden  break-up, 
his  executor  said.  He  had  left  all 
his  property,  which  was  not  much,  to 
his  great-nephew,  who  was  to  get  leave 
to  come  home  as  soon  as  he  could. 

The  first  time  we  touched  at  Malta 
Tom  Holdsworth  left  us,  and  went 
home.  We  followed  about  two  years 
afterwards,  and  the  first  thing  I  did 
after  landing  was  to  find  out  the  Com- 
modore's executor.  -  He  was  a  quiet, 
dry  little  Plymouth  lawyer,  and  very 
civilly  answered  all  my  questions  about 
the  last  days  of  my  old  friend.  At  last 
I  asked  him  to  tell  me  as  near  as  he 
could  the  time  of  his  death ;  and  he 
put  on  his  spectacles,  and  got  his  diary, 
and  turned  over  the  leaves.  I  was  quite 
nervous  till  he  looked  up  and  said, — 
"  Twenty-five  minutes  to  two,  sir,  A.  M., 
on  the  morning  of  October  21st;  or  it 
might  be  a  few  minutes  later." 

"  How  do  you  mean,  sir  ] "  I  asked. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "it  is  an  odd  story. 
The  doctor  was  sitting  with  me,  watch- 
ing the  old  man,  and,  as  I  tell  you,  at 
twenty-five  minutes  to  two,  he  got  up 
and  said  it  was  all  over.  We  stood 
together,  talking  in  whispers  for,  it 
might  be,  four  or  five  minutes,  when  the 
body  seemed  to  move.  He  was  an  odd 
old  man,  you  know,  the  Commodore, 
and  we  never  could  get  him  properly  to 
bed,  but  he  lay  in  his  red  nightcap  and 
old  dressing-gown,  with  a  blanket  over 
him.  It  was  not  a  pleasant  sight,  I  can 
tell  you,  sir.  I  don't  think  one  of  you 
gentlemen,  who  are  bred  to  face  all 
manner  of  dangers,  -would  have  liked  it. 
As  I  was  saying,  the  body  first  moved, 
and  then  sat  up,  propping  itself  behind 
with  its  hands.  The  eyes  were  wide 
open,  and  he  looked  at  us  for  a  moment, 
and  said  slowly,  '  I've  been  to  the 
Mediterranean,  but  I  didn't  see  Tom.' 
Then  the  body  sank  back  again,  and 
this  time  the  old  Commodore  was  really 
dead.  But  it  was  not  a  pleasant  thing 
to  happen  to  one,  sir.  I  do  not  remem- 
ber anything  like  it  in  my  forty  years' 
practice." 

To  be  continued. 


154 


THE    ELDEE'S   DAUGHTER. 


CAST  her  forth  in  her  shame  ; 

She  is  no  daughter  of  mine  ; 
We  had  an  honest  name, 

All  of  our  house  and  line  ; 
And  she  has  brought  us  to  shame. 

What  are  you  whispering  there, 
Parleying  with  sin  at  the  door  ? 

I  have  no  blessing  for  her  ; 

She  is  dead  to  me  evermore  ; — 

Dead  !  would  to  God  that  she  were  ! 

Dead  !  and  the  grass  o'er  her  head  ! 

There  is  no  shame  in  dying  : 
They  were  wholesome  tears  we  shed 

Where  all  her  little  sisters  are  lying ; 
And  the  love  of  them  is  not  dead. 

I  did  not  curse  her,  did  1 1 

I  meant  not  that,  0  Lord  : 
We  are  cursed  enough  already ; 

Let  her  go  with  never  a  word  : — 
I  have  blessed  her  often  already. 

You  are  the  mother  that  bore  her, 
I  do  not  blame  you  for  weeping  ; 

They  had  all  gone  before  her, 

And  she  had  our  hearts  a-keeping ; 

And  0  the  love  that  we  bore  her  ! 

I  thought  that  she  was  like  you ; 

I  thought  that  the  light  in  her  face 
Was  the  youth  and  the  morning  dew, 

And  the  winsome  look  of  grace  : 
But  she  was  never  like  you. 

Is  the  night  dark  and  wild  1 

Dark  is  the  way  of  sin — 
The  way  of  an  erring  child, 

Dark  without  and  within. — 
And  tell  me  not  she  was  beguiled. 

What  should  beguile  her,  truly  ? 

Did  we  not  bless  them  both  ? 
There  was  gold  between  them  duly, 

And  we  blessed  their  plighted  troth  ; 
Though  I  never  liked  him  truly. 


Let  XTS  read  a  word  from  the  Book ; 

I  think  that  my  eyes  grow  dim; — 
She  used  to  sit  in  the  nook 

There  by  the  side  of  him, 
And  hand  me  the  holy  Book. 

I  wot  not  what  ails  me  to-night, 
I  cannot  lay  hold  on  a  text. 

0  Jesus  !  guide  me  aright, 
Eor  my  soul  is  sore  perplexed, 

And  the. book  seems  dark  as  the  night. 

And  the  night  is  stormy  and  dark  ; 

And  dark  is  the  way  of  sin  ; 
And  the  stream  will  be  swollen  too ; 
and  hark 

How  the  water  roars  in  the  Lynn  ! — 
It's  an  ugly  ford  in  the  dark. 

What  did  you  say  1     To-night 

Might  she  sleep  in  her  little  bed  1 — 

Her  bed  so  pure  and  white  ! 

How  often  I've  thought  and  said 

They  were  both  so  pure  and  white. 

But  that  was  a  lie — for  she 

Was  a  whited  sepulchre ; 
Yet  0  she  was  white  to  me, 

And  I've  buried  my  heart  in  her ; 
And  it's  dead  wherever  she  be. 

Nay,  she  never  could  lay  her  head 
Again  in  the  little  white  room 

Where  all  her  little  sisters  were  laid  ; 
She  would  see  them  still  in  the  gloom, 

All  chaste  and  pure — but  dead. 

We  will  go  all  together, 

She,  and  you,  and  I ; 
There's  the  black  peat-hag  'mong  the 
heather, 

Where  we  could  all  of  us  lie, 
And  bury  our  shame  together. 

Any  foul  place  will  do 

For  a  grave  to  us  now  in  our  shame : — 
She  may  lie  with  me  and  you, 

But  she  shall  not  sleep  with  them, 
And  the  dust  of  my  fathers  too. 


The  Royal  Academy. 


Is  it  sin,  you  say,  I  have  spoken  ? 

I  know  not ;  my  head  feels  strange  ; 
And  something  in  me  is  broken ; 

Lord,  is  it  the  coming  change  ? 
Forgive  the  word  I  have  spoken. 

I  scarce  know  what  I  have  said  ; 

Was  I  hard  on  her  for  her  fall  ? 
That  was  wrong;  but  the  rest  were  dead, 

And  I  loved  her  more  than  them  all — 
For  she  heired  all  the  love  of  the  dead. 

One  by  one  as  they  died, 

The  love,  that  was  owing  to  them, 
Centred  on  her  at  my  side; 

And  then  she  brought  us  to  shame, 
And  broke  the  crown  of  my  pride. 

Lord,  pardon  mine  erring  child  : 

Do  we  not  all  of  us  err  ? 
Dark  was  my  heart  and  wild  ; 

0  might  I  but  look  on  her, 
Once  more,  my  lost  loved  child. 


For  I  thought,  not  long  ago, 

That  I  was  in  Abraham's  bosom, 

And  she  lifted  a  face  of  woe, 

Like  s*orne  pale,  withered  blossom, 

Out  of  the  depths  below. 


Do  not  say,  when  I  am  gone, 

That  she  brought  my  grey  hairs  to 

the  grave ; 
Women  do  that ;  but  let  her  alone  ; 

She'll  have  sorrow  enough  to  brave  ; 
That  would  turn  her  heart  into  stone. 


Is  that  her  hand  in  mine  ? 

Now,  give  me  thine,  sweet  wife  : 
I  thank  thee,  Lord,  for  this  grace  of 
thine, 

And  light,  and  peace,  and  life  ; 
And  she  is  thine  and  mine.' 

ORWELL. 


THE   EOYAL  ACADEMY. 


A  GOOD  ruler  but  a  bad  general  was 
Ferdinand,  Duke  of  Brunswick.  The 
French  defeated  him  at  Auerstadt  and 
Jena ;  mortally  wounded,  he  retired  to 
his .  own  territories  ^to  die,  but,  being 
hunted  out,  took  refuge  within  those  of 
the  Danish  king.  His  enemies  over- 
ran Brunswick  and  committed  such 
dreadful  excesses  that  the  huzzars  of 
Brunswick  Oels,  assuming  a  black 
uniform  of  perpetual  mourning  for  their 
loss,  signified  a  determination  neither 
to  give  nor  receive  quarter  by  wearing 
on  their  shakoes  a  silver  skull  and  cross- 
bones.  They  fulfilled  the  vow,  and  their 
hatred  of  the  French  was  deepened  by 
the  death  of  the  young  Duke  William 
Frederick,  at  Ligny,  on  the  day  before 
Waterloo.  Mr.  Millais  has  chosen  for 
his  contribution  the  parting  of  an  officer 
of  this  famous  corps  of  the  Black- 
Brunswiekers  from  his  mistress.  He 
insinuates  a  French  leaning  to  her 
judgment  by  giving  a  French  character 
to  her  face,  and  showing  hung  upon 
the  wall  of  the  room  a  print  after 


David's  picture  of  "  Napoleon  crossing 
the  Alps."  She  would  have  him  stay, 
not  only  as  her  lover,  but  as  the 
opponent  of  her  own  party.  For  this 
she  has  interposed  herself  between  him 
and  the  door, — standing  up  against  his 
breast,  she  holds  it  back  with  one  hand 
upon  the  lock,  although  he  firmly  strives 
to  open  it  and  leave  her.  For  this  the 
tears  are  ready  to  start  under  her 
broad  eyelids,  and  for  this  she  lays  her 
head  against  his  bosom ;  her  eyes  are 
downcast,  and  her  lips  tremble  with 
emotion — suppressed  though  evident. 
He  looks  at  her  depressed  face,  in 
pique  averted  from,  him,  himself  hurt 
that  she  owns  not  the  call  of  duty  ha 
must  obey. 

"  I  could  not  love  thee,  deare,  so  much, 
Loved  I  not  honour  more" — 

is  the  motto  he  might  take  from  Love- 
lace's song.  His  will  is  stern  and 
heart  strong,  and  she  does  but  make 
the  duty  painful  by  resisting.  Maybe 
he  feels  that  a  political  bias  in- 


156 


The  Royal  Academy. 


fluences  her  conduct.  Does  this  seem 
melodramatic,  good  reader — this  story  of 
vengeance,  skulls,  and  cross-bones,  and 
lovers'  parting  ?  Possibly  it  may  to 
some  who  believe  in  no  more  earnest 
expression  of  passion  than  an  operatic 
duet  siing  before  the  footlights.  But 
let  such  sceptics  see  Millais'  picture, 
and  they  will  recognise  more  than  the 
raptures  of  the  kid-glove  school.  He 
has  dealt  with  great  wisdom  upon  the 
broad,  bold,  and  blunt  features  of  the 
German  officer ;  the  square  forehead  and 
knitted  brow,  the  clear  firm-set  lips; 
the  hair  cut  short  giving  a  precision  and 
rigidity  to  his  face,  which,  brown  but 
pale,  typifies  a  resolute  grief  admirably. 
She  too,  with  her  French  face,  is  half 
unworthy  of  such  a  lover,  piqued  and 
nigh  fretful  as  she  is.  Passionate  as  a 
child,  and  unstable  as  water,  she  would 
stay  his  will  with  her  prejudices.  All 
this  must  strike  the  most  unobservant 
as  the  converse  of  the  motive  of  the 
"  Huguenot" — to  which  this  picture  is 
a  pendant.  Let  us  think  how  the 
artist  displays  his  knowledge  of  the 
heart  in  thus  treating  two  allied 
subjects  so  diversely.  In  both  the 
woman  would  save  her  lover,  one  by 
keeping  him  away  from  danger;  the 
other,  humbler  and  more  devoted,  bow- 
ing to  the  will  of  the  strong-hearted 
man,  strives  only  to  gain  him  a  little 
safety — only  a  little — with  the  badge  of 
Guise !  We  are  to  suppose  too  that 
she  is  not  aware  of  the  Protestantism  of 
her  lover,  at  any  rate  that  it  is  not 
publicly  known ;  so  she  is  tempting 
him  to  no  overt  dishonour — as  she  of 
the  Black-Brunswicker  does ;  therefore 
the  entreaty  of  that  sweet  face,  whose 
beauty  men  have  not  yet  done  justice 
to,  because  forsooth  it  is  not  tamely 
vacant  of  expression.  The  depth  of 
her  tenderness  is  very  different  from 
that  passionate  caprice  of  the  lady  of 
Brussels,  who  would  not  guard  her  lover, 
but  rather  lock  him  up  out  of  the  way 
of  hurting  or  being  hurt. 

For  technical  merit  this  work  is  a 
triumph  throughout.  Getting  over  the 
difficulty  of  the  mass  of  black  in  the 
soldier's  uniform  by  any  means  would  be 


honourable  to  the  painter,  but  every  artist 
will  appreciate  the  skill  with  which  Millais 
has  opposed  this  by  a  sudden  contrast 
of  the  intense  white  of  the  lady's  dress, 
so  that  they  negative  one  another ;  thenr 
to  overcome  the  chill  effect  of  both — 
having  grouped  round  them  warm  greens 
of  the  wall-paper,  mauve  of  the  lady's 
shawl,  and  hot  transparent  brown  of  the 
polished  mahogany  door,  white  and 
black  repeated  in  the  print  on  the 
wall, — he  adds  the  warm-tinted  floor,  the 
variety  in  unity  of  broken  tints  of  warm 
or  cold  counterchanged  upon  the  black 
and  the  white  dress ;  lastly,  the  focali- 
zation  of  hot  tint  with  crimson-scarlet 
of  the  broad  arm-ribbon  of  the  lady,  and 
the  subtle  employment  of  downright 
cold  blue  in  the  braid  running  athwart 
the  soldier's  figure.  We  shall  be  told 
that  these  are  technical  subtleties  people 
don't  understand,  but  reply  that  they 
are  not  subtleties,  but  patent  to  the 
least  taught  eye.  Colour  is  as  much 
an  art  as  music,  being  in  fact  to  the  eye 
what  music  is  to  the  ear, — the  expres- 
sion of  beauty — 

"  That  may  overtake  far  thought, 
With  music  that  it  makes." 

The  time  is  rapidly  coming  when  this 
will  be  understood,  and  critics  no  more 
omit  to  describe  the  .colour  of  a  picture 
— heart  of  art  as  it  is — than  they  would 
the  melody  of  a  piece  of  music. 

Mr.  Frith's  "Claude  Duval"  displays 
no  such  knowledge  as  Mr.  MUlais' 
work.  Comparatively  it  is  deficient 
in  artistic  power  and  feeling  for  the 
subject,  relatively  coarse  as  that  is. 
Claude  Duval,  the  highwayman,  took  a 
lady  out  of  her  coach  and  made  her 
dance  a  corranto  with  him  in  the  road 
while  his  companions  rifled  the  equipage. 
His  figure  is  stiff  and  angular,  needs  grace 
and  spirit  of  action ;  that  of  the  lady  is 
much  better;  she  looks  pallid  with  fear, 
and  trembling  with  suppressed  anger. 
The  group  inside  the  coach  is  the  best 
part  of  the  picture ;  a  masked  ruffian 
enters  it  with  a  grin,  demanding  the 
occupiers'  valuables.  An  old  lady  clasps 
her  hands  entreatingly,  a  younger  one 
faults  at  the  spectacle.  An  old  man 


The  Eoyal  Academy. 


157 


sits  bound  by  the  roadside,  after  having 
struggled  against  the  thieves. 

Sir  E.  Landseer  has  outdone  himself 
with  his  great  picture,  "  A  Flood  in  the 
Highlands."  A  torrent  rushes  through 
the  village  street,  bearing  large  pine- 
trees  torn  up  by  the  roots,  and  carried 
down  from  the  bank  above;  these  have 
fallen  across  a  waggon,  the  horse  of  which 
struggles  in  the  flood;  some  men  on 
the  roof  of  a  cottage  endeavour  to  save 
him  by  means  of  a  rope,  that  stretched 
to  the  utmost  does  but  check  the  speed. 
Immersed,  and  nigh  spent,  an  ox  has 
come  driving  full  upon  a  cottage  in  the 
foreground,  and  with  bloody  nostrils  and 
distended  eyes,  strives  vainly  to  get 
footing  for  its  hoofs.  A  goat  whose 
eyes  are  glazing  in  death  is  swept 
down  beside  the  larger  beast,  and 
will  soon  sink  in  the  waves.  Upon 
the  roof  of  this  last  cottage,  up  to  the 
very  threshold  of  which  the  water  flows, 
are  gathered  its  inhabitants,  a  woman 
with  her  child,  whom  she  has  just 
taken  from  the  cradle;  and  now,  so 
ghastly  is  the  spectacle  of  death  pre-, 
sented  by  the  drowning  beasts  before 
her  that  she  lets  even  the  infant  lie 
scarce  noticed  on  her  lap.  Glaring  with 
rounded  eyes  of  horror,  and  parted  jaw, 
fixed  wide  in  terror,  with  outthrust 
head,  and  body  bowed,  she  stares,  her 
forehead  in  deep  lines,  and  her  cheek 
hollowed  out  fearfully.  The  cradle  is 
empty,  the  clothes  tossed  over;  before 
it  a  sheep-dog,  with  pricked  ears  and 
quivering  flanks,  whimpers  with  fright. 
Behind  her  sits  an  old  man,  blind, 
scarce  conscious,  but  mutely  praying; 
by  his  side,  a  boy,  dripping  wet,  clasps 
a,  puppy  he  has  saved  close  to  his  chest ; 
the  boy  is  pallid-cheeked,  andhis  eyes  red. 
On  a  ladder,  by  which  they  have  reached 
the  roof,  is  a  group  of  poultry,  fussily 
troubled,  and  stupidly  selfish.  The 
cock  roosts  lazily ;  one  of  the  hens  in  her 
nervous  alarm — true  bit  of  nature  this — 
has  laid  an  egg,  which,  falling  on  a  lower 
step  before  a  cat,  astonishes  her  greatly, 
as,  with  curved  tail,  she  rises  to  in- 
spect it.  Above  the  poultry,  a  mouse 
creeps  upon  the  step,  having  judi- 
ciously put  them,  between  himself  and 


the  cat.  The  trophies  of  the  household, 
that  have  been  saved  as  its  palladium, 
lie  heaped  in  front, — a  brass-studded 
target,  wherewith  the  old  grandsire 
might  have  gone  to  battle  in  the  '45 ;  a 
heap  of  plaids,  and  triple  case  of  High- 
land knives.  Overhead  the  great  pines 
roar  in  the  wind's  strife,  bending  their 
red  branches  like  canes ;  black  game, 
driven  from  the  moors,  cling  there  ;  and 
the  wild  grey  clouds  of  storm  hurry 
heavily  over  the  scene  of  ruin.  Close 
undor  the  eaves  of  the  cottage  in  front,  a 
hare,  borne  down  from  the  open,  and 
.  sheltered  from  the  force  of  the  deluge  by 
the  slack- water,  burrows  fearfully  in  haste 
a  way  into  the  thatch  of  the  habitation  of 
its  enemies ;  its  ears  are  laid  back,  and  the 
eyes,  that  Nature  has  made  ever  expres- 
sive of  alarm,  have  now  no  meaning  in 
them  but  the  wild  instinct  of  self-pre- 
servation. "We  have  said  the  water  has 
reached  the  cottage  threshold,  and  it 
has  flooded  the  interior.  A  flock  of 
ducks  swim  before  it.  Over  it  is  placed 
a  board,  with  the  inscription  denoting 
the  occupation  of  the  inmates ;  thus  :— •* 

ALICK  GORDON. 
Upputting. 

Stance  mile  East. 

For  the  benefit  of  Southron  readers, 
let  us  say  that  "upputting" — genuine 
old  Saxon  the  Celtic  proprietor  has 
adopted — is  equivalent  to  the  offer  of 
"beds."  Does  not  promise  good  ones 
even  ;  you  may  stop,  and  that  is  all ; 
still  less  does  it  hold  out  hopes  of  "  good 
entertainment  for  man  and  beast,"  so  rife, 
but  so  seldom  fulfilled,  in  the  English 
villages.  "Stance  mile  East,"  signifies 
that  there  is  a  mile-stone  so  placed. 
In  the  Highlands  the  primitive  direction 
to  travellers  is  by  the  points  of  the  com- 
pass, and  not  "  first  turning  to  the  right 
and  third  to  the  left,"  of  the  less  intel- 
ligible English  custom. 

Mr.  Elmore's  picture,  "  The  Tuileries, 
20th  June,  1792,"  has  for  subject 
Marie  Antoinette  before  the  mob.  The 
lowest  of  the  people  have  flooded  the 
Palace;  and,  the  Queen's  attendants 
having  brought  her  children,  in  order 
that  their  presence  might  protect  their 


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mother,  she,  "standing  behind  a  large 
table,  faces  her  enemies  with  the  here- 
ditary resolution  of  the  Austrian  race. 
This  keeps  down  the  manifestation  of 
terror ;  and  she  is  haughtily  self-pos- 
sessed enough,  the  inward  dread  show- 
ing itself  alone  in  her  sunk  features,  and 
eyelids  that  droop  quiveringly.  "She  has 
assumed  the  Republican  cockade.  The 
Dauphin  sits  upon  the  table's  edge, 
clinging  to  his  mother,  wearing  the 
red  cap  of  liberty.  Leaning  by  the 
side  is  her  daughter,  whom  she  clasps 
against  her  breast.  Madame  is  nearer 
the  window,  far  more  terrified  than  she 
who  is  more  in  danger.  Beyond  the 
table  is  a  hot  crowd  of  urgent  and 
shrieking  women,  and  a  few  men,  armed 
and  unarmed.  A  withered  hag  vocife- 
rates loudly,  snapping  her  lean  talons  at 
the  Queen.  The  last  has  been  im- 
pressed with  the  appearance  of  a  younger 
woman  Avho  had  been  loudest  of  all.  Re- 
monstrating, she  demanded  what  harm 
she  had  done  the  people,  that  they  should 
hate  her :  "I  was  happy  when  you 
loved  me."  The  woman  addressed,  who 
has  a  coarse  beauty,  moved  by  this, 
desisted,  and  now  looks  half  regret- 
fully upon  the'  Queen.  A  more  brutal 
girl  rebukes  such  tenderness  of  heart, 
and  urges  further  violence.  The  crowd 
.sways,  to  and  fro,  jostling  about,  and, 
screaming  oaths  of  vengeance,  seems 
bent  on  destruction.  In  front  of  the  table 
lies  a  gilded  chair  of  state,  broken  to 
pieces ;  the  gilded  crown  shattered  upon 
its  back.  The  whole  picture  is  full  of 
action  and  commotion,  displays  great 
variety  of  character  and  expression, 
and  for  execution  is  much  superior  to 
anything  the  artist  has  yet  produced. 
Contrasted  to  this  in  all  respects  is 
Mr.  Dyce's  "St.  John  leading  Home  his 
Adopted  Mother."  After  the  entomb- 
ment, it  is  related  that  the  "  beloved  " 
"  took  her  to  his  own  home."  They 
move  across  the  front  of  the  picture, 
St.  John  leading  the  Virgin, — no  lacry- 
mose  beauty,  but  a  worn  woman,  past 
the  prime  of  life,  by  the  hand.  His 
face,  notwithstanding  a  certain  asceti- 
cism of  execution  that  makes  it  look 
peevish,  is  as  beautiful  as  it  should 


be,  his  divided  hair  falling  in  equal 
masses  on  his  shoulders,  the  features 
calm,  pale,  and  regular ;  he  moves 
erect  and  elastically,  with  a  graceful 
mien,  the  loose  robes  flowing  about 
him  as  he  goes,  his  head  bare.  The 
Virgin's"  head  is  covered  with  a 
wimple ;  her  sorrow-stricken  face  de- 
pressed, and  head  held  sideways ;  her 
dress  massed  about  her.  Behind  is 
seen  the  new  tomb,  two  sitting  at  its 
entrance:  from  the  gate  of  the  inclo- 
sure  two  more  depart ;  upon  the  horizon 
the  sun  of  "a  summer  dawn  arises 
through  a  mass  of  purple  cloud,  throw- 
ing golden  light  upon  the  sepulchre ; 
while  Christ's  mother  and  the  "most 
loved  "  pace  away  from  its  radiance  into 
the  chilly  shadow  of  the  foreground.  This 
foreground  is  elaborately  and  delicately 
wrought  with  weeds,  grass,  and  herbage. 
The  adoption  of  a  system  of  execution 
like  that  of  the  early  Italian  school  is 
not  inapt  to  the  subject. 

"The  Man  of  Sorrows,"  by  this 
painter,  shows  Christ  seated  in  the  wil- 
derness. This  is  an  elaborately  exe- 
cuted work,  displaying  far  more  power 
of  colour  than  that  above  described. 
The  landscape  portion  is  delightfully 
faithful,  and  most  tenderly  treated ; 
but  the  artist  has,  probably  from  a  desire 
to  show  the  universality  of  the  motive 
he  illustrates,  chosen  an  English  in- 
stead of  an  Eastern  view,  for  his  back- 
ground. All  the  herbage  is  English ; 
the  sky,  soft  grey -blue,  like  an  English 
sky.  It  may  be  that  the  face  of  the 
Redeemer  lacks  the  dignity  of  resigna- 
tion ;  but  his  action,  seated  upon  a  bank, 
with  head  downcast  and  hands  strongly 
clasped  upon  his  lap,  is  expressive,  and 
admirably  apt.  Mr.  Dyce's  "  View  of 
Pegwell  Bay,"  notwithstanding  its  ex- 
treme delicacy  and  careful  treatment, 
from  the  want  of  due  gradations  of 
tone  and  breadth  of  effect,  pleases  us 
less  than  either  of  the  before-named. 
Bits  of  nature,  seen  especially  in  the 
foreground  rocks,  glittering  pools  of 
water,  and  shining,  saturated  sand,  are 
really  delicious. 

The    scene   from    "The   Taming   of 
the  Shrew/7  Petruchio  overthrowing  the 


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159 


table,  by  Mr.  Egg,  is  admirably  full  of 
auction  and  character.  The  tamer  has 
sprung  from  his  seat,  plunged  the  carv- 
ing-fork into  the  joint  of  meat  before 
him,  holds  it  up  so,  brandishes  the 
carving-knife,  and  looks  melo-dramatic 
thunders  at  the  waiting-men.  Poor 
Katherine,  bursting  with  wrath,  and  yet 
dismayed  at  the  outrageous  conduct  of 
her  master,  knits  her  brows  vainly,  and 
would  gladly  escape.  Her  face  is  an 
admirable  study  of  expression,  not  at- 
all  in  the  conventional  style  of  character 
in  which  she  is  often  represented,  but 
showing  a  fresh  conception  of  the  cha- 
racter altogether.  The  execution  is  a 
little  thin  in  some  parts,  as  in  the  heads 
of  two  servants  that  are  opposed  to  the 
light  of  an  open  window.  This  picture 
exhibits  extremely  fine  qualities  of 
colour,  of  a  deep  and  vigorous  kind  ;  it 
is  rich,  without  being  hot  or  tawdry. 

Mr.  John  Phillip's  "  Marriage  of  the 
Princess  Eoyal '"'  is  a  very  fine  work 
of  its  class.  More  has  been  made  out  of 
the  subject  than  was  to  be  expected 
from  the  constraints  and  inconveniences 
under  which  it  must  have  been  exe- 
cuted. The  portraits  are  excellently 
done,  and  the  row  of  rosy  bridesmaids 
gives  a  peculiar  charm  to  the  work.  -  A 
flood  of  rosy  soft  light  seems  to  come 
out  of  them,  doubtless  indicative  of  the 
artist's  intense  satisfaction  in  dealing 
with  anything  so  charming  and  so 
natural 

A  long  warm  tract  of  moonlight  in  the 
sea,  that  goes  rippling  and  gently  heav- 
ing to  afar  off,  where  it  is  lost  in  the 
vapours  of  the  mysterious  horizon,  over 
which  the  soft  luminary's  light  casts  .a 
radiant  veil, — the  sky  calm  and  still,  and 
slow  clouds  travelling  athwart  it !  A 
mild  gentle  wind  like  a  sleeping  pulse 
lifts  the  sail  of  an  open  boat,  filling  it 
in  irregular  puffs,  but  to  collapse  again, 
letting  the  cordage  rattle  softly.  Three  are 
seated  in  the  boat.  A  young  man,  with 
large  gaunt  eyes  fixed  in  thought,  leans 
forward  in  his  place,  the  long  robes  of 
a  Greek  of  the  later  time  folded  about 
him,  and  his  whole  attitude  bespeaking 
the  feelings  of  one  who  had  just  seen  a 
great  horror,  so  great  that  he  contem- 


plates the  impression  on  his  brain 
again  and  yet  again,  as  that  of  a  spec- 
tacle that  should  never  leave  his  sight. 
Beside  him,  aad  all  at  length  upon  the 
vessel's  thwart,  a  woman  leans  back, 
her  face  upturned,  regarding  the  sky 
vaguely  and  dreamily  as  that  of  one 
whose  great  dread  was  over,  and  now, 
•  exhausted  with  the  suffering,  yet  feels 
a  great  happiness  nigh  within  her  grasp. 
Nearer  to  us,  and  facing  them,  so  that  her 
back  is  towards  ourselves,  sits  a  second 
woman,  also  young,  holding  a  Greek  lyre 
upon  her  knee^  over  whose  strings  from 
time  to  time  her  fingers  go,  bringing 
out  a  melancholy  wail,  like  that  of  one 
who,  saved  in  person,  had  yet  lost  that 
which  was  more  than  all.  The  lighted 
gloom  of  night  above  and  around, — still- 
ness, the  lisping  of  the  sea  chattering 
by  the  keel !  A  few  low  notes  of  music, 
and  the  night- wind  rustling  in  the  sail ! 
This  is  Mr.  Poole's  picture  of  "  Glaucus, 
Nydia,  and  lone  escaping  from  Pompeii." 
It  is  like  a  vision  or  a  dream,  the  ecstatic 
fancy  of  an  opium-eater  in  his  narcotic 
sleep,  just  when  the  fervour  of  the  drug 
is  slaked  and  the  procession  of  imagery 
takes  pathetic  and  mournful  phases.  The 
wide  and  moonlit  sea,  and  three  escaping 
from,  a  lava-burnt  city;  the  darkness 
of  preternatural  night  that  had  been 
instead  of  day.  Thus  they  had  left 
crowds,  earthquake,  fire,  and  falling 
rocks, — the  ashes  that  made  night,  the 
crashing  palaces,  and  the  roaring,  shriek- 
ing people, — to  find  themselves  upon  the 
open,  secret  sea,  alorie  and  silent  under 
the  weight  of  awe.  Such  is  the  impres- 
sion excited  by  this  singularly  poetical 
work.  Its  sole  intention  has  been  to 
create  an  impression  of  something 
vaguely  beautiful,  undefined,  vast,  and 
dreamy.  The  figures  are  almost  form- 
less; the  heads,  technically  speaking, 
are  ill- drawn ;  the  hands  dispropor- 
tionate ;  the  very  colour  itself,  upon 
which  the  whole  impression  is  founded, 
will  not  bear  examination  or  comparison 
with  the  simple  prosaic  truths  of  nature. 
Despite  all  this,  the  intense  feeling  of 
the  artist  has  not  failed  to  arouse  a  re- 
ciprocating sympathy  in  our  own  minds, 
and  there  is  no  painter,  not  even  Land- 


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seer  himself,  whom  we  should  miss  more 
from  his  place  on  the  wall  than  Paul 
Falconer  Poole. 

There  is  a  great  contrast  to  be  found 
in  the  manner  of  treating  a  poetic  sub- 
ject, on  comparison  of  this  picture  of 
the  flight  from  Pompeii,  by  Poole,  with 
that  by  the  painter  of  the  "  Evening 
Sun,"  Mr.  F.  G.  Danby.  "Phoebus  rising 
from  the  Sea,"  by  the  lustre  of  his  first 
vivifying  rays,  through  the  drifting  forms 
of  a  rolling  wave,  calls  into  worldly 
existence  "The  Queen  of  Beauty,"  which 
wordy  title  is  in  itself  against  the  picture. 
The  work  is  an  attempt  to  express  the 
antique  classic  feeling  upon  a  represen- 
tation of  nature  poetically  conceived. 
It  is  dawn  over  the  Greek  sea, — a 
mass  of  golden  clouds  on  the  horizon 
are  modelled  into  the  shape  of  Phcebus 
and  his  car,  and  those  attendants  of 
the  morning  that  ever  dance  before  it. 
Farther  off,  and  just  lighted  by  the 
warm  ray,  is  a  cloudy  Olympus,  the 
gods  sitting  in  council  or  banquet,  for 
their  whole  forms  are  so  vague  and  un- 
determined that  it  is  difficult  to  deter- 
mine which.  It  is  a  mere  cloud-phan- 
tasm, such  as  the  fancy  feigns  Avhen  idly 
gazing  at  the  summer  sky.  The  calm 
sea  of  the  morning  flows  softly  to  the 
shore,  and  breaks  in  the  gentlest  waves 
upon  a  shell-strewn  beach.  Overhead  is 
the  argentine  azure  of  day's  new  birth. 
Venus  seated  in  a  shell  and  a  group  of 
nymphs  are  on  the  shallows  of  the 
shore.  But  Mr.  Danby  has  ruined  the 
motive  of  his  subject  by  treating  it 
prosaically.  The  cloudy  Olympus  looks 
a  sham  beside  the  solid  sand  and  multi- 
tude of  sea-shells.  Apollo  and  his  horses 
affect  us  not,  because  they  come  in  con- 
tact with  the  truthful  and  natural  paint- 
ing of  the  sea.  The  contrast  jars  between 
the  realm  of  fact  and  that  of  imagina- 
tion. The  artist  must  convey  the  in- 
tended impression  by  means  of  one  or 
the  other  alone ;  they  are  not  to  be 
mixed  with  impunity — hence  the  total 
failure  of  all  pictures  of  dreams,  except 
when  ideally  treated,  as  Rembrandt  did 
that  of  Jacob.  "We  cannot  tolerate  the 
figure  of  a  sleeping  man  and  a  picture 
of  his  dream  stuck  in  the  sky :  either 


we  are  with  the  dreamer  and  uncon- 
scious of  ourselves  and  the  dream  ;  or  we 
see  the  dream  alone,  and  our  imagination 
must  be  content  with  the  dream :  no 
presentiment  of  both  can  exist  together, 
but  is  repulsive  to  the  feelings  and  the 
taste.  Thus  Mr.  Danby  has  failed.  His 
poetic  Venus  and  cloud-realms  above 
go  down  before  the  hard  sand  of  the 
shore  and  dash  of  the  sea- waves,  and  we 
are  brought  to  see  the  bad  drawing  of 
the  goddess  herself,  and  distortions  of 
the  nymphs.  We  actually  rejoice,  so 
prosaic  is  the  impression,  that  these 
queer  females  are  near  the  shore,  and 
not  like  to  be  drowned.  Mr.  Poole 
gives  us  nothing  whatever  of  nature, 
but  the  brain-impression  of  a  poetic 
instinct :  we  do  not  come  in  contact 
with  substantial  angles  of  fact,  but  drift 
with  him  into  the  region  of  fancy. 

Placed  upon  the  line,  in  a  conspicuous 
position,  is  a  picture  by  Mr.  Solomon 
Hart,  E.A.,  entitled  "Sacred  Music," 
No.  176,  showing  three  vulgar  women, 
all  of  whose  faces  are  out  of  drawing ; 
one  singing,  and  two  playing  on  man- 
dolins. If  such  a  picture  as  this  is  hung, 
what  must  have  been  those  thousands 
that  are  annually  rejected.  Or,  turn 
to  another  of  Mr.  Hart's  pictures.  It 
is  considered  imperative  -  upon  an  ar- 
tist, before  he  commences  a  picture, 
if  it  contains  architecture,  to  acquaint 
himself  with  at  least  the  leading  prin- 
ciples of  the  construction  and  ornamen- 
tation of  any  style  to  be  employed.  If 
he  paints  from  a  particular  locality,  he 
must  present  us  with  something  like  a 
portrait  of  that  place  if  existing  ;  if  not 
so,  he  must  reconstruct  it  from  autho- 
rities as  well  as  he  can.  There  is  hardly 
any  building  of  the  middle  ages  that 
could  be  more  easily  reconstructed  than 
old  St.  Paul's  Cathedral ;  there  are  oceans 
of  prints  of  it ;  descriptions  and  plans 
abound.  Its  history  could  be  traced 
from  decade  to  decade, — from  comple- 
tion to  ruin  in  the  Great  Fire  of  London. 
Mr.  Hart  chooses  a  subject  showing 
the  interior  of  this  building,  "Arch- 
bishop Langton,  after  a  Mass  in  old  St. 
Paul's,  conjuring  the  Earl  of  Pembroke 
and  the  Barons  to  extort  from  John 


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161 


the  Ratification  of  the  Charter  of  Henry 
the  First."  Here  is  the  primate  and  the 
barons,  here  the  most  beautiful  of  Eng- 
lish cathedrals.  Alas,  Mr.  Hart !  is  that 
the  glorious  rose-window  men  raved 
about ;  are  these  the  piers  of  old  St. 
Paul's  1  Indeed  there  is  hardly  one  of 
them  upright.  Has  the  artist  no  more 
eye  for  beauty  than  to  "  do  "  them  thus, 
devoid  of  carving,  or  of  ornament,  of 
proportion  even  ?  Are  those  the  arches 
and  that  the  groined  roof  above  1  The 
figures  may  be  better,  let  us  hope ;  so, 
look.  Indeed,  they  are  not  quite  so  bad, 
and  might  stand,  which  the  columns 
will  hardly  do  ;  we  see  what  the  dresses 
are  meant  for  in  every  quality  but  tex- 
ture ;  and,  although  there  is  bad  drawing 
in  every  one  of  them,  yet  nothing  like 
so  palpable  an  offence  to  the  observer's 
taste  as  showing  a  cathedral  without 
carvings  and  without  colours,  and  in  the 
state  to  which  the  iconoclasts,  and  the 
white-wash  brushes  of  centuries  of  Deans 
and  Chapters,  have  reduced  the  other 
glories  of  English  architecture.  Not  less 
extraordinary  and  not  less  false  is  the 
flesh  painting,  or  the  surface  of  tinted 
chalk,  for  it  is  as  dry  as  that,  and  as 
crude  as  a  coarse  system  of  handling  can 
make  it.  Few  of  the  faces  are  in  better 
drawing  in  this  picture  than  in  the  last. 
Mr.  Hart  is  Professor  of  Painting  to  the 
Royal  Academy,  a  post  at  one  time  held, 
or  rather  we  should  say  filled,  by  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  whose  mantle  must  be 
too  small  for  his  successor.  If  this 
gentleman  had  never  painted  better  pic- 
tures than  these  pretentiously  placed 
works,  we  should,  notwithstanding  his 
eminent  position,  have  passed  him  over 
in  silence.  But  Mr.  Hart  has  done 
much  better  things  than  those  he  has 
exhibited  of  late  years.  A  tune  was 
when  he  did  not  offend  the  public  with 
ill-drawn  and  vulgar  faces,  and  when  at 
least  he  aimed  at  colour. 

In  the  picture  to  which  we  have 
referred,  the  archbishop  points  eagerly 
to  the  roll  of  the  Charter  held  by  an 
attendant.  Some  of  the  barons  attest 
their  devotion  to  the  cause  by  pledging 
themselves  to  Heaven;  one  kneels  kiss- 
ing his  naked  sword.  Behind  the  arch- 


bishop is  a  group  of  acolytes  and  several 
military  vassals  of  the  Church  ;  one  of 
the  last  is  upon  his  knees,  ardently 
kissing  a  reliquary  containing  bones. 
If  the  neglect  of  the  most  ordinary  rules 
of  art  shown  in  the  treatment  of  the 
architecture  be  not  sufficient  to  convict 
this  painter  of  the  utmost  indifference 
to  public  opinion,  let  the  spectators 
examine  the  mail  worn  by  the  knights 
and  barons.  Any  one  who  knows  the 
peculiarly  beautiful  and  delicate  con- 
struction of  this  fabric  will  see  at  a 
glance  that  it  is  not  the  genuine  mail, 
but  rather  a  coarse  imitation  of  it,  pro- 
bably obtained  at  a  costumier's,  and  ren- 
dered with  a  careless  hand  in  the 
picture.  This  is  but  a  type  of  the  treat- 
ment throughout. 

Let  us  turn  from  these  to  the 
works  of  an  artist  who  loves  and 
understands  nature,  and  renders  for  us 
all  her  beauties  that  the  brush  can 
render.  We  refer  to  those  of  Mr.  Hook, 
four  in  number.  Take,  first,  "  Stand 
clear  !" — a  fisherman's  boat  coming 
ashore,  leaping  to  the  beach,  as  it 
were,  the  clear  green  sea's  last  wave 
curving  out  under  her  stem  in  a  long 
bright  arch  that  comes  gently  hissing 
from  the  shingle  to  fling  itself  impa- 
tiently forward.  "  Stand  clear  ! "  is  the 
order  to  us  on  shore  to  avoid  the  rope 
that  one  of  her  crew  casts  to  his  mates 
that  they  may  make  her  fast  by  it.  It 
springs  out  of  his  hands  in  bold  curves, 
and  leaps  before  the  boat.  The  fisher- 
man himself,  an  old  salt,  stands  up 
furling  the  sail ;  a  boy  sits  upon  the 
gunwale,  just  ready  to  drop  into  the 
water  the  instant  she  touches ;  another 
sits  within,  looking  out  for  some  one 
amongst  the  bystanders.  There  is  a 
perfectly  delightful  expression  on  this 
lad's  face.  No  painter  understands  more 
entirely  the  colour  of  a  sea-bronzed  face 
than  Mr.  Hook,  or  can  give  so  well  the 
salted  briny  look  of  an  old  sailor's  skin, 
or  the  tawny  gold  seen  in  that  of  a 
smooth-faced  lad  which  has  been  sub- 
jected to  the  same  influences.  "  Whose 
Bread  is  on  the  Waters  "  is  the  title  of 
another  picture  by  \this  artist.  A  fisher- 
man and  a  boy  are  in  an  open  boat, 


162 


The  Royal  Academy. 


sturdily  hauling  in  a  net  that  conies  up 
loaded  with  fish,  whose  glittering  silver 
scales,  fresh  from  the  sea,  sparkle  on  the 
brown  cordage  of  the  net  like  lustrous 
jewels.  The  boy  pulls  with  a  will, 
setting  his  foot  against  the  boat's 
thwart;  the  man,  stronger  and  more 
deliberate, . gives  a  "dead  haul."  .The 
sea  is  of  deep  fresh  green,  very  different 
from  the  sea  of  painters  generally,  but 
sparkling  and  full  of  motion,  intensely 
varied  in  colour,  and  displaying  an 
amount  of  knowledge  of  nature  that  is 
delightful  to  contemplate,  and  one  that 
all  who  love  her  will  recognize  with 
ever-increasing  satisfaction.  The  way 
the  waves  rise  and  dash  over,  shows  it  is 
wind  against  tide,  for  their  foamy  little 
crests  fall  back  into  their  own  hollows  ; 
the  turbulent  tops-of  these  waves,  pettish 
as  they  seem  to  be,  and  hasty  without 
force,  and  too  small  to  be  the  cause  of 
awe  to  us,  shows'  a  fine  reticence  of  the 
artist's  power.  He  does  not  care  to 
bully  our  admiration  out  of  us,  but  takes 
it  captive  with  fidelity  to  nature.  The 
sea,  not  angry  now,  is  yet  working  up, 
and  the  sky  above  shows  signs  of  a  gale 
in  its  long-drawn  clouds,  purplish  and 
deep  grey.  The  brassy  colour  of  the 
firmament,  where  the  sun  has  just  gone 
down,  and  a  veil  of  shifting  vapour 
above  that  melts  the  edges  of  the  clouds 
into  the  luminous  ether  —  these  last, 
drawn  to  streaks — are  signs  of  wind  to 
come. . 

The  waters  dash  crisply  and  freshly 
in  the  last-named  pictures,  but  the 
artist's  illustration  to  Tennyson's 
"Break,  Break,  Break,"— 

"  O,  well  for  the  sailor  lad 

That  he  sings  in  his  boat  on  the  bay!" — 

shows  the  calmest  of  calm  seas,  a  silver 
sea,  filled  with  subdued  light,  and  seem- 
ing asleep  in  light,  the  long  low  billows 
that  roll,  not  like  waves  that  break  and 
dash,  but  the  heaving  of  a  vast  sheet  of 
glittering  waters,  in  shallow  trenches,  flat 
for  miles,  yet  creeping  and  sweeping 
along  in  a  restless  heave,  as  the  chest  of 
one  deep  asleep  moves  gently  to  his 
breathing.  Such  the  sea  that  is  over- 
hung with  a  misty  veil ;  not  lifting,  be- 


cause universal,  and  still,  because  there 
is  not  a  breath  of  wind  to  find  itself  in 
this  deep  bay,  whose  air  itself  dozes  over 
the  waters  at  rest.  The  silent  sleepy 
heat  that  holds  the  whole  scene  to  this 
quiet,  has  drawn  that  dreaming  misty 
veil  from  the  sea,  to  overhang  a  hill ;  it 
wraps  also  the  high,  deep-verdured  cliffs 
in  the  same  delicate  shade.  All  is 
asleep,  and  a  silvery  silence  reigns.  By 
some  piles  in  the  front  floats  a  boat  and 
a  boy  in  it  singing,  his  sister  leaning 
backwards  upon  the  gunwale,  paddling 
her  arm  over  the  side  in  the  water,  that 
burns  beneath  the  little  craft  with  a 
deep  vivid  green,  of  the  sunlight  con- 
trasted and  concentrated  through  the 
translucent  waters.  The  reflections  of  the 
piles  tremble  upon  the  water  that  steal- 
thily creeps  about  them,  making  ring 
within  ring  at  every  slow  heave,  as  it 
ascends  the  solid  timber.  So  silent  seems 
it  all,  that  one  might  hear  the  boy's 
voice  (he  pours  it  out  in  a  low  monoto- 
nous sea  song)  even  far  off  on  the  mist- 
veiled  cliff.  The  bay  is  broken  in  two 
by  a  jutting  point,  telling  of  an  estuary 
beyond,  round  which  go  the  white 
glimmering  sails  of  a  barque,  as  she  is 
borne  in,  not  by  the  wind,  for  the  canvas 
hangs  useless  from  the  yards,  but  by  the 
tide  alone  that  is  setting  inwards.  The 
reader  will  see  that  our  admiration  for 
this  picture  is  unbounded  ;  indeed  the 
poetic  feeling  needed  to  express  the 
theme  supplied  by  the  Laureate's  verses, 
is  exquisitely  rendered,  and  that  more- 
over in  the  most  loyal  way  the  task  could 
be  executed — which  is,  representing 
natural  thoughts,  however  refined, 
pathetic,  and  subtle  they  may  be, — by 
the  aid  of  most  refined,  pathetic,  and 
subtle-meaning  nature  herself  alone.  A 
delightful  pastoral,  "The  Valley  in  the 
Moor,"  is  the  remaining  picture  by  this 
artist.  It  seems  to  us  a  little  crude  in 
green  colour ;  but,  notwithstanding,  is 
very  faithful  as  a  portrait  of  nature. 

Excepting  these,  which  from  their 
class  we  may  rank  with  the  landscapes, 
the  best  representation  of  nature  is 
Mr.  Anthony's  "  Hesperus,"  a  large  pic- 
ture, showing  a  piece  of  open  land  under 
an  evening  sky,  when  the  star  named 


The  Royal  Academy. 


163 


reigns  brightly,  even  in  the  lustre  of  a 
sunset.  The  sun  has  gone  down  behind 
the  trees  on  the  margin  of  the  open 
country,  and  casts  a  soft  crimson  radi- 
ance upon  the  fleecy  clouds  that  swim 
above ;  the  air  cool  and  bright  and  clear; 
the  vegetation  dark  red  with  autumn 
tints,  harmonising  with  the  tawny  brown 
of  the  stiff  clay  land,  and  orange  of  a 
gravel  road  over  which  passes  a  team, 
and  waggon.  We  commend  to  the  ob- 
server's study  the  sky  in  all  its  delicate 
and  beautiful  colouring. 

Mr.  Dobson's  picture  of  the  Nativity, 
styled  "Bethlehem,"  needs  our  atten- 
tion. It  shows  some  fine  points  of 
design,  especially  that  of  a  kneeling 
•  shepherd ;  the  infant  Christ  himself 
is  charmingly  treated,  lying  back 
playing  Avith  his  fingers  as  infants 
will.  In  Mr.  Simeon  Solomon's 
"  Moses,"  the  mother  of  the  deliverer 
of  Israel  is  taking  farewell  of  him  be- 
fore he  is  deposited  among  the  bul- 
rushes. The  sister  of  Moses  waits  be- 
side holding  the  basket,  and,  standing 
upright,  peers  over  her  mother's  arm  at 
the  child.  Their  faces,  although,  it 
appears  to  us,  a  little  too  dark,  are  full  of 
expression  and  characteristic  tenderness. 
The  colour  throughout  this  picture  is 
extremely  good,  the  varying  textures  of 
the  dresses  excellently  rendered,  and  the 
accessories  all  displaying  thought  and 
originality.  "  Early  Morning  in  the 
Wilderness  of  Shurr,"  by  Mr.  F.  Good- 
all,  is  a  large  work,  representing  an 
Arab  sheikh  addressing  his  tribe  before 
they  break  up  an  encampment  at  the 
hills  of  Moses,  on  the  eastern  shore  of 
the  Red  Sea.  Tliis  is  solidly  and  power- 
fully painted,  has  much  variety  of  cha- 
racter in  it,  and  appears  to  have  been 
executed,  either  on  the  spot,  direct  from 
nature,  or  from  faithful  sketches  of 
nature.  Mr.  John.  Brett's  elaborate  and 
delicate  study  from  the  margin  of  a 
plantation,  where  a  hedger  is  mending 
a  wattled  fence,  does  him  infinite  honour 
for  the  care  and  fidelity  with  which  he 
has  rendered  all  the  herbage  and  wild- 
flowers  about.  Some  fine  roses  are  de- 
licious in  colour  and  freshness ;  and, 
although  believing  the  hyacinths  that 


are  in  the  front  to  be  a  little  positive 
in  blue,  we  say  so  under  the  correction 
of  so  cunning  a  Tenderer  of  nature  as 
the  artist.  This  picture  is  styled,  from 
the  figure  it  contains,  "  The  Hedger." 
Unquestionably  this  figure  is  thin  in 
execution,  and  does  not  come  out  so 
solidly  as  it  should. 

Mr.  A.  Solomon' s  "  Drowned,Drowned, " 
is  a  large  picture,  showing  the  arrival  of 
a  party  of  rakes  from  a  masquerade,  in 
costume,  at  the  foot  of  Waterloo  Bridge, 
just  as  a  waterman  has  rescued  from  the 
river  the  body  of  a  girl,  an  unfortunate, 
who  has  cast  herself  away  in  despair. 
We  are  to  suppose  that  the  foremost  of 
these  men  has  been  the  cause  of  the 
wretched  girl's  ruin ;  and  now,  coming 
suddenly  upon  her  corpse,  thus  dragged, 
foul  and  dripping,  from  the  river,  he 
stands  aghast  and  horrified  at  the  spec- 
tacle, checks  instinctively  the  advance 
of  a  female  companion,  who,  clinging  to 
his  arm,  comes  gaily  along,  heedless  of 
her  own  fate.  Behind  is  another  man 
similarly  accompanied,  his  companion 
coquetting  with  him.  A  policeman  kneels 
before  the  dead  girl,  casting  the  light  of 
his  lanthorn  on  her  face,  so  that  it 
is  clearly  seen.  The  waterman  points 
out  to  a  bystander  the  place  he  brought 
the  body  out  from,  and  is  dilating  upon 
the  event  and  his  own  share .  in  it 
especially.  A  girl  with  a  basket  of 
violets  upon  her  head  stands  behind, 
looking  commiseratingly  upon  the  lost 
one.  There  is  a  fine  perception  of  cha- 
racter shown  in  the  treatment  of  this 
last  figure.  She  is  one  of  those  hard 
women,  whom  misfortune  -has  made 
undemonstrative,  to  say  the  least,  if  not 
cold-hearted  ;  so  she  only  stands  by,  and 
seems  to  give  but  a  general  look  of 
sympathy  to  the  spectacle  before  her. 
If  the  artist  had  treated  this  subject 
with  more  complete  fidelity, — that  is, 
actually  painted  the  background  on 
the  spot  it  represents,  and  needfully 
rendered  the  locality,  and,  above  all, 
the  effect  of  cold  early  dawn  rising 
over"  the  city,  the  awful  stillness  of 
which  would  have  given  a  solemnity  to 
the  event, — we  should  have  had  a  far 
more  moving  picture  than  the  present, 


164 


Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  and  Mr.  Wilson. 


which  has  undeniably  "been  executed  in 
the  studio,  and  therefore  does  not  render 
the  subtler  qualities  of  nature,  which, 
rightly  rendered,  would  have  been  an 
immense  help  to  the  motive  of  the 
whole.  As  it  is,  the  picture  is  grimy 
rather  than  forceful,  and  heavy  rather 
than  -  clear.  This  prosaic  method  of 
working  has,  in  short,  injured  the 
poetry  of  the  subject. 

The  omission  of  the  two  upper  rows 
of  pictures  from  this  gallery  is  really  a 
great  improvement,  and  gives  a  notable 
appearance  of  size  to  the  rooms.  Pic- 
tures placed  on  those  rows  of  yore  could 
never  be  seen,  and  were  ever  the  misery 
of  their  painters,  who,  naturally  "enough, 
complained  bitterly  of  the  result  of  their 
confidence  in  the  justice  of  the  hangers. 
The  very  small  number  of  miniatures 
also  is  a  novelty,  which  we  fear  tells  of 


the  havoc  made  by  photography  amongst 
the  professors  of  the  agreeable  little  art. 
The  Octagon  Room  contains  only  prints. 
Among  the  sculptures,  Baron  Maro- 
chetti's  "Portrait — marble  statuette" 
of  a  child,  although  not  particularly 
original  in  design,  has  a  manly  breadth 
of  treatment  about  it  that  is  agreeable. 
Mr.  Thomas  Woolner's  bust  of  Sir 
William  Hooker  is  a  noble  specimen  of 
artistic  skill  in  the  very  highest  order 
of  art — faithful,  finished,  naturalistic, 
yet  delicate  and  vigorous  to  an  un- 
equalled degree.  The  same  artist's  three 
medallion  portraits  of  Messrs.  Norman, 
Crawford,  and  A.  A.  Knox,  are  fine 
examples  of  sound  treatment.  Mr.  A. 
Munro  has  several  portraits  in  marble, 
displaying  his  usual  pleasing  and  grace- 
ful style  of  execution. 


SIR   CHARLES  TREVELYAN  AND   MR,  WILSON". 

BY   J.    M.    LUDLOW. 


A  GRAVE  event  has  befallen  India — 
the  gravest,  I  believe,  in  its  conse- 
quences, whether  for  good  or  evil,  that 
has  happened  since  the  rebellion.  A 
Governor,  who  promised  to  show  him- 
self the  best  that  has  ruled  in  that 
country  since  the  days  of  Lord  William 
Bentinck,  whose  trusted  subordinate  he 
was  once,  has  been,  through  his  own 
indiscretion,  suddenly  recalled,  and  is 
believed  to  have  anticipated  that  recall 
by  resignation. 

Through  his  own  indiscretion.  There 
is  no  blinking  the  fact.  As  Governor  of 
Madras,  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  was  sub- 
ordinate to  the  Council  of  the  Governor- 
General  of  India,  sitting  at  Calcutta. 
A  financial  scheme  for  all  India  had 
been  put  forth  publicly,  in  a  speech 
of  great  power,  by  a  gentleman  sent 
out  from  this  country  for  the  express 
purpose  of  taking  charge  of  Indian 
finance,  and  a  bill  founded  on  that 
scheme  had  been  introduced,  with  the 
sanction  of  the  Governor-General,  into 
the  Legislative  Council.  Sir  Charles 
Trevelyan,  deeming  that  scheme  and 


bill  mischievous  and  fatal  as  respects 
the  Presidency  over  which  he  was  Go- 
vernor, not  only  remonstrated  against  it, 
and  drew  up  a  scheme  on  wholly  oppo- 
site principles,  which  he  embodied  in  a 
minute,  and  which  obtained  the  assent 
of  his  colleagues,  members  of  the  Madras 
Council,  bxit,  without  consulting  them, 
without  previous  sanction  from  his  offi- 
cial superiors,  on  his  sole  responsibility, 
sent  that  minute  to  the  public  press. 
Nor  is  it  possible  to  deny  that  in  the 
tone  of  the  minute,  as  well  as  in  the 
fact  of  its  publication,  there  is  much 
that  is  inconsistent  with  the  require- 
ments of  public  duty. 

But  there  is  a  discretion  which  may 
lose  a  country.  There  is  an  indiscretion 
which  may  save  it.  I  believe  that  Sir 
Charles  Trevelyan's  indiscretion  was 
such.  I  need  not  say  I  am  sure,  had  he 
not  believed  this,  he  never  would  have 
committed  it. 

Let  us  look  the  fact  in  the  face.  It 
is  proposed  to  impose  at  once  three  ab- 
solutely new  taxes  upon  from  150  to 
180  millions  of  people.  It  is  admitted 


Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  and  Mr.  Wilson, 


165 


by  the  proposer  that  there  are  "  abso- 
lutely no  data  upon  which  any  reliable 
"  calculation  can  be  made  of  their  result." 

I  say  that  the  history  of  mankind 
affords  no  instance  of  such  an  experi- 
ment, carried  out  on  such  a  scale.  I  say 
that  it  is  perfectly  impossible  for  me  to 
conceive  of  its  succeeding  under  such 
conditions.  I  say  that  the  deepest 
gratitude  is  owing  to  the  first  man  who 
comes  forward  and  shows  under  what 
conditions,  within  what  limits,  it  cannot 
succeed,  and  therefore  should  not  be  tried. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  be  misunder- 
stood. Mr.  Wilson  left  this  country, 
not  perhaps  amid  such  a  chorus  of  uni- 
versal good  opinion  as  the  applause  of 
farewell  meetings  and  dinners  might  lead 
one  to  think,  but  still  with  the  reputation 
of  a  very  able,  very  hard-working,  and 
very  experienced  financier.  I  think  his 
scheme  a  very  able  one.  I  wish  to  see 
it  tried,  on  a  safe  and  limited  scale.  I 
hope  it  may  succeed,  so  as  eventually  to 
be  applicable  on  a  larger  one.  Even 
were  it  to  fail,  I  believe  him  to  be 
entitled  to  our  very  great  gratitude  for 
devising  it.  Anything  more  absurd, 
anything  more  wicked  than  our  financial 
administration  of  India  hitherto,  it  is 
impossible  to  conceive.  We  have  so 
ruled  a  land  of  the  utmost  fertility, 
capable  of  producing  everything  under 
heaven,  with  a  practical  monopoly  of 
growth  as  respects  several  articles  in 
great  demand,  teeming  with  a  docile  and 
industrious  population,  as  to  have  a 
deficit  in  thirty-three  years  out  of  the 
last  forty-six  (1814—1860),  a  surplus 
only  in  thirteen,  the  net  total  deficit 
amounting  to  nearly  sixty-four  millions. 
Mr.  Wilson  conies,  and  [says :  This 
shall  be  no  longer.  All  thanks  to  him 
for  so  doing.  He  says  :  I  will  do  no 
further  towards  sapping  the  productive 
powers  of  the  country  at  their  very  root 
by  adding  to  the  weight  of  the  land-tax. 
I  will  tax  production  in  its  fruits,  and 
consumption  in  its  enjoyments.  Right 
again,  most  right.  But  when  he  conies 
to  the  specific  measures  for  applying 
these  principles — a  tax  on  incomes,  a 
licence-duty  for  trades,  a  duty  on  tobacco 
— then  the  whole  question  of  specific  merit 


is  opened  up  as  to  every  one  of  these 
taxes,  and  the  application  of  every  one, 
and  the  figure  of  every  one.  A  tax 
may  be  admirable  as  respects  ten  millions 
of  people,  detestable  as  respects  the  ten 
next  millions,  their  neighbours.  Admit 
if  you  like — and  I  sincerely  trust  it  is 
so — that  Mr.  Wilson's  taxes  are  per- 
fectly adapted  for  Northern  India,  which 
he  has  seen,  what  possible  ground  can 
there  be  for  supposing  that  they  are 
equally  adapted  to  Central  and  Southern 
India,  which  he  has  not  seen  ] 

Let  us  test  this  by  a  comparison.  In 
the  year  2060,  North  American  con- 
querors have  established  their  dominion 
over  the  whole  of  Europe,  minus  part  of 
Russia,  a  few  small  European  states  re- 
maining here  and  there  as  their  tribu- 
taries, but  all  the  present  distinctions  of 
race,  language,  habits,  religion,  remain- 
ing the  same,  and  the  relation  between 
conquerors  and  conquered  being  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  the  former  are 
Mormonites,  whose  creed  is  abhorrent  to 
European  notions.  They  have  not  shoAvn 
themselves  able  financiers  ;  the  surplus 
revenues  of  every  most  flourishing  state 
have  mostly  vanished  upon  its  annexa- 
tion ;  yearly  deficits  have  been,  for  a 
length  of  time,  the  rule,  A.fter  a  dan- 
gerous rebellion,  a  shrewd  Yankee  is 
sent  from  Connecticut  to  set  the  finances 
of  America's  European  empire  straight. 
He  takes  a  rapid  run  vid  Southampton 
and  London,  through  Belgium  and  North 
Germany,  re  turns  to  Hamburg,[the  capital 
of  the  empire,  and  three  months  after 
arrival,  puts  forth  a  new  budget,  im- 
posing three  spick  and  span_  new  taxes 
on  the  whole  population,  from  the  North 
Cape  to  Gibraltar,  averring  beforehand 
that  he  cannot  calculate  what  they  will 
bring  in.  Whereupon,  a  subordinate 
official,  of  very  great  European  as  well 
as  American  experience,  who  only  rules 
over  France,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  gets  up 
and  says  :  "  Your  scheme  won't  do  in 
any  way  for  the  countries  under  my 
charge  ;  I  undertake  for  them  to  restore 
the  balance  between  income  and  expen- 
diture without  new  taxes,  by  merely 
reducing  expenditure."  Now,  judging  ot 
the  twenty-first  century  by  the  lights 


166 


Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  and  Mr.  Wilson. 


of  the  nineteenth,  should  not  we  hold 
that  both  might  be  quite  right  within 
the  sphere  of  their  own  experience;  but 
the  shrewd  Yankee  most  probably  quite 
wrong  in  attempting  to  tax  France, 
Spain,  Portugal,  Italy,  Greece,  Turkey, 
Hungary,  half  Germany,  half  the  British 
Isles,  not  to  speak  of  the  Scandinavian 
countries,  from  his  three  months'  expe- 
rience of  Southern  England,  Belgium, 
and  half  Germany?  Why  do  we  not 
see  that  what  would  be  folly  in  the 
twenty-first  century  is  folly  in  the  nine- 
teenth ? 

I  believe,  for  my  own  part,  Sir  Charles 
Trevelyan  had  thoroughly  calculated  the 
cost  of  his  own  indiscretion.  I  believe 
he  thought,  and  thought  rightly,  that 
the  only  appeal  against  the  monstrous 
folly  of  Calcutta  centralization  which 
could  save  the  country  committed  to  his 
charge,  lay  to  public  opinion.  I  believe 
that,  to  make  that  appeal,  he  voluntarily 
sacrificed,  not  place  and  power  alone, 
which  he  could  well  afford,  but  reputa- 
tion. I  believe  that  the.  true  answer  to 
that  appeal  on  the  part  of  his  ultimate 
superiors  in  this  country  would  have 
been — not  to  recall  him,  as  they  have 
done  ;  not  to  send  him  to  Calcutta,  as 
Mr.  Danby  Seymour  foolishly  advised — 
but  to  have  hurried  a  bill  through  both 
houses,  declaring  the  Madras  Presidency, 
for  a  twelvemonth  at  first,  exempt  from 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Council  in  India, 
and  to  have  cast  upon  Sir  Charles  the 
full  responsibility  of  making  good  his 
own  pledges ;  or,  better  still,  to  have 
at  once  authorized  him  by  despatch  to  act 
upon  those  principles,  and  then  to  have 
come  before  Parliament  with  a  bill  of 
indemnity  for  themselves  and  for  him. 

For,  if  we  will  look  into  the  heart  of 
the  matter,  which  Mr.  Bright  alone  has 
done  hitherto,  the  fault  of  all  this  lies  in 
the  insane  concentration  of  power  in 
the  Calcutta  Council 

If  any  one  were  to  put  before  us 
the  problem  :  How  are  180  millions  of 
people,  speaking  twenty  or  thirty  dif- 
ferent languages,  following  four  different 
religions  (themselves  split  up  into  in- 
numerable sects),  varying  almost  ad 
infinitum  in  race,  colour,  customs,  modes 


of  life,  thought,  and  feeling,  to  be 
governed  by  100,000  men  of  another 
race,  colour,  and  religion,  and  of  strik- 
ingly different  customs,  modes  of  thought 
and  feeling,  from  all  the  rest?' — I  suppose 
the  very  last  solution  which  would  occur 
to  any  one  would  be  this :  You  shall 
establish  a  legislative  and  administrative 
body  at  one  extremity  of  the  country, 
which  shall  have  supreme  control  over 
the  whole,  so  that  there  shall  be,  as  far 
as  possible,  one  law,  one  police,  one 
system  of  government  taxation,  affecting 
the  whole  of  these  180  millions  of  men, 
and  reducing  them,  as  far  as  the  domi- 
nant 100,000  can  succeed  in  doing  so, 
to  unity  and  nationality.  Now  this  is 
precisely  the  task  which  England  has 
set  before  herself  in  governing  India. 
One  might  have  thought  that  the  late 
rebellion  would  have  roused  her  to  a 
sense  of  the  mischiefs  attending  its  ful- 
filment ;  since  that  rebellion  was  only 
put  down  by  means  of  such  remnants 
of  local  autonomy  as  still  subsist  in  our 
military  organization,  whereby  the  native 
armies  of  Bombay  and  Madras  were 
rendered  available  to  subdue  the  rebel- 
lious native  army  of  Bengal ;  or  by 
means  of  such  temporary  autonomy  as 
was  allowed  to  Sir  John  Lawrence  in 
the  Punjab,  and  was  exercised  on  a 
smaller  scale,  in  fact,  in  a  hundred 
separate  localities,  by  every  individual 
English  official  who  was  not  carried 
away  by  the  flood.  Yet  the  lesson  seems 
to  have  been  utterly  thrown  away,  and 
our  whole  empire  is  to  be  staked  on  the 
cast  of  a  die,  since  Mr.  Wilson  himself 
practically  admits  that  his  three  new 
taxes  amount  to  no  more. 

It  is  not  indeed  four  independent 
governments  which  India  wants,  but 
twenty  or  thirty — to  be  entirely  self- 
ruled  within,  with  power  to  federate 
for  economical  purposes,  but  with  no 
other  subordination  except  direct  to  the 
mother-country.  Possibly,  the  power  of 
making  peace  and  war  might  be  vested 
in  a  supreme  governor- general ;  but 
since  India  is  no  farther  from  us  now 
in  point  of  time  than  were  the  West 
Indies  thirty  years  ago,  it  seems  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  even  this  can  ba 


Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  and  Mr.  Wilson. 


167 


strictly  necessary  ;  indeed  half  our  In- 
dian wars  ere  this,  I  suspect,  would 
have  been  saved  by  the  absence  of 
such  a  power.  I  believe  it  is  impos- 
sible to  calculate  the  wondrous  de- 
velopment of  local  activity  and  life 
which  such  a  decentralization  would  call 
out ;  the  vigour  of  root  which  Euro- 
pean intellect  might  then  show  forth, 
striking  deep  into  a  soil  which  it  now 
only  languidly  trails  over,  in  the  con- 
stant expectation  of  being  transplanted 
from  high  to  low,  from  bleak  to  sunny, 
from  clay  to  sand ;  the  improved  pro- 
cesses of  government  which  emulation 
would  then  realize.  I  believe  that  Sir 
Charles  Trevelyan' s  self-sacrifice  will 
bear  its  fruits ;  that  Indian  centraliza- 
tion will  reel  and  crumble  beneath  the 
very  weight  of  his  fall ;  that  men  will 
no  longer  be  satisfied  with  a  mock  iini- 
formity  of  rule,  which  requires,  for  the 
success  of  its  experiments,  that  such 
a  man  should  be  driven  from  his  post. 
The  autonomy  of  the  Presidencies  is  the 
least  result  which  I  expect  from  his 
indiscretion.  God  grant  that  it  may 
not  have  to  realize  itself  through  the 
preliminary  process  of  a  rebellion,  in 
precisely  that  portion  of  India  which 
passed  almost  scatheless  through  the 
last! 

This  is  not  the  time  to  discuss,  in 
their  application  to  India,  the  three 
great  methods  of  equalizing  income  and 
expenditure — reduction  of  expenditure  ; 
increased  taxation  ;  or  increased  expen- 
diture for  reproductive  purposes.  I 
have  confined  myself  hitherto  simply  to 
one  point — the  utter  absurdity  of  sup- 
posing that  an  entirely  new  system  of 
taxation  can  be  enforced  all  at  once 
throughout  all  India.  I  do  not  wish 
to  complicate  with  details  that  simple 
point,  self-evident  when  once  perceived, 
only  not  perceived,  I  venture  to  think, 
through  that  political  short  sight  which 
renders  some  men  actually  incapable  of 
perceiving  things  on  account  of  their 
very  evidence — just  as,  I  take  it,  the 
limited  vision  of  the  mole  renders  it 
incapable  of  realizing  the  bulk  of  the 
elephant.  "With  the  highest  admiration 
for  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan's  character,  I 


am  far  from  approving  of  many  of  his 
acts  since  his  assumption  of  the  govern- 
ment of  Madras  ;  his  conduct  towards 
one  great  Indian  family  in  particular — 
to  judge  from  a  recent  pamphlet  by 
Mr.  J.  B.  Norton — painfully  recalls  old 
Leadenhall-street  officialism.  But  I  am 
bound  to  say  that,  as  respects  this  finan- 
cial scheme,  even  in  matters  of  detail, 
there  is  strong  reason  to  think  that  Sir 
Charles  Trevelyan  is,  for  Madras,  right 
altogether.  A  landowner  in  his  own 
Presidency  writes  thus  (15th  March), 
knowing  as  yet  only  Mr.  Wilson's 
scheme,  and  not  Sir  Charles's  opposition 
to  it : — 

"  You  will  have  read  Wilson's  great 
"  speech.  ...  Its  delivery  will  mark  an 
'  Indian  epoch ;  but  his  scheme  of 
1  native  taxation  is  another  affair.  I 
'  hope  that  will  not  also  mark  an 
'  epoch.  I  go  thoroughly  along  with 
'  the  principles,  adopt  every  one  of 
'  them  where  practicable  ;  but  how  can 
'  they  be  practicable  in  Madras,  where 
'  the  European  collectors  and  assistants 
'  are  the  sole  reliable  instruments  in 
'  each  province  for  assessing  the  licence 
'  and  income  tax  ]  Trust  the  duty  to 
'  the  amlahs,  and  see  if  the  natives 
'  will  pay.  In  Madras,  the  artizans  and 
'  small  shopkeepers  are,  as  a  rule,  too 
'  poor  to  pay.  Wilson  has  planned  an 
1  admirable  machine,  and  has  to  learn 
'  that  he  is  without  the  power  of  setting 
'  it  in  motion." 

Again,  as  to  Sir  Charles's  undertaking 
to  meet  expenditure  by  retrenchment, 
I  can  only  add  that  an  Indian  officer  of 
.  great  experience  in  military  administra- 
tion in  Bombay,  and  as  free  from  rash- 
ness by  temperament  as  he  is  by  age, 
has  expressed  to  me  the  confident  belief 
that  the  thing  is  perfectly  feasible — not 
in  Madras,  about  which  he  knows  little, 
and  Sir  Charles  may  be  fairly  supposed 
to  know  much — but  in  Bombay,  which, 
it  has  been  publicly  stated,  has  never 
yet  paid  its  own  expenses. 

If  it  be  asked,  Why  should  Mr. 
Wilson's  taxes  be  good  for  Northern 
India,  bad  for  Southern?  the  answer 
should  be  quite  sufficient,  For  the  same 
reason  that  taxes  or  charges  which 


168 


Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  and  Mr.  Wilson. 


suit  England  do  not  suit  France,  and 
vice  versd — so  that  octroi  duties  would 
drive  Englishmen  to  rebellion,  as  turn- 
pike tolls  would  Frenchmen — so  that 
we  could  as  little  bear  a  tobacco  mono- 
poly as  France  an  income-tax.  But  for 
those  who  know  anything  of  Indian 
history,  the  answer  is  plainer  still. 
Northern  India  has  capital;  Southern, 
with  a  few  exceptions,  has  not.  The 
Madras  Presidency, — though  now,  thank 
God,  rapidly  recovering  under  a  milder 
system, — has  for  half  a  century  been 
drained  by  the  force-pump  of  ryotwar, 
or  annual,  settlements  of  the  land  re- 
venue, except  in  those  few  districts  for- 
merly attached  to  Bengal,  where  a 
permanent  settlement  has  been  allowed 
to  subsist.  These  being  accepted, — 
unless  at  her  capital,  in  the  persons 
of  a  few  native  chieftains  exception- 
ally treated,  and  in  those  of  her 
•money-lenders-,  she  has  no  taxable  in- 
comes. Still  less,  as  the  above-quoted 
letter  indicates,  has  she  trades  which 
would  bear  a  licence-duty.  The  reverse 
is  the  case  in  Bengal,  where  the  perma- 
nent settlement  has  favoured  the  accu- 
mulation of  capital- — in  the  northern 
provinces,  where  a  third  system  of  land 
revenue  has  at  least  not  wholly  destroyed 
it.  Let  a  few  years  pass,  and  out  of  her 
noAv  accruing  income  Madras  will  have 
accumulated  capital  sufficient  to  bear 
Mr.  Wilson's  burthens.  At  present, 
they  would  stop  the  very  power  of 
accumulation,  and  thus  run  counter  to 
the  very  principles  of  his  own  budget. 

A  singular  want  of  judgment,  it  may 
be  observed,  has  hitherto  attended  the 
recall  of  India's  governors.  Such  a 
punishment,  or  its  equivalent,  has  in- 
variably reached  those  who  were  among 
her  ablest  and  best.  Lord  Macartney 


lost  the  governor-generalship  because  he 
would  not  take  it  without  the  power 
of  overruling  his  council,  which  was 
straightway  granted  to  his  successor. 
Lord  Wellesley  was  worried  out  of  office 
by  "  the  ignominious  tyranny  of  Leaden- 
hall  Street."  Lord  William  Bentinck 
was  recalled  from  Madras  for  not  having 
prevented  a  plot  which  never  existed. 
Sir  Charles  Metcalfe  was  not  suffered  to 
retain  permanently  the  governor-general- 
ship. Lord  Ellenborough  was  recalled, 
after  saving  an  empire  which  Lord 
Auckland  had  done  his  best  to  lose. 
He  lost  office  in  the  Board  of  Control 
for  writing  a  despatch  which,  as  we 
know  now  from  Mr.  Eussell's  Diary, 
embodied  the  universal  feeling  of  all  on 
the  spot  who  were  qualified  to  judge ; 
the  spirit  of  which  was,  in  practice, 
carried  out  from  the  first  out  of  sheer 
necessity,  and  has  eventually  received 
the  most  signal  homage  through  the 
acts  of  Lord  Canning  himself.  Sir 
Charles  Trevelyan  now  adds  his  name 
to  the  noble  list  of  India's  luckless  ones. 
He  may  well  be  proud  of  his  company. 

NOTE. 

Through  an  untoward  misprint,  the  word 
" Pantheiism"  was,  in  the  last  sentence  but 
one  of  Mr.  Ludlow's  article  on  "  Spiritualistic 
Materialism  "  (vol.  ii.  p.  51),  printed  as  "  Pan- 
theism," and  the  greater  portion  of  the  impres- 
sion went  off  before  the  error  could  be  re- 
medied. The  phrase  should  stand  thus  : — 

"But  against  such  Pantheism,  overt  or 
latent,  in  the  gristle  or  in  the  bone,  there  is 
no  better  preservative  than  the  Pantheiism,  if 
I  may  use  the  term,  of  Christianity." 

The  writer  would  not,  but  for  what  has 
happened,  have  deemed  it  necessary  to  point 
out  that  the  distinction  he  sought  to  establish 
was  between  the  looking  upon  all  as  God 
),  and  upon  all  as  from  God,  or  divine 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


JULY,  1860. 


SWISS-FRENCH  LITERATURE:    MADAME  DE   GASPARIN. 

BY  J.    M.    LUDLOW. 


THE  surface  of  the  earth  has  gold- 
fields  intellectual,  as  it  has  material. 
Take  a  map  of  Switzerland,  draw  a  line 
SS.W.  from  about  Bale  to  Martigny, 
not  straight,  but  incurved  so  as  to  follow 
the  valleys  of  the  Upper  Birse,  the 
middle  Aare,  and  the  Saane,  and  you 
will  have  marked  out  one  of  such,  of 
which  the  Eldorado  diggings,  or  richest 
nugget-nest,  will  be  found  at  the  south- 
western extremity.  "Within  that  field, 
about  as  large  as  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  and 
Essex  together,  more  of  intellectual 
power  has  been  developed  than  in  many 
a  great  empire  ;  in  that  Eldorado  corner 
a  good  three-fifths  of  the  whole  has 
taken  its  rise.  The  tract  in  question 
embraces  the  Jura  chain  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  valley  between  its  eastern 
slopes  and  the  western  ones  of  the  Alps, 
so  far  as  the  Gallic  tide  has  extended 
until  met  and  arrested  by  the  Teutonic. 
With  an  outlying  district  or  two,  such 
as  the  valley  of  the  Upper  Rhone  as  far 
as  Visp,  it  represents  French  Switzer- 
land. 

Strange  to  say,  indeed,  this  gold-field 
is  but  of  comparatively  recent  discovery. 
Three  centuries  alone  have  seen  its  trea- 
sures brought  to  light.  Nothing  in  the 
earlier  history  of  Switzerland  foretold  its 
splendours.  The  great  names  of  that 
earlier  history  are  all  German.  From  Tell 
to  Zwingli  the  Teutonic  race  has  a  mo- 
nopoly of  Swiss  glory.  Basel — not  yet 
Bale — is  in  some  respects  the  Geneva  of 

No.  9. — VOL.  ii. 


the  early  half  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
— a  centre  of  free  thought.  From  Fro- 
ben's  presses  are  poured  forth  the 
works  of  Erasmus,  of  Luther ;  Erasmus 
comes  to  die  beside  his  friend.  French  • 
Switzerland  only  wakens  up  from  the 
day  when  Farel,  the  restless  apostle  of 
French  Protestantism,  invading  Swit- 
zerland, carries  Neufchatel  as  by  assault 
(1530),  and  on  his  return  from  a  synod 
of  the  Waldenses  of  Piedmont,  stops 
at  Geneva  (1532),  where  in  three  years 
(1532-5)  the  bishop's  yoke  is  broken 
from  off  the  city,  and  political  inde- 
pendence is  the  fruit  of  religious  reform. 
Farel  is  succeeded  by  those  other  great 
Frenchmen,  Calvin  and  De  Beze,  and 
under  them  grows  up  that  marvellous 
theocracy  which,  however  stern  and 
oppressive  it  may  show  itself  to  us 
under  some  of  its  aspects,  yet  made 
Geneva  one  of  the  very  centres  of  Eu- 
ropean thought.  Think  of  one  small 
town  having  given  in  three  centuries,  to 
physical  science  Saussure,  Deluc,  De 
Candolle,  Huber;  Charles  Bonnet  to 
metaphysics ;  to  jurisprudence,  Bur- 
lamaqui,  Delolme,  Dumont  (not  to 
speak  of  our  Romilly,  a  Genevese  watch- 
maker's son) ;  to  history,  Sismondi, 
Guizot ;  Necker  and  Sismondi  again  to 
political  economy;  to  diplomacy,  Albert 
Gallatin  ;  to  literature  proper,  Rousseau 
and  Madame  de  Stael, — besides  the  Dio- 
datis,  Leclercs,  Senebiers,  Mallets,  Pictets. 
and  other  miscellaneous  celebrities. 

N 


170 


Swiss-French  Literature  :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


Protestantism,  therefore,  may  be  said 
to  have  created  French  Switzerland; 
Protestantism  is  that  which  has  made  it 
entitled  to  stand  out  before  Europe  ag 
the  representative  of  all  Switzerland. 
It  is  easy  to  see  why.  If  there  be  one 
marked  characteristic  of.  the  Swiss  race, 
it  is  its  individualism.  Inhabiting  for 
the  most  part  a  very  thinly  populated 
country, — always  at  wax,  so  to  speak, 
with  nature,  since  even  his  sunniest 
valleys  are  swept  by  the  wintry  moun- 
tain blasts, — the  Switzer  is  obliged  to 
earn  his  own  living,  to  fight  his  own 
way.  He  is  essentially  a  worker  and  a 
fighter ;  shrewd,  prudent,  determined ; 
endowed  with  more  good  sense  than 
genius ;  his  thrift  shading  easily  into 
avarice ;  a  trader  even  when  he  fights. 
Now  the  Calvinistic  reformation  is  the 
most  individualizing  of  all  the  theolo- 
gical movements  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, and  it  was  thus  admirably  adapted 
to  the  tendencies  of  the  Swiss  mind, 
whilst  the  position  of  Geneva,  as  a 
harbour  for  French  Protestantism  when- 
ever expelled  by  fire  and  sword  from  its 
own  country,  and  thereby  in  constant 
antagonism  with  Romanist  France, 
tended  to  develop  this  character  to  the 
uttermost.  Not,  indeed,  but  what  the 
Protestant  cantons  of  German  Switzer- 
land have  always  held  a  respectable 
place  in  the  intellectual  annals  of  Eu- 
rope. Haller,  of  Berne  ;  J.  von  Miiller, 
of  Schaflhausen ;  and,  above  all  the 
sons  of  Zurich,  the  "Athens  of  German 
Switzerland,"  the  Gessners,  Lavater, 
Tschudi,  Zimmermann,  with  Zchokke 
in  our  own  days,  give  to  that  district 
quite  a  fair  average  of  literary  and  sci- 
entific merit.  But  already  on  the  border- 
land between  Gaul  and  German,  at 
Bale  (which  now  every  year  becomes 
more  French),  the  Bernouillis  and  Euler 
are  French  in  language  ;  and  it  is  un- 
questionable that  to  French  Switzer- 
land belong  those  few  really  great  Swiss 
names  which  stamp  themselves  upon 
their  age,  the  Rousseaus,  De  Staels, 
Guizots.  Romanism,  moreover,  con- 
tinued to  cling  to  the  rock-summits  of 
German  Switzerland,  harbouring  with  it 
ignorance  and  intellectual  torpor,  at  the 


very  heart  of  the  old  Teutonic  nucleus 
of  the  land.  And  thus  it  came  to  pass, 
as  I  said,  that  wherever  Swiss  indivi- 
dualism had  to  speak  out  before  Europe, 
it  did  so  mainly  in  French. 

Conversely  again,  we  need  not  be 
surprised  to  find  that  if  there  be  one 
character  which  distinguishes  Swiss- 
French  literature  and  science,  it  is  pre- 
cisely this  individualism.  Here  we  find 
ourselves  dealing  with  men  who  think 
for  themselves.  Their  very  mediocrity 
becomes  thus  original  by  the  force  of 
circumstances.  Was  there  ever  a 
heavier  writer,  a  more  mediocre  thinker 
than  Necker  ?  And  yet  that  Genevese 
banker,  standing  in  his  plebeian  respec- 
tability amid  the  brilliant  French  court, 
daring  to  declare,  in  an  age  of  prodi- 
gality and  insolvency,  that  economy  is 
a  public  duty,  that  it  is  the  business 
of  kings  to  rule  for  the  good  of  their 
siibjects,  has  an  originality  which  it  is 
impossible  to  mistake  in  contemporary 
pictures,  and  becomes  thereby  for  a  time 
the  very  idol  of  a  nation.  Dumont  is 
not  a  man  of  very'  great  genius  ;  but 
he  has  the  originality  to  discover  Bent- 
ham,  who  for  twenty  years  perhaps  is 
scarcely  known  except  in  Dumont's 
paraphrases. 

These  Swiss-French  have  thus,  in  the 
modern  history  of  France  herself,  an 
importance  which  no  impartial  observer 
should  overlook.  They  represent  that 
principle  of  individualism  which  the 
French  Reformation  tended  perhaps 
unduly  to  develop,  which  generations  of 
despotism,  from  Richelieu  downwards, 
took  every  pains  to  trample  out.  The 
type-man  of  them  all, — the  man  whose 
value  we  Englishmen  are  least  apt  to 
appreciate,  —  is  Rousseau.  What  is 
Rousseau's  essential  function  in  the 
eighteenth  century  ?  Above  all,  to 
stand  up  against  that  last  despot  whom 
a  Frenchman  will  yet  obey,  when  he 
has  cast  off  every  other  yoke, — King 
Wit,  then  lording  it  over  Europe  under 
the  name  of  Voltaire,  I  know  of  no 
greater  marvel  in  history  than  the  in- 
fluence of  Rousseau.  In  an  essentially 
spirituel  age,  without  a  particle  of  esprit, 
— in  an  essentially  courtly  age,  a  mere 


Swiss-French  Literature  :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


171 


boor, — devoid  of  every  worldly  advan- 
tage,— incapable  of  joining  or  leading 
school,  sect,  or  party, — he  becomes,  he, 
Jean  Jacques  the  misanthrope,  a  very 
power  in  the  world,  balancing  even  that 
of  the  lord   of  Ferney.     No   one   can 
fairly  judge  Eousseau  except  in  contrast 
with  Voltaire.     The   relation  between 
them   is   that   of  absolute  antagonism. 
The  one  is  essentially  positive,  the  other 
essentially  negative.     The  life  of  the  one 
is  one  long  struggle — oh,  through  what 
hideous   failures   often ! — to   do   good. 
The  highest  efforts  of  the  other  are  but 
to  undo  evil — with  what  noble  success 
indeed  sometimes,  let  the  name  of  Galas 
testify.      It  is  easy  for  us  to  rail  at 
Rousseau's    "  rose-pink "    sentiment,    at 
the  immorality  of  Julie  or  St.  Preux. 
But  place  them  beside  the  "  Pucelle," 
and  then  see  to  what  immorality  that 
tale  of  passion  really  was  the  antidote. 
"When   shall   we  practically  learn   that 
God's  medicine  is  not  more  timid  than 
man's  ?   that    He   too   knows   in  what 
proportions  even  poisons  may  be  used 
to  check  »or  quell  disease  1     Unwhole- 
some as  Eousseau' s  works  may  be  for 
the  nineteenth  century,  they  were  price- 
less for  the  eighteenth.     Voltaire  was 
for  ever  crushing  out  all   enthusiasm; 
Eousseau  for  ever  kindling  it ;  Voltaire 
was  essentially  an  intellectual  aristocrat ; 
Eousseau,  the  ex-lackey,  never  ceased  to 
be  one  of  the  many.    Whatever  of  noble 
and  generous,  of  loving  and  self-sacri- 
ficing, lived  amid  the  fires  of  the  French 
revolution  and  survived  them,  one  man 
above  all  others  has  France  to  thank 
for  it  under  God,  Eousseau  the  Genevese. 
Nor  would  it,  I  believe,  be  sufficient 
to     give    Switzerland    the    credit     of 
Eousseau's    influence,   her   native-born 
son.     It  is  characteristic  of  all  countries 
with  strongly-marked  natural  features, 
of    all   nations    with    strongly-marked 
generic  qualities,   that  they  impress  a 
perceptible   influence   upon  the   guests 
who    come    to    sojourn    among    them. 
Neither  Calvin  nor  De  Beze  would  pro- 
bably have  been  in  France  what  they 
were  at  Geneva.     Still  less,  I  believe, 
would  Voltaire   have    been    anywhere 
else  what  he  was  at  Ferney.      To  that 


period  belong  the  purest  pages  of  his 
history,  such  as  that  story  of  Galas  to 
which  I  have  referred.  The  persevering 
pluck  which  he  displayed  in  it  would 
have  been  physically  impossible  in  Paris. 
I  believe  it  would  have  been  no  less 
beyond  his  moral  reach  amidst  the  fri- 
volous corruption  of  French  society. 
There  blows  through  it  all,  as  it  were,  a 
waft  of  free  mountain  air. 

Between  Eousseau  and  the  next  great 
name  which  I  shall  have  to  mention, 
Switzerland    gives   to   France   one    no 
longer   of    splendour,   but   of    infamy. 
This  time,  however,  it  is  right  to  say 
that  it  is  not  free  Geneva,  but  Neuf- 
chatel,  completely  under  the  thumb  of 
wooden  Fried  richian  Prussianism,  which 
sends  forth  the  most  hideous  figure  of 
the    French   Eevolution,    Marat.     And 
yet  I  do  not  know  but  what,  even  in 
this   portent    of    humanity,    we    may 
recognise  the  distinctive  individualism 
of  the  Swiss  character.     Mediocre  in  all' 
things,    the    time    exhibits    no    other 
instance  of  mediocrity  so  self-sufficient, 
and  rising  to   such   importance.     The 
man  thoroughly  dares  to  be  that  which 
he  is — hence   his  power.     Marat  with 
his  greasy  cap  and  scurvied  frame  is, 
after  all,  but  the  loathsome  caricature  of 
Eousseau  "the  savage,"  as  he  was  called, 
md  called  himself.     The  peculiarity  of 
both  men  is  that  they  are  always  ready 
to  stand  defiant  against  those  who  are 
held    to    be    their    fellow-combatants. 
Marat  quails  as  little  before  Danton  or 
Eobespierre,  as  Eousseau  before  Voltaire 
or  Diderot. 

But  Geneva  boasts  no  such  heroes  as 
Marat.  Other  names  are  hers.  Not  to 
speak  of  the  Dumonts,  Clavieres,  Mallet 
Dupans,  who  represent  her  during  the 
revolutionary  crisis, — what  Eousseau 
is  in  one  century,  Madame  de  Stael 
is  at  the  beginning  of  the  next.  We 
need  not  emulate  the  admiration  of  the 
generation  which  preceded  us  for  Ma- 
dame de  Stael's  writings  in  themselves. 
But  her  historical  greatness  can,  I  think, 
but  grow.  It  is  one  of  contrast,  like 
that  of  Eousseau.  You  must  measure 
her  by  him  against  whom  she  measured 
herself.  Only  when  we  have  appre- 

N2 


172 


Swiss-French  Literature :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


ciated  the  colossal  and  yet  fascinating 
greatness  of  the  First  Napoleon,  as  he 
showed  himself,  -with  Greek  profile  and 
eagle  eye,  springing  up,  as  it  were,  from 
the  ruins,  from  the  ashes  of  old  France, 
young,  beautiful,  brave,  mighty ;  in  war, 
driving  the  nations  asunder  before  his 
sword ;  in  peace,  making  the  walls  of  a 
new  social  order  to  rise  about  him  from 
the  ground,  as  to  the  sound  of  some 
magic  lyre, — a  sort  of  Phoebus- Ares  or 
Balder- Odin   among    men, — only   then 
can  we  discern  also  the  strange  greatness 
of  that  woman's  voice  lifted  against  him 
in  protest,  from  Coppet  or  elsewhere; 
not  dwelling  on  old  traditions,  like  De 
Maistre  or  Chateaubriand ;  not  backed, 
like   our  English   statesmen,   by  Tory 
obstinacy  and  national  pride,  but  sing- 
ing alone,  as  it  were  in  the  very  ears  of 
the  despot,  the  weird  and  deadly  song  of 
the  future,  the  song  of  Freedom  and  of 
Pe£ce,  of  the  fraternal  independence  of 
the  nations.     Very  wonderful  was  the 
power  of  that  voice.      Years  after  her 
death  it  seemed  yet  to  murmur  in  music 
round  every  name  that  had  once  been 
familiar  to  it ;  and  the  selfish  and  scep- 
tical Benjamin  Constant  died  the  object 
of  a  nation's  reverence  because  Madame 
de  Stael  had  once  chanced  to  care  for 
him,  and  had  for  a  time  kindled  his  dry 
heart   into  indignation   and   eloquence. 
It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
spirit   of  Madame   de   Stael   was   that 
which  presided  over  that,  on  the  whole, 
very  noble   period    in  the   history  of 
French    liberalism,   its    fifteen     years 
of   opposition    under    the   government 
of  the  Restoration.     Nor  can  we  deem 
her  influence  wholly   extinct   so   long 
as   a   De   Broglie   thinks    and    writes, 
and  lives  respected.     So   great  is  the 
debt   of    France  to, that  other    noble 
Genevese. 

And  what  greater  name  do  we  find  in 
France,  during  that  period  of  fifteen 
years  and  the  next  of  eighteen  which 
follows  it,  than  that  of  Guizot  ?  If  we 
look  to  his  worth  as  a  writer,  he  and 
that  other  Swiss  (though  not  by  descent), 
Sismondi,  are  in  truth  the  fathers,  under 
both  its  leading  aspects,  of  the  present 
historical  school  Sismondi  exhibits  to 


us  the  patient  research  into  original 
authorities,  without  which  all  historical 
thought  is  baseless ;  Guizot,  along  with 
this,  that  keen  questioning  of  facts  till 
they  yield  up  their  inmost  meaning, 
without  which  historic  research  remains 
fruitless.  If  we  look  to  Guizot's  poli- 
tical career,  on  the  other  hand, — though 
the  close  of  it  is  to  me  singularly  pain- 
ful and  unworthy  of  him, — who  can 
deny  that  for  some  years  the  Swiss  pro- 
fessor had  made  himself  not  only  the 
foremost  man  in  France,  but  one  of  the 
two  or  three  foremost  in  Europe  ?  And 
if  he  failed,  why  was  it,  but  because 
he  stooped  from  Swiss  independence 
to  the  practice  of  Louis  Philippian 
despotism  ? 

Shall  we  take   some  less   ambitious 
names,  though  no  less  likely  to  endure  ? 
I  will  single  out  two,  in  wholly  different 
spheres:  Agassiz,  of  Fribourg,  and  Vinet, 
of  Lausanne.    The  country  that  has  pro- 
duced two  such  names  in  a  generation 
may  well  rest  satisfied.  Agassiz,  one  of  the 
greatest  of  contemporary  naturalists,  on 
whom,  by  universal  consent,  the  mantle 
of  Cuvier  has  descended, — Vinet,  the 
real  father  of  modern  French  religious 
thought,  the  most  Pascal-like  since  Pascal 
of  French  writers.     How  many  names 
of   mark   within    their    sphere   cluster 
round    his  —  the    Merle    d'Aubigne"s, 
Gaussens,  Malans,    Celleriers,   Bonrets, 
Bosts,  Cherbuliez,  &c. — is  well  known 
to  religious  readers ;  whilst  from  him 
proceed  directly  the  two  most  remark- 
able, though  mutually  opposed,  schools 
of  contemporary  French  theology,  those 
of  De  Pressense"  and  Scherer.    And  now 
there   has  come  forth  from  the   same 
quarter  one  who  seems  destined  to  ex- 
ercise,  within   the   sphere    of    French 
thought,  a  religious  influence  more  wide- 
spreading,  more  popular,  than  any  other 
number  of  her  school,  the  authoress  of 
the  "  Horizons  Prochains  "  and  the  "  Ho- 
rizons Celestes,"  Madame  de  Gasparin. 

Of  this  lady  herself,  it  is  sufficient  to 
say  that  she  is  the  wife  of  Count  Age"nor 
de  Gasparin,  son  of  that  Count  de  Gas- 
parin who  was  long  a  minister  under 
Louis  Philippe.  M.  Agenor  de  Gasparin 
was  himself  for  several  years  a  member 


Swiss-French  Literature:  Madame  de  Gasparin, 


173 


of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  where  his 
position  may  be  briefly  characterised  by 
saying  that  he  showed  himself  there  as 
frankly  Protestant  as  M.  de  Montalem- 
bert  showed  himself  frankly  Romanist, 
and  won  the  respect  of  all.  He  after- 
wards took  a  prominent  part  in  the 
formation  of  that  "Free  Church"  of 
Protestant  France,  which  certainly  in- 
cludes within  it  the  most  stirring  and 
energetic  members  of  the  general  body. 

Now,  if  Calvinism  in  general  exhibits 
mainly  the  individualist  side  of  Chris- 
tian doctrine — if  the  French  Calvinistic 
Church,  from  the  circumstances  of  its 
position  as  the  Church  of  a  long  unre- 
cognised and  often  persecuted  minority, 
tends  to  bring  out  that  individualist  side 
with  peculiar  sharpness — if  the  like 
tendency  results  in  the  Swiss  Church 
from  the  national  position  and  charac- 
teristics of  the  Swiss  people — it  has 
been  naturally  carried  to  an  extreme  by 
the  events  in  the  midst  of  and  in  op- 
position to  which  the  Vinet  school  of 
theology  grew  up,  and  by  the  special 
constitution  of  the  "  Free  Church." 
Those  who  are  in  anywise  familiar  with 
the  state  of  religion  on  the  Continent, 
know  that  half  a  century  ago  an  almost 
complete  religious  deadness  spread  over 
French  Switzerland, — that  Socinianism, 
following  in  the  wake  of  despotic  and 
aristocratic  rule,  established  its  very 
throne  at  Geneva.  Against  these  two 
tendencies — the  aristocratic  and  the  So- 
cinian — a  sort  of  cross-reaction  took 
place.  A  coarse,  vulgar  democracy,  de- 
void of  all  religious  principle,  copied 
from  the  lowest  French  models,  of  which 
M.  James  Fazy  is  the  too  successful 
embodiment,  rose  up  against  the  old 
Genevese  aristocracy,  and  threw  it.  A 
spring  of  earnest,  self-devoted,  thought- 
ful, sometimes  learned,  Christian  faith 
welled  out,  and  soon  carried  away,  for 
all  religious  purposes,  the  dry  bones  of 
old  Socinianism.  Meanwhile  a  strange 
change  was  taking  place.  As  each 
struggle  was  unfortunately  carried  on, 
in  great  measure,  within  separate  spheres 
— as  many  of  the  religious  reformers 
had  not  the  insight  to  discern  the 
political  necessities  of  their  age  and 


country,  nor  the  political  reformers  the 
power  to  see  that  political  reform,  unin- 
spired by  religious  faith,  can  end  but  in 
a  mere  change  of  machinery — it  came 
to  pass  that  the  conquerors  met  in  turn 
as    opponents,    whilst    the    conquered 
passed,  so  to  speak,  each  to  the  service 
of  the  other  conqueror.    Religious  reform 
became  identified  with  political  conserva- 
tism— political  reform,  with  irreligion ; 
old   Socinianism   easily   ranging   itself, 
under  colour  of  the  most  absolute  Eras- 
tianism,  beneath  the  banners  of  demo- 
cracy, in  order  to  worst  its  opponents  by 
means  of  the  civil  arm.     Hence,  though 
indeed  even  less  in  Geneva  than  in  its 
neighbouring    French    and    Protestant 
canton    of    Vaud,   that   shameless    op- 
pression of  the  Church  by  the  majority 
which  developed  the  "  Free  Church  "  of 
Vaud.   And  as  Swiss  democracy,  blindly 
echoing  the  voice  of  French,  had  taken  up 
the  cry  of  Socialism — an  idea  which  the 
Swiss  character  seems  specially  incapable 
of  understanding — it  followed  that  the 
religious  reformers  grew  to  embody  in 
that  word  all  the  blasphemy,  lawless- 
ness, oppression  which  they  saw  around 
them.    Socialism,  as  will  be  seen  almost 
anywhere  in  Vinet's  works,  is  for  that 
admirable  thinker  a  mere  monster  and 
portent.    '  He  is  too  much  unnerved  at 
s'ght  of  it  ever  to  reach  its  root-idea,  as 
being  simply  the  effort  to  organize  social 
relations,  and  to  elevate  that  labour  into 
a  science  and  an  art.     He  never  stops 
to  inquire  whether  the  problem,  how  to 
conciliate   the   claims   of   society  with 
those  of  the  individual,  may  not  occupy 
some  of  those  socialists  whom  he  in- 
veighs against  quite  as  much  as  himself. 
Socialism  for  him  must  be  a  dreadful 
conspiracy   against  individual  freedom 
and  worth ;  the  very  word  of  society, 
you  would  say,  makes  him  almost  shiver. 
To  understand  his  vehemence,  we  must 
remember  that  for  him,  as  taught  by  the 
lessons  of  daily  experience,   "society" 
meant  in   practice  a  knot  of  ignorant 
parish   demagogues    pretending   to   or- 
ganize  a  Church ;    whilst   "  the   indi- 
vidual" was  the  poor  "pasteur"  their 
victim. 

Swiss  democracy  had  been  a  bad  copy 


174 


Swiss-French  Literature  :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


of  French ;  the  French  "  Free  Church" 
was  a  somewhat  better  copy  of  the  really 
heroic   Swiss   ones.     It  is  founded,   I 
heard  it  declared  by  one  of  its  most 
eloqiient  champions,  M.  Pilatte,  in  one, 
certainly,  of  the  very  noblest  sermons  I 
ever  heard, — not  (as  the  words  might 
seem  to  follow)  on  that  foundation  other 
than  which,  St.  Paul  tells  us,  hath  no 
man  laid,  but  upon  "  individual  profes- 
sion."   It  sets  itself  in  direct  opposition 
to  the  "  churches  of  multitude,"  as  it 
terms  those  that  venture  to  hold  God's 
revealed   Will   and  Love   a   somewhat 
firmer  foundation  than  the  fleeting  "  pro- 
fession" of  man.     For  their  behoof  it 
has  invented  the   contemptuous  term 
of  "  multitudinism ;  "  individualism  it 
openly  glorifies ;  many  of  its  members 
repelling  the  baptism  of  those  infants, 
likeness  to  whom,  we  are  told,  makes  us 
children  of  the  kingdom.     How  many 
broader  and  nobler  currents  flow  mingled 
with  these,  especially  in  the  works  of 
M.  de  Pressense" — how  the  sense  of  God's 
universal  Fatherhood  has  taken  root  in 
what  would  otherwise  seem  an  ungenial 
soil — how  a  deeper  study  of  the  Scrip- 
tures and  of  the  fathers,  a  broader  edu- 
cational training,  a  wider  outlook  over 
men  and  things,  have  induced   also  a 
catholicity  of  spirit  towards  Romanism, 
towards  even  heathen  creeds  and  phi- 
losophies, an  acknowledgment  of  Christ's 
everlasting  and  universal  working  as  the 
Light  of  the  world  in  the  minds  and 
consciences  of  men,  to  which  we  are 
sadly  unaccustomed'  in  such  quarters — 
how  openly  the  extreme  consequences 
of  Calvinistic  doctrine  have  been  pro- 
tested against  in  this  bodyj  the  latest 
offshoot  of  Calvinism — I  have  not  here 
the  space  to  show. 

So  much  for  the  quarter  whence 
Madame  de  Gasparin' s  works  proceed. 
She  has  been  long  before  the  public  as  an 
author.  I  have  before  me  the  second 
edition,  dated  1844,  of  her  earliest  work, 
"Marriage  from  a  Christian  point  of 
view;"  so  that  it  must  be  sixteen 
years  and  more  since  she  achieved  her 
first  success  as  an  author.  But  that 
success  was  almost  limited  to  the  "re- 
ligious" public.  And,  indeed,  between 


these  early  works  and  the  two  last, 
there  is  all  the  difference  between  the 
larva  and  the  butterfly.  None  of  them 
belong  indeed  quite  to  the  class  of  those 
quarter  or  half-pounds  of  spiritual  starch 
commonly  called  "  good  books,"  which 
are  as  incapable  of  alone  nourishing  the 
soul  of  man  as  material  starch  alone  his 
body.  But  it  was  impossible  to  guess 
from  them  the  high  qualities  which  dis- 
tinguish the  last  two ;  only  in  the  latest 
predecessor  of  these,  "  Some  Faults  of 
the  Christians  of  our  Day" — full  of 
searching  and  often  caustic  truth — can 
we  now,  looking  back,  discern,  as  in 
the  ripened  chrysalis,  the  folded  wings 
which  have  since  outspread  themselves 
to  the  sun. 

The  "Near  Horizons"  went  forth  last 
year  anonymously,  not  from  any  special 
Protestant  book-shop,  but  from  that  of 
the  great  popular  publishers  of  Paris, 
the  Michel  Levys.  The  appeal  thus 
made  to  a  wider  public  than  Madame 
de  Gasparin  had  yet  addressed  was  fully 
justified  by  the  result.  The  value  of 
the  book  was  soon  pointed  out  by  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  and  ere  this 
three  editions  have  appeared.  Yet  the 
book  hardly  promised  to  be  popular 
The  "  Near  Horizons "  are  those  of 
heaven  itself.  The  various  sketches 
of  which  the  work  consists  mostly 
have  death-beds  for  subjects,  and  a 
certain  monotony  thus  runs  through 
it,  felt  indeed  only  when  it  is  read 
off  at  once,  and  which  the  freshness 
of  feeling  and  language  otherwise  en- 
tirely keeps  off.  Yes,  freshness ;  for 
after  her  sixteen  years  of  authorship,  it 
is  only  now  that  Madame  de  Gasparin, 
young  no  longer,  has  completely  reached 
the  expression  of  that  quality.  Fresh- 
ness is  the  great  charm  of  the  book,  as 
it  is  of  its  successor.  You  feel  that 
you  are  dealing  with  one  who  has 
looked  at  nature,  who  has  looked  at 
religion,  at  first  hand.  So  wondrous 
are  the  pictures  of  nature  in  the  former, 
that  it  seems  at  first  sight  impossible 
they  should  have  been  written  by  any 
other  than  that  sovran  queen  of  French 
landscape  painters  in  words,  George 
Sand.  And  yet  soon — apart  from  in- 


/Siviss -French  Literature  :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


175 


dications  of  fact  or  of  doctrine  which 
individual  knowledge  may  suggest  as 
decisive  against  the  supposition — the 
very  character  of  the  style  declares  it 
impossible.  George  Sand's  style  is  that 
of  her  favourite  scenes  of  central  France, 
with  their  fat  plains  or  stretches  of 
common,  never  undulating  into  more 
than  hill  and  dale,  with  streams  swift 
or  sluggish,  pebbly  or  clayey,  but  all 
unconscious  of  torrent  or  waterfall:  so 
that  she  must  leave  Berry  for  Auvergne 
to  find  that  "Black  Town"  which  she 
was  lately  depicting  to  us ;  itisRafaelesque 
or  Mozartlike  in  its  perfection,  vehe- 
ment without  roughness,  lofty  without 
reaching  to  the  sublime.  Madame  de 
Gasparin's  style,  on  the  contrary,  is 
essentially  a  mountain  style,  hasty  often 
and  abrupt,  -now  rushing  like  a  torrent, 
now  towering  like  a  rock.  Mountains 
too  are  a  leading  subject  for  her  pen, 
with  their  ravines  and  their  pine-trees, — 
those  Jura  Mountains,  which  already,  if 
I  mistake  not,  have  proved  the  main 
source  of  inspiration  for  Calame  the 
landscape  painter,  but  of  which  Madame 
de  Gasparin  may  be  called  the  first 
poet,  as  Rousseau  was  of  the  Alps. 

Of  Madame  de  Gasparin's  powers 
of  word-painting,  take  the  following 
example  : — 

"  It  is  not  yet  the  time  for  beautiful  fungi, — 
those  strange  creations  which  sow  the  wood 
with  their  warm  tints  when  October  has 
stripped  the  glades  flowerless.  They  are 
queer  characters,  full  of  mystery.  Some  are 
honest,  some  vicious.  I  don't  speak  of  the 
deadly  ones,  I  mean  the  face,  the  bearing  of 
them.  Some  delicate,  milk-white,  planted  all 
in  a  ring,  as  if  to  mark  the  spot  where  the 
fairies  danced  last  night.  The  others  solitary, 
blackish,  livid,  traitor-faces  ruminating  some 
crime  apart.  These  purple,  doubled  with 
orange,  spreading  forth  the  magnificence  of 
their  mantle  in  the  midst  of  a  crowd  of  grey 
buttons  that  hold  themselves  at  a  distance, — a 
pasha  in  his  harem.  Those  with  a  silver  lustre, 
smooth  as  silk,  with  a  dome  of  satin  above, 
and  spotless  ribbing  beneath.  Some  are  iri- 
descent, some  pale  golden.  How  came  they  ? 
how  go  they  ?  What  sun,  when  autumn  mists 
grow  heavy  on  the  soil,  what  sun  empurpled 
them,  what  painted  them  with  sulphur,  what 
gave  them  the  rainbow  reflections  of  mother- 
of-pearl?  Why  does  the  cow  that  crops  the 
latest  plants,  that  twists  off  the  leaves  touched 
with  the  frost ;  why  does  the  sheep  wander- 


ing under  the  bare  oak-trees  leave  them  un- 
touched ?     I  know  not." 

The  first  sketch,  "Lisette's  Dream," 
the  main  charm  of  which  lies,  however, 
in  its  descriptions,  is  directed  against 
what,  in  her  next  work,  the  writer  will 
call  "  a  Paradise  which  frightens  one." 
Lisette,  an  old  peasant- woman,  has 
dreamed  of  Paradise — of  a  house  of 
gold,  bright  as  the  sun  of  midday, 
wherein  she  saw  a  fair  old  lady,  severe 
and  yet  sweet  of  mien,  who  sat  and 
knitted  in  perfect  bliss,  but  forbade  her 
the  door.  She  is  frightened ;  such  a 
vision  of  Paradise  oppresses  her.  The 
writer  comforts  her  with  the  remem- 
brance of  the  thief  on  the  cross. 

"  At  this  hour,  since  many  a  winter,  Lisette 
has  entered  the  house  of  gold. 

"  Does  she  knit,  impassive,  in  beatitude,  from 
age  to  age,  beside  the  silver-haired  matron? 
I  think  not;  I  believe  her  to  be  alive  and 
active  in  heaven  as  upon  earth.  Cares  have 
passed  away ;  happiness  beams  immutable, 
supreme  life  reveals  its  mysteries  to  the 
ardent  soul  of  Lisette." 

"The  Three  Eoses"  represent  three 
young  girls  dying  before  twenty.  All 
three  sketches  are  inimitable  in  their 
graceful  tenderness.  I  will  not  spoil 
them  by  attempting  to  analyse,  but  will 
only  detach  the  following  paragraph  : — 

"  Little  cries  answer  one  another : 
"  '  Have  you  any  ?' — 'Yes.' — '  A  good  place  ?' 
Silence. 

"  There  is  no  hunt  in  which  selfishness  dis- 
plays itself  better  than  in  the  hunt  after  lilies 
of  the  valley.  One  holds  one's  tongue.  To 
say  no  would  be  lying ;  to  say  yes  would  be  to 
lose  one's  find.  One  makes  haste ;  if  scrupu- 
lous, one  makes  a  little  murmur  which  pledges 
one  to  nothing ;  and  the  treasure  once  reaped, 
one  creeps  farther  on,  very  far  on,  into  some 
other  odorous  nest  all  sown  with  white 
bunches." 

The  "Tilery,"  as  we  may  call  it, 
takes  its  name  from  the  description  ,of 
an  entirely  secluded  house,  inhabited 
by  a  family  of  tile-makers,  who  take 
delight,  the  wife  especially,  in  their 
loneliness.  "The  Hegelian"  is  a  tale 
of  1849,  placing  before  us,  in  striking 
contrast,  the  wild  enthusiasm  of  German 
revolutionists,  and  the  innocent  blood- 
thirstiness  of  the  reactionists  : — 

"'Shot,'  cried  the  general.  .  .  .  Shot  the 
chiefs !  shot  the  soldiers !  shot  the  imbeciles 


176 


Swiss-French  Literature  :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


who  let  them  alone.'  As  I  named  to  him  this 
one  and  that,  the  general,  with  an  expressive 
gesture,  took  aim,  winked,  pulled  the  trigger, 
uttered  his  absurd  '  shot/  and  then  laughed  a 
big  simpleton  laugh." 

Amongst  the  other  Sketches,  I  would 
chiefly  point  out  "The  Poor  Boy,"— 
wonderfully  beautiful  all  through, — 
which  gives  the  life  of  a  grotesque 
idiot,  maltreated  by  his  father,  till,  in 
his  last  illness,  the  religious  sense  is 
kindled  in  him,  and  he  dies  in  peace. 
"  The  Pigeon-house,"  is  not  "  what  you 
"think.  There  is  no  other  pigeon- 
"  house  but  a  poor  room,  no  other  pigeons 
"  than  an  old  man  and  his  wife."  It  is 
the  story  of  the  last  years  of  an  old 
Lyonnese  upholsterer,  a  good  workman, 
but  a  shallow  and  weak  mind,  coming 
to  Paris  in  the  hope  of  finding  work, 
with  a  wife,  his  good  genius,  to  whom 
he  is  tenderly  attached;  and  after 
various  ups  and  downs,  losing  his 
wife  and  going  off  into  semi-imbe- 
cility. Though  away  from  her  beloved 
mountains,  the  writer  shows  here  a 
delicate  truth  of  observation  and  firm- 
ness of  touch  which  could  not  be  sur- 
passed. "  Marietta,"  again,  is  a  charming 
tale  of  a  hideous,  though  gentle-souled 
dwarf,  cared  for  with  the  most  thought- 
ful delicacy  by  an  old  shoemaker,  her 
cousin. 

Very  slight  are  for  the  most  part 
these  sketches,  as,  indeed,  the  writer 
warns  us  from  the  first.  Their  one 
great  quality  is,  that  they  are  all  from 
nature,  and  by  one  who  has  eyes  to  see. 
But  they  have  all  of  them  a  singular 
charm  of  style.  The  French  of  these 
Swiss  writers,  as  M.  Ste.  Beuve  has 
observed  ere  this,  has  always  a  pleasant 
archaic  provincialism  about  it, — a  smack 
of  that  sixteenth  century,  so  various 
and  so  free,  ere  yet  France  had  put  on  the 
periwig  of  the  "  Grand  Siecle."  This  is 
remarkable,  amongst  other  writers,  in 
that  charming  teller  of  tales  Rudolph 
Topffer,  the  caricaturist  schoolmaster, 
whose  "Travels  in  Zigzag,"  though  too 
lengthy,  constituted,  even  before  "Tom 
Brown,"  the  first  great  literary  homage 
paid  to  boy-nature.  But  apart  from 
mere  archaisms  and  provincialisms,  the 


style  of  Madame  de  Gasparin  in  her 
"Near  Horizons"  is  full  of  words  and 
expressions  which  have  a  sweet  country 
smell  about  them,  though  the  dialect  is 
not  the  same  as  that  with  which  George 
Sand  has  made  us  familiar.  Very  dif- 
ferent, indeed,  is  the  point  of  view  of 
the  Protestant  authoress  from  that  of 
her  world-famous  contemporary;  not 
only  as  being  strictly  religious,  but  also 
under  the  social  aspect.  Here  we  have 
only  glances  cast  from  above,  bright 
and  loving  indeed,  but  still  not  actual 
outlooks  from  that  sphere  of  artizan  and 
labourer  life  into  which  George  Sand 
seems  to  have  fairly  penetrated.  It  is 
always  the  great  lady,  in  town  or  country, 
going  forth  to  help,  to  comfort,  to  speak 
of  Christ,  using,  nobly  and  generously, 
her  own  social  privileges  for  the  benefit 
of  others ;  it  is  not  a  soul  oppressed 
with  the  weight  of  those  very  privileges, 
striving  and  struggling,  even,  it  may  be, 
at  the  cost  of  sin,  to  be  one  with  the 
poorest  and  the  lowest. 

The  "Heavenly  Horizons"  is,  in  its 
success,  even  a  more  remarkable  work 
than  its  elder  born.  Again  it  has 
been  reviewed  in  the  Deux  Mondes,  by 
Emile  Montegut,  and  with  singular 
favour ;  again  it  has  reached  a  third 
edition.  Yet  this  deals  no  longer  with 
nature's  glories,  even  as  vehicles  for 
higher  things,  no.  longer  sketches  the 
sunlights  or  the  shadows  of  human  life. 
It  is  occupied  all  through  directly  with 
the  highest,  gravest  subjects, — <leath, 
heaven,  immortality,  resurrection,  the 
new  creation.  If  the  writer's  style  has 
forgone  the  field  of  its  charming  rus- 
ticities, yet,  struggling  with  mighty  pur- 
poses, it  becomes  as  it  were  even  more 
picturesque  than  ever  in  its  brave  free- 
dom, its  bold  abruptness.  The  cardinal 
idea  of  the  book  may  be  said  to  be  a 
protest  against  the  "Paradise  which 
frightens  one,"  a  Paradise  of  absorption, 
or  even  of  rest, — the  "  apocryphal  Para- 
dise" of  the  painters,  of  Dante,  a 
"  Chinese  scene  painted  with  strange 
"figures,"  as  the  writer  somewhere  calls 
it.  That  the  soul  does  not  sleep,  that 
personal  identity  subsists  after  death, 
that  affections  are  eternal,  such  are  the 


Swiss-French  Literature :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


177 


points  on  which  the  writer  exhausts  her 
most  incisive  arguments. 

"Who  made  our  affections?  God  or  the 
devil  ?  Forgive  me  my  precision  of  terms.  Now 
if  God  put  affections  into  us  Himself;  if  He 
judged  His  work  as  good,  will  He  judge  it  as 
bad  all  of  a  sudden,  on  such  a  day  ?  He  who 
endowed  the  earth  with  attachments  so  mighty 
and  so  sweet,  could  He  disinherit  heaven  of 
them  ?  Easily  could  He  have  placed  us  in  an 
atmosphere  of  uniform  and  I  will  say  tasteless 
love,  like  in  all,  equal  for  all,  an  ocean  island- 
less  and  shoreless.  He  has  not  done  it.  Men 
have  imagined  this,  not  God.  % 

"  Men  think  monotony  great.  God  finds  it 
poor.  Just  take  away  from  man  his  pre- 
ferences. Behold,  he  loves  all  things  and  all 
men  with  identical  feelings ;  his  father  no 
more  nor  less  than  the  generality  of  old  men  ; 
that  unknown  child  quite  like  his  own.  Friends 
he  has  none ;  or  rather  you,  I,  a  stranger,  the 
Grand  Turk  at  need,  we  are  his  friends,  in 
the  same  degree,  in  the  same  manner.  This 
man  is  not  a  man;  I  see  in  him  arms,  legs,;! 
discover  no  heart.  And  if  really  he  is  alive,  if 
it  be  not  an  automaton,  I  say  that  loving  all 
he  loves  nothing,  that  I  care  little  for  his 
general  tendernesses,  and  that  I  would  rather 
be  the  neighbour's  cat  than  his  wife  or  his  son. 

*  *  *  * 

"  Yet  this  is  how  men  settle  heaven,  these 
are  the  guests  with  which  they  people  it. 

"  Oh,  how  differently  God  has  made  it,  how 
differently  He  has  made  man  ! 

"  God  has  created  the  family,  which  man 
would  not  have  invented,  which  in  the  savage 
state  he  annihilates,  which  in  the  excesses  of 
corrupt  civilization  he  ceases  to  acknowledge, 
which  most  of  our  philosophies  dissolve.  God 
has  strongly  bound  the  sheaf,  the  man  to  his 
wife,  the  father  to  his  child.  And  when  with 
a  word  Paul  would  depict  Roman  degradation, 
he  writes,  '  Men  without  natural  affections.' 

*  *  *  * 

"  Yes,  there  are  families  up  yonder,  united 
by  indissoluble  links,  each  loving  the  other 
with  a  love  more  solid  than  earth  has  known. 
No  selfishness  narrows  it,  no  unfaithfulness 
befouls  it ;  neither  does  the  ambition  of  power 
stifle  it,  nor  the  passion  of  gold  dry  it  up :  it 
renews  itself  without  ceasing  in  the  worship 
of  God,  and  that  worship  quenches  it  not,  but 
makes  it  shine  eternally  like  itself. 

-  Yet  Jesus  has  said  that  in  heaven 
there  is  no  taking  nor  giving  of  women  in 
marriage. 

"  Doubtless.  Another  condition,  other  rela- 
tions. Our  earthly  marriage  has  consequences 
which  future  life  could  not  admit  of.  What  is 
transitory  ceases,  what  is  immortal  subsists. 
Now  Christian  love  is  immortal. 

"  To  convince  yourself  of  this,  admit  the 
contrary  for  an  instant.  Represent  to  your- 
self Abraham,  that  mighty  individuality," 
(Oh,  Madame  de  Gasparin  !)  "  without  Sarah, 
that  other  individuality,"  (Oh!)  t(so  closely 


bound  to  his  own.  Go  a  step  further  ; 
imagine  Jacob  indifferent  to  Rachel.  He 
meets  her,  the  gentle  beloved,  the  com- 
panion of  his  pilgrimages,  he  meets  her  in 
this  Paradise  of  uniform  tints.  No  names 
more,  no  touching  memories,  no  tenderness. 
He  meets  her,  and  unmoved  in  eye,  unmoved 
in  thought,  he  glides  beside  her.  A  soul  taken' 
at  haphazard  inspires  him  with  the  like  love. 
The  mother  of  Joseph,  the  mother  of  Benja- 
min, he  feels  nothing  towards  her  which  he 
does  not  feel  in  the  same  degree  for  any  other 
inhabitant  of  heaven.  Ah  !  she  whom  weeping 
he  laid  on  the  road  to  Bethlehem,  she  remains 
there  still.  Both  are  dead.  The  beings  whom 
in  higher  regions  you  call  yet  Rachel,  Jacob, 
have  nothing  in  common  with  the  hearts  which 
burned  here  below  with  a  love  at  once  so 
divine  and  so  human.  I  recognise  them  no 
more. 

»  *  *  * 

"Be  it  so.  But  with  the  persistency  of  the 
affections  you  introduce  sorrow  into  Paradise. 
All  whom  you  love,  will  they  have  a  place 
there  ?  Are  you  sure  of  finding  them  there  ? 
A  father,  a  child. . . . 

"  I  fall  at  thy  feet,  my  God  !  I  fall  with  a  cry 
which  is  an  act  of  faith.  Thou  wilt  save  them, 
Thou  wilt  fetch  them ;  beneath  Thy  fervent 
love  all  hardening  of  heart  shall  melt.  If  it 
should  be  otherwise !  .  .  .  .  My  God,*  have 
pity  on  me  1  I  know  that  Thou  lovest  them ; 
I  know  that  Thou  wilt  wipe  away  my  tears ;  I 
believe  with  all  my  soul  that  Thou  wilt  not 
wipe  them  away  whilst  narrowing  my  heart. 
Thou  comfurtest  by  giving;  Thou  takest 
nought  away  of  that  which  is  good,  that 
which  Thyself  hast  found  very  good.  And 
then,  behold  a  mystery :  Thyself,  0  God, 
from  the  bosom  of  Thine  immutable  felicity, 
Ihou  seest  those  that  have  lost  themselves. 
Yet  Thy  Love  and  Thy  Charity  remain ;  Thou 
hast  not  sacrificed  Thy  love  to  Thy  felicity. 
Veiled  harmonies  these,  but  of  which  I  hear 
the  far  off  echo. 

"  What  Thy  omniscience  did  for  Thee,  Thy 
compassions  will  do  for  me. 

"My  love  shall  not  die.  Struck  all  along 
the  road,  covered  with  wounds,  not  thus  shall 
I  enter  the  kingdom  of  God ;  bleeding  and 
maimed.  The  God  before  whom  despair  takes 
flight  will  not  chase  it  away  by  dispersing  to 
the  four  winds  the  ashes  of  my  recollections. 
Indifference  shall  not  cure  me  of  sorrow.  My 
God  has  other  remedies  for  suffering  which 
has  just  loved. 

"My  tendernesses  will  live,  Lord,  as  Thy 
love,  as  Thy  tendernesses.  Thy  heart,  Jesus 
risen  from  the  dead,  is  my  warrant  for  my 
heart's  vitality." 

In  the  earlier  pages  of  her  book, 
Madame  de  Gasparin  says,  that  she  only 
speaks  to  those  whom  she  terms  "  the 
redeemed,"  those  who  have  felt  their 
guilt  and  their  impotency,  and  have 


178 


Swiss-French  Literature :  Madame  de  Gasparin. 


fallen  at  God's  feet  imploring  mercy. 
And  yet,  apart  from  its  scriptural  in- 
stances, what  is  the  passage  I  have 
quoted  but  a  fervid  appeal  to  the 
common  humanity  of  every  one  of  us, 
"Jews,  Turks,  Infidels,  and  Heretics" 
as  well  as  Christians  of  churches  old 
and  new,  state  and  free, — an  appeal 
grounded  on  the  nature  of  Him  who 
is  the  Father  of  all, — a  cry  to  the 
heart,  in  the  name  of  Him  who  is  the 
Lord  of  the  hearts  of  all  1  Indeed,  if  I 
might  characterise  the  "  Heavenly  Hori- 
zons" in  two  words,  I  would  say  that 
the  essential  beauty  of  the  book,  as  well 
as  its  distinctive  characteristic,  consists 
in  its  passionate  humanity.  So  much 
broader,  thank  God,  is  the  spirit  of  man 
than  the  systems  in  which  it  seeks  to 
inclose  itself,  that  the  world  is  filled 
with  such  contradictions,  whether  in  the 
writings  or  in  the  lives  of  men.  Feel- 
ings perpetually  overlap  dogmas.  The 
large  heart  and  the  narrow  doctrine  often 
quaintly  meet  in  one.  A  man  will 
damn  you  Sunday  after  Sunday  from  his 
pulpit,  who  will  treat  you  as  the  best  of 
friends  when  he  comes  down  from  it. 
And  so  Madame  de  Gasparin,  professing 
only  to  address  "the  redeemed,"  has 
illustrated  a  truth  which  she  ignores,  by 
speaking  to  the  hearts  of  all 

And  now  I  need  hardly  point  out  how 
these  books,  written  by  the  mistress  of 
a  Parisian  household,  are  yet  essentially 
Swiss-French  books, — how  they  illus- 
trate, though  with  a  fervour  and  a  poetry 
of  style  of  which  Switzerland  has  sup- 
plied no  instances  since  Rousseau, — 
that  proud  and  vigorous  individualism 
of  the  Swiss  race.  Here  again,  then, 
we  may  recognise  the  influence  of  that 
Swiss  element  in  French  thought  on 
which  I  have  dwelt.  Western  Switzer- 
land is  indeed  essentially  married  to 
France,  as  the  mountain  to  the  plain; 
bracing  her  with  crisp  airs,  feeding  her 
streams  with  snows.  But  the  marriage, 
to  be  healthy  and  prolific,  must  be  one 
not  of  violence  and  slavery,  but  of  free 
love.  There  could  be  few  greater  moral 
curses  for  France  than  the  trampling 
out  of  that  nest  of  Protestant  faith,  free 
thought,  self-reliant  manhood,  which  lies 


now  on  her  eastern  border,  in  a  fold 
of  the  great  central  mountain-chain  of 
Europe. 

Nor  would  the  mischief,  I  suspect, 
be  less  great  materially  than  morally. 
Despotism  shuts  a  country  more  and 
more  up  within  itself.  Freedom  always 
overbrims  in  blessings.  The  trade  and 
industry  of  free  Switzerland  have  accu- 
mulated within  her  narrow  limits  a  vast 
amount  both  of  capital  and  of  acquired 
skill,  by  which  her  neighbours,  France 
especially,  largely  profit.  Not  only  is 
her  industrial  ability  such,  that  out  of 
cotton  bought  at  Liverpool,  charged  with 
all  the  cost  of  transit  thence,  by  rail  or 
river,  to  the  very  heart  of  the  continent, 
she  is  able  to  manufacture  certain  fabrics 
which  undersell  our  own  in  neighbour- 
ing markets ;  but  she  actually  supplies 
capital  to  the  factories  of  Eastern  France. 
Thus,  it  is  well  known  that,  thanks  to 
commandite,  Bale  has  created  Mulhouse. 
The  same  superiority  exists,  as  we  pass 
into  the  sphere  of  handicrafts.  Districts, 
which  in  France  would  send  forth  only 
workers  in  the  coarser  kinds  of  labour, 
send  them  forth  in  Switzerland  in  the 
finer  ;  a  village  which  in  France  would 
breed  stone-cutters  or  carpenters,  trains 
in  French  Switzerland  its  watchmakers 
or  confectioners ;  who,  if  afterwards 
they  go  forth  throughout  all  the  world, 
yet  above  all  take  up  their  sojourn  in 
France,  and  even  if  not,  yet  under  their 
French  names  generally  give  France  the 
credit  of  their  success.  No  physical 
peculiarities  of  the  country  suffice  to  ex- 
plain these  facts  ;  they  are  above  all  the 
fruits  of  freedom ;  they  must  perish  if 
that  be  rooted  out.  May  Switzerland 
long  retain  her  own !  May  the  powers 
of  Europe,  true  to  their  long-pledged 
word,  suffer  no  imperial  ambition  to  in- 
vade or  paralyze  it !  May  Switzerland 
be  ever  more  true  to  herself,  and  strong 
in  the  consciousness  of  her  rights,  of 
her  worth  in  the  political  fabric,  as  one 
of  the  very  corner-stones  of  European 
peace,  remember  always  that,  as  the 
French  proverb  says,  God  helps  those 
who  help  themselves ! 

But  helping  herself,  let  her  seek  help 
from  God.  Let  her  learn  that  true 


The  Fair  at  Ready. 


179 


democracy  does  not  consist  in  abuse  of 
momiers,  and  needs  other  representatives 
than  a  James  Fazy.  True  it  is,  that  the 
God  whom  her  pious  men  have  chiefly 
shown  to  her,  is  not  the  one  whom  she 
blindly  gropes  for.  Excessive  religious 
individualism  has  too  much  obscured  for 


her  the  divine  breadth  of  the  Church. 
What  Switzerland  needs,  is  to  see  the 
God  of  Israel,  the  God  of  the  nation, 
behind  the  God  of  the  single  believer.  If 
the  crisis  of  her  independence — as  many 
signs  indicate — is  nigh,  in  that  Name 
only  will  she  stand, — will  she  conquer. 


THE  FAIE  AT  KEADY. 


BY  ALEXANDER  SMITH. 


MY  friend,  John  Penruddock,  over  in 
Ireland,  with  whom  I  spent  a  month 
last  summer,  made  a  deeper  impression 
on  me  than  I  can  telL  For  years  I  had 
not  seen  such  a  man.  There  was  a 
reality  and  honest  stuff  in  him,  which, 
in  living  with  him  and  watching  his  daily 
goings  on,  revealed  itself  hour  by  hour, 
quite  new  to  me.  The  people  I  had 
been  accustomed  to  meet,  talk  with,  live 
with,  were  so  different.  The  tendency 
of  each  of  these  was  towards  art  in  one 
form  or  other ;  and  there  was  a  certain 
sadness  somehow  in  the  contemplation 
of  them.  They  fought  and  strove  bravely, 
but  like  the  Old  Guard  at  "Waterloo,  it 
was  brave  fighting  on  a  lost  field.  After 
years  of  toil  there  were  irremediable 
defects  in  that  man's  picture ;  fatal 
flaws  in  that  man's  book.  In  all  their 
efforts  were  failure  and  repulse,  apparent 
to  some  extent  to  themselves,  plain 
enough  to  me,  the  passionless  looker-on. 
That  resolute,  hopeless  climbing  of  hea- 
ven of  theirs,  was,  according  to  the 
mood,  a  thing  to  laugh  at  or  a  thing  to 
weep  over.  With  Penruddock,  all  was 
different.  What  he  strove  after  he  ac- 
complished. He  had  a  cheerful  mastery 
over  circumstances.  All  things  went 
well  with  him.  His  horses  ploughed 
for  him,  his  servants  reaped  for  him,  his 
mills  ground  for  him  successfully.  The 
very  winds  and  dews  were  to  him  helps 
and  aids.  Year  after  year  his  crops 
grew,  yellowed,  were  cut  down,  and 
gathered  into  barns,  and  men  fed 
thereupon;  and  year  after  year  there 


lay  an  increased  balance  at  his  banker's. 
This  continual,  ever- victorious  activity  of 
his  seemed  strange  to  me.  We  usually 
think  that  poets,  painters,  and  the  like, 
are  finer,  more  heroical  than  cultivators 
of  the  ground.  But  does  the  production 
of  a  questionable  book  really  surpass  in 
merit  the  production  of  a  field  of  unques- 
tionable turnips  1  Perhaps,  in  the  severe 
eyes  of  the  gods,  the  production  of  a 
wooden  porringer,  watertight  and  fit  for 
household  uses,  is  of  more  account  than 
the  rearing  of  a  tower  of  Babel,  meant 
to  reach  to  heaven.  Alas  !  that  so  many 
must  work  on  these  Babel  towers  ;  can- 
not help  toiling  on  them  to  the  very 
death,  though  every  stone  is  heaved  into 
its  place  with  weariness  and  mortal 
pain;  though,  when  the  life  of  the 
builder  is  wasted  out  on  it,  it  is  fit 
habitation  for  no  creature,  can  shelter 
no  one  from  rain  or  winter  snow,  tower- 
ing in  the  eyes  of  men  a  Folly  (as  the 
Scotch  phrase  it)  after  alL 

Penruddock  had  promised  to  take  me 
to  see  the  fair  at  Keady  a  fortnight 
before  it  came  off;  but  was  obliged  on 
the  day  immediately  preceding  that 
event  to  leave  his  farm  at  Arran-More 
on  matter  of  important  business.  It 
was  a  wretched  day  of  rain,  and  I  began 
to  tremble  for  the  morrow.  After  din- 
ner the  storm  abated,  and  the  dull  drip- 
ping afternoon  set  in.  While  a  distem- 
pered sunset  flushed  the  west,  the  heavy 
carts  from  the  fields  came  rolling  into 
the  court-yard,  the  horses'  fetlock  deep 
in  clay,  and  steaming  like  ovens.  Then, 


180 


The  Fair  at  Keady. 


at  the  sound  of  the  bell,  the  labourers 
came,  wet,  weary,  sickles  hanging  over 
their  arms,  yet  with  spirits  merry 
enough.  These  the  capacious  kitchen 
received,  where  they  found  supper  spread. 
It  grew  dark  earlier  than  usual,  and 
more  silent.  The  mill-wheel  rushed 
louder  in  the  swollen  stream,  and  lights 
began  to  glimmer  here  and  there  in  the 
dusty  windows.  Penruddock  had  not 
yet  come.  He  was  not  due  for  a  couple 
of  hours.  The  tune  began  to  hang 
heavily  ;  so,  shipping  to  my  bed,  I  solved 
every  difficulty  by  falling  asleep. 

The  lowing  of  cattle,  the  bleating  of 
sheep,  the  barking  of  dogs,  and  the  loud 
voices  of  men  in  the  court-yard  beneath, 
awoke  me  shortly  after  dawn.  In  the 
silence  that  ensued  I  again  fell  asleep, 
and  was  roused  at  last  by  the  clangour 
of  the  breakfast-bell.  When  I  got  up, 
the  sun  was  streaming  gloriously  through 
the  latticed  window ;  heaven  was  all  the 
gayer  and  brighter  now  for  yesterday's 
gloom  and  sulky  tears,  and  the  rooks 
were  cawing  and  flapping  cheerfully  in 
the  trees  above.  When  I  entered  the 
breakfast-room,  Penruddock  was  already 
there,  nothing  the  worse  for  his  jour- 
ney ;  and  the  tea-urn  was  bubbling  on 
the  table. 

At  the  close  of  the  meal,  Tim  brought 
the  dog-cart  to  the  door.  Pen  glanced 
at  his  watch.  "  We  have  hit  the  time 
exactly,  and  will  arrive  as  soon  as  Mick 
and  the  cattle."  There  was  an  encou- 
raging chir-r-r,  a  flick  of  the  whip,  and 
in  a  trice  we  were  across  the  bridge, 
and  pegging  along  the  highway  at  a 
great  pace. 

After  proceeding  about  a  Jjule,  we 
turned  into  a  narrow  path  which  gradu- 
ally led  us  up  into  a  wild  irregular 
country.  Corn-fields,  flax-tanks,  and 
sunny  pasture  lands,  dotted  with  sheep, 
were  left  behind  as  up  hill  we  tugged, 
and  reached  at  last  a  level  stretch  of 
purple  moor  and  black  peat  bog.  Some- 
times for  a  mile  the  ground  was  black 
with  pyramids  of  peat ;  at  other  times 
the  road  wriggled  before  us  through  a 
dark  olive  morass,  enlivened  here  and 
there  with  patches  of  treacherous  green ; 
the  sound  of  our  wheels  startling  into 


flight  the  shy  and  solitary  birds  native 
to  the  region.  Ever  and  anon,  too,  when 
we  gained  sufficient  elevation,  we  could 
see  the  great  waves  of  the  landscape 
rolling  in  clear  morning  light  away  to 
the  horizon;  each  wave  crested  with 
farms  and  belts  of  woodland,  and  here 
and  there  wreaths  of  smoke  rising  up 
from  hollows  where  towns  and  villages 
lay  hid.  After  a  while  the  road  grew 
smoother,  and  afar  the  little  town  of 
Keady  sparkled  in  the  sun,  backed  by 
a  range  of  smelting  furnaces,  the  flames 
tamed  by  the  sunlight,  making  a  restless 
shimmer  in  the  air,  and  blotting  out 
everything  beyond.  Beneath  us  the  high 
road  was  covered  with  sheep  and  cows, 
and  vehicles  of  every  description,  push- 
ing forward  to  one  point ;  the  hill  paths 
also  which  led  down  to  it  were  moving 
threads  of  life.  On  the  brow  of  the 
hill,  just  before  we  began  to  descend, 
John  pulled  up  for  a  moment.  It  was 
a  pretty  sight !  A  few  minutes'  drive 
brought  us  into  Keady,  and  such  a  busy 
scene  I  had  never  before  witnessed. 
The  narrow  streets  and  open  spaces  were 
crowded  with  stalls,  cattle,  and  people, 
and  the  press  and  confusion  were  so 
great  that  our  passage  to  the  inn  where 
our  machine  was  to  be  put  up  was  mat- 
ter of  considerable  difficulty.  Men,  strip- 
ped to  trousers  and  shirt,  with  red  hair 
streaming  in  the  wind,rushed  backwards 
and  forwards  with  horses,  giving  vent  at 
the  same  time  to  the  wildest  vociferations, 
while  clumps  of  sporting  gentlemen, 
with  straws  in  their  mouths,  were  in- 
specting with  critical  eyes  the  points  of 
the  animals.  Travelling  auctioneers  set 
up  their  little  carts  in  the  streets,  and 
with  astonishing  effrontery  and  power 
of  lung  harangued  the  crowd  on  the 
worth  and  cheapness  of  the  articles 
which  they  held  in  their  hands.  Beg- 
gars were  very  plentiful,  disease  and  de- 
formity their  stock-in-trade.  Fragments 
of  humanity  crawled  about  upon  crutches. 
Women  stretched  out  shrunken  arms. 
Blind  men  rolled  sightless  eyeballs, 
blessing  the  passenger  when  a  copper 
tinkled  in  their  iron  jugs ;  cursing  yet 
more  fervently  when  disappointed  in 
their  expectation.  In  one  place  a  melan- 


The  Fair  at  Ready. 


181 


choly  acrobat  in  dirty  tights  and  faded 
tinsel,  was  performing  evolutions  with  a 
crazy  chair  on  a  bit  of  ragged  carpet ; 
he  threw  somersaults  over  it,  he  stood 
upon  his  head  on  it,  he  embraced  it 
firmly  and  began  spinning  along  the 
ground  like  a  wheel,  in  which  perform- 
ance man  and  chair  seemed  to  lose  their 
individuality  and  become  one  as  it  were ; 
and  at  the  close  of  every  feat  he  stood 
erect  with  that  indescribable  curve  of 
the  right  hand  which  should  always  be 
followed  by  thunders  of  applause,  the 
clown  meanwhile  rolling  in  ecstasies  of 
admiration  in  the  sawdust.  Alas !  no 
applause  followed  the  exertions  of  the 
artist.  The  tights  were  getting  more 
threadbare  and  dingy.  His  hollow  face 
was  covered  with  perspiration,  and  there 
was  but  the  sparsest  sprinkling  of  half- 
pence. I  threw  him  half-a-crown,  but 
it  rolled  among  the  spectators'  feet,  and 
was  lost  in  the  dust.  He  groped  about 
in  search  of  it  for  some  little  time,  and 
then  came  back  to  his  carpet  and  his 
crazy  chair.  Poor  fellow  !  he  looked  as 
if  he  were  used  to  that  kind  of  thing. 
There  were  many  pretty  faces  among  the 
girls,  and  scores  of  them  were  walking 
about  in  holiday  dresses.  Rosy-faced 
lasses  with  black  hair  and  blue  eyes  sha- 
dowed by  long,  dark  eyelashes.  How  they 
laughed,  and  how  sweetly  the  brogue 
melted  from  their  lips  in  reply  to  the 
ardent  blarney  of  their  sweethearts  !  At 
last  we  reached  an  open  square,  or  cross 
as  it  would  be  called  in  Scotland,  more 
crowded,  if  possible,  than  the  narrow 
streets.  Hordes  of  cattle  bellowed  here. 
Here  were  sheep  from  the  large  farms 
standing  in  clusters  of  fifties  and  hun- 
dreds ;  there  a  clump  of  five  or  six  with 
the  widow  in  her  clean  cap  sitting  be- 
side them.  Many  an  hour  ago  she  and 
they  started  from  the  turf  hut  and  the 
pasture  beyond  the  hills.  Heaven  send 
her  a  ready  sale  and  good  prices !  In 
the  centre  of  this  open  space  great 
benches  were  erected,  heaped  with  eggs, 
butter,  cheeses,  the  proprietors  standing 
behind  anxiously  awaiting  the  advances 
of  customers.  One  section  was  crowded 
with  sweetmeat  stalls,  much  frequented 
by  girls  and  their  sweethearts.  Many  a 


rustic  compliment  there  had  for  reply  a 
quick  glance  or  a  scarlet  cheek.  Another 
,  was  devoted  to  poultry ;  geese  stood 
about  in  flocks,  bunches  of  hens  were 
scattered  on  the  ground,  their  legs  tied 
together ;  and  turkeys,  inclosed  in  wicker 
baskets,  surveyed  the  scene  with  quick 
eyes,  their  wattles  all  the  while  burning 
with  indignation.  On  reaching  the  inn, 
which  displayed  for  ensign  a  swan  with 
two  heads  afloat  on  an  azure  stream,  we 
ordered  dinner  at  three  o'clock,  and 
thereafter  started  on  foot  to  where  Pen- 
ruddock's  stock  was  stationed.  It  was 
no  easy  matter  to  force  a  path ;  cows 
and  sheep  were  always  getting  in  the 
way.  Now  and  then  an  escaped  hen 
would  come  clucking  and  flapping  among 
our  feet;  and  once  a  huge  bull,  with 
horns  levelled  to  the  charge,  came  dash- 
ing down  the  street,  scattering  every- 
thing before  him.  Finally,  we  reached 
the  spot  where  Mick  and  his  dogs  were 
keeping  watch  over  the  cows  and  sheep. 

"  Got  here  all  safe,  Mick,  I  see." 

"  All  safe,  sir,  not  a  quarter  o'  an  hour 
ago." 

"  Well,  Burdett,  I  have  opened  my 
shop.  We'll  see  how  we  get  on." 

By  this  time  the  dealers  had  gathered 
about,  and  were  closely  examining  the 
sheep,  and  holding  whispered  consulta- 
tions. At  length,  an  excited-looking  man 
camerunningforward ;  plunging  his  hand 
into  his  breeches  pocket,  he  produced 
therefrom  half-a-crown,  which  he  slapped 
into  Penruddock's  hand,  at  the  same 
time  crying  out  "  Ten-and-six  a  head." 
"  Fifteen,"  said  John,  returning  the 
coin.  "Twelve  shillings,"  said  the  man, 
bringing  down  the  coin  with  tremendous 
energy ;  "  an'  may  I  niver  stir  if  I'll 
give  another  farthin'  for  the  best  sheep 
in  Keady."  "  Fifteen,"  said  John, 
flinging  the  half-crown  on  the  ground ; 
"  and  I  don't  care  whether  you  stir  again 
or  not"  By  this  time  a  crowd  had 
gathered  about,  and  the  chorus  began. 
"  There  isn't  a  dacenter  man  than  Mr. 
Penruddock  in  the  market.  I've  known 
him  iver  since  he  came  to  the  counthry." 
"  Shure  an'  he  is,"  began  another ;  "  he's 
a  jintleman  every  inch.  He  always 
gives  to  the  poor  man  a  bit  o'  baccy,  or 


182 


The  Fair  at  Ready. 


a  glass.  Ach,  Mr.  Loney,  he's  not  the 
one  to  ax  you  too  high  a  price.  Shure, 
Mr.  Penruddock,  you'll  come  down  a 
sixpence  jist  to  make  a  bargain."  "  Is't 
Mr.  Loney thafs  goin'  to  buy?"  cried  a 
lame  man  from  the  opposite  side,  and  in 
the  opposite  interest.  "  There  isn't  sich 
a  dealer  in  county  Monaghan  as  Mr. 
Loney.  Of  coorse  you'll  come  down  some- 
thing, Mr.  Penruddock."  "  He's  a  rich 
one,  too,  is  Mr.  Loney,"  said  the  lame 
man,  sidling  up  to  John,  and  winking  in 
a  knowing  manner,  "  an'  a  power  o'  notes 
he  has  in  his  pocket-book."  Mr.  Loney, 
who  had  been  whispering  with  his 
group  a  little  apart,  "and  who  had  again 
made  an  inspection  of  the  stock,  re- 
turned the  second  time  to  the  charge. 
"  Twelve-an'-six,"  cried  he,  and  again 
the  half-crown  was  slapped  into  Pen- 
ruddock's  palm.  "  Twelve-an'-six,  an' 
not  another  farthin'  to  save  my  sowL" 
"Fifteen,"  said  John,  returning  the 
half-crown  with  equal  emphasis ;  "  you 
know  my  price,  and  if  you  won't  take 
it  you  can  let  it  stand."  The  dealer 
disappeared  in  huge  wrath,  and  the 
chorus  broke  out  in  praises  of  both.  By 
this  time  Mr.  Loney  was  again  among 
the  sheep ;  it  was  plain  his  heart  was 
set  upon  the  purchase.  Every  now  and 
then  he  caught  one,  got  it  between  his 
legs,  examined  the  markings  on  its  face, 
and  tested  the  depth  and  quality  of  its 
wool.  He  appeared  for  the  third  time, 
while  the  lame  man  and  the  leader  of 
the  opposing  chorus  seemed  coming  to 
blows,  so  zealous  were  they  in  the 
praises  of  their  respective  heroes.  "  Four- 
teen," said  Mr.  Loney,  again  producing 
the  half-crown,  spitting  into  his  hand 
at  the  same  time,  as  much  as  to  say,  he 
would  do  the  business  now.  "Four- 
teen," he  cried,  crushing  the  half-crown 
into  Penruddock's  hand,  and  holding  it 
there.  "  Fourteen,  an'  divil  a  rap  more 
I'll  give."  "Fourteen,"  said  John,  as 
if  considering,  then  throwing  back  the 
coin,  "  Fourteen-and-six,  and  let  it  be 
a  bargain." 

"  Didn't  I  say,"  quoth  John's  chorus- 
leader,  looking  round  him  with  an  air 
of  triumph,  "  didn't  I  say  that  Mr.  Pen- 
ruddock's  a  jintleman  ?  Ye  see  how  he 


drops  the  sixpence.  I  niver  saw  him 
do  a  mane  thing  yet.  Ach,  he's  the 
jintleman  ivery  inch,  an'  that's  saying 
a  dale,  consideriii'  his  size." 

"  Fourteen-an'-six  be  it  then,"  said 
the  dealer,  bringing  down  the  coin  for 
the  last  time.  "An5  if  I  take  the  lot 
you'll  give  me  two  pounds  in  f  my- 
self?" 

"  Well,  Loney,  I  don't  care,  although 
I  do,"  said  Penruddock,  pocketing  the 
coin  at  last.  A  roll  of  notes  was  pro- 
duced, the  sum  counted  out,  and  the 
bargain  concluded.  The  next  moment 
Loney  was  among  the  sheep,  scoring 
some  mark  or  other  on  their  backs  with 
a  piece  of  red  chalk.  Penruddock  scat- 
tered what  spare  coppers  he  possessed 
among  the  bystanders,  and  away  they 
went  to  sing  the  praises  of  the  next 
bargain-maker. 

Pen  turned  to  me,  laughing.  "  This 
is  a  nice  occupation  for  a  gentleman  of 
respectable  birth  and  liberal  education, 
is  it  not?" 

"  Odd.  It  is  amusing  to  watch  the 
process  by  which  your  sheep  are  con- 
verted into  bank-notes.  Does  your 
friend,  Mr.  Loney,  buy  the  animals  for 
himself?" 

"  Oh,  dear  no.  We  must  have  middle- 
men of  one  kind  or  another  in  this 
country.  Loney  is  commissioned  to  pur- 
chase, and  is  allowed  so  much  on  the 
transaction." 

By  this  time  a  young  handsome  fel- 
low pushed  his  horse  through  the  crowd 
and  approached  us.  "  Good  morning," 
cried  he  to  Penruddock.  "Any  busi- 
ness doing?" 

"  I  have  just  sold  my  sheep." 

"Good  price?" 

"  Fair.     Fourteen-and-six." 

"Ah,  not  so  bad.  These  cattle,  I 
suppose,  are  yours  ?  We  must  try  if  we 
can't  come  to  a  bargain  about  them." 
Dismounting,  he  gave  his  horse  in  keep- 
ing to  a  lad,  and  he  and  John  went  off 
to  inspect  the  stock. 

Business  was  proceeding  briskly  on 
all  sides.  There  was  great  higgling  as 
to  prices,  and  shillings  and  half-crowns 
were  tossed  in  a  wonderful  manner  from 
palm  to  palm.  Apparently,  no  trans- 


The  Fair  at  Keady. 


183 


action  could  be  transacted  without  that 
ceremony,  whatever  it  might  mean. 
Idlers  were  everywhere  celebrating  the 
merits  and  "dacency"  of  the  various 
buyers  and  sellers.  Huge  greasy  leather 
pocket-books  of  undoubted  antiquity, 
were  to  be  seen  in  many  a  hand,  and 
rolls  of  bank-notes  were  deftly  changing 
owners.  The  ground,  too,  was  begin- 
ning to  clear,  and  purchasers  were 
driving  off  their  cattle.  Many  of  the 
dealers  who  had  disposed  of  stock  were 
taking  their  ease  in  the  inns.  You 
could  see  them  looking  out  of  the  open 
windows ;  and,  occasionally,  a  man 
whose  potations  had  been  early  and  ex- 
cessive went  whooping  through  the 
crowd.  In  a  short  time  John  returned 
with  his  friend. 

"  Captain  Broster/'  said  John,  pre- 
senting him,  "  has  promised  to  dine 
with  us  at  three.  Sharp  at  the  hour, 
mind,  for  we  wish  to  leave  early." 

"  I'll  be  punctual  as  clockwork,"  said 
the  captain,  turning,  to  look  after  his 
purchases. 

We  strolled  up  and  down  till  three 
o'clock,  and  then  bent  our  steps  to  the 
inn,  where  we  found  Broster  waiting. 
In  honour  to  his  guests  the  landlord 
himself  brought  in  dinner,  and  waited 
with  great  diligence.  When  the  table 
was  cleared  we  had  punch  and  cigars, 
and  sat  chatting  at  the  open  window. 
The  space  in  front  was  tolerably  clear  of 
cattle  now,  but  dealers  were  hovering 
about,  standing  in  clumps,  or  prome- 
nading in  parties  of  twos  and  threes. 
But  at  this  point  a  new  element  had 
entered  into  the  ssene.  It  was  dinner 
hour,  and  many  of  the  forgemen  from 
the  furnaces  above  had  come  down  to 
see  what  was  going  on.  Huge,  hulk- 
ing, swarthy-featured  fellows  they  were. 
Welshmen,  chiefly,  as  I  was  afterwards 
told ;  who,  confident  in  their  strength, 
were  at  no  pains  .to  conceal  their 
contempt  for  the  natives.  They,  too, 
mingled  in  the  crowd,  but  the  greater 
number  leaned  lazily  against  the  houses, 
smoking  their  short  pipes  and  indulging 
in  the  dangerous  luxury  of  "  chaffing " 
the  farmers.  Many  a  rude  wit-combat 
was  going  on,  accompanied  by  roars  of 


laughter,  snatches  of  which .  we  occa- 
sionally heard.  Broster  had  been  in 
the  Crimea,  was  wounded  at  Alma, 
recovered,  went  through  all  the  work 
and  privation  of  the  first  winter  of  the 
siege,  got  knocked  up,  came  home  on 
sick  leave,  and  having  had  enough  of  it, 
as  he  frankly  confessed,  took  the  oppor- 
tunity on  his  father's  death,  which 
happened  then,  to  sell  out  and  settle 
as  a  farmer  on  a  small  property  to 
which  he  fell  heir.  He  chatted  about 
the  events  of  the  war  in  an  easy,  familiar 
way,  quietly,  as  if  the  whole  affair  had 
been  a  game  at  football;  and  when 
courage,  strength,  and  splendid  pros- 
pects were  changed  by  unseen  bullet, 
or  grim  bayonet  stab,  into  a  rude  grave 
on  the  bleak  plateau,  the  thing  was 
mentioned  as  a  mere  matter  of  course ! 
Sometimes  a  comrade's  fate  met  with 
an  expression  of  soldierly  regret,  slight 
and  indifferent  enough,  yet  with  a  cer- 
tain pathos  which  no  high-flown  oration 
could  reach.  For  the  indifferent  tone 
seemed  to  acquiesce  in  destiny,  to  con- 
sider that  disappointment  had  been  too 
common  in  the  life  of  every  man  during 
the  last  six  thousand  years  to  warrant 
any  raving  or  passionate  surprise  at  this 
time  of  day  ;  and  that  in  any  case  our 
ordinary  pulse  and  breath  time  our 
march  to  the  grave ;  passion  beats  the 
double-quick,  and  when  it  is  all  over, 
there  is  little  need  for  outcry  and.  the 
shedding  of  tears  over  the  eternal  rest. 
In  the  midst  of  his  talk,  voices  rose  in 
one  of  the  apartments  below  :  the  noise 
became  altercation,  and  immediately 
a  kind  of  struggling  or  dragging  was 
heard  in  the  flagged  passage,  and  then 
a  tipsy  forgeman  was  unceremoniously 
shot  out  into  the  square  ;  and  the  inn 
door  closed  with  an  angry  bang.  The 
individual  seemed  to  take  the  indignity 
in  very  good  part ;  along  he  staggered, 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  heedless  of  the 
satirical  gibes  and  remarks  of  his  com- 
panions, who  were  smoking  beneath  our 
windows.  Looking  out,  we  could  see 
that  his  eyes  were  closed,  as  if  he 
scorned  the  outer  world,  possessing  one 
so  much  more  satisfactory  within  himself. 
As  he  went  he  began  to  sing  from  sheer 


184 


The  Fair  at  Keady. 


excess    of   happiness  ;     the    following 
stanza  coming  distinctly  to  our  ears. 

"When  I  was  a  chicken  as  "big  as  a  hen, 
My  mother  'ot  me  an'  I  'ot  her  agen  ; 
My  father  came  for  to  see  the  r-r-rrowr 
So  I  lifted  my  fist  an  I  'ot  him  a  clow." 

"I  hope  that  fellow  won't  come  to 
grief,"  said  Broster,  as  the  forgeman 
lurched  through  a  group  of  countrymen 
intent  on  a  bargain,  and  passed  on 
without  notice  or  apology,  his  eyes 
closed,  and  singing  as  before, 

"Ses  my  mother,  ses  she,  there's  a 
peeler  at  hand." 

"By  Jove,  he's  down  at  last,  and 
there'll  be  the  devil  to  pay !"  We 
looked  out :  the  forgeman  was  prone  in 
the  dust,  singing,  and  apparently  un- 
conscious that  he  had  changed  his  posi- 
tion. A  party  of  farmers  were  standing 
around  laughing  ;  one  of  them  had 
put  out  his  foot  and  tripped  the  forge- 
man as  he  passed.  The  next  moment, 
a  bare-armed,  black-browed  hammer- 
smith stood  out  from  the  wall,  and, 
without  so  much  as  taking'  the  pipe 
from  his  mouth,  felled  the  dealer  at 
a  blow,  and  then  looked  at  his  com- 
panions as  if  wishing  to  be  informed  if 
he  could  do  anything  in  the  same  way 
for  them.  The  blow  was  a  match 
dropped  in  a  powder  magazine.  Alelu  ! 
to  the  combat.  There  were  shouts  and 
yells.  Insult  had  been  rankling  long 
in  the  breasts  of  both  parties.  Old 
scores  had  to  be  paid  off".  From  every 
quarter,  out  of  the  inns,  leaving  potheen 
and  ale,  down  the  streets  from  among 
the  cattle,  the  dealers  came  rushing  to 
the  fray.  The  forgemen  mustered  with 
alacrity,  as  if  battle  were  the  breath 
of  their  nostrils.  In  a  few  seconds, 
the  square  was  the  scene  of  a  general 
melee.  The  dealers  fought  with  their 
short  heavy  sticks ;  the  forgemen  had 
but  the  weapons  nature  gave,  but  their 
arms  were  sinewed  with  iron,  and  every 
blow  told  like  a  hammer.  These  last 
were  overpowered  for  a  while,  but  the 
alarm  had  already  spread  to  the  furnaces 
above,  and  parties  of  twos  and  threes 


came  at  a  run,  and  flung  themselves  in 
to  the  assistance  of  their  companions. 
Just  at  this  moment,  a  couple  of  con- 
stables pressed  forward  into  the  mad 
yelling  crowd.  A  hammersmith  came 
behind  one,  and  seizing  his  arms,  held 
him,  despite  his  struggles,  firmly  as  in 
a  vice.  The  other  was  knocked  over 
and  trampled  under  foot.  "  Good 
heavens,  murder  will  be  done,"  cried 
Broster,  Lifting  his  heavy  whip  from 
the  table.  "  We  must  try  and  put  an 
end  to  this  disgraceful  scene.  Will  you 
join  me?"  "With  heart  and  soul," 
said  Penruddock,  "  and  there  is  no  time 
to  be  lost.  Come  along,  Burdett."  At 
the  foot  of  the  stair  we  found  the  land- 
lord shaking  in  every  limb.  He  had 
locked  the  door,  and  was  standing  in 
the  passage  with  the  key  in  his  hand. 
"  McQueen,  we  want  out ;  open  the 
door." 

"Shure,  jintlemen,  you'r  not  goin' 
just  now.  You'll  be  torn  to  paces  if 
you  go." 

"  If  you  won't  open  the  door  give  me 
the  key,  and  I'll  open  it  myself." 

The  landlord  passively  yielded  : 
Broster  unlocked  the  door,  and  flung 
the  key  down  on  the  flagged  passage. 
"  Now,  my  lads,"  cried  he  to  half  a 
dozen  countrymen  who  were  hanging-on 
spectators  on  the  skirts  of  the  combat, 
and  at  the  same  time  twisting  his  whip 
lash  tightly  around  his  right  hand  till 
the  heavily  leaded  head  became  a  for- 
midable we.apon,  a  blow  from  which 
would  be  effective  on  any  skull  of 
ordinary  susceptibility ;  "  Now  my  lads, 
we  are  resolved  to  put  an  end  to  this, 
will  you  assist  us?"  The  captain's 
family  had  been  long  resident  in  the 
county,  he  was  himself  personal!}' 
known  to  all  of  them,  and  a  cheerful 
"ay,  ay,"  was  the  response.  "Pen- 
ruddock,  separate  them  when  you  can, 
knock  them  over  when  you  can't, 
Welshman  or  Irishman,  its  quite  the 
same."  So  saying,  in  we  drove.  Broster 
clove  a  way  for  himself,  distributing 
his  blows  with  great  impartiality,  and 
knocking  over  the  combatants  like  nine- 
pins. We  soon  reached  the  middle  of 
the  square,  where  the  fight  was  hottest. 


The  Fair  at  Ready. 


185 


The  captain  was  swept  away  in  an  eddy 
for  a  moment,  and  right  in  front  of 
Penruddock  and  myself  two  men  were 
grappling  on  the  ground.  As  they  rolled 
over,  we  saw  that  one  was  the  hammer- 
smith who  had  caused  the  whole  affray. 
We  flung  ourselves  upon  them,  and 
dragged  them  up.  The  dealer  with 
whom  I  was  more  particularly  engaged 
had  got  the  worst  of  it,  and  plainly 
wasn't  sorry  to  be  released  from  the 
clutches  of  his  antagonist.  With  his 
foe  it  was  different.  His  slow  sullen 
blood  was  fairly  in  a  blaze,  and  when 
John  pushed  him  aside,  he  dashed  at 
him  and  struck  him  a  severe  blow  on 
the  face.  In  a  twinkling,  Penruddock's 
coat  was  off,  while  the  faintest  stream  of 
blood  trickled  from  his  upper  lip. 
"  Well,  my  man,"  said  he,  as  he  stood 
up  ready  for  action,  "  if  that's  the  game 
you  mean  to  play  at,  I  hope  to  give  you 
a  bellyful  before  I've  done."  "  Seize  that 
man,  knock  him  over,"  said  Broster ; 
"you're  surely  not  going  to  fight  him, 
Penruddock,  it's  sheer  madness  ;  knock 
him  over."  "  I  tell  you  what  it  is," 
said  Penruddock,  turning  savagely,  "  you 
sha'n't  deprive  me  of  the  luxury  of  giv- 
ing this  fellow  a  sound  hiding."  Broster 
shrugged  his  shoulders,  as  if  giving  up 
the  case.  By  this  time  the  cry  arose, 
"  Black  Jem's  goin'  to  fight  the  gentle- 
man," and  a  wide  enough  ring  was 
formed.  Many  who  were  prosecuting 
small  combats  of  their  own  desisted, 
that  they  might  behold  this  greater  one. 
Broster  stood  beside  John.  "He's  an 
ugly  mass  of  strength,"  whispered  he, 
"and  will  hug  you  like  a  bear;  keep 
him  well  off,  and  remain  cool  for  Heaven's 
sake."  "Ready?"  said  John,  stepping 
forward.  "  As  a  lark  i'  the  mornin'," 
growled  Jem,  as  he  took  up  his  ground. 
The  men  were  very  wary,  Jem  retreat- 
ing round  and  round,  John  advancing. 
Now  and  then  one  or  other  darted  out  a 
blow,  but  it  was  generally  stopped,  and 
no  harm  done.  At  last  the  blows  went 
home ;  the  blood  began  to  rise.  The 
men  drew  closer,  and  struck  with  greater 
rapidity.  They  are  at  it  at  last,  hammer 
and  tongs.  No  shirking  or  flinching 
now.  Jem's  was  flowing.  He  was 
No.  9. — VOL.  n. 


evidently  getting  severely  punished.  He 
couldn't  last  long  at  that  rate.  He 
fought  desperately  for  a  close,  when  a 
blinding  blow  full  in  the  face  brought 
him  to  the  earth.  He  got  up  again  like 
a  madman,  the  whole  bull-dog  nature  of 
him  possessed  and  mastered  by  fierce, 
brutal  rage.  He  cursed  and  struggled 
in  the  arms  of  his  supporters  to  get  at  his 
enemy,  but  by  main  force  they  held  him 
back  till  he  recovered  himself.  "  He'll 
be  worked  off  in  another  round,"  I  heard 
Broster  whisper  in  my  ear.  Ah !  here 
they  come !  I  glanced  at  John  for  a 
moment  as  he  stood  with  his  eye  on  his 
foe.  There  was  that  in  his  face  that 
boded  no  good.  The  features  had  har- 
dened into  iron  somehow ;  the  pitiless 
mouth  was  clenched,  the  eye  cruel.  A 
hitherto  unknown  part  of  his  nature  re- 
vealed itself  to  me  as  he  stood  there. 
Perhaps  unknown  to  himself.  God  help 
us,  what  strangers  we  are  to  ourselves  ! 
In  every  man's  nature  there  is  an  interior 
unexplored  as  that  of  Africa, -and  over 
that  region  what  wild  beasts  may  roam  ! 
But  they  are  at  it '.  again ;  Jem  still 
fights  for  a  close,  and  every  tune  his 
rush  is  stopped  by  a  damaging  blow. 
They  are  telling  rapidly ;  his  countenance, 
by  no  means  charming  at  the  best,  is 
rapidly  transforming.  Look  at  that 
hideously  gashed  lip !  But  he  has 
dodged  Penruddock's  left  this  time, 
and  clutched,  him  in  his  brawny  arms. 
Now  comes  the  tug  of  war,  skill  pitted 
against  skill,  strength  against  strength. 
They  breathe  for  a  little  in  one  an- 
other's grip,  as  if  summoning  every 
energy.  They  are  at  it  now,  broad  chest 
to  chest.  Now  they  seem  motionless, 
but  by  the  quiver  of  their  frames  you 
can  guess  the  terrific  strain  going 
on.  Now  one  has  the  better,  now 
the  other,  as  they  twine  round  each 
other,  lithe  and  supple  as  serpents. 
Penruddock  yields  !  No  !  That's  a 
bad  dodge  of  Jem's.  By  Jove  he  loses 
his  grip.  All  is  over  with  him.  John's 
brow  grows  dark;  the  veins  start  out 
on  it ;  and  the  next  moment  Black 
Jem,  the  hero  of  fifty  fights,  slung  over 
his  shoulder,  falls  heavily  to  the  ground. 
At  his  fall  a  cheer  rose  from  the 


186  On  the  Social  and  Economical  Influence  of  the  New  Gold. 


dealers.  "  You  blacksmith  fellows  had 
better  make  off,"  cried  Broster  ;  "  your 
man  has  got  the  thrashing  he  deserves, 
and  you  can  carry  him  home  with  you. 
I  am  resolved  to  put  a  stop  to  these 
disturbances — there  have  been  too  many 
of  late."  The  furnace  men  hung  for  a 
moment  irresolute,  seemingly  half  in- 
clined to  renew  the  combat,  but  a  for- 
midable array  of  cattle-dealers  pressed 
forward  and  turned  the  scale.  They 
decided  on  a  retreat.  Black  Jem,  who 
had  now  come  to  himself,  was  lifted  up, 
and,  supported  by  two  men,  retired 
toward  the  works  and  dwellings  on  the 
upper  grounds,  accompanied  by  his 
companions,  who  muttered  many  a  surly 
oath  and  vow  of  future  vengeance. 

When  we  got  back  to  the  inn,  John 
was  very  anxious  about  his  face.  He 
washed,  and  carefully  perused  his  fea- 
tures in  the  little  looking-glass.  Luckily, 
with  the  exception  of  the  upper  lip 
slightly  cut  by  Jem's  first  blow,  no 
mark  of  "the  combat  presented  itself; 
at  this  happy  result  of  his  investigations 
he  expressed  great  satisfaction — Broster 
laughing  the  meanwhile,  and  telling 


him  that  he  was  as  careful  of  his  face 
as  a  young  lady. 

The  captain  came  down  to  see  us  off. 
The  fair  was  over  now,  and  the  little 
streets  were  almost  deserted.  The 
dealers — apprehensive  of  another  de- 
scent from  the  furnaces — had  hurried 
off  as  soon  as  their  transactions  could 
in  any  way  permit.  Groups  of  villagers, 
however,  were  standing  about  the  doors 
discussing  the  event  of  the  day ;  and 
when  Penruddock  appeared  he  became, 
for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  an  object  of 
public  interest  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  and  so  far  as  he  has  yet  lived,  for 
the  last ;  an  honour  to  which  he  did 
not  seem  to  attach  any  particular  value. 

We  shook  hands  with  the  captain  ; 
then,  at  a  touch  of  the  whip,  the 
horse  started  at  a  gallant  pace,  scatter- 
ing a  brood  of  ducks  in  all  directions  ; 
and  in  a  few  minutes,  Keady, — with  its 
white-washed  houses  and  dark  row  of 
furnaces,  tipped  with  tongues  of  flame, 
pale  and  shrunken  yet  in  the  lustre  of 
the  afternoon,  but  which  would  rush  out 
wild  and  lurid  when  the  evening  fell, — 
lay  a  rapidly  dwindling  speck  behind. 


ON    THE    SOCIAL    AND    ECONOMICAL    INFLUENCE    OF    THE 

NEW   GOLD. 

. .    .        •  *  -  -  -       \  \ 

BY    HENRY    FAWCETT. 


IT  is  very  important  to  arrive  at  some 
definite  opinion  on  a  subject  which  has 
been  so  much  confused. 

I  wish  to  direct  attention  to  three  dis- 
tinct series  of  effects  which  have  been 
produced  by  the  new  gold. 

Firstly.  The  substance  which  is  by 
so  many  nations  adopted  as  a  medium 
of  exchange  has  been  augmented  in 
quantity. 

Secondly.  The  new  gold  has  influ- 
enced the  wealth  and  the  social  condi- 
tion of  the  countries  in  which  it  has 
been  discovered. 

Thirdly.  Great  Britain  has  been 
affected  by  this  change  in  the  social  and 
material  condition  of  one  of  her  most 
important  colonies. 


When  it  was  found  in  1851  that  Aus- 
tralia and  California  would  each  year 
supply  nearly  30,000,  OOOZ.  of  gold,  or, 
in  other  words,  at  least  four  times  as 
much  as  all  other  gold  mines  had  annu- 
ally yielded  before,  it  was  supposed  that 
gold  would  rapidly  decline  in  value  to 
the  extent  of  at  least  twenty-five  per  cent. 
The  best  authorities  now  agree  that  this 
decline  has  not  as  yet  occurred.  I  will, 
in  the  first  place,  state  the  reasons 
which  justify  this  supposition,  and  then 
explain  in  what  manner  the  increased 
gold  has  been  absorbed,  and  its  value 
been  maintained.  An  inductive  proof 
of  a  change  in  the  value  of  gold  requires 
data  which  cannot  be  obtained,  for  a 
comparison  of  general  prices  during  the 


On  the  Social  and  Economical  Influence  of  the  New  Gold.          187 


last  ten  years  will  not  afford  a  sufficient 
proof.  Thus  the  average  price  of  wheat 
is  lower  now  than  then.  The  value  of 
gold  compared  with  wheat  has  risen  ; 
but  how  erroneous  would  it  be  thence 
to  conclude  that  its  general  value  had 
risen !  Wheat  has  declined  in  price 
because  it  can  be  imported  cheaply  from 
other  countries.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
price  of  meat  and  dairy  produce  has  of 
late  risen  considerably.  This  rise  in 
price  we  know  is  partly  due  to  the  in- 
creasing wants  of  an  advancing  popu- 
lation, and  especially  to  the  increased 
consumption  of  a  more  numerous  and 
better  paid  labouring  class  ;  but  although 
we  know  this,  we  cannot  assert  that  the 
rise  in  the  price  of  such  produce  has  not 
been  augmented  by  a  fall  in  the  general 
value  of  gold.  Manifestly  such  com- 
parisons avail  nothing.  The  price  of 
silver  will  afford  the  most  important 
evidence.  Silver  and  gold  have  been 
adopted  as  the  general  media  of  ex- 
change because  they  are  liable  to  little 
change  in  their  value.  The  value  of 
these  metals,  like  agricultural  produce, 
is  determined  by  the  cost  of  obtaining 
them  under  the  most  unfavourable  cir- 
cumstances. Therefore  their  value  is  not 
altered,  unless  the  current  rate  of  profit  in 
a  country  falls,  and  renders  it  profitable 
to  work  worse  mines  than  those  already 
worked;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  rises, 
and  renders  it  no  longer  profitable  to 
work  these  worse  mines.  Where  com- 
modities are  employed  in  industrial 
occupations,  the  demand  is  variable ; 
their  value  depends  upon  the  demand ; 
and  this  value  constantly  tends  to  obtain 
that  position  of  stable  equilibrium  when 
the  supply  equals  the  demand.  But  the 
quantity  of  gold  and  silver  which  is 
used  for  industrial  purposes  is  compara- 
tively very  insignificant ;  and  when  a 
substance  is  used  merely  as  a  medium  of 
exchange,  the  demand  is  always  exactly 
equal  to  the  supply ;  the  aggregate 
supply  determines  the  value,  and  the 
value  in  a  cross  way  regulates  the 
supply,  because  the  supply  must  give 
such  a  value  as  will  cause  the  current 
rate  of  profit  to  be  obtained  in  the  worst 
mines.  If,  therefore,  within  the  last  ten 


years  no  silver  mines  of  exceptional 
richness  have  been  discovered,  and  the 
worse  mines  which  were  then  worked  are 
worked  now,  it  affords  strong  evidence 
that  nothing  has  occurred  to  affect  the 
value  of  silver.  If,  therefore,  gold 
has  declined  in  value  twenty-five  per 
cent,  silver  estimated  in  gold  would 
have  increased  twenty-five  per  cent,  in 
price.  But  it  has  not  increased  five  per 
cent.  This,  I  believe,  affords  important 
evidence  that  the  general  value  of  gold 
has  not  yet  declined.  For  some  years 
up  to  1840  our  exports  and  imports  had 
steadily  increased.  About  that  time  the 
progress  seemed  to  have  ceased,  for  from 
1840  to  1846  our  exports  remained  at  the 
stationary  point  of  about  50,000,000^. 
per  annum.  The  fettered  energy  of  the 
country  seemed  to  have  achieved  its 
utmost.  Free  trade  and  the  repeal  of 
the  navigation  laws  unloosed  these 
fetters,  and  then  the  country  started  on  a 
career  of  the  most  extraordinary  progress. 
Our  exports  in  nine  years  advanced  from 
50,000,0002.  to  115, 000,0002.  In  1847, 
475,000,000  Ibs.  of  cotton  were  im- 
ported; in  1856  more  than  1,000,000,000 
Ibs.  This  increased  commerce  stimu- 
lates the  accumulation  of  capital ;  the 
wage-fund  of  the  country  is  augmented, 
and  wages,  especially  in  the  manufac- 
turing districts,  obtain  a  very  decided 
rise.  Free  trade  also  cheapens  many  of 
the  prime  necessaries  of  life,  and  much 
more  can  therefore  be  spared  for  luxu- 
ries. No  luxury  is  more  prized  by  the 
poor  than  tea ;  and  hence  we  find  that 
only  50,000,000  Ibs.  of  tea  were  im- 
ported in  1850,  but  that  86,000,000  Ibs. 
were  imported  in  1856.  In  Europe, 
during  the  last  few  years,  there  has  been 
a  great  failure  of  the  silk  crop.  China 
has  been  resorted  to  ;  and  thus,  while 
only  1,700,000  Ibs.  of  silk  were  imported 
in  1850,  more  than  4,000,000  Ibs.  were 
imported  in  each  of  the  years  1,854, 
1855.  The  plodding  industry  of  the 
Chinese  enables  them  to  supply  this  in- 
creased tea  and  silk;  but,  surrounded 
with  all  the  prejudices  which  have  re- 
sulted from  an  isolation  of  two  thousand 
years,  we  can  induce  them  to  take  no  use- 
ful commodities  in  return.  They  will  be 

o  2 


188  On  the  Social  and  Economical  Influence  of  the  New  Gold. 


paid  in  silver,  and  we  are  thus  obliged 
to  adjust  the  balance  of  trade  by  a  large 
annual  exportation  of  silver.     Nothing 
can  be  more  anomalous  than  our  present 
commercial  relations  with  China.     The 
figures   which  have  just   been  quoted 
show  that  the  present  commercial  pro- 
gress of  Great  Britain  is  perhaps  most 
strikingly  exhibited  by  the  advancing 
demand    for    Chinese   products.      Our 
imports  from  that  country  are  year  by 
year  increasing  in  quantity  and  in  value, 
and   yet  our   exports   to  that  country 
diminish  rather  than  increase.     About 
1844  the  value  of  our  exports  averaged 
2,000,OOOJ»     Of  late   years   they   have 
scarcely  averaged  1,000,000?.,  and,  small 
as  is  our  export  trade  to  China,   it  is 
large  in  comparison  with  that  of  other 
countries.     Thus  the  annual  exports  of 
the  United  States  to  China  do  not  ex- 
ceed 300,000^.,  and  the  exports  which 
are  sent  from  the  Continent  are  still 
more  insignificant.     Great  Britain  con- 
sequently becomes,  to  a  great  extent, 
the  emporium  of  Eastern  produce.     The 
products   of  the   East   are   brought   to 
England,  and  then  again  are  distributed 
not  only  over  the  continent  of  Europe, 
but  even  over  Canada  and  the  United 
States ;    and    the    settlement    of    the 
balances   of   the   Indian    and   Chinese 
trade  is  made  through  England  for  the 
civilized  world.     Until  1850  the  adjust- 
ment  of   this   commerce   required   the 
export  of  only  a  small  amount  of  silver 
'to  the  East ;   but  a   drain   then   com- 
menced, which  has  advanced  with  steady 
rapidity,  and  in  1856  this  country  alone 
exported  to  the  East  the  enormous  sum 
of  14,500,OOOZ.   of  silver.     The   silver 
coinage  of  France  has,  to  a  great  extent, 
supplied  this  silver.     45,000,000^.  have 
been   thus   abstracted   from  her  silver 
coinage  in  six  years,  from  1852 — 1858. 
Gold  has  supplied  its  place.     The  ab- 
sorption of  so  much  gold  in  this  way 
has  induced  M.  Chevalier,  in  his  work 
"  On  the  probable  Fall  in  the  Value  of 
Gold,"  so  admirably  translated  by  Mr. 
Cobden,  to  describe  France  as  a  para- 
chute, which  has  retarded  the  fall  in  the 
value  of  gold.     France  has  supplied  so 
much  silver — 


Firstly.  Because  of  the  large  amount 
of  silver  coinage  she  formerly  possessed ; 
and 

Secondly.  Because,  unlike  us,  she  has 
a  double  standard.  Any  slight  variation 
in  the  fixed  relative  values  of  these  two 
metals  will  induce  all  payments  to  be 
made  in  one  of  these  metals  alone. 
Every  extension  of  credit  enables  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  the  circulating  medium 
to  be  dispensed  with ;  and  it  is  probable 
that  our  vastly  increased  commerce  and 
trade  has  required  little,  if  any  greater 
quantity  of  the  circulating  medium  for 
all  those  transactions  which  may  be 
described  as  wholesale  ;  but,  as  I  have 
before  observed,  a  great  increase  in  the 
national  capital  must  have  accompanied 
this  commercial  progress.  The  wage- 
fund  is  a  component  part  of  this  capital 
Wages  are  almost  always  paid  in  coin. 
This  points  to  another  way  in  which 
much  of  the  new  gold  has  been  ab- 
sorbed. The  possibility  of  accounting 
for  the  absorption  of  the  new  supplies 
of  gold,  confirms  the  opinion  that  its 
value  has  not  yet  declined.  But  the 
fact  that  there  has  been  no  reduction, 
proves  that  gold  would  have  greatly 
risen  in  value  had  not  these  supplies 
been  forthcoming.  The  rise,  too,  would 
have  been  sudden,  and  therefore  most 
serious.  The  conditions  of  every  rnonied 
contract  would  be  altered,  the  national 
debt  would  be  a  more  severe  burden, 
and  the  extension  of  our  commerce  with 
the  East  would  meet  with  the  most 
difficult  obstacle. 

"When  feudal  Europe  ripened  into 
commercial  Europe,  the  gold  of  America 
was  discovered  ;  and  now  that-  free  trade 
has  inaugurated  a  new  social  and  com- 
mercial era,  the  gold  of  Australia  and 
California  is  ready  at  hand  to  aid  the 
progress. 

M.  Chevalier  asserts  that  henceforth 
the  value  of  gold  will  rapidly  decline  at 
least  fifty  per  cent.  I  regard  this  as  a  much 
too  confident  prophecy.  The  wage-fund 
of  most  countries  is  increasing,  in  some 
cases  most  rapidly.  This  will  absorb  a 
great  deal  of  gold.  Our  commerce  with 
the  East  is  so  anomalous,  that  prophecies 
seem  to  me  to  be '  useless.  Every  year 


On  the  Social  and  Economical  Influence  of  the  New  Gold.          189 


there  is  a  constantly  greater  quantity  of 
Eastern  produce  required,  and  therefore 
this  increased  commerce  will  very  soon 
annually  absorb,  instead  of  14,000,000^. 
of  specie,  20,000,000^,  unless  some  great 
change  in  the  habits  of  the  Chinese  in- 
duces them  to  consume  more  European 
commodities.  On  such  a  point  who  •will 
hazard  a  prediction  1  Thus,  in  a  few 
years,  the  East  will  absorb  all  the  silver 
of  the  West.  Shall  we  then  be  able  to 
induce  the  Chinese  to  take  gold  as 
readily  as  they  do  now  silver  ?  There 
is  another  consideration  which  seems  to 
me  to  be  not  sufficiently  noticed.  A 
change  in  the  value  of  gold  always  gene- 
rates a  counteracting  force,  whose  ten- 
dency is  to  restore  the  metal  to  its  former 
value.  Suppose  the  supplies  of  gold  con- 
tinue to  be  the  same  as  they  are  now, 
and  that  after  a  certain  time  gold  de- 
clines in  value.  Gold-digging  is  not — I 
may  say,  cannot  be — permanently  more 
profitable  than  other  employments.  Di- 
rectly a  decline  in  the  value  of  gold 
takes  place,  gold-digging  will  to  many 
become  less  profitable  than  other  labour. 
They  will  therefore  cease  to  dig ;  this 
will  diminish  the  aggregate  supply  of 
gold,  and  this  diminution  will  tend  to 
restore  its  value.  I  will  now  proceed 
to  explain  in  what  way  the  gold  dis- 
coveries have  assisted  the  advance  of 
Australia.  Production  has  three  requi- 
sites : — 

Firstly.  Appropriate  natural  agents. 

Secondly.  Labour  to  develop  the  re- 
sources of  nature. 

Thirdly.  This  labour  must  be  sus- 
tained by  the  results  of  previous  labour, 
or  in  other  words,  by  capital. 

Long  previous  to  1848  the  great 
natural  resources  of  Australia  were 
known,  vast  tracts  of  fertile  land  had 
been  explored,  and  her  climate  had 
been  pronounced  healthy.  There  was  an 
overplus  of  labour  in  our  own  country, 
and  much  additional  capital  would  have 
been  at  once  accumulated  had  an  eligible 
investment  presented  itself.  Little 
labour  and  capital  were,  however,  ap- 
plied in  Australia,  and  her  advance  w«,s 
slow.  We  know  the  discovery  of  gold 
changed  all  this  ;  let  us  then  seek  the 


secret  of  the  change.  Previous  to  the 
gold  discoveries,  the  chief  field  for  the 
investment  of  capital  was  agriculture. 
In  a  young  country  farming  operations 
meet  with  many  obstacles.  The  stock 
and  implements  are  expensive,  no  steady 
supply  of  labour  can  be  ensured;  and 
without  the  investment  of  a  great  deal 
of  capital  in  roads,  and  other  such  works, 
produce  can  with  difficulty  be  brought  to 
market ;  and  when  it  is  brought,  the  de- 
mand is  uncertain.  The  same  consider- 
ations apply  to  manufactures,  and  also 
to  general  mining  operations  ;  for  lead, 
copper,  and  iron  mines  require  most  ex- 
pensive machinery,  and  a  large  co-opera- 
tion of  labour.  This  explains  the  usual 
slow  progress  of  colonies,  even  when 
they  offer  the  greatest  industrial  advan- 
tages. But  as  soon  as  it  was  heard  that 
gold  was  spread  over  a  large  breadth 
of  the  Australian  continent,  thousands 
flocked  to  share  the  spoil.  They  only 
took  the  simplest  tools ;  they  needed  no 
capital,  but  just  sufficient  food  to  sup- 
port them  while  labouring ;  and  each 
one  felt  that  he  could  work  indepen- 
dently, and  risk  nothing  more  than  his 
labour  and  his  passage-money.  Aus- 
tralia, having  thus  suddenly  obtained  an 
abundance  of  manual  labour,  possessed 
two  of  the  requisites  of  production  ;  the 
third,  capital,  was  quickly  supplied  to 
her.  The  savings  of  the  gold-diggers 
formed  a  large  capital,  and  English 
capital  now  flowed  in  even  too  broad  a 
stream  to  supply  the  wants  of  this 
labouring  population.  Australia  for  a 
time  suffered  much  inconvenience,  be- 
cause gold-digging  absorbed  much  of 
the  labour  which  had  been  previously 
applied  to  other  employments  ;  not  that 
more  was  earned  in  this  pursuit  than  in 
others,  but  there  is  a  magic  spell  in 
the  name  of  gold.  Gold-digging  has 
the  excitement  of  a  lottery,  and  the 
chances  of  a  lottery  are  always  esti- 
mated at  more  than  their  true  value. 
After  a  time,  other  pursuits  absorbed  a 
due  proportion  of  labour,  and  thus  Aus- 
tralia possessed  every  attribute  of  indus- 
trial success,  and  her  future  prosperity 
was  established. 

About  1848,  England  was  suffering 


190  On  the  Social  and  Economical  Influence  of  the  New  Gold. 


from  those  ills  which  political  economy 
attributes  to  over  population.  Wages 
•were  becoming  lower,  and  increasing 
population  necessarily  made  food  more 
expensive.  Ireland  had  famine,  and 
we  had  most  deplorable  distress.  I 
have  mentioned  that  the  discovery  of 
gold  acted  more  powerfully  than  any 
other  circumstance  to  induce  a  large 
emigration  from  Great  Britain.  Any 
decrease  in  the  number  of  those  who 
seek  employment  must  cause  a  rise  of 
wages,  but  emigration  from  a  country 
like  our  own  effects  even  a  more  im- 
portant advantage.  I  have  before  ob- 
served that  the  price  of  agricultural 
produce  at  any  time  must  be  such  as 
will  return  the  ordinary  rate  of  profit  to 
the  worst  land  in  cultivation.  If,  there- 
fore, the  wants  of  an  advancing  popu- 
lation cause  more  land  to  be  brought 
into  cultivation,  the  food  which  is  thus 
raised  involves  a  greater  expenditure 
of  labour  and  capital  than  that  which 
was  before  produced,  and  thus  as  popu- 
lation advances  food  becomes  dearer. 
In  a  thickly  peopled  country  there  are 
two  obstacles  to  the  material  prosperity 
of  the  poor  : — 

Firstly.  The  number  of  those  com- 
peting for  employment  reduces  wages. 

Secondly.  Food  rises  in  value  as  it 
becomes  necessary  to  strain  the  resources 
of  the  fertile  land. 

Emigration,  therefore,  has  increased 
not  only  the  monied  wages,  but  the  real 
wages  of  our  labourers.  In  some  of 
our  colonies,  such  as  Canada,  so  little  of 
the  fertile  land  has  been  cultivated, 
that  for  some  time  the  greater  the  im- 
migration is  to  those  parts,  the  more 
abundant  will  be  the  supply  of  cheap 
food  which  will  be  exported  to  our  own 
country.  Emigration  therefore,  as  it 
were,  adds  a  tract  of  fertile  land  to  our 
own  soil.  Again,  labour  is  remunerated 
from  capital.  The  amount  saved,  or  in 
other  words,  the  capital  which  is  ac- 
cumulated, is  regulated  by  the  returns 
which  this  capital  will  obtain.  If  popu- 
lation is  stationary,  and  capital  increases, 
wages  will  rise  and  profits  will  fall ; 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  capital  increases, 
the  rate  of  profit  will  fall.  Can  we 


affirm  anything  with  certainty  about  the 
tendency  of  profits,  when  capital  and 
population  both  increase  1  Any  aug- 
mentation in  the  numbers  of  the 
labourers  must  exercise  an  influence  to 
reduce  wages,  and  therefore  to  raise  pro- 
fits. But  there  is  another  consideration. 
In  a  thickly  peopled  country  like  Great 
Britain,  the  returns  of  the  Registrar- 
General  plainly  indicate  that  the  increase 
of  population  amongst  the  labouring  class 
is  determined  by  the  expense  of  living, 
for  the  number  of  marriages  invariably 
increases  or  decreases  as  food  is  cheap 
or  dear.  Such  being  the  case,  there  is 
always  a  portion  of  the  labouring  class 
whose  wages  are  very  little  more  than 
sufficient  to  provide  them  with  the 
necessaries  of  life.  Such  wages  I  will 
describe  as  minimum  wages.  Since  we 
have  seen  that  an  increasing  popula- 
tion must  always  have  a  tendency  to 
make  food  dearer,  these  minimum  wages 
must,  from  this  cause,  have  a  constant 
tendency  to  rise. 

This  acts  as  a  counteracting  force  to 
reduce  profits.  We  can  now  attribute 
another  important  influence  to  emigra- 
tion. It  raises  wages  by  reducing  the 
number  of  the  labouring  class ;  but 
since,  as  I  have  said,  it  adds  a  tract  of 
fertile  land  to  our  own  soil,  it  cheapens 
food,  and  since  cheap  food  prevents  a 
reduction  in  the  rate  of  profit,  there 
will  be  a  greater  inducement  to  save. 
The  capital  of  the  country  will  from 
this  cause  become  augmented,  and  there 
will  be  therefore  a  larger  fund  to  be 
distributed  amongst  the  wage-receiving 
population.  When  emigration  is  thus 
considered,  its  vast  social  and  economical 
importance  can  be  understood.  Mr.  J. 
S.  Mill,  who,  perhaps  more  than  any 
other  person,  has  systematically  thought 
upon  the  means  to  ameliorate  the  con- 
dition of  the  poor,  emphatically  insists, 
that  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  great 
alteration  in  the  condition  of,  at  least, 
one  generation — to  lift  one  generation, 
as  it  were,  into  a  different  state  of 
material  comfort. 

He  attributes  little  good  to  slight 
improvements  in  the  material  prosperity 
of  the  poor,  because,  unless  accompanied 


The  Volunteer's  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


191 


with  a  change  in  their  social  habits,  the 
advantage  is  sure,  as  it  were,  to  create 
its  own  destruction,  by  encouraging  an 
increase  of  population.  It  seems  that 
there  can  be  no  agency  so  powerful  as 
emigration  to  effect  a  decided  change  in 
the  material  condition  of  the  poor.  I 
therefore  regard  the  discovery  of  gold 


to  be  of  the  utmost  social  value  to 
England,  for  it  has  been  so  potent  an 
agent  to  induce  emigration,  that  it  has 
caused  Australia  in  ten  years  to  advance 
from  a  settlement  and  become  a  nation, 
with  all  the  industrial  appliances  of  the 
oldest  and  most  thriving  commercial 
community. 


THE  VOLUNTEERS  CATECHISM, 

BY    T.    HUGHES,    CAPTAIN    COMMANDING    10TH   MIDDLESEX  ; 


WITH   A   FEW   WOEDS    ON   BUTTS, 

BY    J.    C.    TEMPLEB,    CAPTAIN    COMMANDING    18lH    MIDDLESEX,    "HARROW    RIFLES." 


WHY  are  we  volunteering?  What's  the 
meaning  of  it  all  1  What  is  it  that  is 
making  noblemen,  and  men  of  fortune, 
and  lawyers,  and  merchants,  and  trades- 
men, and  clerks,  and  artisans,  give  up 
their  usual  pursuits,  sacrifice  their 
leisure  hours  (often  few  enough,  Heaven 
knows),  and  incur  trouble,  and  expense, 
and  drudgery,  that  they  may  acquire  the 
manual  and  platoon  exercises,  be  able  to 
hit  a  target  at  200  yards,  and  know  how 
to  form  open  column,  and  to  wheel  into 
line? 

It  is  high  time  for  us  all  to  be  asking 
ourselves  seriously,  what  we  do  mean? 
whether  we  have  any  meaning  at  all  in 
the  matter?  For,  either  the  nation  is 
drifting  into  a  gigantic  piece  of  tom- 
foolery, of  uniform- wearing,  and  swash- 
bucklerism,  and  playing  at  soldiers, 
which  will  last  for  a  summer  or  two,  and 
then  be  quietly  extinguished,  with  the 
approval  of  all  rational  men,  never  to  be 
revived  again  in  our  day;  or  she  is 
rousing  herself  to  undertake  seriously 
one  of  the  hardest  tasks  which  she  can 
set  herself,  and  yet  one  which,  success- 
fully accomplished,  will  yield  results, 
the  worth  whereof  no  living  English- 
man can  estimate. 

On  the  surface  of  our  volunteering 
there  are  signs  which  might  lead  a 
casual  observer  to  the  tom-fpolery  belief. 
We  hear  of  absurd  persons  going  about, 
arrayed  in  sashes  or  sidearms  to  which 


they  have  no  right ;  the  Government 
has  even  had,  at  the  request  of  the 
commanders  of  corps,  to  issue  notices 
and  prohibitions  against  such.  In  one 
quarter,  distressed  and  distressing  volun- 
teers are  whining  in  the  cheap  papers 
that  the  Guards  don't  salute  them  ;  an- 
other set  are  blustering  that  their  un- 
happy rank  is  not  recognised  at  Court, 
and  threatening  an  ungrateful  Sove- 
reign with  the  withdrawal  of  their 
services  as  a  penalty  for  her  want  of  ap- 
preciation. The  uniform  question  has 
attained  a  melancholy  importance  ;  there 
has  been  much  childishness  shown  in 
the  choosing  of  officers.  Nevertheless, 
on  the  whole,  he  who  drew  from  such, 
surface-signs  the  torn-foolery  conclusion 
would  be  mistaken. 

Let  any  man  go  to  a  parade  of  Volun- 
teers, and  just  look  at  the  rank  and  file, 
and  he  will  be  convinced.  They  are  as 
a  rule  men,  and  not  boys  ;  full-grown 
men,  with  professions  and  trades  to 
work  at,  and  families  to  support,  or,  at 
any  rate,  bread  to  earn  for  themselves. 
There  is,  probably,  not  one  in  five  of 
them  who  has  got  over  the  feeling  of 
dismay,  bordering  on  disgust,  which 
comes  on  him,  whenever  he  finds  him- 
self walking  about  the  streets  in  a  uni- 
form ;  not  one  in  a  hundred  Avho  has 
not  other  pursuits  to  which  he  would 
rather  give  the  time  which  volunteering 
swallows  up  ruthlessly.  To  many  the 


192  The  Volunteer  s  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


time  is  a  serious  pecuniary  sacrifice. 
And  yet  they  come  time  after  time,  and 
work  undeniably  well  while  they  are  at 
it,  and  bear  meekly  in  the  streets  the 
frequent  "  Who  shot  the  dog  ?"  and  "  As 
you  were,"  of  the  youthful  Cockney. 

You  believe,  then,  that  enough  Eng- 
lishmen are  downright  in  earnest  about 
volunteering  to  make  it  a  serious  na- 
tional movement  1  Yes.  Then  be  good 
enough  to  refer  to  the  question  put  at 
the  head  of  this  paper,  "  What  do  these 
Englishmen  who  are  downright  in  ear- 
nest mean  by  it  all  ? " 

A  good  many  of  us,  perhaps,  have 
hardly  had  time  to  answer  that  ques- 
tion to  ourselves ;  our  volunteering  time 
has  been  so  well  filled,  what  with 
goose  step,  and  squad  drill,  and  manual 
and  platoon  drill,  and  position  and 
bayonet  drill,  and  battalion  drill,  and 
skirmishing  drill,  and  these  last  abomi- 
nably moist  parade  days  in  the  parks, — 
not  to  mention  bye-days  of  what  we  may 
call  foreign  service  on  Putney  Heath 
or  the  Scrubbs.  However,  let  us  see. 
Of  course  not  one  of  us  means  just  the 
same  thing  as  his  rear  file,  or  right-hand 
man,  or  any  other  man  of  his  corps. 
The  pivot  man  of  the  right  section,  No.  1, 
means  that  he  for  his  part  hopes  some 
day  to  fight  a  Zouave  ;  while  he  of  the 
left,  No.  2,  desires  mainly  an  appetite  for 
dinner.  Nevertheless,  to  a  considerable 
extent  we  do  all  mean  the  same  thing. 
There  are  a  certain  number  of  objects 
which  we  all  aim  at,  though  some  care 
most  to  hit  one,  and  some  another. 

What,  for  instance  ? 

Well,  first  and  foremost,  we  mean 
that  English  homes  are  to  be  made  abso- 
lutely, and  beyond  all  question,  safe. 
Love  and  reverence  for  home,  for  our 
women  and  children,  for  roof-tree  and 
hearth ;  upon  that  we  found  ourselves 
before  all.  That,  many  of  us  may  be- 
lieve, perhaps,  to  be  at  the  bottom  of  all 
true  fighting,  and  of  all  true  preparation 
for  fighting ;  whatever  war-cry  or  banner 
may  be  in  the  air,  all  true  fighting  must, 
we  should  hold,  base  itself  somehow  on 
this,  or  be  wild,  mad  work, — probably, 
devil's  work.  No  need  to  dwell  on  this 
part  of  our  meaning.  Has  not  our  lau- 


reate gathered  it  all  into  eight  deathless 
lines  : — 

Thy  voice  he  hears  in  rolling  drums 
That  beat  to  battle  where  he  stands, 
Thy  face  across  his  fancy  comes 
And  gives  the  battle  to  his  hands  ; 
One  moment,  while  the  trumpets  blow, 
He  sees  his  brood  around  thy  knee  ; 
The  next,  like  fire  he  meets  the  foe, 
:And  strikes  him  dead  for  thine  and 
thee." 

Then  again,  we  mean  that  we  are  tho- 
roughly and  fairly  sick  of  invasion 
panics — that  in  this  last  twelve  years 
we  have  several  tunes  been  eating  our 
hearts  out  in  shame  and  rage  at  seeing 
our  great  country  whipped  into  wild 
terror  by  wild  talk  in  the  newspapers  ; 
and  that  we  don't  want  to  stand  much 
more  of  this  sort  of  thing.  We  mean 
something  more,  too,  than  being  done 
with  panics, — we  mean  that  we  want 
our  Governments  to  steer  a  straight  and 
steady  course  through  the  tangled  drift- 
weed  and  icebergs  of  the  ocean  of  modern 
politics :  insulting  no  one,  cringing  to  no 
one  ;  but  standing  faithfully  and  sternly 
by  every  righteous  cause  and  every 
righteous  man.  They  have  not  always 
done  this  of  late;  we  have  seen  the 
weak  bullied  and  the  strong  flattered, 
and  have  not  enjoyed  the  sight.  And 
now,  when  all  old  forms  <  >f  national  and 
social  life  in  Europe  are  pitching  in  the 
heavy  rising  sea,  ready  to  break  from 
their  moorings,  and  drift  no  man  know- 
eth  where,  we  want  to  see  our  country 
an  ark  to  which  all  eyes  may  turn,  and 
which  will  lend  help  to  all  who  need  it 
and  deserve  it, — "  A  refuge  from  the 
"  storm,  a  shadow  from  the  heat,  and  the 
"  blast  of  the  terrible  ones."  This  she 
may  be,  this  she  ought  to  be, — this  she 
can  never  be  unless  our  Governments 
feel  that  they  have  a  nation  behind 
them  on  whom  they  can  rely.  England 
will  want  her  whole  strength  in  the 
times  that  are  coming.  We  Volunteers 
mean  that  she  shall  have  it  ready  for 
use  in  the  most  telling  form ;  and  we 
believe  that  volunteering  is  the  way  to 
help  her  to  it,  and  the  only  way. 


The  Volunteer  s  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts.  193 


Again,  we  mean  that,  all  in  good  time, 
we  want  the  Army  Estimates  lowered, 
and  that  we  don't  see  our  way  to  it 
except  through  effectual  and  permanent 
volunteering. 

Again,  notwithstanding  the  many 
noble  efforts  at  social  reform  in  the  last 
twelve  years,  there  is  no  denying  that 
classes  in  England  are  still  standing 
lamentably  apart.  The  difficulty  of  find- 
ing a  common  standing-ground,  anything 
in  which  we  may  all  work  together  and 
take  our  pastime  together ;  where  we  can 
stand  shoulder  to  shoulder,  and  man  to 
man,  each  counting  for  what  he  is  worth ; 
the  peer  without  condescending,  and  the 
peasant  without  cringing,  is  almost  as 
great  as  ever.  Here,  in  volunteering,  we 
think  we  have  found  what  may,  when 
rightly  handled,  do  much  towards  filling 
up  this  gap, — a  common  subject  of  in- 
terest, a  bond  which  may  in  the  end 
bind  the  nation  together  again  in  many 
other  ways  besides  teaching  us  men  how 
to  form  rallying  squares,  and  prepare  to 
receive  cavalry  side  by  side. 

Again,  we  mean  that,  to  the  best  of 
our  belief,  steady  volunteering  will  make 
individual  Englishmen  healthier  of  body, 
stronger  and  steadier  of  hand,  quicker 
of  eye,  prompter  in  action,  and  more 
generally  alert  and  intelligent  than  they 
are  at  present. 

This  is  not  all  we  mean,  but  may 
suffice  for  the  present.  And  now  to  pass 
to  another  side  of  the  subject. 

As  you  are  so  bent  on  volunteering, 
Avhere  do  you  mean  to  stop?  Definite 
aims  are  desirable  things  :  now,  what  are 
you  volunteers  going  to  be  content  with  ] 
Will  200,000,  with  40,000  or  50,000 
marksmen  among  them,  do  ?  Will 
500,000,  with  100,000  marksmen,  do  ? 

We  shall  have,  no  doubt,  to  put  up 
with  much  less  than  we  like,  even  if  all 
things  go  well  and  smoothly  (which 
they  most  assuredly  won't);  but  if  it 
conies  to  talking  of  being  content,  we 
shall  be  content  with  this  and  nothing 
less  :  We  shall  be  content  when  it  shall 
be  held  to  be  a  slur  on  an  adult  English- 
man if  he  does  not  know  the  use  of 
arms,  and  the  ordinary  drill  of  a  sol- 
dier. We  shall  be  content  when  the 


nation  is  armed  and  drilled,  when  every 
man  shoulders  musket  once  a  week  or 
so,  as  much  as  a  matter  of  course  as  he 
puts  on  a  decent  coat  on  Sunday  morn- 
ings. That  is  what  will  satisfy  us  as 
respects  numbers. 

As  respects  proficiency,  we  shall  be 
content  when  our  corps  are  equal  to 
any  troops  in  the  world  that  have  never 
seen  actual  service — when  Lord  Clyde, 
or  General  Mansfield,  or  our  own  In- 
spector-General, declares  that  he  would 
as  soon  go  into  action  with  us  as  with 
any  troops  he  ever  saw,  who  had  not 
smelt  powder.  Why  not  1  What  is  to 
hinder  it  ?  The  short  experience  we 
have  had  proves  that  we  are  already 
treading  on  the  heels  of  the  regulars,  if 
we  don't  beat  them,  in  shooting.  Surely, 
with  a  little  resolution,  and  steady  prac- 
tice, we  can  learn  our  drill  as  well  as 
any  of  them.  Eemember,  we  are  only 
nine  months  old  or  so.  What  may  we 
not  hope  in  nine  years'  time  1 

Fine  talk,  my  dear  Sirs,  fine  talk ;  but 
wouldn't  it  be  better  to  draw  it  a  little 
milder,  and  then  people  won't  laugh  so 
loud  at  your  failures,  which  are  sure  to 
come.  To  which  we  reply  in  the  words 
of  good  old  George  Herbert — 

"  Faint  not  in  spirit ;  he  who  aims  the 

sky 
"  Shoots   higher    far    than   he   who 

means  a  tree." 

And  so  we  leave  our  doubting  friends* 
with  the  assurance  that  no  amount  of 
sage  or  sneering  advice,  cold  water,  or 
inextinguishable  laughter  shall  hinder  us 
from  going  as  near  this  mark  as  we  can. 
The  only  chance  of  getting  near  it  at  all 
is  to  start  with  the  resolution  to  be 
content  with  nothing  short  of  thorough 
success.  A  low  standard  will  make  no 
good  men  :  we  hope  to  pull  up  to  a  very- 
high  one  ;  in  any  case,  hit  or  miss,  we 
refuse  to  square  our  hopes  and  cut  down 
our  practice  to  suit  a  low  one. 

But  let  no  one  suppose  that  Volun- 
teers are  not  aware  of  the  enormous 
difficulty  of  the  work  they  have  to  do. 
We  have  all  felt  something  of  it  already, 
and  shall  soon  feel  more  of  it.  Just 
now,  no  doubt,  volunteering  is  at  flood 


194 


The  Volunteer's  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


tide  for  the  year  1860.  We  have  been 
reviewed  by  her  Majesty,  and  rather 
imagine  that  we  have  done  ourselves 
credit.  We  are  just  going  to  shoot  at 
the  great  national  meeting,  started, 
organized,  and  carried  through,  entirely 
by  some  of  the  leading  Volunteers  of 
the  kingdom.  We  look  forward  shortly 
to  our  great  sham-fighting,  but  not 
sham-working,  field-day  of  the  season ; 
when  we  hope  to  exhibit  prodigies  of 
valour  and  intelligence,  under  the  com- 
mand of  Volunteer  brigadiers,  but  also 
under  the  approving  and  envious  eyes 
of  generals  and  colonels  of  the  regulars. 
There  will  be  a  very  different  state  of 
things  when  the  next  number  of  this 
Magazine  appears.  The  volunteering 
appetite  will  then  be  beginning  to  lose 
its  edge,  and  the  up-hill  work  will  be 
at  hand.  Enthusiasm  will  be  cool- 
ing ;  very  possibly  we  shall  be  having 
small  musters,  careless  drills,  lots  of 
withdrawals,  and  wiseacres  will  be  say- 
ing, "We  always  told  you  how  it 
would  be." 

Very  well — we  expect  that  it  will  be 
so ;  we  accept  it,  but  we  don't  mean  to  be 
beat  by  it.  The  question  will  be  then, 
how  is  it  to  be  met  1  How  are  we  to 
pull  through  the  slack  water  so  as  to 
hold  our  corps  together  to  make  play 
again  the  moment  the  tide  turns.  That 
question  will,  no  doubt,  be  pressing 
upon  us  soon,  and  will  require  practical 
consideration.  Meantime,  let  Volunteers 
rejoice  in  the  flood-tide.  "  Sufficient 
to  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof."  We 
will  utter  nothing  like  the  ghost  of 
a  croak  just  now.  We  shall  better 
occupy  ourselves  by  making  these  pages 
the  means  of  imparting  to  others  the 
experience  we  have  been  able  to  gather 
on  the  several  subjects  of  interest  and 
importance  that  have  yet  to  be  settled, 
and  we  can  assure  our  readers  that  we 
do  so  in  no  pedantic  spirit,  but  in  the 
hope  of  aiding  our  brother  Volunteers  to 
avoid  the  mistakes  and  errors  that  we 
have  ourselves  committed. 

First  in  the  list  of  subjects  that  press 
for  immediate  solution  is  that  of  prac- 
tice ranges  for  rifle  shooting.  Some 
companies  of  early  formation  are  still 


without  them ;  some  have  but  short  dis- 
tances ;  while  others,  holding  as  mere 
tenants  at  will,  on  sufferance,  are  unwil- 
ling to  incur  the  necessary  expenses  in 
erecting  a  butt  on  such  uncertain  tenures. 
A  really  good  range  should  satisfy  the 
following  conditions  :  It  should  be  1,000 
yards  in  length  by  10  yards  in  width  ; 
it  should  be  level,  or  nearly  so,  along  its 
entire  distance ;  it  should  intersect  no 
rights  of  way,  and  none  should  cross  its 
line  of  direction  for  1,500  yards  from 
the  back  of  the  targets,  unless  the  ground 
rises  and  forms  a  natural  bar  to  the 
flight  of  the  bullet ;  it  should  be  readily 
accessible  to  the  members  of  the  corps, 
and  therefore  as  central  as  possible  with 
respect  to  head-quarters ;  it  should  all 
be  held  of  one  lessor,  who  should  also 
possess  the  land  as  well  at  the  sides  as 
at  the  back  of  the  butt :  in  addition, 
there  should  also  be  spaces  for  the 
marker's  butt  or  mantlet,  and  for  a  shed 
for  shelter.  The  course,  if  it  may  be  so 
•  called,  would  be  not  unlike  the  half-mile 
gallop  at  Newmarket.  We  are  aware  the 
conditions  we  have  mentioned  are  rarely 
to  be  met  with ;  but  where  they  do  com- 
bine, they  constitute  a  first-rate  range, 
presenting  the-  grand  features  of  safety 
with  the  constant  means  of  practice.  On 
such  a  ground,  a  substantial  brick  butt, 
with  proper  buttresses,  30  feet  wide  by 
20  feet  high,  with  earth- work  faced  with 
turf  up  to  12  feet  high,  and  amply  suffi- 
cient for  a  single  company,  might  be 
erected  for  about  SQL  ;  and,  including 
marker's  butt  and  a  timber-built  shed, 
for  1001.  over  all, — and  in  proportion 
for  a  larger  erection.  In  some  places  an 
earth-work  altogether  might  be  more 
cheaply  constructed,  and,  where  so,  it  is 
the  best,  and  in  others  a  fascine  or  faggot- 
butt,  and  some  have  tried  oak  faced  with 
iron ;  but,  as  a  general  rule,  the  brick 
wall  (14  inch  work  is  enough)  will  be 
found  the  most  economical,  and  it  gives 
that  impression  of  permanency  which 
of  all  things  at  present  it  is  so  desir- 
able to  create.  There  it  stands  fixed 
and  demonstrative  against  all  cavillers 
of  the  success  of  the  first  effort — a 
monument  of  the  hearty  good- will  and 
patriotism  of  the  present  generation; 


The  Volunteer  s  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


195 


the  point  around  which  larger  efforts  in 
the  same  direction  may  centre  in  future, 
should  the  necessity  arise.  It  is  not 
until  every  village  in  England  contains 
its  rifle-practice  range,  that  the  Volun- 
teer system  will  be  established  without 
fear  of  relapse;  and  we  sincerely  trust 
that  the  present  summer  will  witness 
the  erection  of  good  and  substantial 
butts  in  every  part  of  the  country. 

Now  it  will  be  found  that  in  most 
neighbourhoods  but  one  such  range  as  we 
have  described  could  be  selected  :  1,000 
yards  is  a  long  stretch  of  land,  and 
when  1,500  more  is  added  to  it,  it  taxes 
the  capacities  of  a  country,  as  any  engi- 
neer, or  follower  of  hounds,  will  tell  you. 
Harford  Bridge  Flat,  which  tried  the 
speed  and  bottom  of  the  Quicksilver 
Mail  or  Exeter  Telegraph  teams  in  the 
old  coaching  tunes,  was  unique  in  its 
way ;  and,  passing  by  the  other  conditions 
as  more  or  less  attainable,  it  follows  as  a 
trule,  that  in  any  particular  district  there 
is  but  one  best  range,  and  it  becomes  an 
object  of  the  greatest  importance  to  the 
volunteer  corps  to  obtain  it. 

We  will  throw  out  of  consideration 
the  cases  of  those  fortunate  companies 
that  are  placed  near  some  friendly  pro- 
prietor, who  at  once  accommodates  them 
with  all  that  can  be  wished  for,  as  these 
form  but  a  small  percentage  of  the  whole, 
and  we  will  deal  with  those  less  happily 
circumstanced,  who  are  in  view  of  the 
promised  land,  but  are  denied  the  access, 
and  have  to  conduct  the  hard  negotiation 
with  lukewarm  or  unfriendly  occupiers, 
who  would  fain  repeat  the  story  of  the 
railways,  and  exact  almost  fabulous  prices 
for  acreage  and  accommodation.  1,000 
yards  multiplied  by  10,  gives  2  A.  OR.  10p. 
— and  allowing  3  OP.  more  for  mantlet 
and  shed,  two  acres  and  a  quarter  is  all 
that  is  required,  and  10?.,  or,  at  the 
most,  15?.  an  acre,  should  be  a  fair  com- 
pensation :  but  little  real  injury  is  done  ; 
no  fencing  is  required,  and  the  occupier 
has  the  herbage  if  the  land  is  in  grass. 
The  following  simple  form  of  agreement 
is  all  that  is  necessary  between  the  par- 
ties ;  of  course,  any  special  terms  inci- 
dent to  particular  cases  may  be  added, 
but  in  ordinary  cases,  and  for  getting  on 


comfortably  together,   the   simpler  the 
agreement  the  better  : — 

"  Date  [say  24th  June,  I860].  Agree- 
"  ment  between  A.  B.  [the  occupier]  and 
"  C.  D.  [the  captain  of  the  company],  as 
"  follows  : 

"1.  The  said  A.  B.  lets,  and  the 
"said  C.  D.  takes,  at  221.  10s.  yearly 
"  rent,  the  use  of  the  plot  marked  off 
"  by  white  posts  from  the  closes  No.  4, 
"  5,  and  6  [as  the  case  may  be],  in  the 
"  parish  map  of  [name  of  parish],  and 
"  containing  2A.  IB.,  the  rent  to  be  paid 
"  quarterly,  and  first  on  the  29th  of 
"  September  next. 

"  2.  The  said  plot  is  to  be  used  as  a 
"  Rifle  Practice  Range  for  the 
"  Volunteers,  and  such  other  corps  or 
"  persons  as  they  may  permit,  and  may 
"be  excavated,  and  all  necessary  erec- 
"  tions  and  earth- works  made  and  placed 
"  thereon  for  that  purpose. 

"  3.  The  said  A,  B.  may  use  the  said 
"plot  for  any  purpose  not  interfering 
"  with  the  said  C.  D.'s  uses,  but  shall  not 
"  be  compensated  for  any  injury  to  crops 
"occasioned  by  such  uses,  nor  permit 
"  any  rifle  practice  on  the  plot  without 
"  the  said  C.  D.'s  sanction  :  injuries  to 
"  live  stock  to  be  compensated  for." 
(Signed)      "  A.  B. 
"C.  D." 

A  copy  should  be  signed  by  each  party, 
and  the  stamp  will  be  in  proportion  to 
the  rent.  See  the  stamp  tables. 

And  here  it  will  be  proper  to  call 
attention  to  the  false  position  in  which 
corps  and  companies  are  placed  by  the 
conditions  of  acceptance  of  offers  of  ser- 
vice in  the  memorandum  issued  by  the 
"War  Office,  and  which  are  enforced 
through  the  medium  of  the  lords-lieu- 
tenant of  counties.  By  the  2d  condition 
— "  Before  giving  his  sanction  for  the 
"  formation  of  any  rifle  corps,  the  Secre- 
"  tary  of  State  will  require  that  safe 
"  ranges  for  rifle  practice  be  obtained  of 
"not  less  than  200  yards — this  being 
"  the  minimum  of  any  practical  utility." 
The  words  are  be  obtained.  It  is  clear 
that  this  requirement  is  entirely  out  of 
place  as  a  condition  precedent, — it  should 


196 


The  Volunteer's  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


be  assumed,  in  aid  of  the  formation  of 
rifle  companies,  that  safe  ranges  for  rifle 
practice,  of  not  less  than  200  yards,  are 
obtainable  in  any  neighbourhood ;  and 
if  supervision  for  the  protection  of  the 
public  is  necessary,  the  check  should 
come  in  its  proper  time,  and  not  be  ap- 
plied until  the  men  are  ready  to  begin 
shooting  with  ball-cartridge.  In  its 
regular  sequence  it  should  stand  side  by 
side  with  the  recent  War  Office  circular, 
which  enjoins  officers  commanding  not 
to  permit  ball- practice  until  the  members 
have  obtained  the  certificate  of  the  in- 
spector appointed  by  Government.  There 
are  plenty  of  difficulties  to  be  overcome 
by  the  promoters  of  a  volunteer  rifle 
company  on  the  threshold  of  the  un- 
dertaking, without  having  impossible 
conditions  imposed  on  them ;  and  that 
this  is  impossible,  if  it  be  construed 
strictly,  is  clear,  for  all  that  can  be 
assumed  at  the  tune  it  is  insisted  on  is, 
that  there  is  a  reasonable  expectation 
that  a  particular  range,  of  which  the 
inspection  is  invited,  can  be  had.  At 
this  point  of  time,  there  are  no  parties 
to  bind  :  the  captain,  with  whom  the 
legal  contract  can  alone  be  made,  is  not 
appointed ;  the  committee  of  manage- 
ment, or  whoever  is  promoting  the  effort, 
can  only  say  to  the  occupier  of  the 
land,  if  we  succeed  in  forming  a  corps, 
we  will  take  such  a  range  from  you 
on  such  terms, — to  which  the  occupier 
assents.  All,  however,  is  inchoate,  in- 
complete, and  prospective ;  it  is  sure 
to  be  weeks,  and  it  may  be  months,  be- 
fore the  time  conies  when  the  need  of 
the  range  arises  ;  in  the  interim,  the  mere 
passage  of  time  may  work  changes  in 
the  position  or  will  of  the  parties  that 
may  prevent  the  carrying  out  the  origi- 
nal proposal ;  fresh  terms  may  become 
necessary,  and  a  fresh  status  induced. 
It  requires  but  a  glance  to  see  the  false 
position  the  corps  stands  in  all  this 
time  ;  they  have  been  formed  on  the 
faith  of  a  condition  they  may  be  unable 
to  fulfil,  and  when  the  time  comes, 
should  the  arrangement  fall  through, 
they  are  a  company  without  a  range,  its 
having  been  obtained  being  the  condition 
of  their  very  existence.  And  the  ano- 


maly is  rendered  the  more  striking  by 
the  fact,  ihat  the  subsequent  breach  of 
the  condition  does  not  suspend  the  com- 
pany; and  so,  while  they  cannot  form 
without  a  range,  they  can  continue  with- 
out one ;  and,  as  soon  as  they  can  obtain 
the  promise  of  another,  they  can  invite 
a  fresh  inspection,  which  is  ordered  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  the  only  penalty 
inflicted  is  that  it  shall  take  place  at 
the  charge  of  the  company.  We  ask, 
can  anything  be  more  illogical  1  A 
condition  .  is  imposed,  which  common 
sense  treats  as  impossible  by  both  sides 
from  first  to  last.  Still  it  has  had  a 
retarding  influence,  and  in  some  in- 
stances has  prevented  the  formation  of 
companies,  and  would  have  done  so  in 
still  more,  but  that  all  prospective  diffi- 
culties have  been  disregarded  in  the 
general  enthusiasm  that  has  carried  out 
the  national  will ;  and  besides,  the  time 
is  only  now  come  with  the  majority  of 
corps  that  were  formed  at  the  close  of 
1859  and  the  beginning  of  1860,  in 
which  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  a  good 
range  is  beginning  to  be  felt.  The  time 
is  also  now  come  that  this  condition 
be  swept  out  of  the  requisitions  alto- 
gether. 

The  setting  up  a  rifle  company  is  a 
matter  of  steps ;  and,  in  the  ordinary 
course,  the  very  last  round  of  the  ladder 
is  the  shooting  with  ball  at  the  butts. 
The  committee  meetings,  the  corre- 
spondence with  the  lord  -  lieutenant, 
the  approval  of  the  corps  by  her  Ma- 
jesty, the  choice  of  uniform,  the  ap- 
pointment of  officers,  the  engagement 
of  drill  and  musketry  instructors,  the 
recruit  and  company  drill,  the  position 
practice  and  musketry  lessons — these,  as 
well  as  the  obtaining  of  the  certificate  of 
the  inspector  appointed  by  the  Govern- 
ment, all  precede  the  actual  ball  practice 
at  the  targets.  Why  then  should  the 
obtaining  the  range  be  made  the  thread 
upon  which  the  whole  is  to  depend,  and 
that  at  the  risk  of  the  promoters,  who 
have  long  since  discharged  their  duties, 
and  have  either  merged  into  the  body 
of  the  corps,  or  ceased  to. retain  all  con- 
nexion with  it  1  We  have  dwelt  at  some 
detail  on  this,  as  it  has  an  important 


The  Volunteer  s  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


197 


bearing  on  that  part  of  the  case  in  which 
we  insist  that  facilities  should  be  afforded 
by  the  Legislature  in  procuring  rifle 
ranges  for  the  Volunteers,  instead  of  the 
hindrance  which  is  imposed  by  the  ope- 
ration of  the  present  rule. 

We  now  approach  a  more  interesting 
branch  of  the  subject,  and  proceed  to 
inquire  into  the  legal  questions  that  will 
be  sure  to  arise  out  of  the  exercise  of 
ball  practice  at  the  targets.  In  some 
sense  it  may  be  considered  as  the  conflict 
of  the  public  with  the  private  right,  for 
it  is  a  simple  sequitur  that  if  the  volun- 
teer movement  is  meritorious,  the  be- 
coming expert  marksmen,  which  must 
be  attained  by  practice  at  the  butts,  is 
meritorious  also.  Still,  in  many  cases, 
perhaps  even  in  most,  this  practice  will 
interfere  with  the  enjoyment  of  others  ; 
a  neighbouring  owner  or  occupier,  for 
instance,  can  scarcely  be  expected  to 
walk  about  his  farm  within  reach  of  the 
shooting,  inspecting  crops  and  cattle, 
with  that  calm  repose,  that  slowness  of 
mind,  that  has  been  the  privilege  of  the 
Boeotian  intellect  for  so  many  ages.  If 
he  could  feel  morally  certain  that  all  his 
volunteer  friends  were  marksmen — that, 
if  they  missed  the  target,  they  would  at 
least  hit  the  butt — it  might  be  otherwise ; 
but  he  knows  that  with  every  precaution 
there  will  be  some  who  will  be  sure  to 
miss  not  only  the  target,  but  the  butt 
also,  and  that  that  Minie  bullet  has  a 
wonderful  long  track  of  its  own,  and 
may  come  dropping  about  in  a  most 
unexpected  manner.  Things  are  a  little 
ticklish  and  uncomfortable  then,  and  his 
ear  becomes  "  less  Irish  and  more  nice." 
Can  he,  however,  complain  ]  Can  he 
insist  on  the  reduction  of  rent  1  Has 
he  any  legal  redress  1  The  volunteers 
are  doing  no  unlawful  act.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  are  exercising  a  lawful  and 
praiseworthy  vocation.  Before  the  ball 
practice  begins,  the  occupier  can  only 
complain  that  he  is  afraid  of  what  will 
happen;  and,  as  the  common  law  re- 
dresses only  actual  injuries,  he  has  no 
right  of  action  until  he  is  injured  in 
person  or  property  :  neither  could  he 
treat  the  prospective  as  the  existing 
nuisance,  and  proceed  to  abate  it  by  his 


own  act,  or  indict  it  on  the  criminal 
side  of  the  court.  At  this  time  it  is 
all  "  quia  timet,"  and  his  only  remedy 
would  be  by  moving  for  an  injunction 
in  Chancery  to  restrain  the  ball  practice. 
His  success  here  would  probably  depend 
on  the  particular  case  ;  in  some  instances 
it  might  be  granted,  while  in  others  it 
would  be  refused ;  and  at  most,  perhaps, 
he  might  only  be  able  to  restrain  the 
practice  of  the  company  until  guarantees 
were  given  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
court  that  proper  butts  would  be  erected 
and  all  proper  precautions  taken ;  that 
the  Hythe  rules  for  shooting  would  be 
strictly  observed,  and  that  all  shooting 
would  be  in  the  presence  of  an  officer, 
and  the  results  duly  registered.  Still,  a 
proceeding  in  Chancery,  however  quickly 
disposed  of,  would  fall  hard  on  the  com- 
pany ;  and  few  have  funds  to  spare  for 
any  such  contingency.  Again,  assuming 
the  occupier  to  lie  by  and  wait  until 
some  stray  bullet  had  found  its  way  into 
his  land,  we  can  imagine  his  stumbling 
upon  it  with  feelings  akin  to  those  of 
Eobinson  Crusoe,  when  he  discovered 
the  print  of  the  foot  on  the  sand ;  there 
it  is,  sure  enough,  and  the  next  may  be 
for  him.  Now,  however,  he  has  his 
action  of  trespass,  and  he  may  sue  the 
man  who  fired  the  shot,  if  he  can  find 
him  out;  or  the  officer  who  gave  the 
order  for  the  practice,  for  the  bare  in- 
terference of  the  unwelcome  stranger 
with  his  land.  Juries  would  not  be  likely 
to  give  him  much  ;  but  the  mere  flight 
over  his  soil  by  the  bullet,  though  it 
lodged  in  land  beyond  his,  would  entitle 
him  to  his  suit;  and  it  is  this  that 
renders  it  so  important  that  the  land  on 
the  sides  and  at  the  back  of  the  butts 
should  all  be  in  one  holding  with  the 
range  itself :  in  such  case  the  rights  are 
governed  by  the  contract ;  but  otherwise 
the  corps  must  purchase  the  goodwill 
of  others,  if  they  wish  for  an  immunity 
from  legal  proceedings.  It  is  clear, 
from  what  we  have  said,  that  if  the 
position  of  a  neighbouring  occupier  is 
ticklish  from  the  flight  of  some  random 
bullet,  that  of  the  commanding  officer 
is  not  less  so  from  the  not  much  worse 
bullet  of  the  law.  He  may  be  called  on 


198  The  Volunteer  s  Catechism,  with  a  Few  Words  on  Butts. 


to  defend  acts  done  in  his  absence,  and 
to  make  compensations  for  which  he  has 
no  funds  from  the  corps.     Nay,   even 
it  may  become  a  question  for  a  jury, 
whether  the  butt  was  a  reasonable  and 
proper  butt,  looking  at  all  the  surround- 
ing circumstances  of  time  and  place.  Ten 
feet  high,    or   even  the  targets  alone, 
might  be   ample   on  Salisbury   plain ; 
while  ten  feet  multiplied  by  five  would 
be  insufficient  in  some  of  the  populous 
neighbourhoods    of  London  .  or  Liver- 
pool..    Should  the   metropolis  ever  be 
fortified  in  the  manner  suggested  in  a 
very  able  paper  recently  published  in  a 
contemporary  journal,   the   earthworks 
themselves  will  probably  solve  the  ques- 
tion for  the  Middlesex  companies,  by 
supplying  excellent  butts  at  their  bases  ; 
in  the  interim,  however,   the  position 
is  an  uncertain  one,  and  there .  can  be 
no  doubt  corps  will  be  exposed  to  the 
risk  of  suits  both  at  law  and  in  equity, 
from  which,  in  our  opinion,  in  the  pro- 
secution of  a  public  object,  they  ought 
to  be  relieved.     It  will  have  to  be  set- 
tled whether  the   commission   of    the 
volunteer  officer  protects  him  for  acts 
done  without  negligence  in  the  discharge 
of  his  duty,  although  they  may  occasion 
injury  and  loss  to  others ;  and  in  the 
present  uncertainty  occasioned  by  the 
novelty  of  the  subject,  we  suggest  that 
the   Government   inspector   should  be 
called  on  to  certify  the  fitness  of  all 
butts  for  rifle  practice,  and  that  his  cer- 
tificate be  held  conclusive  in  the  courts 
of  judicature  of  the  country.  This  would 
at  once  narrow  the  questions  at  issue 
very  considerably,  and  be  a  great  pro- 
tection, as  well  to  the  public  as  to  corps 
and    their    commanding   officers.      As 
matters  stand  at  present,  it  is  certain 
that  officers  commanding  volunteer  com- 
panies incur  risks  that  do  not  attach  to 
officers  in  the  regular  service,   simply 
because  all  ball  practice  is  carried  on  by 
the  latter  in  places  absolutely  safe  ;  and, 
besides,  their  commission  protects  them. 
With  the  volunteer  officers,  however,  it 
is  a  question  yet  to  be  settled,  whether 
their  commission  protects ;  and  it  will 
take  some  time  to  erect  absolutely  safe 
butts  throughout  the  country ;  and  we 


therefore  warn  all  volunteer  officers  com- 
manding of  the  absolute  necessity  there 
is  of  adopting  every  precaution,  and  re- 
quiring a  most  rigid  observance  of  the 
rules  that  have  been  laid  down  at  Hy the 
relating  to  ball  practice.  Had  this  been 
done,  the  shooting  of  the  dog,  which 
brought  so  much  odium  on  Volunteers, 
could  not  have  happened.  No  shooting 
about  by  individuals  at  their  own  will 
and  pleasure  should  be  permitted  at  all. 
The  ball  practice  should  be  at  the  butts, 
and  butts  alone,  and  always  in  the  pre- 
sence of  an  officer  or  Serjeant,  and  the 
results  always  registered.  If  men  will 
practise  otherwise,  they  should  do  it  with 
their  own  rifles,  and  at  their  own  proper 
risk  and  costs. 

Having  thus  shown  the  difficulties 
that  beset  the  obtaining  of  rifle  ranges, 
and  the  risks  incurred  in  the  use  of 
them,  we  have  to  consider  what  mea- 
sures should  be  taken  to  assure  the 
proper  amount  of  ball  practice  by  the 
Volunteer  on  the  one  side,  with  the 
greatest  possible  safety  to  the  public 
on  the  other.  It  is  a  problem  by, no 
means  easy  to  solve.  We  strongly  main- 
tain, as  a  first  step,  that  all  that  pertains 
to  the  actual  rifle  practice — that  is  to 
say,  the  weapon  itself,  the  ammunition, 
and  the  range — should  be  supplied  by  the 
country.  The  rifleman,  in  finding  time 
and  uniform,  makes  the  far  larger  sacri- 
fice— to  say  nothing  of  the  many  inci- 
dental expenses  of  railway  travelling, 
and  the  like ;  and,  even  if  an  extra  half- 
penny in  the  pound  is  added  to  the 
income-tax,  he  helps  to  pay  it.  At  pre- 
sent, the  rifles  themselves  are  supplied, 
and  the  ammunition  and  ranges  should 
follow ;  but,  if  these  be  withheld,  we 
then  insist  that  a  compulsory  power 
should  be  conferred  by  statute,  enabling 
corps  to  lease  the  butt-ranges  in  their 
respective  neighbourhoods,  making  all 
reasonable  compensation  to  the  occu- 
piers of  the  land.  In  all  probability, 
recourse  would  seldom  be  had  to  the 
Act,  as  the  knowledge  that  it  might  be 
resorted  to  would  facilitate  negotiation. 
Neither  of  our  suggestions  need  inter- 
fere with  the  free  action  of  the  system, 
which  freedom  should  be  maintained 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


199 


strictly  inviolate.  The  movement  can 
only  be  carried  out  to  its  grand  ultimate 
end,  of  every  man  in  England  who  is 
capable  becoming  a  Volunteer,  by  the 
energy  and  free-will  of  the  people  them- 
selves. We  would  only  give  it  greater 
play,  and  a  more  extended  action,  by 
releasing  it  from  the  obstacles  that  now 
impede  its  progress,  and  by  making 
the  Government  responsible  for  the 
ranges.  Already  the  movement  has 
achieved  wonders,  and  the  infant  of 
yesterday  has  expanded  into  the  giant 
of  to-day,  clasping  with  the  arms  of  a 
Briareus  the  whole  length  and  breadth 
of  the  land.  To  all  classes  it  appeals 
alike  as  a  source  of  pleasure  and  advan- 
tage ;  it  combines  duty  with  pastime, 
health  with  sport ;  it  banishes  sloth  and 
inaction,  and  frowns  upon  dandyism  and 
tinsel ;  it  strengthens  the  love  of  coun- 
try, and  enhances  the  blessings  of  home ; 
it  gathers  men  together  in  a  generous 
rivalry  and  cheerful  exercise,  and  will 
sustain  and  renew — perhaps  increase — 
the  pristine  vigour  of  the  race.  And  it 
was  time  that  some  such  diversion  should 


have  reached  us.  In  the  higher  ranks, 
the  manly  love  of  sport  was  becoming 
bastard  and  degenerate — the  miserable 
battues  had  well-nigh  trodden  out  the 
old  keen  zest  and  love  of  it ;  in  the 
middle  ranks,  the  eagerness  for  business 
and  habit  of  money-getting  was  fast  ab- 
sorbing every  thought,  to  the  detriment 
of  all  the  higher  and  nobler  instincts  j 
while  the  lower  classes,  struggling  in  the 
contest  for  life,  were  too  far  apart  from 
the  rest  to  feel  that  there  was  an  identity 
of  interest  for  them.  The  people  were 
still  "  the  lords  of  human!  kind  ; "  but 
it  required  some  strong  stimulus  to 
awaken  all  the  native  energy  of  the 
race.  This  the  rifle  movement  has 
done,  and  the  fondest  aspiration  of  the 
"  high  chief  of  Scottish  song,"  should 
the  stern  necessity  arise,  would  now 
certainly  be  realized — 

"  And  howe'er  crowns  and  coronets 

be  rent, 

"  A  virtuous  populace  will  arise  the  while, 
"  And  stand  a  wall  of  fire  around  our 
much-loved  isle." 


TOM  BKOWN  AT  OXFOKD. 

BY   THE   AUTHOR    OP    "TOM    BROWN'S   SCHOOL-DAYS." 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

DEPARTURES  EXPECTED  AND  UNEXPECTED. 

THERE  was  a  silence  of  a  few  seconds 
after  the  Captain  had  finished  his  story, 
all  the  men  sitting  with  eyes  fixed  on 
him,  and  not  a  little  surprised  at  the 
results  of  their  call.  Drysdale  was  the 
first  to  break  the  silence,  which  he  did 
with  a  "  By  George ! "  and  a  long  respi- 
ration ;  but,  as  he  did  not  seem  pre- 
pared with  any  further  remark,  Tom 
took  up  the  running. 

"  What  a  strange  story,"  he  said ; 
"and  that  really  happened  to  you, 
Captain  Hardy?" 

"To  me,  sir,  in  the  Mediterranean, 
more  than  forty  years  ago." 

"  The  strangest  thing  about  it  is  that 


the  old  commodore  should  have  managed 
to  get  all  the  way  to  the  ship,  and  then 
not  have  known  where  his  nephew  was," 
said  Blake. 

"  He  only  knew  his  nephew's  berth, 
you  see,  sir,"  said  the  Captain. 

"  But  he  might  have  beat  about 
through  the  ship  till  he  had  found  him." 

"  You  must  remember  that  he  was  at 
his  last  breath,  sir,"  said  the  Captain ; 
"  you  can't  expect  a  man  to  have  his 
head  clear  at  such  a  moment." 

"  Not  a  man,  perhaps ;  but  I  should  a 
ghost,"  said  .Blake. 

"  Time  was  everything  to  him,"  went 
on  the  Captain,  without  regarding  the 
interruption,  "  space  nothing.  But  the 
strangest  part  of  it  is  that  /  should  have 
seen  the  figure  at  all.  It's  true  I  had 


200 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


been  thinking  of  the  old  uncle,  because 
of  the  boy's  illness  ;  but  I  can't  suppose 
he  was  thinking  of  me,  and,  as  I  say,  he 
never  recognised  ine.  I  have  taken  a 
great  deal  of  interest  in  such  matters 
since  that  time,  but  I  have  never  met 
with  just  such  a  case  as  this." 

"JSTo,  that  is  the  puzzle.  One  can 
fancy  his  appearing  to  his  nephew  well 
enough,"  said  Tom. 

"  We  can't  account  for  these  things, 
or  for  a  good  many  other  things  which 
ought  to  be  quite  as  startling,  only  we 
see  them  every  day.  But  now  I  think 
it  is  time  for  us  to  be  going,  eh,  Jack  ? " 
and  the  Captain  and  his  son  rose  to  go. 

Tom  saw  that  it  would  be  no  kindness 
to  them  to  try  to  prolong  the  sitting, 
and  so  he  got  up  too,  to  accompany 
them  to  the  gates.  This  broke  up  the 
party.  Before  going,  Drysdale,  after 
whispering  to  Tom,  went  up  to  Captain 
Hardy,  and  said, — 

"  I  want  to  ask  you  to  do  me  a  favour, 
sir.  Will  you  and  your  son  breakfast 
with  me  to-morrow  ? " 

"We  shall  be  very  happy,  sir,"  said 
the  Captain. 

"  I  think,  father,  you  had  better  break- 
fast with  me,  quietly.  We  are  much 
obliged  to  Mr.  Drysdale,  but  I  can't 
give  up  a  whole  morning.  Besides,  I 
have  several  things  to  talk  to  you  about." 

"Nonsense,  Jack,"  blurted  out  the 
old  sailor,  "  leave  your  books  alone  for 
one  morning.  I'm  come  up  here  to  enjoy 
myself,  and  see  your  friends." 

Hardy  gave  a  slight  shrug  of  his 
shoulders  at  the  word  friends,  and  Drys- 
dale, who  saw  it,  looked  a  little  confused. 
He  had  never  asked  Hardy  to  his  rooms 
before.  The  Captain  saw  that  something 
was  the  matter,  and  hastened  in  his  own 
way  to  make  all  smooth  again. 

"  Never  mind  Jack,  sir,"  he  said,  "  he 
shall  come.  It's  a  great  treat  to  me  to 
be  with  young  men,  especially  when  they 
are  friends  of  my  boy." 

"I  hope  you'll  come  as  a  personal 
favour  to  me,"  said  Drysdale,  turning  to 
Hardy.  "Brown,  you'll  bring  him, 
won't  you  ?" 

"  Oh  yes,  I'm  sure  he'll  come,"  said 
Tom. 


"That's all  right.  Good-night,  then;" 
and  Drysdale  went  off. 

Hardy  and  Tom  accompanied  the 
Captain  to  the  gate.  During  his  passage 
across  the  two  quadrangles,  the  old  gen- 
tleman was  full  of  the  praises  of  the 
men,  and  of  protestations  as  to  the  im- 
provement in  social  manners  and  cus- 
toms since  his  day,  when  there  could 
have  been  no  such  meeting,  he  declared, 
without  blackguardism  and  drunken- 
ness, at  least  amongst  young  officers,  but 
then  they  had  less  to  think  of  than 
Oxford  men,  no  proper  education.  And 
so  the  Captain  was  evidently'travelling 
back  into  the  great  trireme  question 
when  they  reached  the  gate.  As  they 
could  go  no  farther  with  him,  however, 
he  had  to  carry  away  his  solution  of  the 
three-banks-of-oars  difficulty  in  his  own 
bosom  to  the  Mitre. 

"  Don't  let  us  go  in,"  said  Tom,  as  the 
gate  closed  on  the  Captain,  and  they 
turned  back  into  the  quadrangle,  "let 
us  take  a  turn  or  two;"  so  they  walked 
up  and  down  the  inner  quad  in  the 
starlight. 

Just  at  first  they  were  a  good  deal 
embarrassed  and  confused  :  but  before 
long,  though  not  without  putting  con- 
siderable force  on  himself,  Tom  got  back 
into  something  like  his  old  familiar  way 
of  unbosoming  himself  to  his  refound 
friend,  and  Hardy  showed  more  than  his 
old  anxiety  to  meet  him  half-way.  His 
ready  and  undisguised  sympathy  soon 
dispersed  the  few  remaining  clouds 
which  were  still  hanging  between  them ; 
and  Tom  found  it  almost  a  pleasure, 
instead  of  a  dreary  task,  as  he  had  an- 
ticipated, to  make  a  full  confession,  and 
state  the  case  clearly  and  strongly 
against  himself  to  one  who  claimed 
neither  by  word  nor  look  the  least 
superiority  over  him,  and  never  seemed 
to  remember  that  he  himself  had  been 
ill-treated  in  the  matter. 

"  He  had  such  a  chance  of  lecturing 
me  and  didn't  do  it,"  thought  Tom 
afterwards,  when  he  was  considering 
why  he  felt  so  very  grateful  to  Hardy. 
"  It  was  so  cunning  of  him,  too.  If 
he  had  begun  lecturing,  I  should  have 
begun  to  defend  myself,  and  never  have 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


201 


felt  half  such  a  scamp  as  I  did  when  I 
was  telling  it  all  out  to  him  in  my  own 
way." 

The  result  of  Hardy's  management 
was  that  Tom  made  a  clean  breast  of  it, 
telling  everything,  down  to  his  night  at 
the  ragged  school ;  and  what  an  effect 
his  chance  opening  of  the  Apology  had 
had  on  him.  Here  for  the  first  time 
Hardy  came  in  with  his  usual  dry,  keen 
voice,  "You  needn't  have  gone  so  far 
back  as  Plato  for  that  lesson." 

"  I  don't  understand,"  said  Tom. 

"Well,  there's  something  about  an 
indwelling  spirit  which  guideth  every 
man  in  St.  Paul,  isn't  there  1 " 

"Yes,  a  great  deal,"  Tom  answered, 
after  a  pause ;  "  but  it  isn't  the  same 
thing." 

"  Why  not  the  same  thing?" 

"  Oh,  surely  you  must  feel  it.  It 
would  be  almost  blasphemy  in  us  now 
to  talk  as  St.  Paul  talked.  It  is  much 
easier  to  face  the  notion,  or  the  fact, 
of  a  demon  or  spirit  such  as  Socrates 
felt  to  be  in  him,  than  to  face  what  St. 
Paul  seems  to  be  meaning." 

"  Yes,  much  easier.  The  only  ques- 
tion is  whether  we  will  be  heathens  or 
not." 

"  How  do  you  mean  ?"  said  Tom. 

"  Why,  a  spirit  was  speaking  to  So- 
crates, and  guiding  him.  He  obeyed 
the  guidance,  but  knew  not  whence  it 
came.  A  spirit  is  striving  with  us  too,  and 
trying  to  guide  us — we  feel  that  just  as 
much  as  he  did.  Do  we  know  what 
spirit  it  is  ?  whence  it  comes  ?  Will 
we  obey  it  ?  If  we  can't  name  it — know 
no  more  of  it  than  he  knew  about  his 
demon,  of  course  we  are  in  no  better 
position  than  he — in  fact,  heathens." 

Tom  made  no  answer,  and,  after  a 
silent  turn  or  two  more,  Hardy  said, 
"Let  us  go  in;"  and  they  went  to  his 
rooms.  When  the  candles  were  lighted, 
Tom  saw  the  array  of  books  on  the 
table,  several  of  them  open,  and  re- 
membered how  near  the  examinations 
were. 

"  I  see  you  want  to  work,"  he  said. 
"  Well,  good  night.  I  know  how  fellows 
like  you  hate  being  thanked — there,  you 
needn't  wince;  I'm  not  going  to  try  it 

ISTo.  9.— VOL.  ii. 


on.  The  best  way  to  thank  you,  I 
know,  is  to  go  straight  for  the  future, 
I'll  do  that,  please  God,  this  time  at 
any  rate.  !Now  what  ought  I  to  do, 
Hardy?" 

"Well,  it's  very  hard  to  say.  I've 
thought  about  it  a  great  deal  this  last 
few  days — since  I  felt  you  were  coming 
round — but  can't  make  up  my  mind. 
How  do  you  feel  yourself?  What's 
your  own  instinct  about  it?" 

"  Of  course  I  must  break  it  all  off  at 
once,  completely,"  said  Tom  mournfully, 
and  half  hoping  that  Hardy  might  not 
agree  with  him. 

"  Of  course,"  answered  Hardy,  "  but 
how?" 

"  In  the  way  that  will  pain  her  least. 
I  would  sooner  lose  my  hand  or  bite 
my  tongue  off  than  that  she  should  feel 
lowered,  or  lose  any  self-respect,  you 
know,"  said  Tom,  looking  helplessly  at 
his  friend. 

"Yes,  thafs  all  right, — you  must 
take  all  you  can  on  your  own  shoulders. 
It  must  leave  a  sting  though  for  both  of 
you,  manage  how  you  will." 

"  But  I  can't  bear  to  let  her  think  I 
don't  care  for  her — I  needn't  do  that — 
I  can't  do  that." 

"  I  don't  know  what  to  advise.  How- 
ever, I  believe  I  was  wrong  in  thinking 
she  cared  for  you  so  much.  She  will 
be  hurt,  of  course — she  can't  help  being 
hurt — but  it  won't  be  so  bad  as  I  used 
to  think." 

Tom  made  no  answer ;  in  spite  of  all 
his  good  resolutions,  he  was  a  little 
piqued  at  this  last  speech.  Hardy  went 
on  presently,  "  I  wish  she  were  well  out 
of  Oxford.  It's  a  bad  town  for  a  girl 
to  be  living  in,  especially  as  a  barmaid 
in  a  place  which  we  haunt.  I  don't 
know  that  she  will  take  much  harm 
now ;  but  it's  a  very  trying  thing  for  a 
girl  of  that  sort  to  be  thrown  every  day 
amongst  a  dozen  young  men  above  her 
in  rank,  and  not  one  in  ten  of  whom 
has  any  manliness  about  him." 

"  How  do  you  mean  —  no  man- 
liness?" 

"I  mean  that  a  girl  in  her  position 
isn't  safe  with  us.  If  we  had  any  man- 
liness in  us  she  would  be — " 


202 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


"  You  can't  expect  all  men  to  be 
.blocks  of  ice,  or  milksops,"  said  Tom, 
who  was  getting  nettled. 

"  Don't  think  that  I  meant  you,"  said 
Hardy ;  "  indeed  I  didn't.  But  surely, 
think  a  moment ;  is  it  a  proof  of  manli- 
ness that  the  pure  and  the  weak  should 
fear  you  and  shrink  from  you  ?  Which 
is  the  true — ay,  and  the  brave — man, 
he  who  trembles  before  a  woman,  or  he 
before  whom  a  woman  trembles  V 

"Neither,"  said  Tom;  "but  I  see 
what  you  mean,  and  when  you  put  it 
that  way  it's  clear  enough." 

"  But  you're  wrong  in  saying  'neither,' 
if  you  do  see  what  I  mean."  Tom  was 
silent. '  "  Can  there  be  any  true  man- 
liness without  purity  1 "  went  on  Hardy. 
Tom  drew  a  deep  breath,  but  said 
nothing.  "And  where  then  can  you 
point  to  a  place  where  there  is  so  little 
manliness  as  here  ?  It  makes  my  blood 
boil  to  see  what  one  must  see  every  day. 
There  are  a  set  of  men  up  here,  and 
have  been  ever  since  I  can  remember 
the  place,  not  one  of  whom  can  look  at 
a  modest  woman  without  making  her 
shudder." 

"There  must  always  be  some  black- 
guards," said  Tom. 

"  Yes  ;  but  unluckily  the  blackguards 
set  the  fashion,  and  give  the  tone  to 
public  opinion.  I'm  sure  both  of  us 
have  seen  enough  to  know  perfectly 
well  that  up  here,  amongst  us  under- 
graduates, men  who  are  deliberately  and 
avowedly  profligates,  are  rather  admired 
and  courted, — are  said  to  know  the 
world,  and  all  that, — while  a  man  who 
tries  to  lead  a  pure  life,  and  makes  no 
secret  of  it,  is  openly  sneered  at  by 
them,  looked  down  on  more  or  less  by 
the  great  mass  of  men,  and,  to  use  the 
word  you  used  just  now,  thought  a 
milksop  by  almost  all." 

"  I  don't  think  it  is  so  bad  as  that," 
said  Tom.  "  There  are  many  men  who 
would  respect  him,  though  they  might 
not  be  able  to  follow  him." 

"  Of  course,  I  never  meant  that  there 
are  not  many  such,  but  they  don't  set 
the  fashion.  I  am  sure  I'm  right.  Let 
us  try  it  by  the  best  test.  Haven't  you 
and  I  in  our  secret  hearts  this  cursed 


feeling,  that  the  sort  of  man  we  are  talk- 
ing of  is  a  milksop  1" 

After  a  moment's  thought,  Tom  an- 
swered, "I  am  afraid  I  have,  but  I 
really  am  thoroughly  ashamed  of  it 
now,  Hardy.  But  you  haven't  it.  If 
you  had  it  you  could  never  have  spoken 
to  me  as  you  have." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon.  No  man  is 
more  open  than  I  to  the  bad  influences 
of  any  place  he  lives  in.  God  knows 
I  am  even  as  other  men,  and  worse ;  for 
I  have  been  taught  ever  since  I  could 
speak,  that  the  crown  of  all  real  man- 
liness, of  all  Christian  manliness,  is 
purity." 

Neither  of  the  two  spoke  for  some 
minutes.  Then  Hardy  looked  at  his 
watch — 

"  Past  eleven,"  he  said.  "  I  must  do 
some  work.  Well,  Brown,  this  will 
be  a  day  to  be  remembered  in  my 
calendar." 

Tom  wrung  his  hand,  but  did  not 
venture  to  reply.  As  he  got  to  the  door, 
however,  he  turned  back,  and  said — 

"  Do  you  think  I  ought  to  write  to 
her]'" 

"  Well,  you  can  try.  You'll  find  it  a 
bitter  business,  I  fear." 

"  I'll  try,  then.     Good  night" 

Tom  went  to  his  own  rooms,  and  set 
to  work  -to  write  his  letter ;  and  cer- 
tainly found  it  as  difficult  and  unplea- 
sant a  task  as  he  had  ever  set  himself 
to  work  upon.  Half  a  dozen  times  he 
tore  up  sheet  after  sheet  of  his  attempts ; 
and  got  up  and  walked  about,  and 
plunged  and  kicked  mentally  against 
the  collar  and  traces  in  which  he  had 
harnessed  himself  by  his  friend's  help, — 
trying  to  convince  himself  that  Hardy 
was  a  Puritan,  who  had  lived  quite 
differently  from  other  men,  and  knew 
nothing  of  what  a  man  ought  to  do  in 
a  case  like  this.  That  after  all  very 
little  harm  had  been  done  !  The  world 
would  never  go  on  at  all  if  people  were 
to  be  so  scrupulous !  Probably,  not 
another  man  in  the  College,  except  Gray, 
perhaps,  would  think  anything  of  what 
he  had  done  !  Done  ! — why,  what  had 
he  done?  He  couldn't  be  taking  it 
more  seriously  if  he  had  ruined  her  ! 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


203 


At  this  point  he  managed  to  bring 
himself  up  sharp  again  more  than  once. 
"  No  thanks  to  me,  at  any  rate,  that  she 
isn't  mined.  Had  I  any  pity,  any 
scruples  1  My  God,  what  a  mean,  selfish 
rascal  I  have  been  !  "  and  then  he  sat 
down  again,  and  wrote,  and  scratched 
out  what  he  had  written,  till  the  other 
fit  came  on,  and  something  of  the  same 
process  had  to  be  gone  through  again. 

I  am  sure  all  readers  must  recognise 
the  process,  and  will  remember  many 
occasions  on  which  they  have  had  to  put 
bridle  and  bit  on,  and  ride  themselves 
as  if  they  had  been  horses  or  mules 
without  understanding  ;  and  what  a 
trying  business  it  was — as  bad  as  getting 
a  young  colt  past  a  gipsy  encampment 
in  a  narrow  lane. 

At  last,  after  many  trials,  Tom  got 
himself  well  in  hand,  and  produced 
something  which  seemed  to  satisfy  him  ; 
for,  after  reading  it  three  or  four  times, 
he  put  it  in  a  cover,  with  a  small  case, 
which  he  produced  from  his  desk,  sealed 
it,  directed  it,  and  then  went  to  bed. 

Next  morning,  after  chapel,  he  joined 
Hardy,  and  walked  to  his  rooms  with 
him,  and  after  a  few  words  on  indif- 
ferent matters,  said — 

"  Well,  I  wrote  my  letter  last  night." 

"  Did  you  satisfy  yourself  ? " 

"Yes,  I  think  so.  I  don't  know, 
though,  on  second  thoughts  :  it  was 
very  tough  work." 

"  I  was  afraid  you  wo~uld  find  it  so." 

"  But  wouldn't  you  like  to  see  it  ? " 

"  No,  thank  you.  I  suppose  my  father 
will  be  here  directly." 

"But  I  wish  you  would  read  it 
through,"  said  Tom,  producing  a  copy. 

"Well,  if  you  wish  it,  I  suppose  I 
must ;  but  I  don't  see  how  I  can  do  any 
good." 

Hardy  took  the  letter,  and  sat  down, 
and  Tom  drew  a  chair  close  to  him, 
and  watched  his  face  while  he  read  : — 

"  It  is  best  for  us  both  that  I  should 
not  see  you  any  more,  at  least,  at  pre- 
sent. I  feel  that  I  have  done  you  a 
great  wrong.  I  dare  not  say  much  to 
you,  for  fear  of  making  that  wrong 
greater.  I  cannot,  I  need  not  tell  you 
how  I  despise  myself  now — how  I  long 


to  make  you  any  amends  in  my  power: 
If  ever  I  can  be  of  any  service  to  you, 
I  do  hope  that  nothing  which  has 
passed  will  hinder  you  from  applying 
to  me.  You  will  not  believe  how  it 
pains  me  to  write  this ;  how  should  you? 
I  don't  deserve  that  you  should  believe 
anything  I  say.  I  must  seem  heartless 
to  you ;  I  have  been,  I  am  heartless. 
I  hardly  know  what  I  am  writing. 
I  shall  long  all  my  life  to  hear  good 
news  of  you.  I  don't  ask  you  to  pardon 
me,  but  if  you  can  prevail  on  yourself 
not  to  send  back  the  enclosed,  and  will 
keep  it  as  a  small  remembrance  of  one 
who  is  deeply  sorry  for  the  wrong  he 
has  done  you,  but  who  cannot  and  will 
not  say  he  is  sorry  that  he  ever  met  you, 
you  will  be  adding  another  to  the  many 
kindnesses  which  I  have  to  thank  you 
for,  and  which  I  shall  never  forget." 

Hardy  read  it  over  several  times,  as 
Tom  watched  impatiently,  unable  to 
make  out  anything  from  his  face. 

"What  do  you  think?  You  don't 
think  there's  anything  wrorg  in  it, 
I  hope?" 

"No,  indeed,  my  dear  fellow.  I  really 
think  it  does  you  credit.  I  don't  know 
what  else  you  could  have  said  very 
well,  only — " 

"Only  what?" 

"  Couldn't  you  have  made  it  a  little 
shorter?" 

"No,  I  couldn't ;  but  you  don't  mean 
that.  What  did  you  mean  by  that 
'only'?" 

"Why,  I  don't  think  this  letter  will 
end  the  business ;  at  least,  I'm  afraid 
not." 

"But  what  more  could  I  have  said ?" 

"Nothing  more,  certainly;  but  couldn't 
you  have  been  a  little  quieter — -it's  dif- 
ficult to  get  the  right  word — a  little 
cooler,  perhaps.  Couldn't  you  have 
made  the  part  about  not  seeing  her 
again  a  little  more  decided?" 

"But  you  said  I  needn't  pretend  I 
didn't  care  for  her." 

"Did  I?" 

"  Yes.  Besides,  it  would  have  been 
a  lie." 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  tell  a  lie,  cer- 
tainly. But  how  about  this  '  small  re- 

p2 


204 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


membrance'  that  you  speak  of?  What's 
that?" 

"  Oh,  nothing !  only  a  little  locket  I 
bought  for  her." 

"  With  some  of  your  hair  in  it  ?" 

u  Well,  of  course  !  Come,  now,  there's 
no  harm  in  that." 

"  JS"o ;  no  harm.  Do  you  think  she 
will  wear  it?" 

"How  can  I  tell?" 

"  It  may  make  her  think  it  isn't  all 
at  an  end,  I'm  afraid.  If  she  always 
wears  your  hair — " 

"By  Jove,  you're  too  bad,  Hardy. 
I  wish  you  had  had  to  write  it  yourself. 
It's  all  very  easy  to  pull  my  letter  to 
pieces,  I  dare  say,  but—" 

"I  didn't  want  to  read  it,  remember." 

"No  more  you  did.  I  forgot.  But 
I  wish  you  would  just  write  down  now 
what  you  would  have  said." 

"Yes,  I  think  I  see  myself  at  it. 
By  the  way,  of  course  you  have  sent 
your  letter?" 

"  Yes,  I  sent  it  off  before  chapel." 

"  I  thought  so.  In  that  case  I  don't 
think  we  need  trouble  ourselves  further 
with  the  form  of  the  document" 

"  Oh,  thaf  s  only  shirking.     How  do 
you  know  I  may  not  want  it  for  the 
'  next  occasion?" 

"No,  no  !  Don't  let  us  begin  laugh- 
ing about  it.  A  man  never  ought  to 
have  to  write  such  letters  twice  in  his 
life.  If  he  has,  why  he  may  get  a 
good  enough  precedent  for  the  second 
out  of  the  '  Complete  Letter  Writer.' " 

"  So  you  won't  correct  my  copy  ?" 
/'No,  not!" 

At  this  point  in  their  dialogue,  Cap- 
tain Hardy  appeared  on  the  scene,  and 
the  party  went  off  to  Drysdale's  to 
breakfast. 

Captain  Hardy's  visit  to  St.  Ambrose 
was  a  great  success.  He  stayed  some 
four  or  five  days,  and  saw  everything 
that  was  to  be  seen,  and  enjoyed  it  all 
in  a  sort  of  reverent  way  which  was 
almost  comic.  Tom  devoted  himself  to 
the  work  of  cicerone,  and  did  his  best 
to  do  the  work  thoroughly.  Oxford 
was  a  sort  of  Utopia  to  the  Captain, 
who  was  resolutely  bent  on  seeing 
nothing  but  beauty  and  learning  and 


wisdom  within  the  precincts  of  the 
University.  On  one  or  two  occasions 
his  faith  was  tried  sorely  by  the  sight 
of  young  gentlemen  gracefully  apparelled, 
dawdling  along  two  together  in  low  easy 
pony  carriages,  or  lying  on  their  backs 
in  punts  for  hours  smoking,  with  not 
even  a  Bell's  Life  by  them  to  pass  the 
time.  Dawdling  and  doing  nothing 
were  the  objects  of  his  special  abhor- 
rence ;  but  with  this  trifling  exception 
the  Captain  continued  steadily  to  behold 
towers  and  quadrangles,  and  chapels, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  colleges, 
through  rose-coloured  spectacles.  His 
respect  for  a  "regular  education,"  and 
for  the  seat  of  learning  at  which  it  was 
dispensed,  was  so  strong,  that  he  invested 
not  only  the  tutors,  doctors,  and  proctors 
(of  whom  he  saw  little  except  at  a  dis- 
tance) but  even  the  most  empty-headed 
undergraduate  whose  acquaintance  he 
made,  with  a  sort  of  fancy  halo  of  scien- 
tific knowledge,  and  often  talked  to 
those  youths  in  a  way  which  was  curi- 
ously bewildering  and  embarrassing  to 
them.  Drysdale  was  particularly  hit  by 
it.  He  had  humour  and  honesty  enough 
himself  to  appreciate  the  Captain,  but 
it  was  a  constant  puzzle  to  him  to  know 
what  to  make  of  it  all. 

"  He's  a  regular  old  brick,  is  the  Cap- 
tain," he  said  to  Tom,  on  the  last  even- 
ing of  the  old  gentleman's  visit ;  "  but, 
by  Jove,  I  can't  help  thinking  he  must 
be  poking  fun  at  us  half  his  time.  It 
is  rather  too  rich  to  hear  him  talking  on 
as  if  we  were  all  as  fond  of  Greek  as  he 
seems  to  be,  and  as  if  no  man  ever  got 
drunk  up  here." 

"  I  declare  I  think  he  believes  it," 
said  Tom.  "  You  see  we're  all  careful 
enough  before  him." 

"  That  son  of  his  too  must  be  a  good 
fellow.  Don't  you  see  he  can  never 
have  peached.  His  father  was  telling 
me  last  night  what  a  comfort  it  was  to 
him  to  see  that  Jack's  poverty  had  been 
no  drawback  to  him.  He  had  always 
told  him  it  would  be  so  amongst  English 
gentlemen,  and  now  he  found  him  living 
quietly  and  independently,  and  yet  on 
equal  terms,  and  friends  with  men  far 
above  him  in  rank  and  fortune,  'like 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


205 


you,  sir,'  the  old  boy  said.  By  Jove, 
Brown,  I  felt  devilish  foolish.  I  believe 
I  blushed,  and  it  isn't  often  I  indulge 
in  that  sort  of  luxury.  If  I  weren't 
ashamed  of  doing  it  now,  I  should  try 
to  make  friends  with  Hardy.  But  I 
don't  know  how  to  face  him,  and  I 
doubt  whether  he  wouldn't  think  me 
too  much  of  a  rip  to  be  intimate  with." 

Tom  at  his  own  special  request  at- 
tended the  Captain's  departure,  and  took 
his  seat  opposite  to  him  and  his  son  at 
the  back  of  the  Southampton  coach,  to 
accompany  him  a  few  miles  out  of 
Oxford.  For  the  first  mile  the  Captain 
was  full  of  the  pleasures  of  his  visit, 
and  of  invitations  to  Tom  to  come  and 
see  them  in  the  vacation.  If  he  did  not 
mind  homely  quarters  he  would  find  a 
hearty  welcome,  and  there  was  no  finer 
bathing  and  boating  place  on  the  coast. 
If  he  liked  to  bring  his  gun,  there  were 
plenty  of  blue  rock-pigeons  and  sea- 
otters  in  the  caves  at  the  point.  Tom 
protested  with  the  greatest  sincerity  that 
there  was  nothing  he  should  enjoy  so 
much.  Then  the  young  men  gof  down 
to  walk  up  Bagley  Hill,  and  when  they 
mounted  again  found  the  Captain  with 
a  large  leather  case  in  his  hand,  out  of 
which  he  took  two  five-pound  notes, 
and  began  pressing  them  on  his  son, 
while  Tom  tried  to  look  as  if  he  did  not 
know  what  was  going  on.  For  some 
time  Hardy  steadily  refused,  and  the 
contention  became  animated,  and  it  was 
useless  to  pretend  any  longer  not  to  hear. 

"  Why,  Jack,  you're  not  too  proud,  I 
hope,  to  take  a  present  from  your  own 
father,"  the  Captain  said  at  last. 

"  But,  my  dear  father,  I  don't  want 
the  money.  You  make  me  a  very  good 
allowance  already." 

"  Now,  Jack,  just  listen  to  me  and  be 
reasonable.  You  know  a  great  many 
of  your  friends  have  been  very  hospit- 
able to  me  :  I  could  not  return  their 
hospitality  myself,  but  I  wish  you  to  do 
so  for  me." 

"  Well,  father,  I  can  do  that  without 
this  money." 

"  Now,  Jack,"  said  the  Captain,  push- 
ing forward  the  notes  again,  "  I  insist 
on  your  taking  them.  You  will  pain 


me    very    much    if    you    don't    take 
them." 

So  the  son  took  the  notes  at  last, 
looking  as  most  men  of  his  age  would 
if  they  had  just  lost  them,  while  the 
father's  face  was  radiant  as  he  replaced 
his  pocket-book  in  the  breast-pocket 
inside  his  coat.  His  eye  caught  Tom's 
in  the  midst  of  the  operation,  and  the 
latter  could  not  help  looking  a  little 
confused,  as  if  he  had  been  unintention- 
ally obtruding  on  their  privacy.  But 
the  Captain  at  once  laid  his  hand  on  his 
knee  and  said — 

"  A  young  fellow  is  never  the  worse 
for  having  a  ten-pound  note  to  veer  and 
haul  on ;  eh,  Mr.  Brown  ?" 

"  No,  indeed,  sir.  A  great  deal  better 
I  think,"  said  Tom,  and  was  quite  com- 
fortable again.  The  Captain  had  no 
new  coat  that  summer,  but  he  always 
looked  like  a  gentleman. 

Soon  the  coach  stopped  to  take  up  a 
parcel  at  a  cross-road,  and  the  young 
men  got  down.  They  stood  watching 
it  until  it  disappeared  round  a  corner  of 
the  road,  and  then  turned  back  towards 
Oxford  and  struck  into  Bagley  Wood, 
Hardy  listening  with  evident  pleasure 
to  his  friend's  enthusiastic  praise  of  his 
father.  But  he  was  not  in  a  talking 
humour,  and  they  were  soon  walking 
along  together  in  silence. 

This  was  the  first  time  they  had  been 
alone  together  since  the  morning  after 
their  reconciliation ;  so  presently  Tom 
seized  the  occasion  to  recur  to  the  sub- 
ject which  was  uppermost  in  his 
thoughts. 

"She  has  never  answered  my  letter," 
he  began  abruptly. 

"  I'm  very  glad  of  it,"  said  Hardy. 

"But  why?" 

"  Because  you  know  you  want  it  all 
broken  off  completely." 

"  Yes  ;  but  still  she  might  have  just 
acknowledged  it.  You  don't  know  how 
hard  it  is  to  me  to  keep  away  from  the 
place." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  I  know  it  must  be 
hard  work,  but  you  are  doing  the  right 
thing."  . 

Yes,  I  hope  so,"  said  Tom,  with  a 
"I  haven't  been  within  a  hun- 


206 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


dred  yards  of  '  The  Choughs '  this  five 
days.  The  old  lady  must  think  at  so 
odd." 

Hardy  made  no  reply.  What  could 
he  say,  but  that  no  doubt  she  did  ? 

"  Would  you  mind  doing  me  a  great 
favour  1 "  said  Tom,  after  a  minute. 

"Anything  I  can  do.— What  is  it?" 

"  Why,  just  to  step  round  on  our  way 
back, — I  will  stay  as  far  off  as  you  like, 
— and  see  how  things  are  going  on  ; — 
how  she  is." 

"Very  well.  Don't  you  like  this 
view  of  Oxford?  I  always  think  it  is 
the  best  of  them  all." 

"  No.  You  don't  see  anything  of  half 
the  colleges,"  said  Tom,  who  was  very 
loth  to  leave  the  other  subject  for  the 
picturesque. 

"  But  you  get  all  the  spires  and  tow- 
ers so  well,  and  the  river  in  the  fore- 
ground. Look  at  that  shadow  of  a  cloud 
skimming  over  Christ  Church  Meadow. 
It's  a  splendid  old  place  after  all." 

"  It  may  be  from  a  distance,  to  an 
outsider,"  said  Tom ;  "  but  I  don't 
know — it's  an  awfully  chilly,  deadening 
kind  of  place  to  live  in.  There's  some- 
thing in  the  life  of  the  place  that  sits 
on  me  like  a  weight,  and  makes  me  feel 
dreary." 

"  How  long  have  you  felt  that  1 
You're  coming  out  in  a  ne\v  line." 

"  I  wish  I  were.  I  want  a  new  line. 
I  don't  care  a  straw  for  cricket ;  I  hardly 
like  pulling ;  and  as  for  those  wine  par- 
ties day  after  day,  and  suppers  night 
after  nigh?,  they  turn  me  sick  to 
think  of." 

"You  have  the  remedy  in  your  own 
hands,  at  any  rate,"  said  Hardy,  smiling. 

"  How  do  you  mean  ?" 

"  Why,  you  needn't  go  to  them." 

"Oh,  one  can't  help  going  to  them. 
What  else  is  there  to  do?" 

Tom  waited  for  an.  answer,  but  his 
companion  only  nodded  to  show  that  he 
was  listening,  as  he  strolled  on  down  the 
path,  looking  at  the  view. 

"  I  can  say  what  I  feel  to  you,  Hardy. 
I  always  have  been  able,  and  it's  such  a 
comfort  to  me  now.  It  was  you  who 
put  these  sort  of  thoughts  into  my  head 
too,  so  you  ought  to  sympathize  with  me." 


"I  do,  my  dear  fellow.  But  you'll 
be  all  right  again  in  a  few  days." 

"  Don't  you  believe  it.  It  isn't  only 
what  you  seem  to  think,  Hardy.  You 
don't  know  me'  so  well  as  I  do  you, 
after  all.  No,  I'm  not  just  love-sick, 
and  "hipped  because  I  can't  go  and  see 
her.  That  has  something  to  do  with  it, 
I  dare  say,  but  if  s  the  sort  of  shut-up, 
selfish  life  we  lead  here  that  I  can't 
stand.  A  man  isn't  meant  to  live  only 
with  fellows  like  himself,  with  good 
allowances  paid  quarterly,  and  no  care 
but  how  to  amuse  themselves.  One  is 
old  enough  for  something  better  than 
that,  I'm  sure." 

"  No  doubt,"  said  Hardy,  with  provok- 
ing taciturnity. 

"And  the  moment  one  tries  to  break 
through  it,  one  only  gets  into  trouble." 

"  Yes,  there's  a  good  deal  of  danger  of 
that  certainly,"  said  Hardy. 

"  Don't  you  often  long  to  be  in  contact 
with  some  of  the  realities  of  life,  with 
men  and  women  who  haven't  their  bread 
and  butter  all  ready  cut  for  them  ?  How 
can  a  p*lace  be  a  University  where  no  one 
can  come  up  who  hasn't  two  hundred  a 
year  or  so  to  live  on  1 " 

"  You  ought  to  have  been  at  Oxford 
four  hundred  years  ago,  when  there 
were  more  thousands  here  than  we  have 
hundreds." 

"  I  don't  see  that.  It  must  have  been 
ten  times  as  bad  then." 

"  Not  at  all.  But  it  must  have  been  a 
very  different  state  of  things  from  ours  ; 
they  must  have  been  almost  all  poor 
scholars,  who  worked  for  their  living,  or 
lived  on  next  to  nothing." 

"  How  do  you  really  suppose  they 
lived  though  ? " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.  But  how  should 
you  like  it  now,  if  we  had  fifty  poor 
scholars  at  St.  Ambrose,  besides  us  ser- 
vitors— say  ten  tailors,  ten  shoemakers, 
and  so  on,  who  came  up  from  love  of 
learning,  and  attended  all  the  lectures 
with  us,  and  worked  for  the  present 
undergraduates  while  they  were  hunting, 
and  cricketing,  and  boating  1 " 

"Well,  I  think  it  would  be  a  very- 
good  thing — At  any  rate,  we  should  save 
in  tailors'  bills." 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


207 


"Even  if  we  didn't  get  our  coats  so 
well  built,"  said  Hardy,  laughing. 
"  Well,  Brown,  you  have  a  most  catho- 
lic taste,  and  '  a  capacity  for  taking  in 
new  truths,'  all  the  elements  of  a  good 
Radical  in  you." 

"  I  tell  you  I  hate  Eadicals,"  said  Tom 
indignantly. 

"  Well,  here  we  are  in  the  town.  I'll 
go  round  by  '  The  Choughs '  and  catch 
you  up  before  you  get  to  High  Street." 

Tom,  left  to  himself,  walked  slowly  on 
for  a  little  way,  and  then  quickly  back 
again  in  an  impatient,  restless  manner, 
and  was  within  a  few  yards  of  the  cor- 
ner where  they  had  parted  when  Hardy 
appeared  again.  He  saw  at  a  glance 
that  something  had  happened. 

"  What  is  it — she  is  not  ill  ? "  he  said 
quickly. 

"  No ;  quite  well,  her  aunt  says." 

"  You  didn't  see  her  then?" 

"  No.  The  fact  is  she  has  gone  home." 


CHAPTEE  XXIII. 

THE   ENGLBBOURN   CONSTABLE. 

ON  the  afternoon  of  a  splendid  day  in 
the  early  part  of  June,  some  four  or  five 
days  after  the  Sunday  on  which  the 
morning  service  at  Englebourn  was  in- 
terrupted by  the  fire  at  Farmer  Grove's, 
David  Johnson,  tailor  and  constable  of 
the  parish,  was  sitting  at  his  work,  in  a 
small  erection,  half  shed,  half  summer- 
house,  which  leaned  against  the  back  of 
his  cottage.  Not  that  David  had  not 
a  regular  workshop  with  a  window  look- 
ing into  the  village  street,  and  a  regular 
counter  close  under  it,  on  which  passers- 
by  might  see  him  stitching,  and  from 
whence  he  could  gossip  with  them  easily, 
as  was  his  wont.  But  although  the 
constable  kept  the  king's  peace  and 
made  garments  of  all  kinds  for  his  live- 
lihood— from  the  curate's  frock  down 
to  the  ploughboy's  fustians — he  was  ad- 
dicted for  his  pleasure  and  solace  to  the 
keeping  of  bees.  The  constable's  bees 
inhabited  a  row  of  hives  in  the  narrow 
strip  of  garden  which  ran  away  at  the 
back  of  the  cottage.  This  strip  of  garden 
was  bordered  along  the  whole  of  one  side 


by  the  rector's  premises.  Now  honest 
David  loved  gossip  well,  and  considered 
it  a  part  of  his  duty  as  constable  to  be  well 
up  in  all  events  and  rumours  which  hap- 
pened or  arose  within  his  liberties.  But 
he  loved  his  bees  better  than  gossip, 
and,  as  he  was  now  in  hourly  expecta- 
tion that  they  would  be  swarming,  was 
working,  as  has  been  said,  in  his  summer- 
house,  that  he  might  be  at  hand  at  the 
critical  moment.  The  rough  table  on 
which  he  was  seated  commanded  a  view 
of  the  hives ;  his  big  scissors  and  some 
shreds  of  velveteen  lay  near  him  on  the 
table,  also  the  street-door  key  and  an  old 
shovel,  of  which  the  uses  will  appear 
presently. 

On  his  knees  lay  the  black  velveteen 
coat,  the  Sunday  garment  of  Harry 
Winburn,  to  which  he  was  fitting  new 
sleeves.  In  his  exertions  at  the  top  of 
the  chimney  in  putting  out  the  fire 
Harry  had  grievously  damaged  the  gar- 
ment in  question.  The  farmer  had  pre- 
sented him  with  five  shillings  on  the 
occasion,  which  sum  .was  quite  inade- 
quate to  the  purchase  of  a  new  coat,  and 
Harry,  being  too  proud  to  call  the  far- 
mer's attention  to  the  special  damage 
which  he  had  suffered  in  his  service, 
had  contented  himself  with  bringing  his 
old  coat  to  be  new-sleeved. 

Harry  was  a  favourite  with  the  con- 
stable on  account  of  his  intelligence  and 
independence,  and  because  of  his  rela-, 
tions  with  the  farmers  of  Englebourn  on 
the  allotment  question.  -Although  by 
his  office  the  representative  of  law  and 
order  in  the  parish,  David  was  a  man 
of  the  people,  and  sympathized  with  the 
peasantry  more  than  with  the  farmers. 
He  had  passed  some  years  of  his  appren- 
ticeship at  Eeading,  where  he  had  picked 
up  notions  on  political  and  social  ques- 
tions much  ahead  of  the  Englebourn 
worthies.  When  he  returned  to  his 
native  village,  being  a  wise  man,  he  had 
kept  his  new  lights  in  the  back-ground, 
and  consequently  had  succeeded  in  the 
object  of  his  ambition,  and  had  been 
appointed  constable.  His  reason  for 
seeking  the  post  was  a  desire  to  prove 
that  the  old  joke  as  to  the  manliness  of 
tailors  had  no  application  to  his  case, 


208 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


and  this  he  had  established  to  the  satis- 
faction of  all  the  neighbourhood  by  the 
resolute  manner  in  which,  whenever 
called  on,  he  performed  his  duties. 
And,  now  that  his  character  was  made 
and  his  position  secure,  he  was  not  so 
careful  of  betraying  his  leanings,  and 
had  lost  some  custom  amongst  the  far- 
mers in  consequence  of  them. 

The  job  on  which  he  was  employed 
naturally  turned  his  thoughts  to  Harry. 
He  stitched  away,  now  weighing  in  his 
mind  whether  he  should  not  go  himself 
to  farmer  Grove,  and  represent  to  him 
that  he  ought  to  give  Harry  a  new  coat; 
now  rejoicing  over  the  fact  that  the 
Rector  had  decided  to  let  Harry  have 
another  acre  of  the  allotment  land ;  now 
speculating  on  the  attachment  of  his 
favourite  to  the  gardener's  daughter, 
and  whether  he  could  do  anything  to 
forward  his  suit.  In  the  pursuit  of 
which  thoughts  he  had  forgotten  all 
about  his  bees,  when  suddenly  a  great 
humming  arose,  followed  by  a  rush 
through  the  air  like  the  passing  of  an 
express  train,  which  recalled  him  to 
himself.  He  jumped  from  the  table, 
casting  aside  the  coat,  and,,  seizing  the 
key  and  shovel,  hurried  out  into  the 
garden,  beating  the  two  together  with 
all  his  might. 

The  process  in  question,  known  in 
country  phrase  as  "  tanging,"  is  founded 
upon  the  belief  that  the  bees  will  not 
settle  unless  under  the  influence  of  this 
peculiar  music  ;  and  the  constable,  hold- 
ing faithfully  to  the  popular  belief,  rushed 
down  his  garden  "  tanging,"  as  though 
his  life  depended  upon  it,  in  the  hopes 
that  the  soothing  sound  would  induce 
the  swarm  to  settle  at  once  on  his  own 
apple  trees. 

Is  "  tanging "  a  superstition  or  not  ? 
People  learned  in  bees  ought  to  know, 
but  I  never  happened  to  meet  one  who 
had  considered  the  question.  It  is 
curious  how  such  beliefs  or  superstitions 
fix  themselves  in  the  popular  mind  of  a 
country-side,  and  are  held  by  wise  and 
simple  alike.  David  the  constable  was 
a  most  sensible  and  open-minded  man 
of  his  time  and  class,  but  Kernble  or 
Akerman,  or  other  learned  Anglo-Saxon 


scholar,  would  have  vainly  explained  to 
him  that  "tang,"  is  but  the  old  word 
for  "to  hold,"  and  that  the  object  of 
"tanging"  is,  not  to  lure  the  bees  with 
sweet  music  of  key  and  shovel,  but  to 
give  notice  to  the  neighbours  that  they 
have  swarmed,  and  that  the  owner  of 
the  maternal  hive  means  to  hold  on 
to  his  right  to  the  emigrants.  David 
would  have  listened  to  the  lecture  with 
pity,  and  have  retained  unshaken  belief 
in  his  music. 

In  the  present  case,  however,  the 
tanging  was  of  little  avail,  for  the 
swarm,  after  wheeling  once  or  twice  in 
the  air,  disappeared  from  the  eyes  of 
the  constable  over  the  Rector's  wall. 
He  went  on  "  tanging "  violently  for 
a  minute  or  two,  and  then  paused  to 
consider  what  was  to  be  done.  Should 
he  get  over  the  wall  into  the  Rector's 
garden  at  once,  or  should  he  go  round 
and  ask  leave  to  carry  his  search  into 
the  parsonage  grounds  ?  As  a  man  and 
bee-fancier  he  was  on  the  point  of  fol- 
lowing straight  at  once,  over  wall  and 
fence ;  but  the  constable  was  also  strong 
within  him.  He  was  not  on  the  best  of 
terms  with  old  Simon,  the  Rector's  gar- 
dener, and  his  late  opposition  to  Miss 
Winter  in  the  matter  of  the  singing 
also  came  into  his  mind.  So  he  resolved 
that  the  parish  constable  would  lose 
caste  by  disregarding  his  neighbour's 
boundaries,  and  was  considering  what 
to  do  next  when  he  heard  a  footstep  and 
short  cough  on  the  other  side  the  wall 
which  he  recognised. 

"  Be  you  there,  Maester  Simon  1 "  he 
called  out.  Whereupon  the  walker  on 
the  other  side  pulled  up,  and  after  a 
second  appeal  answered  shortly — 

"Ees." 

"  HeVee  seed  ought  o'  my  bees  ? 
Thaay' ve  a  bin'  and  riz  and  gone  off 
somweres  athert  the  wall." 

"  E'es,  I  seen  em." 

"  Wer*  be  em  then?" 

"  Aal-amang  wi  ourn  in  the  Limes." 

"  Aal-amang  wi  yourn,"  exclaimed 
the  constable.  "Drattle  em.  Thaay 
be  niwore  trouble  than  they  be 
wuth." 

"  I  knowed  as  thaay  wur  yourn  zoon 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


as  ever  I  sot  eyes  on  ein,"  old  Simon 
went  on. 

"How  did'ee  know  em  then?"  asked 
the  constable. 

"  Cause  thine  be  a'al  zettin'  crass- 
legged,"  said  Simon,  with  a  chuckle. 
"  Thee  medst  cum  and  pick  em  all  out 
if  thee'st  a  mind  to  V 

Simon  was  mollified  by  his  own  joke, 
and  broke  into  a  short,  dry  cachination, 
half  laugh,  half  cough ;  while  the  con- 
stable, who  was  pleased  and  astonished 
to  find  his  neighbour  in  such  a  good 
humour,  hastened  to  get  an  empty  hive 
and  a  pair  of  hedger's  gloves — fortified 
with  which  he  left  his  cottage  and  made 
the  best  of  his  way  up  street  towards 
the  rectory  gate,  hard  by  which  stood 
Simon's  cottage.  The  old  gardener  was 
of  an  impatient  nature,  and  the  effect  of 
the  joke  had  almost  time  to  evaporate, 
and  Simon  was  fast  relapsing  into  his 
usual  state  of  mind  towards  his  neigh- 
bour before  the  latter  made  his  appear- 
ance. 

"  Wher'  hast  been  so  long  1 "  he  ex- 
claimed, when  the  constable  joined  him. 
"  I  seed  the  young  missus  and  t'other 
young  lady  a  standin'  talkin'  afore  the 
door,"  said  David  ;  "  so  I  stopped  back, 
so  as  not  to  disturre  'em." 

"  Be  'em  gone  in  1  Who  was  'em 
talkin'  to  ? " 

"  To  thy  missus,  and  thy  daarter  too, 
I  b'lieve  'twas.  Thaay  be  both  at  whoam, 
bean't  'em  1 " 

"  Like  enough.  But  what  was  'em 
zayin'  ? " 

"  I  couldn't  heer  nothin'  partic'lar, 
but  I  judged  as  t'was  summat  about  Sun- 
day and  the  fire." 

"  'Tis  na  use  for  thaay  to  go  on  fillin' 
our  pleace  wi;  bottles.  I  dwont  mean 
to  take  any  mwore  doctor's  stuff." 

Simon,  it  may  be  said,  by  the  way, 
had  obstinately  refused  to  take  any 
medicine  since  his  fall,  and  had  main- 
tained a  constant  war  on  the  subject, 
both  with  his  own  women  and  with 
Miss  Winter,  whom  he  had  impressed 
more  than  ever  with  a  belief  in  his 
wrong-headedness. 

"  Ah  !  and  how  be  'ee,  tho',  Maester 
Simon?"  said  David;  "  I  didn't  mind  to 


ax  afore.     You  d won't  feel  no  wus  for 
your  fall,  I  hopes  ? " 

"  I  feels  a  bit  stiffish  like,  and  as  if 
summat  wus  cuttin'  in'  at  times,  when  I 
lifts  up  my  arms." 

"  'Tis  a  mercy  'tis  no  wus,"  said  David ; 
"we  bean't  so  young  nor  so  lissom  as 
we  was,  Maester  Simon." 

To  which  remark  Simon  replied  by  a 
grunt.  He  disliked  allusions  to  his  age 
— a  rare  dislike  amongst  his  class  in  that 
part  of  the  country.  Most  of  the  people 
are  fond  of  making  themselves  out  older 
than  they  are,  and  love  to  dwell  on  their 
experiences,  and  believe,  as  firmly  as  the 
rest  of  us,  that  everything  has  altered 
for  the  worse  in  the  parish  and  district 
since  their  youth. 

But  Simon,  though  short  of  words 
and  temper,  and  an  uncomfortable  ac- 
quaintance in  consequence,  was  inclined 
to  be  helpful  enough  in  other  ways. 
The  constable,  with  his  assistance,  had 
very  soon  hived  his  swarm  of  cross- 
legged  bees. 

Then  the  constable  insisted  on  Simon's 
coming  with  him  and  taking  a  glass  of 
ale,  which,  after  a  little  coquetting, 
Simon  consented  to  do.  So,  after  carry- 
ing his  re-capture  safely  home,  and 
erecting  the  hive  on  a  three-legged 
stand  of  his  own  workmanship,  he 
liastened  to  rejoin  Simon,  and  the  two 
soon  found  themselves  together  in  the 
bar  of  the  "  Red  Lion." 

The  constable  wished  to  make  the 
most  of  this  opportunity,  and  so  began 
at  once  to  pump  Simon  as  to  his  inten- 
tions with  regard  to  his  daughter.  But 
Simon  was  not  easy  to  lead  in  any  way 
whatever,  and  seemed  in  a  more  than 
usually  no -business -of- yours  line  about 
his  daughter.  Whether  he  had  any  one 
in  his  eye  for  her  or  not,  David  could 
not  make  out;  but  one  thing  he  did 
make  out,  and  it  grieved  him  much. 
Old  Simon  was  in  a  touchy  and  un- 
friendly state  of  mind  against  Harry, 
who,  he  said,  was  falling  into  bad  ways, 
and  beginning  to  think  much  too  much 
of  his  self.  Why  was  he  to  be  wanting 
more  allotment  ground  than  any  one 
else  ?  Simon  had  himself  given  Harry 
some  advice  on  the  point,  but  not  to 


210 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


much  purpose,  it  would  seem,  as  lie 
summed  up  his  notions  on  the  subject 
by  the  remark  that,  "'Twas  waste  of 
soap  to  lather  an  ass." 

The  constable  now  and  then  made  a 
stand  for  his  young  friend,  but  very 
judiciously ;  and,  after  feeling  his  way 
for  some  time,  he  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion— as,  indeed,  the  truth  was — that 
Simon  was  jealous  of  Harry's  talent  for 
growing  flowers,  and  had  been  driven 
into  his  present  frame  of  mind  at  hear- 
ing Miss  Winter  and  her  cousin,  talking 
about  the  flowers  at  Dame  Winburn's 
under  his  very  nose  for  the  last  four  or 
five  days.  They  had  spoken  thus  to 
interest  the  old  man,  meaning  to  praise 
Harry  to  him.  The  fact  was,  that  the 
old  gardener  was  one  of  those  men  who 
never  can  stand  hearing  other  people 
praised,  and  think  that  all  such  praise 
must  be  meant  in  depreciation  of  them- 
selves. 

When  they  had  finished  their  ale,  the 
afternoon  was  getting  on,  and  the  con- 
stable rose  to  go  back  to  his, work;  while 
old  Simon  declared  his  intention  of 
going  down  to  the  hay-field,  to  see  how 
the  mowing  was  getting  on.  He  was 
sure  that  the  hay  would  never  be  made 
properly,  now  that  he  couldn't  be  about 
as  much  as  usuaL 

In  another  hour  the  coat  was  finished, 
and  the  constable,  being  uneasy  in  his 
mind,  resolved  to  carry  the  garment 
home  himself  at  once,  and  to  have  a  talk 
with  Dame  Winburn.  So  he  wrapped 
the  coat  in  a  handkerchief,  put  it  under 
his  arm,  and  set  off"  down  the  village. 

He  found  the  dame  busy  with  her 
washing ;  and  after  depositing  his  parcel 
sat  down  on  the  settle  to  have  a  talk 
with  her.  They  soon  got  on  the  subject 
which  was  always  uppermost  in  her 
mind,  her  son's  prospects,  and  she 
poured  out  to  the  constable  her  troubles. 
First  there  was  this  sweethearting  after 
old  Simon's  daughter, — not  that  Dame 
Winburn  was  going  to  say  anything 
against  her,  though  she  might  have  her 
thoughts  as  well  as  other  folk,  and  for 
her  part  she  hiked  to  see  girls  that  were 
fit  for  something  besides  dressing  them- 
selves up  like  their  betters, — but  what 


worrited  her  was  to  see  how  Harry  took 
it  to  heart.  He  wasn't  like  himself,  and 
she  couldn't  see  how  it  was  all  to  end. 
It  made  him  fractious,  too,  and  he  was 
getting  into  trouble  about  his  work.  He 
had  left  his  regular  place,  and  was  gone 
mowing  with  a  gang,  most  of  them  men 
out  of  the  parish  that  she  knew  nothing 
about,  and  likely  not  to  be  the  best  of 
company.  And  it  was  all  very  well  in 
harvest  time,  when  they  could  go  and 
earn  good  Avages  at  mowing  and  reaping 
anywhere  about,  and  no  man  could  earn 
better  than  her  Harry,  but  when  it 
came  to  winter  again  she  didn't  see  but 
what  he  might  find  the  want  of  a  regu- 
lar place,  and  then  the  farmers  mightn't 
take  him  on ;  and  Jhis  own  land  that  he 
had  got,  and  seemed  to  think  so  much 
of,  mightn't  turn  out  all  he  thought  it 
would.  And  so  in  fact  the  old  lady  was 
troubled  in  her  mind,  and  only  made 
the  constable  more  uneasy.  He  had  a 
vague  sort  of  impression  that  he  was  in 
some  way  answerable  for  Harry,  who 
was  a  good  deal  with  him,  and  was  fond 
of  coming  about  his  place.  And  al- 
though his  cottage  happened  to  be  next 
to  old  Simon's,  which  might  account  for 
the  fact  to  some  extent,  yet  the  con- 
stable was  conscious  of  having  talked  to 
his  young  friend  on  many  matters  in  a 
way  which  might  have  unsettled  him, 
and  encouraged  his  natural  tendency  to 
stand  up  for  his  own  rights  and  inde- 
pendence, and  he  knew  well  enough 
that  this  temper  was  not  the  one  which 
was  likely  to  keep  a  labouring  man  out 
of  trouble  in  the  parish. 

He  did  not  allow  his  own  misgivings, 
however,  to  add  to  the  widow's  troubles, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  cheered  her  by 
praising  up  Harry  as  much  as  ever  she 
could  desire,  and  prophesying  that  all 
would  come  right,  and  that  those  that 
lived  would  see  her  son  as  respected  as 
any  man  in  the  parish,  and  he  shouldn't 
be  surprised  if  he  were  churchwarden 
before  he  died.  And  then,  astonished  at 
his  own  boldness,  and  feeling  that  he 
was  not  capable  of  any  higher  flight  of 
imagination,  the  constable  rose  to  take 
his  leave.  He  asked  where  Harry  was 
working,  and,  finding  that  he  was  at 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


211 


mowing  in  the  Danes'  Close,  set  off  to 
look  after  him.  The  kind-hearted  con- 
stable could  not  shake  off  the  feeling 
that  something  was  going  to  happen  to 
Harry  which  would  get  him  into  trouble, 
and  he  wanted  to  assure  himself  that  as 
yet  nothing  had  gone  wrong.  Whenever 
one  has  this  sort  of  vague  feeling  about 
a  friend,  there  is  a  natural  and  irresisti- 
ble impulse  to  go  and  look  after  him, 
and  to  be  with  him. 

The  Danes'  Close  was  a  part  of  the 
glebe,  a  large  field  of  some  ten  acres  or 
so  in  extent,  close  to  the  village.  Two 
footpaths  ran  across  it,  so  that  it  was 
almost  common  property,  and  the  village 
children  considered  it  as  much  their 
playground  as  the  green  itself.  They 
trampled  the  grass  a  good  deal  more 
than  seemed  endurable  in  the  eyes  of 
Simon,  who  managed  the  rector's  farm- 
ing operations  as  well  as  the  garden ; 
but  the  children  had  their  own  way, 
notwithstanding  the  threats  he  some- 
times launched  at  them.  Miss  Winter 
would  have  sooner  lost  all  the  hay  than 
have  narrowed  their  amusements.  It 
was  the  most  difficult  piece  of  mowing 
in  the  parish,  in  consequence  of  the 
trarnplings  and  of  the  large  crops  it 
bore.  The  Danes,  or  some  other  un- 
known persons,  had  made  the  land  fat, 
perhaps  with  '  their  carcases,  and  the 
benefit  had  lasted  to  the  time  of  our 
story.  At  any  rate,  the  field  bore 
splendid  crops,  and  the  mowers  always 
got  an  extra  shilling  an  acre  for  cutting 
it,  by  Miss  Winter's  special  order,  which 
was  paid  by  Simon  in  the  most  ungra- 
cious manner,  and  with  many  grumblings 
that  it  was  enough  to  ruin  all  the  mowers 
in  the  countryside. 

As  the  constable  got  over  the  stile 
into  the  hayfield,  a  great  part  of  his  mis- 
givings passed  out  of  his  head.  He 
was  a  simple  kindly  man,  whose  heart 
lay  open  to  all  influences  of  scene  and 
weather,  and  the  Danes'  Close,  full  of 
life  and  joy  and  merry  sounds,  as  seen 
Tinder  the  slanting  rays  of  the  evening 
sun,  was  just  the  place  to  rub  all  the 
wrinkles  out  of  him. 

The  constable,  however,  is  not  singu- 
lar in  this  matter. 


What  man  amongst  us  all,  if  he  will 
think  the  matter  over  calmly  and  fairly, 
can  honestly  say  that  there  is  any  one 
spot  on  the  earth's  surface  in  which  he 
has  enjoyed  so  much  real,  wholesome, 
happy  life  as  in  a  hay-field  ?  He  may 
have  won  renown  on  horseback  or  on, 
foot  at  the  sports  and  pastimes  in  which 
Englishmen  glory ;  he  may  have  shaken 
off  all  rivals,  time  after  time,  across  the 
vales  of  Aylesbury,  or  of  Berks,  or  any 
other  of  our  famous  hunting  counties ; 
he  may  have  stalked  the  oldest  and 
shyest  buck  in  Scotch  forests,  and  killed 
the  biggest  salmon  of  the  year  in  the 
Tweed,  and  troiit  in  the  Thames;  he 
may  have  made  topping  averages  in 
first-rate  matches  at  cricket ;  or  have 
made  long  and  perilous  marches,  dear 
to  memory,  over  boggy  moor,  or  moun- 
tain, or  glacier;  he  may  have  success- 
fully attended  many  breakfast-parties 
within  drive  of  May  Fair,  on  velvet 
lawns,  surrounded  by  all  the  fairy  land 
of  pomp,  and  beauty,  and  luxury,  which 
London  can  pour  out ;  he  may  have 
shone  at  private  theatricals  and  at- 
homes  ;  his  voice  may  have  sounded 
over  hushed  audiences  at  St.  Stephen's, 
or  in  the  law  courts;  or  he  may  have 
had  good  times  in  any  other  scenes  of 
pleasure  or  triumph  open  to  English- 
men; but  I  much  doubt  whether,  on 
putting  his  recollections  fairly  and 
quietly  together,  he  would  not  say  at 
last  that  the  fresh-mown  hay -field  is 
the  place  where  he  has  spent  the  most 
hours  which  he  would  like  to  live  over 
again,  the  fewest  which  he  would  wish 
to  forget. 

As  children,  we  stumble  about  the 
new-mown  hay,  revelling  in  the  many 
colours  of  the  prostrate  grass  and  wild 
flowers,  and  in  the  power  of  tumbling 
where  we  please  without  hurting  our- 
selves :  as  small  boys,  we  pelt  one 
another  and  the  village  school-girls  and 
our  nursemaids  and  young  lad}r  cousins 
with  the  hay,  till,  hot  and  weary,  we 
retire  to  tea  or  syllabub  beneath  the 
shade  of  some  great  oak  or  elm  stand- 
ing up  like  a  monarch  out  of  the  fair 
pasture ;  or,  following  the  mowers,  we 
rush  with  eagerness  on  .the  treasures 


212 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford, 


disclosed  by  the  scythe-stroke, — the  nest 
of  the  unhappy  late-laying  titlark,  or 
careless  field-mouse :  as  big  boys,  we 
toil  ambitiously  with  the  spare  forks 
and  rakes,  or  climb  into  the  wagons 
and  receive  with  open  arms  the  delicious 
load  as  it  is  pitched  up  from  below,  and 
rises  higher  and  higher  as  we  pass  along 
the  long  lines  of  haycocks :  a  year  or 
two  later  we  are  strolling  there  with  pur 
first  sweethearts,  our  souls  and  tongues 
loaded  with  sweet  thoughts  and  soft 
speeches  ;  we  take  a  turn  with  the 
scythe  as  the  bronzed  mowers  lie  in  the 
shade  for  their  short  rest,  and  willingly 
pay  our  footing  for  the  feat.  Again,  we 
come  back  with  book  in  pocket,  and  our 
own  children  tumbling  about  as  we  did 
before  them ;  now  romping  with  them, 
and  smothering  them  with  the  sweet- 
smelling  load — now  musing  and  reading 
and  dozing  away  the  delicious  summer 
evenings.  And  so  shall  we  not  come 
back  to  the  end,  enjoying  as  grandfathers 
the  lovemaking  and  the  rompings  of 
younger  generations  yet  ? 

Were  any  of  us  ever  really  disap- 
pointed or  melancholy  in  a  hay-field  ? 
Did  we  ever  lie  fairly  back  on  a  hay- 
cock and  look  up  into  the  blue  sky,  and 
listen  to  the  merry  sounds,  the  whetting 
of  scythes  and  the  laughing  prattle  of 
women  and  children,  and  think  evil 
thoughts  of  the  world  or  our  brethren  ? 
Not  we  !  or  if  we  have  so  done,  we 
ought  to  be  ashamed  of  ourselves,  and 
deserve  never  to  be  out  of  town  again 
during  hay  harvest. 

There  is  something  in  the -sights  and 
sounds  of  a  hay-field  which  seems  to 
touch  the  same  chord  in  one  as  Lowell's 
lines  in  the  "  Lay  of  Sir  Launfal,"  which 
ends — 

i'  For  a  cap  and  bells  our  lives  we  pay ; 
"  We  wear  out  our  lives  with  toiling 

and  tasking ; 

"  It  is  only  Heaven  that  is  given  away  ; 
"  It  is  only  God  may  be  had  for  the 

asking. 
"  There  is  no  price  set  on  the  lavish 

summer, 

"  And  June  may  be  had  by  the  poorest 
comer." 


But  the  philosophy  of  the  hay-field 
remains  to  be  written.  Let  us  hope 
that  whoever  takes  the  subject  in  hand 
will  not  dissipate  all  its  sweetness  in 
the  process  of  the  inquiry  wherein  the 
charm  lies. 

The  constable  had  not  the  slightest 
notion  of  speculating  on  his  own  sensa- 
tions, but  was  very  glad,  nevertheless, 
to  find  his  spirits  rising  as  he  stepped 
into  the  Danes'  Close.  All  the  hay  was 
down,  except  a  small  piece  in  the  fur- 
ther corner,  which  the  mowers  were 
upon.  There  were  groups  of  children  in 
many  parts  of  the  field,  and  women  to 
look  after  them,  mostly  sitting  on  the 
fresh  swarth,  working  and  gossiping, 
while  the  little  ones  played  about.  He 
had  not  gone  twenty  yards  before  he 
was  stopped  by  the  violent  crying  of  a 
child ;  and,  turning  towards  the  voice, 
he  saw  a  little  girl  of  six  or  seven,  who 
had  strayed  from  her  mother,  scrambling 
out  of  the  ditch,  and  wringing  her  hands 
in  an  agony  of  pain  and  terror.  The 
poor  little  thing  had  fallen  into  a  bed  of 
nettles,  and  was  very  much  frightened, 
and  not  a  little  hurt.  The  constable 
caught  her  up  in  his  arms,  soothing  her 
as  well  as  he  could,  and,  hurrying  along 
till  he  found  some  dock-leaves,  sat  down 
with  her  on  his  knee,  and  rubbed  her 
hands  with  the  leaves,  repeating  the  old 
saw — 

"  Out  nettle, 

"  In  dock : 

"  Dock  shall  ha' 

"  A  new  smock ; 

"  Nettle  shan't 

"  Ha'  narrun'." 

What  with  the  rubbing,  and  the  con- 
stable's kind  manner,  and  listening  to 
the  doggrel  rhyme,  and  feeling  that  nettle 
would  get  her  deserts,  the  little  thing 
soon  ceased  crying.  But  several  groups 
had  been  drawn  towards  the  place,  and 
amongst  the  rest  came  Miss  Winter  and 
her  cousin,  who  had  been  within  hearing 
of  the  disaster.  The  constable  began  to 
feel  very  nervous  and  uncomfortable, 
when  he  looked  up  from  his  charitable 
occupation,  and  suddenly  found  the  rec- 
tor's daughter  close  to  him.  But  his 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


213 


nervousness  was  uncalled  for.  The  sight 
of  what  he  was  about,  and  of  the  tender 
way  in  which  he  was  handling  the  child, 
drove  all  remembrance  of  his  heresies 
and  contumaciousness  in  the  matter  of 
psalmody  out  of  her  head.  She  greeted 
him  with  frankness  and  cordiality,  and 
presently — when  he  had  given  up  his 
charge  to  the  mother,  who  was  inclined 
at  first  to  be  hard  with  the  poor  little 
sobbing  truant — came  up,  and  said  she 
wished  to  speak  a  few  words  to  him. 

David  was  highly  delighted  at  Miss 
Winter's  manner;  but  he  walked  along 
by  her  side  not  quite  comfortable  in  his 
mind,  for  fear  lest  she  should  start  the 
old  subject  of  dispute,  and  then  his  duty 
as  a  public  man  would  have  to  be  done 
at  all  risk  of  offending  her.  He  was 
much  comforted  when  she  began  by 
asking  him  whether  he  had  seen  much 
of  Widow  Winburn's  son  lately. 

David  admitted  that  he  generally  saw 
him  every  day. 

Did  he  know  that  he  had  left  his  place, 
and  had  quarrelled  with  Mr.  Tester  ? 

Yes,  David  knew  that  Harry  had  had 
words  with  Farmer  Tester ;  but  Farmer 
Tester  was  a  sort  that  it  was  very  hard 
not  to  have  words  with. 

"  Still,  it  is  very  bad,  you  know,  for 
so  young  a  man  to  be  quarrelling  with 
the  farmers,"  said  Miss  Winter. 

"  'Twas  the  varmer  as  quarrelled  wi' 
he ;  you  see,  Miss,"  David  answered, 
"  which  makes  all  the  odds.  He  cum 
to  Harry  all  in  a  fluster,  and  said  as  how 
he  must  drow  up  the  land  as  he'd  a' got, 
or  he's  place — one  or  t'other  on  'em. 
And  so  you  see,  Miss,  as  Harry  wur 
kind  o'  druv  to  it.  'Twarn't  likely  as  he 
wur  to  drow  up  the  land  now  as  he  wur 
just  reppin'  the  benefit  ov  it,  and  all  for 
Variner  Tester's  place,  wich  be  no  sich 
gurt  things,  Miss,  arter  all." 

"  Very  likely  not ;  but  I  fear  it  may 
hinder  his  getting  employment.  The 
other  farmers  will  not  take  him  on  now, 
if  they  can  help  it." 

"  No  ;  thaay  falls  out  wi'  one  another 
bad  enough,  and  calls  all  manner  o' 
names.  But  thaay  can't  abide  a  poor 
man  to  speak  his  mind,  nor  take  his 
own  part,  not  one  on  'em,"  said  David, 


looking  at  Miss  Winter,  as  if  doubtful 
how  she  might  take  his  strictures ;  but  she 
went  on,  without  any  show  of  dissent, — 

"  I  shall  try  to  get  him  work  for  my 
father;  but  I  am  sorry  to  find  that 
Simon  does  not  seem  to  like  the  idea  of 
taking  him  on.  It  is  not  easy  always  to 
make  out  Simon's  meaning.  When  I 
spoke  to  him,  he  said  something  about  a 
bleating  sheep  losing  a  bite  ;  but  I  should 
think  this  young  man  is  not  much  of  a 
talker  in  general  1 " she  paused. 

"  That's  true,  Miss,"  said  David,  ener- 
getically ;  "there  ain't  a  quieter  spoken  or 
steadier  man  at  his  work  in  the  parish." 

"  I'm  very  glad  to  hear  you  say  so," 
said  Miss  Winter,  "  and  I  hope  we  may 
soon  do  something  for  him.  But  what 
I  want  you  to  do  just  now  is  to  speak  a 
word  to  him  about  the  company  he  seems 
to  be  getting  into." 

The  constable  looked  somewhat  aghast 
at  this  speech  of  Miss  Winter's,  but 
did  not  answer,  not  knowing  to  what 
she  was  alluding.  She  saw  that  he  did 
not  understand,  and  went  on — 

"He  is  mowing  to-day  with  a  gang 
from  the  heath  and  the  next  parish  ;  I. 
am  sure  they  are  very  bad  men  for  him 
to  be  with.  I  was  so  vexed  when  I 
found  Simon  had  given  them  the  job; 
but  he  said  they  would  get  it  all  down 
i  i  a  day,  and  be  done  with  it,  and  that 
was  all  he  cared  for." 

"And  'tis  a  fine  day's  work,  Miss,  for 
five  men,"  said  David,  looking  over  the 
field;  "and  'tis  good  work  too,  you 
mind  the  swarth  else,"  and  he  picked 
up  a  handful  of  the  fallen  grass  to  show 
her  how  near  the  ground  it  was  cut. 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  have  no  doubt  they  are 
very  good  mowers,  but  they  are  not  good 
men,  I'm  sure.  There,  do  you  see  now 
who  it  is  that  is  bringing  them  beerl 
I  hope  you  will  see  Widow  Winburn's 
son,  and  speak  to  him,  and  try  to  keep 
him  out  of  bad  company.  We  should 
be  all  so  sorry  if  he  were  to  get  into 
trouble." 

David  promised  to  do  his  best,  and 
Miss  Winter  wished  him  good  evening, 
and  rejoined  her  cousin. 

"  Well,  Katie,  will  he  do  your 
behest  ? " 


214 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


"  Yes,  indeed ;  and  I  think  he  is  the 
best  person  to  do  it.  Widow  Winburn 
thinks  her  son  minds  him  more  than 
any  one." 

"  Do  you  know  I  don't  think  it  will 
ever  go  right.  I'm  sure  she  doesn't  care 
the  least  for  him." 

"Oh,  you  have  only  just  seen  her 
once  to-day  for  two  or  three  minutes." 

"  And  then,  that  wretched  old  Simon 
is  so  perverse  about  it,"  said  the  cousin. 
"  You  will  never  manage  him." 

"He  is  very  provoking,  certainly; 
but  I  get  my  own  way  generally,  in 
spite  of  him.  And  it  is  such  a  perfect 
plan,  isn't  it  ? " 

"  Oh !  charming,  if  you  can  only 
bring  it  about." 

"  Now  we  must  be  really  going  home, 
papa  will  be  getting  restless."  So  the 
young  ladies  left  the  hay-field  deep  in 
castle-building  for  Harry  Winburn  and 
the  gardener's  daughter,  Miss  Winter 
being  no  more  able  to  resist  a  tale  of 
true  love  than  her  cousin,  or  the  rest  of 
her  sex.  They  would  have  been  more 
or  less  than  women  if  they  had  not 
taken  an  interest  in  so  absorbing  a 
passion  as  poor  Harry's.  By  the  time 
they  reached  the  Rectory  Gate  they  had 
installed  him  in  the  gardener's  cottage 
with  his  bride,  and  mother,  (for  there 
would  be  plenty  of  room  for  the  widow, 
and  it  would  be  so  convenient  to  have 
the  laundry  close  at  hand)  and  had 
pensioned  old  Simon,  and  sent  him  and 
his  old  wife  to  wrangle  away  the  rest  of 
their  time  in  the  widow's  cottage. 
Castle-building  is  a  delightful  and  harm- 
less exercise. 

Meantime  David  the  constable  had 
gone  towards  the  mowers,  who  were 
taking  a  short  rest  before  finishing  off 
the  last  half  acre  which  remained  stand- 
ing. The  person  whose  appearance  had 
so  horrified  Miss  Winter  was  drawing 
beer  for  them  from  a  small  barrel  This 
was  an  elderly  raw-boned  woman  with 
a  skin  burnt  as  brown  as  that  of  any  of 
the  mowers.  She  wore  a  man's  hat  and 
spencer,  and  had  a  strong  harsh  voice, 
and  altogether  was  not  a  prepossessing 
person.  She  went  by  the  name  of 
Daddy  Cowell  in  the  parish,  and  had 


been  for  years  a  proscribed  person.  She 
lived  up  on  the  heath,  often  worked  in 
the  fields,  took  in  lodgers,  and  smoked 
a  short  clay  pipe.  These  eccentricities, 
when  added  to  her  half-male  clothing, 
were  quite  enough  to  account  for  the 
sort  of  outlawry  in  which  she  lived. 
Miss  Winter,  and  other  good  people  of 
Englebourn,  believed  her  capable  of  any 
crime,  and  the  children  were  taught  to 
stop  talking  and  playing,  and  run  away 
when  she  came  near  them ;  but  the 
constable,  who  had  had  one  or  two 
search  warrants  to  execute  in  her  house, 
and  had  otherwise  had  frequent  occasions 
of  getting  acquainted  with  her  in  the  course 
of  his  duties,  had  by  no  means  so  evil 
an  opinion  of  her.  He  had  never  seen 
much  harm  in  her,  he  had  been  heard 
to  say,  and  she  never  made  pretence  to 
much  good.  Nevertheless,  David  was 
by  no  means  pleased  to  see  her  acting 
as  purveyor  to  the  gang  which  Harry 
had  joined.  He  knew  how  such  contact 
would  damage  him  in  the  eyes  of  all 
the  parochial  respectabilities,  and  was 
anxious  to  do  his  best  to  get  him  clear 
of  it. 

With  these  views  he  went  up  to  the 
men,  who  were  resting  under  a  large  elm 
tree,  and  complimented  them  on  their 
day's  work.  They  were  themselves  well 
satisfied  with  it,  and  with  one  another. 
When  men  have  had  sixteen  hours  or 
so  hard  mowing  in  company,  and  none 
of  them  can  say  that  the  others  have 
not  done  their  fair  share,  they  are  apt 
to  respect  one  another  more  at  the  end 
of  it.  It  was  Harry's  first  day  with 
this  gang,  who  were  famous  for  going 
about  the  neighbourhood,  and  doing 
great  feats  in  hay  and  wheat  harvest. 
They  were  satisfied  with  him  and  he 
with  them,  none  the  less  so  probably 
in  his  present  frame  of  mind,  because 
they  also  were  loose  on  the  world, 
servants  of  no  regular  master.  It  was 
a  bad  time  to  make  his  approaches,  the 
constable  saw ;  so,  after  sitting  by  Harry 
until  the  gang  rose  to  finish  off  their 
work  ia  the  cool  of  the  evening,  and 
asking  him  to  come  round  by  his  cottage 
on  his  way  home,  which  Harry  promised 
to  do,  he  walked  back  to  the  village. 
To  be  continued. 


215 


ALL'S  WELL. 


THE  long  night-watch  is  over ;  fresh  and 

chill 
Conies  in  the  air  of  morn ;  he  slumbers 

stiU. 
Each  hour    more    calm    his    laboured 

breathings  grew. 

"  0  God  !  may  he  awaken  free  from  ill ; 
May  this  supreme  repose  dear  life  re- 
new!" 

She  rose,  and  to  the  casement  came, 
The   curtain  drew,  and  blank,  grey 

morn 

Looked  pitiless  on  eyes  grief- worn, 
On  the  dying  lamp's  red,  flickering 

flame, 
And,    slowly  through  the   wavering 

gloom 

Searching  out  the  shaded  room, 
Fell  on  a  form — the  pillowed  head 
So  motionless,  supinely  laid. 
O,  was  it  death,  or  trance,  or  sleep, 
Had  power  his  sense  thus  locked  to 

keep  ? 
She   turned,   that  woman  wan    and 

mild; 

She  gazed  through  tears,  yet  hope-be- 
guiled; 

He  was  her  son,  her  first-born  child, — 
Ah,  hush  !  she  may  not  weep. 


Many  a  night,  with  patient  eye, 
Had  she  watched  him — sight  of  woe ! 
Fever-chained,  unconscious  lie ; 
Many  a  day  passed  heavily, 
Since  met  in  glad  expectancy 
Eound  the  cheerful  hearth  below 
Young  and  old,  a  goodly  show, 
To  welcome  from  the  wondrous  main, 
Their  wanderer  home  returned  again. 
The  father's  careful  brow  unbent, 
The  mother  happily  intent 
That  nothing  should  be  left  undone 
To  greet  him  best ;  the  youngest  one 
In  childish,  bright  bewilderment, 
Longed,  curious,  to  look  upon 
Her  own,  strange  sailor-brother  sent 
Afar,  before  she  could  remember ; 


While    elder    sons     and    daughters 

thought 
What   change   in   the  playmate  un- 

forgotten 

Time  and  foreign  skies  had  wrought. 
Could  he  be  like  that  fair-haired  boy, 
With  curly  hair  of  golden  hue, 
And  merry-twinkling  eye  of  blue, 
Whose  tones  were  musical  with  joy  1 
For  he  had  sailed  all  round  the  world, 
In  China's  seas  our  flag  unfurled, 
On  Borneo's  coast  with  pirates  fought, 
From    famed    spice-islands    treasure 

brought, 
^  Had  been  where  the  Upas  grew  ! 

But  the  long  June  day  was  closing 

fast, 

And  yet  he  did  not  come ; 
And   anxious    looks    and    murmurs 

passed. 

Some  gazed  without,  sate  listless  some ; 
Down  the  hill-side,  across  the  vale, 
Night-mists   are   rising,    sweeps   the 

gale; 
But  nought  can  we  see  through  the 

gloom ; 

When,  hark !  a  step  at  the  wicket-gate, 
,     And  the  brothers   rushed  out  with 

call  and  shout. 

Welcome,  at  last,  though  late ! 
And  round  him  hurriedly  they  press, 
And  bring  him  in  to  the  warm-lit 

room, 
To  his  mother's  fond  caress. 

"  But  how  is  this  ?  dear  son,  thy  lips  are 

pale  ; 
And  thy  brow  burneth,  and  thy  speech 

doth  fail. 
Hath  some  sore  sickness  thus  thy  frame 

opprest, 
Or  sinkest  thou  for  want  of  food  and 

rest?" 
"All's  well — I  am  at  home  ;  but  make 

my  bed  soon, 
For  I  am  weary,  mother,  and  fain  would 

lay  me  down." 


216 


Airs  Well. 


Even  while  he  spake,  he  tottered,  fell ; 

The  heavy  lid  reluctantly 

Shrouded  the  glazing,   love-strained 

eye. 
They  tenderly  raised  him ;  who  may 

teU, 
What  anguish  theirs  ?  That  smothered 

cry! 

They  "bore  him  up  the  narrow  stair ; 
They  laid  him  on  his  bed  with  care ; 
On  snowy  pillow, — flower-besprent, 
(Ah  !  for  lighter  slumber  meant.) 
They  knew  some  pestilential  blight 
Lurked    in    his   blood  with   deadly 

might, 

And  they  trembled  for  the  morrow. 
Thus  in  the  smitten  house  that  night, 
All  joy  was  changed  to  sorrow. 

Yea,  swift  and  near,  the  fever-fiend 
Had  dogged  the  mariner's  homeward 

way. 

One  ocean  south,  one  ocean  north, 
The   ship  from  red   Lymoon    sailed 

forth, 
But  fast  in  her  hold  the  dark  curse 

lay; 

In  vain  blew  the  cool  west-wind. 
"Week  after  week,  he  now,  in  vain, 
Had  breathed  his  pleasant  native  air ; 
For  still  with  restless,  burning  brain, 
He  seemed  to  toss  on  a  fiery  main, 
'Neath  a  sky  of  copper  glare. 
Under  his  window  a  sweet-briar  grew, 
And  fragrance  his  boyhood  full  well 

knew, 

In  at  the  open  lattice  flung ; 
The  thrush  in  his  own  old  pear-tree 

sung. 

Young  voices  from  the  distance  borne, 
Or  mower's  scythe  at  dewy  morn, 
Cock's  shrill  crowing,  all  around 
Sweet  familiar  scent  or  sound, 
None  could  bring  his  spirit  peace ; 
None  from  wandering  dreams  release. 
He  heard  an  angry  surf  still  thunder, 
Crashing  planks  beneath  him  sunder, 
Tumults  that,  ever  changing,  never 

cease. 

"  Look,  look  !  what  glides  and  glitters  in 

the  brake  1 
Is  it  a  panther,  or  green  crested  snake  ? 


Ah !  cursed  Malay — I  see  his  cruel  eye  ; 
His  hissing  arrows  pierce  me  1  Must  I  lie, 
Weltering  in  torture  on  this  hell-hot 

brine ; 
Not  one  cool  drop  my  parching  throat* 

to  slake  1 
Jesu  have  mercy !  what  a  fate  is  mine  ! " 

Yet  ever  his  mother's  yearning  gaze, 
Saintly  sad,  was  on  him  dwelling ; 
Could  it  not  penetrate  the  haze 
Of  phantasy,  and,  frenzy-quelling 
In  heart  and  brain,  soft-healing  flow  ? 
His  sister  came  with  noiseless  tread, 
And,  bending  o'er  the  sufierer's  bed, 
Lightly  laid  her  smooth,  cold  palm 
Upon  the  throbbing  brow  ; 
And  with  the  touch  a  gradual  calm 
Stole  quietly,  diffusing  slow 
Sleep's  anguish-soothing  balm. 
Pain's  iron  links,  a  little  while 
Eelaxing,  let  his  spirit  rove 
In  vision  some  Atlantic  isle, 
Where  waved  the  tall  Areca  palm  ; 
Fresh   breezes   fanned,  and  gushing 

rills 

Murmured,  as  in  green  English  grove 
They,  winding,  deepen  from  the  hills. 
And  momentary  smiled,  perchance, 
Dear  faces  thro'  the  shadowy  trance, 
His   unclosed   eye   saw  not,  though 

near  ; 
Dear  voices  reached  the  spell-bound 

ear, 

His  waking  sense  had  failed  to  hear. 
Only  a  little  space — too  soon 
The  fiery  scourge,  from  slumber  burst, 
Swept  like  the  tyrannous  typhoon, 
Gathering    new    rage,   the   last   the 

worst; 

Till  the  pulse  ebbed  low,  and  life 
Shrank  wasted  from  the  strife. 

At  length  a  dreamless  stupor  deep 
Fell  on  him,  liker  death  than  sleep. 
At  eve  the  grave  physician  said  : 
"  No  more  availeth  human  aid  ; 
Nature  will  thus  his  powers  restore, 
Or  else  he  sleeps  to  wake  no  more." 
Alone  his  mother  watched  all  night, 
In  silent  agony  of  prayer. 
When  dimly  gleamed  the  dawning  light, 
She  thought,   "Its  ghastly,  spectral 
stare 


Airs  Well. 


217 


Makes  his  hue  so  ashen  white." 
But,  when    broadening    day    shone 

bright, 

Froze  to  despair  her  shivering  dread. 
None  who  have  seen  that  leaden  mask 
Over  loved  features  greyly  spread, 
"  Whose  superscription  this  1 "  need 

ask. 

Soft  she  unclosed  the  door,  and  said, 
"  Come,"  in  whisper  hoarse  and  low  ; 
And  silently  they  came, 
One  by  one,  the  same 
Who  had  joyous  met  by  the  hearth 

below, 

Only  three  short  weeks  ago. 
They  looked,  "  Is  it  life,  or  death?" 
She   beckoned    them   in,    and,  with 

hushed  breath 

Standing  around,  they  saw  dismayed 
That  living  soul  already  laid 
The  shadow  of  the  grave  beneath. 

Kneeling  beside  his  hope,  his  pride, 
Felled  in  youth's  prime,  his  sea-worn 

son, 

Aloud  the  reverend  father  cried : 
"Submissive,  Lord,  we  bow ;  Thy  will  be 

done ; 
Yet    grant   some  token  ere   my   child 

depart, 
Thy  love  hath  ever  dwelt  within  his 

heart, 
And  through  the  vale  of  darkness  safe 

will  guide." 
"Amen,  amen,"   in   faltering  response 

sighed 

Mother    and    children,   watchers  woe- 
begone. 

0  mournful  vigils,  lingering  long  ! 
0  agonies  of  hope,  that  wrong 
Solemn  prayer  for  swift  release, 
And  the  soul's  eternal  peace  ! 
Now  holy  calm,  now  wild  desire 
With  sick  suspense  alternate  tire, 
Till  very  consciousness  must  cease. 
Faint  the  reluctant  hours  expire  ; 
The  mind  flows  back ;  as  in  a  dream 
Trivial  imaginations  stream 
Over  the  blank  of  grief, 
Bringing  no  relief. 

Haply  some  sudden  sound  without — 
A  sheep-dog's  bark,    or  schoolboy's 

shout, 
No.  9. — VOL.  ii. 


Or  careless  whistler  passing  near — 
May,  unaware,  pierce  the  dull  ear, 
And  feeble,  mystic  wonder  wake, 
And  straight  the  web  of  fancy  break  ; 
The  awful  Presence  over  all 
Hovering  unseen,  a  brooding  pall. 
"  0,  look !  what  change  is  there  1   can 

hope  revive  ? 

Lift  his  head  gently,  give  him  air " 

As  drive 

Strong  winds  through  a  thunder-cloud, 

and  shear 

Athwart,  on  either  side,  its  blackness, 
Sweeping  the  empyrean  clear  ; 
So,  from  the  stony  visage  rent, 
Instantaneously  withdrew 
The  heaviness,  the  livid  hue  ; 
And     the     inward     spirit     shining 

through 

Serene,  ethereal  brightness  lent. 
His  eyes  unclosed  ;  their  gaze  intent 
No  narrow,  stifling  limits  saw, 
No  aspects  blanched  by  love  and  awe — 
Far,  far  on  the  eternal  bent. 
Hark !    from   his   lips   the   seaman's 

cheer, 

Sudden,  deep-thrilling,  did  they  hear, 
"  Land  ahead  !  "    The  words  of  welcome 

rose  ; 
Then  he  sank  back  in  isolate  repose. 

What  land  1  0  say,  thou  tempest- tost ! 
Whither  hath  thy  worn  bark  drifted, 
Seest  thou  thine  own  dear,  native 

coast — 

Vision  by  strong  desire  uplifted — 
Britain's  white  cliffs  afar  appearing ; 
Or  art  thou  not,  full  surely,  nearing 
That  unknown  strand,  that  furthest 

shore, 

Whence  wanderer  never  saileth  more  ? 
But  hush !  again  he  speaks  with  sted- 

fast  tone, 
"  Let  go  the,  anchor."    Now,  the  port  is 

won. 

0  happy  mariner  !  at  last, 
Ocean  storms  and  perils  past, 
Past  treacherous   rock  and  shelving 

shoal, 

And  the  ravening  breakers'  roll, 
Securely  moored  in  haven  blest, 
Thy  weary  soul  hath  found  its  rest, 
Touching  now  the  golden  strand  ! 
Before  thee  lies  the  promised  land, 

Q 


218 


My  Friend  Mr.  Bedlow  : 


To- thy  raptured  eyes  revealed 
(Eyes  on  earth  for  ever  sealed). 
Eternity's  reflected  splendour 
Transfigure th  the  hollow  brow; 
And  the  shattered  hull  must  render, 
Landed,  the  free  spirit  now. 
Wayfarers  we,  on  a  homeless  sea, 
Bid  thee  not  return,  delay  ; 
But  oh  !  one  word  of  parting  say  ! 

Sweet,  solemn,  full,  those  final  accents 

feU, 
Pledge   of    undying  peace  :   he   spake, 

"AM*  well." 

Yea,  all  is  well ;  that  last  adieu 
Opened  Paradise  to  view  ; 
While,  on  tremulous  passing  sigh, 
The  happy  spirit  floated  by. 
O'er    mourning    hearts    in    anguish 

hushed, 

Effluence  ecstatic  gushed ;, 
They  saw  Heaven's  gates  of  pearl  un- 
fold 
Paven  courts  of  purest  gold, 


The  glorious  city  on  a  height 

Lost  in  distances  of  light ; 

Heard  angelic  harpings  sweet, 

Voices  jubilant,  that  greet 

New  comers   through  the   floods   of 

death ; 

Felt  softly  blow  a  passing  breath 
Celestial,  the  winnowings 
Viewless  of  ethereal  wings. 
This  could  not  last  for  mortal  strain, 
Transport  sinking  down  to  pain*; 
Yet  a  refulgent  glimpse  of  Heaven, 
Never  by  cloud  or  storm-blast  riven, 
Ray  from  love  divine,  shall  dwell 
On  all  who  heard  that  last  farewell 
Sweet,  faint  echoes,  never  dying, 
Of  far  homes  immortal  tell, 
Where  sorrows  cease,  and  tears  and 

sighing ; 
Still  whispering:    "All   is  well,   is 

well." 

H.  L. 


MY  FRIEND  MR  BEDLOW :  OR,  REMINISCENCES  OF  AMERICAN 

COLLEGE  LIFE. 

BY   CARL   BENSON,  AUTHOR   OP    "  FIVE   YEARS  IN  AN    ENGLISH   UNIVERSITY,"  ETC. 
IN  TWO  PARTS  :  PART  I. 


BE  so  good  as  to  transport  yourself  in 
time  backward  for  rather  more  than 
twenty  years,  and  in  space  westward  as 
far  as  New  Haven. 

What  New  Haven  ? 

There  is  one  place,  if  not  more,  of  the 
name  in  England ;  possibly  others  in 
Scotland  and  Ireland;  but  the  New 
Haven  I  mean  is  half  the  capital  of  the 
state  of  Connecticut. 

Half  the  capital? 

Literally  so.  It  divides  the  honour 
of  being  the  state  metropolis  with  Hart- 
ford, and  the  state  legislature  meets-  in 
each  city  alternately. 

New  Haven  has  the  reputation,  and 
justly  so,  of  being  a  very  pretty  place. 
I  have  sometimes  compared  it  to  the 
environs  of  Cheltenham,  mutatis  mu- 
tandis, which  in  this  case  must  be  trans- 
lated, substituting  wooden  houses  for  stone 


ones;  not  a  very  good  comparison,  but  the 
best  that  occurs.  It  is  one  of  the  few 
cities  in  the  world  where  birds  fly  and 
bees  hum  at  large  in  the  streets.  Two 
long  avenues,  crossing  each  other  at 
right  angles,  contain  the  book-stores 
(Anglicb  booksellers)  and  the  grocery- 
stores,  and  all  the  other  "  stores,"  and 
the  hotels  and  principal  boarding- 
houses — all  the  business  of  the  place, 
in  fact ;  and  the  remaining  streets  are 
occupied,  not  by  the  "  upper  ten  "  exactly 
— in  the  time  we  write  of,  Willis  had 
not  yet  invented  the  upper  ten, — but  by 
private  dwellings  almost  exclusively ; 
neat  little  white  wooden  houses, — cot- 
tages you  might  call  them, — and  much 
"  greenery  "  all  about,  and  the  birds  and 
bees  aforesaid ;  altogether,  a  very  good 
specimen  of  the  rus  in  urbe. 

Such  was  it  at  the  period  of  which  I 


Or,  Reminiscences  of  American  College  Life. 


219 


write.  Since  then  it  has  not  entirely 
escaped  the  progress  of  modern  improve- 
ment. It  has  big  brown  stone  "  stores," 
and  stone — or  imitation  of  it — private 
houses,  and  a  more  ambitious  look  gene- 
rally. It  is  said  that  there  are  young 
ladies  who  waltz  ;  perhaps  there  are  even 
fast  horses.  But  in  the  year  183 —  it 
was  a  truly  unsophisticated,  country -like 
place,  at  least  half  a  century  behind  New 
York  in  all  the  externals  of  material 
civilization. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  place  that  you 
are  to  notice  at  all,  but  its  inhabitants, 
or  rather  a  very  small  portion,  numeri- 
cally speaking,  of  its  inhabitants — the 
five  hundred  students  of  Yale  College. 
Five  hundred  we  may  call  them  in  round 
numbers,  including  the  graduate  profes- 
sional students, — not  a  great  multitude, 
but  they  are  conspicuous  enough  every- 
where, notwithstanding  the  absence  of 
any  academical  costume.  The  difference 
between  "town"  and  "gown"  is  always 
strongly  marked,  even  when  the  "  gown" 
has  no  gown.  The  bursch  may  wear  no 
beard,  or  cap,  or  other  peculiar  mark,  yet 
he  is  never  to  be  mistaken  for  the 
philister.  The  greenest  "fresh"  at  Yale 
may  be  distinguished  with  half  an  eye 
from  the  "  town-loafer." 

Suppose  it  then  to  be  a  fine  spring 
noon  ;  let  us  walk  down  this  long  street, 
which  extends  from  the  college  to  the 
post-office.  The  municipal  authorities, 
wise  without  knowing  it,  have  placed 
the  latter  at  a  considerable  distance  from 
the  former  ;  else  it  is  to  be  feared  that 
many  of  the  students  would  never  take 
any  exercise  at  all.  The  Yalensiaris  are 
great  correspondents,  and  great  devourers 
of  newspapers ;  and,,  the  postman  being 
an  institution  quite  unknown  to  New 
Haven,  they  are  forced  to  fetch  and  carry 
for  themselves ;  besides,  this  is  the 
fashionable  promenade  of  the  town,  so 
we  are  sure  to  meet  many  parties  and 
groups  of  these  youths*  They  are  about 
the  average  age  of  English  upper-form 
public  schoolboys^  for  they  usually  enter 
at  fifteen,  and  "go  out,"  as  a  .Gantab 
would  call  it — "  graduate,"  as  they  call 
it — at  nineteen.  They  are  not  quite  the ' 
average  size  of  the  schoolboys  aforesaid^ 


for  they  grow  later  and  longer ;  but,  in 
spite  of  this,  they  have  ten  times  more 
the  air  of  men.  Not  finer  specimens  of 
animal  development ;  we  have  just  re- 
marked that  they  do;  not  attain  their  full 
growth  so  soon,  nor,  on  the  other  hand, 
do  I  mean  that  they  show  any  signs  of 
premature  dissipation ;  but  they  have  a 
self-possessed,  at-their-ease,  independent^ 
don' t-care  -  a  -  monosyllable  -  for  -  anybody, 
air,  that  it  would  be  hard  to  match  among 
the  youth  of  any  other  country,  not  ex- 
cepting those  of  France,  who  are  sup- 
posed to  be  particularly  forward,  and,  hi 
some  respects,  are  so.  Take  at  random 
any  three  of  these  young  men  (they 
would  be  fearfully  insulted  if  you  were 
to  call  them  boys),  the  odds  are  that 
you  may  set  up  one  of  the  three  with- 
out warning  before  fifteen  hundred  men, 
and  he  will  extemporize  them  a  speech 
about  things  in  general  and  the  politics 
of  the  country  in  particular.  Or  he  will 
charge  a  drawing-room  full  of  ladies  with 
equal  gallantry  ;  only  then  you  must  not 
take  him  altogether  without  preparation ; 
he  must  have  time  to  make  his  most  ela- 
borate toilette — otherwise  he  would  be 
disconcerted  indeed. 

For  dress  is  rather  a  vanity  of  these 
youths,  as  you  may  see  at  a  very  super- 
ficial glance.  They  have  small  feef,  and 
are  proud  of  them,  to  judge  from  the  deli- 
cate, lady-like  boots  they  wear.  Most  of 
them  sport  kid  gloves,  and  some  of  thenv 
light  kid  gloves.  Many  of  them  delight 
in  fancy  caps,  as  being  more  picturesque, 
and  at  the  same  time  more  convenient, 
than  the  common  domestic  hat.  Their 
dress  appears  to  be  got  up  on  what 
some  one  calls  the  Frenchman's  theory 
of  dress,  a  combination  of  colours ; 
and  they  have  also  a  continental,  or,  if 
you  prefer  it,  a  flash  tendency  in  the 
matter  of  chains,  pins,  and  studs.  If 
it  had  been  a  month  or  two  earlier  in 
the  season,  you  would  have  seen  most 
of  them  enveloped  in  magnificent  full-; 
circle  blue  cloth  cloaks,  atv  least  £12 
worth  of  cloth  •  and  velvet  to  each 
cloak  It  must  be  observed,  however,  / 
that  these  melodramatic  envelopes  were  ' 
preferred  to  overcoats  on  grounds  of 
use  as  well  as  show.  In  their  hurried 

Q  2 


220 


My  Friend  Mr.  Bedlow : 


preparation  for  the  very  early  morning 
chapel,  the  students  not  unfrequently 
donned  an  old  dressing-gown,  in  lieu  of 
coat,  and  entirely  neglected  the  minor 
details  of  cravat  and  waistcoat,  the 
charitable  mantle  supplying  all  defi- 
ciencies of  looks  or  warmth. 

But  these  elegant  youths  do  not  com- 
prise the  whole  body  of  Yalensians. 
Contrasted  with  them  we  remark  many 
students  of  a  very  different  type.  Men — 
old  men,  comparatively  speaking — say 
from  twenty-four  to  thirty  years  of  age  ! 
Their  attire  is  not  only  unfashionable, 
but  positively  shabby.  Coats  of  "  home- 
made "  cloth,  threadbare  and  rusty,  worn 
to  holes  at  the  cuffs,  and  strangely 
bound  there  with  velvet, — the  attempt 
at  converting  a  patch  into  an  ornament 
only  making  the  poverty  of  the  gar- 
ment more  conspicuous, — cowhide  shoes, 
"shocking  bad"  hats,  coarse  linen,  of 
doubtful  whiteness.  These  are  the 
"beneficiaries,"  the  students  who  have 
taken  to  the  ministry  late  in  life.  You 
might  compare  them  to  the  small- 
college  fellow-commoners  at  Cambridge, 
with  this  important  difference,  that 
whereas  the  latter  are  wealthy,  the 
"beneficiaries"  are  much  the  reverse. 
Indeed,  they  derive  their  popular  name 
from  the  pecuniary  benefit  which  they 
receive  from  the  college.  Various 
charitable  legacies  and  donations  give 
them  about  £\  5  a  year  each,  and  that  is 
all  the  actual  cash  some  of  them  can 
depend  upon.  Now,  though  New  Haven 
is  not  a  dear  place,  still  a  man  can 
hardly  well  board  himself  there  for  less 
than  two  dollars — that  is,  about  eight 
shillings — a  week.  It  is  evident,  there- 
fore, that  some  other  means  must  be 
resorted  to  to  make  up  the  deficit. 
Some  beneficiaries  absent  themselves 
during  a  portion  of  the  winter  to  teach 
schools,  their  own  studies  necessarily 
suffering  meantime.  One  of  them  rings 
the  college  bell  (he  earns  his  money, 
poor  fellow !).  Some  of  them  sleep  in 
little  closets  adjoining  the  "  recitation  " 
(lecture)  rooms,  and  get  their  lodging 
gratis  in  return  for  keeping  the  said 
recitation-rooms  in  order.  Several  of 
them  wait  on  the  other  students  in  hall, 


and  for  so  doing  get  their  own  meals 
free  of  expense.  Cambridge  sizars 
used  to  do  the  same  thing :  the  prac- 
tice has  continued  in  democratic  Ame- 
rica long  after  it  was  abolished  in 
aristocratic  England  ;  for  all  I  know  to 
the  contrary,  it  exists  in  full  force  to 
the  present  day. 

Are  you  curious  to  know  how  these 
men  are  treated  by  their  fellow-students  ? 
They  mingle  on  terms  of  perfect  equality, 
but  their  intercourse  is  far  from  being 
perfectly  genial.  Not  on  account  of  the 
beneficiaries'  poverty,  nor  yet  altogether 
from  the  difference  of  age,  though  that 
has  something  to  do  with  it ;  but  rather 
owing  to  unfortunate  theological  differ- 
ences, of  which  more  hereafter.  Before 
the  "faculty" — that  is,  the  college  autho- 
rities— they  all  stand  on  a  par.  Indeed,  if 
there  were  any  preference  to  be  shown, 
the  beneficiaries  would  most  naturally 
come  in  for  it,  since  the  tutor  has 
nothing  possible  to  expect  from  the 
rich  student,  whom  the  chances  are  he 
will  never  see  when  the  latter  has  once 
left  college,  whereas  he  feels  a  strong 
sympathy  for  the  poor  student,  having, 
in  perhaps  the  majority  of  cases,  sprung 
from  that  class  himself. 

When  speaking  of  dress  and  orna- 
ments just  above,  we  omitted  one  kind 
of  ornament  common  to  all  the  stu- 
dents, though  the  beneficiaries  are  rather 
less  adorned  in  this  way  than  the  others. 
You  perceive  that  a  large  number,  pro- 
bably full  half,  of  them,  wear  queer 
trinkets  of  gold,  or  gold  and  enamel, 
inscribed  with  Greek  letters  and  various 
quaint  devices.  Some  of  them  are 
broad,  flat,  old-fashioned  watch-keys  j 
others  are  triangles,  stars,  or  suns,  used 
as  "  charms,"  or  breloques ;  others  heavy 
embossed  rings,  and  others  again  breast- 
pins ; — the  shapes  and  devices  of  the 
breastpins  are  the  most  ferociously 
mystic  of  all.  These  are  the  badges  of 
the  secret  societies  which  swarm  in 
every  American  college.  They  have 
different  origins,  different  professed  aims, 
and  very  different  degrees  of  secrecy. 
Some  scarcely  profess  to  conceal  their 
proceedings  from  the  outsiders,  while 
others  shroud  themselves  in  thickest 


Or,  Reminiscences  of  American  College  Life. 


221 


mystery.  One  society  was  a  sort  of 
appendix  to  academic  honours,  being 
composed  of  all  who  took  a  certain 
standing  in  the  junior  (third)  year. 
Another  was  supposed  to  be  made  up  of 
the  best  "speakers"  and  "writers," 
especially  the  latter ;  candidates  for  the 
editorship  of  the  magazines,  and  gainers 
of  "  composition  "  prizes — English  com- 
position, not  Latin ;  though,  for  that 
matter,  if  you  were  otherwise  unob- 
jectionable, writing  Latin  would  qualify 
you  at  a  pinch  almost  as  well  as  writing 
English :  it  certainly  was  the  rarer 
accomplishment  of  the  two.  Others — 
these  were  the  breastpins  generally — • 
limited  their  numbers  to  a  very  select 
few,  in  the  choice  of  whom  personal 
considerations  were  presumed  to  weigh 
no  less  than  literary.  These  were 
awfully  mysterious.  One  of  them,  the 
awe  and  admiration  of  all  freshmen, 
had  a  most  ferocious  pin,  with  a  piratical 
device  of  a  death's  head  and  cross- 
bones,  and — a  live  skeleton  I  was  going 
to  say, — I  mean  a  real  one,  in  a  corner  of 
the  room  where  it  met,  and  an  unuttera- 
ble name  (like  that  of  Ancient  Rome) 
known  only  to  the  initiated.  To  belong 
to  this  chib  was  a  great  object  of  am- 
bition, and  its  principle  of  selection 
seemed  to  be  that  two-thirds  of  its 
members  were  about  the  cleverest  and 
j  oiliest  fellows  of  their  year,  and  the 
other  third  gentlemanly  nobodies  of  some 
pecuniary  means.  In  spite  of  all  precau- 
tions and  freemasonry,  there  was  sufficient 
leakage  to  make  one  conclude  that  the  basis 
of  all  these  associations  was  the  same — 
what  we  may  call  the  great  motive  prin- 
ciple of  an  American  college — speaking 
and  writing,  writing  and  speaking  ; 
while  on  this  the  more  aristocratic 
breastpins  had  crossed  the  popular 
Anglo-Saxon  institution  of  grub,  with 
the  necessary  concomitant  of  something 
to  drink,  which  made  the  breastpins 
more  expensive ;  and  on  this  account,  as 
well  as  some  others,  they  admitted  few 
"beneficiaries;"  but  some  of  these  forced 
their  way  even  into  the  piratical  sanc- 
tuary— for  talent,  or  what  passes  for 
such,  is  a  great  leveller  of  distinctions 
in  a  transatlantic  university.  The  less 


ostensible  badges,  such  as  rings  and 
bracelets  (I  assure  you  I  am  not  joking; 
there  were  students  who  wore  bracelets 
in  my  time),  generally  betokened  mere 
symposia,  like  the  B.  S.  club  at  Cam- 
bridge, which,  with  its  lettered  buttons, 
is  the  only  approach  to  the  American 
system  my  English  experience  supplies 
me  with.  But,  0  reader ! — whom  I 
always  take  somehow  to  be  a  Cantab — • 
try  and  realize  this  phenomenon  at  your 
own  alma  mater — the  Johnian  scholars 
wearing  oblong  watch-keys,  the  "  Athe- 
naeum "  men  star  breloques,  the  "  apo- 
stles "  enamelled  breastpins  with  an 
allegorical  design  of  Goethe  trampling 
on  the  Record,  even  the  dozen  Trinity 
bachelors  who  meet  in  one  another's 
rooms  on  Sunday  night  to  drink  coffee 
and  read  Shakespeare  (if  that  informal 
association  still  exists),  setting  up  a  ring 
of  some  peculiar  form.  A  very  ridi- 
culous state  of  things,  you  would  say ; 
and  my  private  opinion  about  coincides 
with  yours.  Every  possible  club,  or 
combination  of  Yalensians,  had  its  badge, 
save  only  the  three  great  debating  socie- 
ties, called  par  excellence  the  literary 
societies,  to  one  of  which  every  member 
of  the  university  belonged,  and  which, 
probably  for  that  reason,  had  no  decora- 
tion peculiar  to  them.1 

And  now,  even  though  my  friend  Bill 
Bedlow  is  waiting  all  this  time  to  be 
introduced  to  you,  I  must  go  back  a 
little  to  say  something  that  might  per- 
haps have  come  in  more  d  propos  of  the 
big  cloaks  and  the  early  chapels.  When 
you  see  this  heterogeneous  mass  of  boys 
and  men — doubly  heterogeneous,  for 
they  come  from  all  parts  of  the  Union, 
scarcely  a  state  unrepresented,  and  from 
all  sorts  of  schools,  or  no  schools  at  all, — 
one  of  the  first  questions  that  naturally 
occurs  to  you  is,  by  what  discipline  are 

1  Even,  these  made  a  parade  of  secrecy, 
allowing  no  strangers  to  be  present  at  their 
debates,  and  admitting  new  members  with 
much  formality  and  a  Christy 's-ininstrel-like 
"  knocking  at  the  door."  It  is  singular  that, 
with  all  this  preparatory  training  to  secrecy, 
when  they  get  into  real  life  no  people  let  out 
political  secrets  so  readily  as  the  Americans. 
Perhaps  it  is  merely  a  case  of  "  diamond  cut 
diamond." 


222 


My  Friend  Mr.  Bedlow  : 


these  students  kept  in  order,  or  is  there 
any  pretence  of  keeping  them  in  order  ? 
According  to  your  own  ideas  and  expe- 
rience, the  system  will  be  apt  to  strike 
you  as  a  singular  mixture  of  laxity  and 
sternness;  but,  on  further  consideration, 
you  will  probably  be  convinced  that  it 
is  not  only  the  most  natural,  but  the 
only  possible  one,  o 

First,  then,  there  are  no  such  things 
known  as  walls  or  gates  in  the  estab- 
lishment.    To  "gate"* or  "wall"  a  re- 
fractory student  would  be  simply  impos- 
sible, for  want  of  the  material  masonry. 
There  is  indeed  a  law  that  no  one  shall  be 
out  of  his  room  after  ten  P.M.,  but  it  is  as 
obsolete  as  those  English  college  statutes 
.which  provide  for  the  flogging  of  fresh- 
men  in   chapel,   or  their   not.  walking 
alone  on  Sundays.     The  primitive  hours 
of   the  old  gentlemen  and  ladies  who 
let  lodgings   may  be  supposed  to  put 
some  check  on  any  noctivagant  propen- 
sities of  their  lodgers ;   but  for   those 
students  who  "room"  in  college — more 
than    half   the   whole    number — there 
really  is  no  let  or  hindrance  to  their 
passing  the   night  out,  any  night  and 
avery  night  of  the  week,  if  they  choose. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  there    is  a 
most  rigid  system  of  roll-call  and  muster. 
To  put  it  into  Cantab  phraseology,  the 
.Yalensians  have  to  keep  sixteen  chapels 
and  sixteen  lectures  a  week,  and  that 
during  three  terms,  which  take  up  full 
three-quarters  of  the  entire  year,  instead 
of  less  than  one-half  of  it     Yale,  like 
almost   all   the  American  colleges,  has 
its  particular  religion.     It  belonged  to 
.the  Congregationalists,  a  species  of  demo- 
cratic  Presbyterians,  answering,  I   be- 
lieve,  to    the    English     Independents. 
The  Episcopalians  are  allowed  to  go  to 
their  own  church  on  Sundays,  but  even 
there  the  monitor  pursues  them.     And 
suppose  a  student  fails  to  attend?     In 
that   case    the    process    is    sufficiently 
euinmary.     A  certain,  not  very   large, 
number  of  "  absent"  marks — say  thirty 
in   the    course    of   the    year — involves 
your  polite  dismission  from  the  institu- 
tion,  no  matter  how  high  your  moral 
or  intellectual  standing. 

There    would    have    been    a    great 


slaughter  of  the  innocents  under  this 
system,  but  for  a  little  elasticity  in  the 
practical  working  of  it.  The  sole  ex- 
cuse for  absence  was  illness ;  the  test 
of  illness  was  keeping  your  room,  the 
proof  of  your  having  kept  your  room 
was  your  word  for  it,  unless  you  were 
stupid  enough  to  run  bolt  against  a 
tutor.  But  without  supposing  any 
direct  violation  of  truth,  there  were 
many  cold  winter  days  when  to  stay 
in  doors  for  twenty-four  hours  was  no 
great  hardship,  and  the  sick  man  could 
always  find  some  friend  to  bring  him 
his  meals. 

Disturbances  of  so  grave  a  character 
that  the  "faculty"  are  compelled  to 
notice  them,  occur  very  rarely.  In  such 
cases  the  offenders  are  usually  "  sus- 
pended," i.e.  rusticated,  for  a  term  or 
longer.  Expulsion  is  sometimes  re- 
sorted to,  pour  encourager  les  autres. 
Sometimes  a  whole  class,  or  the  greater 
part  of  one,  rebels,  generally  for  some 
such  silly  reason  as,  that  the  "  recita- 
tions"— in  plain  English  the  lessons — are 
too  long  On  such  occasion  a  number 
of  the  recalcitrant  youth  are  apt  to  expel 
themselves,  and  the  authorities  have  a 
habit  of  sending  the  "balance"  after  them 
for  the  sake  of  symmetry. 

Now  then,  having  duly  prepared  the 
way  for  the  introduction  of  so  important 
a  person,  let  me  present  to  your  notice, 
Mr.  William  Bedlow,  or  Bill  Bedlow,  as 
his  intimate  friends,  like  myself,  are 
permitted  to  call  him,  notwithstanding 
his  dignified  carriage. 

"Mr.  Bedlow,  of  New  York"— that 
is  the  legitimate  manner  of  introducing 
him — forms  the  central  figure  of  the 
group  standing  in  front  of  that  not 
very  magnificent  confectioner's  across 
the  way.  Mr.  Bedlow  is  between  nine- 
teen and  twenty  years  of  age — you  cer- 
tainly would  not  take  him  to  be  a  day 
older,  and  you  might  very  well  take 
him  to  be  a  year  or  two  younger.  His 
stature  rather  above  medium  height; 
his  figure  slender,  denoting  activity 
rather  than  strength.  His  features  are 
delicate,  and  decidedly  handsome,  and 
his  black  hair  has  a  tendency  to  curl 
under  the  rakish  silk-tasselled  cap  that 


Or,  Reminiscences  of  American  College  Life.- 


223 


is  pitched  on  one  side  of  his  head. 
No  moustache  of  course :  that  was  as 
rare  an  article  under  the  presidency  of 
Martin  Von  Buren  as  under  the  premier- 
ship of  Lord  Melbourne.  His  toilette 
is  "  got  up  to  kill,"  as  the  slang  phrase 
goes — his  broad  shirt  collar  turns  down 
over  a  black  satin  cravat ;  his  frock- 
coat  is  dark-olive,  with  fancy  silk  but- 
tons, and  a  velvet  collar. 

Bill's  waistcoat  is  a  wonderful  affair: 
delicately  blended  shades  of  straw- 
colour,  salmon-colour,  and  pearl-grey ; 
he  had  it  made  last  summer,  when  he 
was  manager  of  the  Commencement  ball ; 
the  nine  managers  bought  the  whole 
piece  of  waistcoating,  to  appropriate  it 
to  themselves.  His  pantaloons  (re- 
member, Ave  are  in  America  for.the  nonce, 
and  must  talk  American)  are  French- 
grey  ;  his  feet,  as  small  as  a  woman's, 
are  cased  in  thin  seal-skin  boots,  with 
very  high  heels ;  one  of  his  hands — 
which,  if  not  quite  so  small  as  a  woman's, 
are  nearly  as  white — is  carefully  fitted 
into  a  pearl-coloured  kid,  the  other  is 
bare,  probably  to  show  a  large  embossed 
ring,  the  badge  of  one  of  his  societies. 
Various  other  badges  are  plastered  over 
his  waistcoat  and  shirt-front. 

After  this  detail,  you  may  perhaps 
express  your  opinion,  that  Mr.  Bedlow 
looks  like  a  guy,  Not  improbably  he 
does  so  to  you.  I  can  only  say  we 
used  to  think  him  a  very  handsome 
fellow,  and  no  end  of  a  swell.  You  may 
perhaps  also  think  (I  am  aware  he  is 
open  to  criticism  in  many  ways)  that  he 
has  an  effeminate  look.  And,  when  I 
complete  the  picture  by  making  you 
observe  that  he  is  eating  a  paper  of 
candy,  positive  sugar-candy,  which  he 
has  just  bought  at  the  confectioner's 
behind  him,  you  will  be  still  more  likely 
to  think  so.  Nevertheless,  before  we 
have  done  with  him,  you  will  see  that 
Bill  is,  to  use  a  Western  phrase,  "  some" 
in  a  row.  * 

Bedlow  was  rather  a  college  idol  of 
mine.  Why  I  worshipped  him  has 
sometimes  puzzled  me  since ;  he  was 
not  so  very  clever  or  noble  after  all,  and 
I  believe  has  never  done  anything  as  a 
man  to  distinguish  himself.  But  his 


little  knot  of  intimate  friends  swore  by 
him,  and  generally -he -was  one  of  the 
most  popular  and  influential  members  of 
his  class  one  of  the  best  hated  too,  as 
popular  men  are  apt  to  be. 

Bill  came  up  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  a 
rosy  lively  lad  from  New  York,  where 
his  father  was  a  lawyer  and  politician 
(in  America  the  terms  are  almost  syn- 
onymous) of  some  position,  and  fair, 
though  not  large,  fortune.  He  had  under- 
gone his  preparatory  studies  at  a  pretty 
good  private  school,  of  which  there  were 
then,  and  still  are,  a  large  number  in  the 
Northern  States.  Thanks  to  this  school, 
Bedlow  was  better  off  for  Latin,  espe- 
cially Latin  prosody,  than  most  of  the 
New  Englanders ;  he  naturally  knew 
more  about  the  elegances  of  city  life  ;  he 
was  pretty  well  supplied  with  money  or 
credit ;  so  on  the  whole  he  began  by  rather 
despising  the  bulk  of  his  fellow-students, 
and  setting  up  for  an  aristocrat.  Bather 
an  odd  way,  you  may  say,  of  acquiring 
popularity ;  and,  had  Bedlow  been  a  fool 
in  other  respects,  or  a  weak,  undecided 
character,  he  would  doubtless  have  made 
sad  shipwreck  of  his  pretensions.  But 
having  a  deal  of  "  go  "  in  him,  and  being 
quick  enough  to  excel  up  to  a  certain 
point  in  anything  he  would  take  the 
.trouble  to  apply  himself  to,  he  ended  by 
'  ,ausing  his  assumption  of  superiority  to 
be  on  the  whole  acknowledged.  His 
first  success,  however,  was  not  exactly 
of  a  literary  nature. 

The  undergraduate  course  at  all  Ame- 
rican colleges  occupies  four  years.  The 
four  divisions  are  not  called  "years," 
but  "classes,"  and  the  lines  between 
them  are  much  more  strictly  drawn,  as 
we  shall  have  further  occasion  to  see  by 
and  by,  than  between  the  men  of  diffe- 
rent years  in  an  English  university.  The 
second-year  students  are  called  sopho- 
mores ;  why,  nobody  knows.  The  popular 
explanation  used  to  be,  that  the  name 
was  compounded  of  the  two  contradictory 
Greek  words  most  resembling  it  in 
sound,  and  had  originally  been  applied 
as  a  term  of  derision.  But  an  erudite 
Yale  professor  found  out  by  dint  of  vast 
research  that  the  epithet  was  formerly 
written  sophimore,  a  discovery  for  which 


224 


My  Friend  Mr.  Bedlow  : 


he  took  to  himself  great  credit,  and  which 
greatly  helped  to  elucidate  the  difficulty.1 

These  sophomores,  or  sophimores,  or 
sophs  (the  usual  abbreviation  will  serve 
to  compromise  the  difference  in  ortho- 
graphy) have  the  traditional  reputation 
of  being  the  chief  actors  in  such  small 
amount  of  larking  as  goes  on  at  Yale. 
Their  particular  speciality  used  to  be 
hoaxing  the  freshmen.  In  all  societies 
of  boys  or  young  men  everywhere  it  is 
customary  to  play  tricks  upon  new- 
comers ;  but  the  American  contrivances 
certainly  went  ahead  of  most  European 
doings  of  the  kind.  Probably  the  nearest 
approach  to  them  might  be  found  in  an 
Irish  mess  of  the  last  generation.  Some 
of  the  tricks  were  simply  dishonest, 
such  as  chousing  an  unlucky  freshman 
out  of  fifty  cents  or  half  a  dollar  under 
pretence  of  an  "oil  tax."  Other  diversions 
were,  blowing  up  the  hapless  tyros  with 
gunpowder,  or  making  their  rooms  un- 
inhabitable for  a  time  by  means  of 
asafcetida.  Another  favourite  sport  was 
to  gain  surreptitious  admission  into  a 
freshman's  room  and  make  an  inverse 
ratio  of  all  the  contents,  after  the  manner 
formerly  in  vogue  among  sprightly  young 
officers.  One  of  the  most  innocent 
amusements  was  "smoking  a  fresh." 
When  it  had  been  ascertained  (by  the 
Baconian  process  of  offering  him  a 
weed)  that  a  particular  freshman  did  not 
smoke,  half  a  dozen  sophs  would — with 
consequences  which  may  be  guessed — 
combine  to  initiate  him. 

But  the  pet  joke  was  sham-tutoring. 
One  of  the  oldest  and  gravest  looking 
sophs,  his  dignity  further  enhanced  by 
a  pair  of  spectacles,  green  or  otherwise, 
sent  an  accomplice  to  inform  one  of  the 
freshmen  that  tutor  (some  imaginary 
name)  wished  to  see  him  immediately. 
An  invisible  audience  crammed  the  two 
bedrooms  adjoining  the  sitting-room  in 
which  the  soph  received  his  supposed 
pupil,  without  asking  him  to  take  a 

1  The  "speaking  and  writing"  mania  begins 
its  ravages  in  the  second  year.  Hence  sopho- 
moric  or  sophomorical  has  come  to  be  an 
American  adjective  to  express  anything  even 
more  bombastic  and  absurd  than  the  usual 
style  of  forensic  and  congressional  eloquence. 


chair,  but  in  other  respects  very  politely, 
and  proceeded  to  ask  him  all  manner  of 
questions  about  his  parents,  and  family, 
and  himself,  what  were  his  means  and 
prospects,  how  many  shirts  he  had —  this 
was  always  a  great  point, — and  the  num- 
ber of  the  poor  fellow's  under  garments, 
five,  six,  or  seven  as  the  case  might 
be,  was  carefully  taken  down  as  a  subject 
for  a  future  jest — in  short,  anything 
that  was  likely  to  afford  occasion  for 
"  trotting  him  out." 

Now  in  Bill's  first  term  the  sophs 
undertook  to  sham-tutor  him,  although 
he  was  by  no  means  the  usual  kind  of 
subject;  a  much  older,  much  greener, 
and  much  poorer  class  was  usually  select- 
ed for  this  victimization.  Perhaps  they 
thought  him  so  self-sufficient  and  over- 
convinced  of  his  own  sharpness  that  he 
might  easily  be  taken  in.  If  so,  never 
were  men  more  mistaken,  for  the  fresh- 
man, after  pretending  to  be  duly  awe- 
struck at  the  awful  presence  into  which 
he  was  ushered,  began  to  answer  the 
questions  addressed  to  him  in  a  way 
which  soon  showed  that  lie  was  chaffing 
the  sham-tutor.  However,  the  pretended 
functionary  went  on  with  his  interroga- 
tion, more  because  he  did  not  know  well 
how  to  get  out  of  it  than  from  a  desire 
to  continue  a  farce  in  which  the  tables 
were  so  turned  upon  himself,  until  it 
came  to  the  subject  of  the  inner  vest- 
ments, when  Bill,  instead  of  a  direct 
reply,  innocently  remarked,  that  he  did 
not  wonder  at  the  faculty  interesting 
themselves  in  the  students'  cleanliness  j 
there  certainly  was  great  need  of  their 
interference ;  he  had  noticed  a  great 
many  dirty  shirts,  particularly  among 
the  sophomores,  whose  linen  struck  him 
as  extremely  problematical.  At  this 
the  concealed  parties  could  hold  out  no 
longer,  but  rushed  out  from  their  closets 
in  great  wrath,  and  with  loud  cries  of 
"  Hustle  him  out !"  ejected  Bill  into  the 
entry.  But  when  they  had  got  him 
there,  the  freshman,  though  smaller  than 
any  of  his  assailants,  made  such  use  of 
his  fists  as  to  astonish  one  or  two  of 
them  ;  not  merely  astonish,  but  incense 
them,  and,  the  staircase-window  being 
open  (it  was  only  a  second  floor),  some- 


Or,  Reminiscences  of  American  College  Life. 


225 


body  proposed  that  they  should  throw 
him.  out  of  it,  which  was  accordingly 
done  forthwith.  But  Bedlow,  who  hadn't 
been  used  to  that  sort  of  uhing  at  home, 
took  care  to  pull  out  a  sophomore  along 
with  him,  that  he  might  have  something 
soft  to  fall  upon.  The  soph  fell  under- 
most and  broke  his  arm ;  the  freshman 
got  off  with  a  few  bruises.  The  affair 
was  hushed  up,  and  very  few  even  of  the 
students  ever  heard  of  it,  but  there  buzzed 
around  a  mysterious  rumour  that  Bed- 
low  had  somehow  "served  out"  the 
sophs  completely.  They  were  always  ob- 
served to  give  him  a  wide  berth,  and 
his  own  class  began  to  regard  him  as 
,a  hero. 

You  will  please  not  to  infer  from  the 
above  that  American  second-year  men 
have  a  habit  of  throwing  freshmen  out 
of  third-story  windows.  A  set  of  youth 
less  belligerent,  less  aggressive,  less  ad- 
dicted to  anything  like  breaches  of  the 
peace  than  the  Yalensians  were  in  my 
time,  it  would  be  hard  to  conceive,  much 
more  to  find.  A  personal  collision  even 
with  a  "  town-loafer  "  was  of  very  rare 
occurrence,  among  themselves  still  rarer. 
Looking  back  to  my  own  feelings  and 
habits  of  mind  as  an  undergraduate 
there,  I  am  quite  sure  that  nothing  short 
of  the  direst  extremity,  such  as  peril  of 
my  own  life  or  another's,  could  have 
forced  me  to  lay  hands  on  a  comrade, 
and  I  am  equally  sure  that  the  same 
might  have  been  said  of  half,  or  more 
than  half,  the  students.  So  far  as  one 
can  reason  back  upon  the  subject,  I  im- 
pute this  state  of  feeling  to  three  causes. 
First  (I  affirm  it  in  all  sincerity),  religi- 
ous principle,  a  solemn  conviction  that 
it  was  unchristian  to  resort  to  personal 
violence,  save  when  in  obvious  peril  of 
life  or  limb.  Secondly,  a  conviction 
nearly  or  quite  as  strong,  that  personal 
violence  was  ungentlemanly.  Thirdly,  a 
want  of,  not  presence  of  mind  exactly, 
but  what  you  might  almost  call  presence 
of  body ;  a  want  of  familiarity  with 
dangerous  positions  and  bodily  strug- 
gles. Cowardice  I  do  not  admit  as  a 
constituting  element.  At  the  same  time, 
I  do  admit  that  the  conduct  above  de- 
scribed may  be  very  easily  misinterpreted 


as  the  effect  of  cowardice  (more's  the 
pity  !),  and  that  the  unfortunate  results 
of  such  misinterpretation  are  now  too 
plainly  visible.  The  hot-headed  South- 
erner, finding  the  people  of  the  North  not 
so  ready  as  himself  to  resent  a  real  or 
supposed  insult  with  a  blow,  began  at  a 
very  early  period  of  our  history  to  form 
his  conception  of  them  as  wanting  in 
courage.  This  idea  gaining  ground  by 
repetition  in  each  successive  genera- 
tion, the  insolence  of  the  slaveholders 
gained  ground  pari  passu,  till  the  abuse 
culminated  in  the  present  state  of 
things,  when  Northern  representatives 
are  obliged  to  carry  revolvers  to  Con- 
gress to  protect  themselves. 

Bedlow,  therefore,  having  founded  his 
reputation  as  a  wit  and  a  hero  at  the 
same  time,  was  able  to  rest  on  his  laurels 
in  the  latter  character  ;  in  the  former 
he  felt  bound  to  do  something  more. 
Among  the  various  rhetorical  paces 
through  which  we  were  put,  one  of  the 
earliest  consisted  in  declaiming,  or 
"  speaking  pieces,"  which  we  had  to  do 
to  a  great  extent,  once  a  week  at  least. 
A  few  of  the  students  took  a  school- 
boy pleasure  in  this,  but  the  majority 
were  much  the  reverse  of  delighted  ; 
even  those  fondest  of  hearing  their  own 
voices  in  debates  of  their  own  composi- 
Uon  were  bored  at  being  obliged  to 
rehearse  the  compositions  of  others ;  and 
still  more  bored  to  hear  them  rehearsed. 
Bedlow  endeavoured  to  enliven  the  per- 
formance by  selecting  humorous  extracts, 
such  as  Serjeant  Buzfuz  from  "Pickwick" 
(which  had  just  then  appeared) ;  but 
the  professor  of  elocution,  feeling  the 
dignity  of  his  lecture-room  violated  by 
the  unseemly  sound  of  laughter,  forbade 
the  young  speaker  to  choose  any  more 
"  comic "  speeches.  Whereupon,  Bill 
swore  that  he  would  deliver  a  comic 
speech  in  spite  of  the  professor.  Next 
time,  he  selected  a  well-known  bit  of 
Irish  eloquence  :  well-known,  because 
it  was  one  of  the  first  in  our  freshman 
manual  of  extracts  ;  a  speech  in  an 
action  for  libel,  stigmatizing  the  libeller 
as  worse  than  the  highway  robber.  "  The 
man  who  plunders  on  the  highway 
may  have  the  semblance  of  an  apology 


226 


An  Eastern  Legend  Versified. 


for  what  he  does.  'A  loved  wife  may 
demand  subsistence,  a  circle  of  helpless 
children  may  raise  to  him  the  supplicat- 
ing hand  for  food.  He  may  be  driven  to 
the  act  by  the  high  mandate  of  impera- 
tive necessity,"  &c.  &c.  And  a  little 
farther  on  it  is  affirmed,  that  the  libel- 
ler's victim,  "if  innocent,  may  look  like 
Anaxagoras  to  the  heavens,  but  must 
feel  that  the  whole  earth,"  <fec.  Such 
was  the  speech  by  Bill  chosen  ;  but  in 
reciting  it,  pretending  to  forget  the 
words,  he  travestied  it  into  utter  non- 
sense. The  professor  did  not  quite 
comprehend  him  at  first,  for  he  began  in 
alow  tone,  and  had  a  Rachel  orRobson- 
like  habit  of  dropping  his  voice  at  times, 
till  almost  inaudible ;  but,  when  the  grave 
instructor  did  hear  what  was  going  on, 
he  was  horrified  by  the  following  : 
"  The  man  who  blunders  on  the  high- 


way may  have  the  hindrance  of  an 
analogy  for  what  he  does.  A  snubbed 
wife  may  command  resistance ;  a  circle 
of  yelping  children  may  raise  to  him  the 
suffocating  hand  for  food.  He  may  be 
driven  to  the  act  by  the  huge  mammoth 
of  impertinent  necromancy." 

The  professor  rubbed  his  ears  and 
eyes,  hardly  daring  to  believe  those 
organs.  Meanwhile,  Bedlow  had  gone 
down  into  one  of  his  sotto  voces,  and  the 
next  words  audible  were — 

"  If  innocent,  he  may  look,  like  an  ox 
or  an  ass,  to  the  heavens — "  Here 
Bill's  speech  was  brought  to  an  untimely 
close,  for  the  professor,  in  great  wrath, 
ordered  him  down,  and  threatened  to 
have  him  suspended.  But  the  good  luck 
which  seemed  to  attend  Bedlow  in  all 
his  scrapes,  got  him  off  scotfree. 
To  be  continued. 


AN  EASTERN  LEGEND  VERSIFIED, 
FEOM  ALPHONSE  DE  LAMARTINE'S  TRAVELS. 
JR'li.1   .   BY   THE   REV.    CHARLES   TURNER. 


ci 

h 


'TWAS  just  when  harvest-tide  was  gone, 
In  Haroun's  golden  days  ; 
When  deeds  in  love  and  honour  done 
Were  blest  with  royal  praise  : 

Two  equal  heirs  of  perch  and  rood, 
Two  brothers,  woke  and  said  — 
As  each  upon  the  other's  good 
Bethought  him  in  his  bed  ; 


The  elder  spake  unto  his  wife, 

Our  brother  dwells  alone, 
'  No  little  babes  to  cheer  his  lifo, 
'  And  helpmate  hath  he  none  : 

'  Up  let  us  get,  and  of  our  heap 
'  A  shock  bestow  or  twain, 

The  while  he  lieth  sound  asleep 
'  And  wots  not  of  the  gain." 

So  up  they  gat,  and  did  address 
Themselves  with  loving  heed, 
Before  the  dawning  of  the  day, 
To  do  that  gracious  deed. 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson,  227 

Now  to  the  other,  all  unsought, 
The  same  kind  fancy  came  ; 
Nor  wist  they  of  each  other's  thought, 
Though  moved  to  the  same. 

"  My  brother  he  hath  wife,"  he  said, 
"  And  babes  at  breast  and  knee  ; 
"  A  little  boon  might  give  him  aid, 
"  Though  slender  boot  to  me.'* 

So  up  he  gat,  and  did  address 
Himself  with  loving  heed, 
Before  the  dawning  of  the  day, 
To  mate  his  brother's  deed. 

Thus  played  they  oft  their  kindly  parts, 
And  marvelled  oft  to  view 
Their  sheaves  still  equal,  for  their  hearts 
In  love  were  equal  too. 

One  morn  they  met,  and  wondering  stood 
To  see,  by  clear  daylight, 
How  each  upon  the  other's  good 
Bethought  him  in  the  night. 

So,  when  this  tale  to  court  was  brought, 

The  caliph  did  decree, 

Where  twain  had  thought  the  same  good  thought, 

There  Allah's  house  should  be  ! 

FEMALE   SCHOOL   OF  ART;    MKS.  JAMESON. 

BY   THE   REV.    F.    D.    MAURICE. 

I  TRUST  that  some  one  who  is  capable  of  "  3.  Since  1852  six  hundred  and  ninety  Stu- 

dealing  with  questions  of  Art,  and  who  dents  have  entered  themselves  at  the  School, 

•           .    .     TJY»                    j  i                          1*1  find.  tii6  number  Et  th.6  present  tiino  is  on.6 

IS  not  indifferent   to  the  power  which  hundred  and  eighteen,  of  whom  seventy-seven 

women  may  exert  in  raising  or  in  cor-  are  studying  with  the  view  of  ultimately  main- 

rupting  it,  will   draw  our  attention  to  taining  themselves.     Some  of  them,  daughters 

the  Female  School  of  Art  and  Design  of  Clergymen  and  Medical  Men,  unexpectedly 

I'll  i  i         r      n  »v      s"i  COUlPtjllcd.    t)Y     £1     VBXlCtV     OI     CEUS68.    to    £cUQ 

which  has  been  opened  at  37,  Gower  thejP  own'  g^ooS  and  even  to  support 

Street,  and  of  which  the   following  ac-  others  besides  themselves,  have,  through  the 

Count  is  given  in   a  paper   lately  issued  instruction  and  assistance  received  here,  ob- 

by  the  Committee  : tained  good  appointments  in  Schools,  or  are 

enabled  to  live  independently  by  means  of 

"  1.  This    School,    originally    the     female  private  teaching.     The  present  daily  attend- 

'  School  of  Design,'  was  established   by  Go-  ance  averages  seventy. 

vernment  at   Somerset  House  in    the    year  "4.  The  success  of  the  School  has  been  con- 

1842-3,  but,  from  want  of  accommodation,  it  siderable.     In  the  last  three  years,  the  stu- 

was  removed    to  adjacent  premises    in   the  dents  have  taken  an  annual  average  of  twenty 

Strand,  and,  for  a  similar  reason,  was  after-  Local,  and  three  National  Medals,  and,  at  the 

wards  transferred   to   Gower  Street  in   Feb-  last  Annual   Examination,  six  of  them   ob- 

ruary,  1 852.  tained  Free  Studentships.     Six  of  them,  more- 

"  2.  Its  object  is  twofold :  I. — Partly  to  over,  gained  their  living  for  several  years,  by 
enable  Young  Women  of  the  Middle  Class  to  Designing  and  Painting  Japanned  Articles,  in 
obtain  an  honourable  and  profitable  employ-  Wolverhampton ;  one  was  for  several  years  a 
ment;  II. — Partly  to  improve  Ornamental  Designer  in  a  Damask  Manufactory  in  Scot- 
Design  in  Manufactures  by  cultivating  the  land ;  another  supports  herself  by  Litho- 
taste  of  the  Designer.  graphy ;  and  three  are  employed  in  a  Glass 


228 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


Factory,  where  they  draw  and  paint  figures 
and  ornamental  subjects  for  glass  windows. 
Besides  these,  there  are  many  of  the  former 
students,  who  are  now  engaged  in  teaching  in 
various  Schools  belonging  to  the  Science  and 
Art  Department. 

"  5.  Precisely  at  the  time  when  the  School 
seems  to  have  struck  root,  and  to  be  steadily 
widening  its  area  of  usefulness,  the  Committee 
of  Council  on  Education  have  intimated 
their  intention  of  withdrawing  their  special 
assistance  from  the  School  (amounting  to  5001. 
per  annum),  and  of  finally  closing  it,  unless  it 
can  be  placed  on  a  self-supporting  basis. 

"  6.  Two  questions  have  therefore  to  be  con- 
sidered : — 

"  I.  Is  the  School  of  sufficient  value  to 
deserve  an  effort  to  maintain  its  ex- 
istence ? 

"  II.  If  fairly  set  going  as  an  independent. 
Institution,  will  it  be  able  to  support 
itself? 

"A  letter  from  R.  REDGRAVE,  Esq.,  R.A., 
bearing  testimony  to  the  value  of  the  School, 
may  conveniently  be  inserted  here. 

"'SCIENCE  AND  ART  DEPARTMENT, 

"  SOUTH  KENSINGTON,  LONDON,  W. 

10th  day  of  February,  1860. 
"DEAR  MADAM,— In  reply  to  your  request 
that  I  would  state  my  opinion  as  to  the  success 
of  the  instruction  afforded  to  Females  in  the 
School  of  Art  in  Gower  Street,  I  most  will- 
ingly state  that  the  School  in  all  our  Compe- 
titions, both  Local  and  National,  has  ever 
borne  and  still  maintains  a  high  position.  I 
am  also  aware  that  many  females  of  the 
Middle  Class  have  through  it  been  enabled  to 
earn  a  competent  livelihood  by  their  own  in- 
dustry, as  Teachers,  Designers  for  Linens, 
Carpets,  Papier  Macho",  etc.,  the  School  thus 
affording  valuable  assistance  to  a  class  of 
females,  for  whom  there  have  hitherto  been 
few  means  of  providing. 
"  I  am,  Madam, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"  RICHD.  REDGRAVE. 
"  To  Miss  Gann, 

"Superintendent  of  the  School  of  Art, 
"37,  Gower  Street,  W.C.' 

"  7.  In  reply  to  the  first  question  it  may  be 
stated,  that  over  and  above  the  immense  im- 
portance of  making  every  effort  to  provide 
channels  of  industry  for  young  women,  other 
Schools  of  Art  are,  on  various  grounds,  inade- 
quate. Most  of  the  young  persons  who  attend 
this  School,  live  at  too  great  a  distance  from 
South  Kensington  to  be  able  to  attend  there ; 
and  there  is  no  other  School  in  London,  ex- 
clusively for  females,  in  which  teaching  is 
given  for  the  whole  day,  on  five  days  of  the 
week,  or  in  which  the  instruction  is  so  ample, 
and  the  range  of  subjects  so  extensive. 

"  8.  By  an  augmentation  of  the  Fees  (at 
present  very  low)  for  the  day  classes,  and 


by  a  saving  in  house-rent,  which  might  be 
effected  by  purchasing  or  renting  convenient 
premises  in  the  neighbourhood,  the  expenses, 
there  is  reason  to  hope,  might,  by  careful 
financial  management,  be  brought  down  to  a 
level  with  the  receipts. 

"  9.  This,  however,  can  be  looked  for  only 
when  the  school  has  been  started  afresh  on  its 
new  career  and  housed  in  premises  of  its  own, 
repaired  and  fitted  for  the  purpose. 

"  10.  To  purchase  suitable  premises  and  to 
make  them  thoroughly  complete,  a  sum  of  at 
least  2.000Z.  is  required,  to  raise  which  the 
Committee  of  the  School  are  compelled  to 
appeal  to  the  public.  It  is  understood  that 
the  Science  and  Art  Department  is  prepared 
to  apply  to  Parliament  for  a  grant  of  25  per 
cent,  on  the  cost  of  erecting  the  building. 

"11.  A  love  of  the  beautiful  is  one  of 
those  endowments  of  our  nature,  which  we 
may  reasonably  suppose  is  to  be  carefully  cul- 
tivated with  the  rest.  It  is  most  certainly  a 
right  and  laudable  object  to  keep  open  every 
possible  channel  for  the  employment  of  young 
women.  However  anxious  we  may  be  to 
retain  them  in  that  private  life  in  which  their 
right  position  undoubtedly  is,  yet  cases  con- 
stantly occur  in  which  they  must  either 
starve  in  obscurity,  or  come  forth  to  struggle, 
and  perhaps  to  descend  in  the  social  scale, 
through  no  fault  of  their  own.  The  instruc- 
tions given  in  this  School  are  eminently 
useful  in  preventing  such  misfortunes,  and 
may  be  received  and  eventually  turned  to 
profit,  without  necessarily  taking  them  out 
of  their  proper  sphere.  To  throw  away 
the  ground  won  by  many  years  of  patient 
industry  would  be  mortifying,  if  not  foolish  ; 
and  it  is  hoped  that  this  appeal  on  behalf  of 
a  School  hitherto  so  ably  conducted,  and  so 
conveniently  situated  for  the  North  and  West 
of  London,  as  well  as  for  the  City,  may  be  libe- 
rally responded  to,  not  only  by  the  residents  in 
the  immediate  neighbourhood,  but  also  by  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Metropolis  at  large." 

This  quiet  and  reasonable  statement 
could  derive  no  force  from  any  words 
that  I  could  add  to  it.  If  it  needed 
professional  recommendations,  it  is  sup- 
ported by  the  authority  of  Sir  Charles 
Eastlake,  Mr.  Eedgrave,  and  Mr.  West- 
macott.  Clerical  aid  it  has  of  the  most 
effective  kind.  The  Eector  of  St.  Giles's, 
whose  zeal  and  faith  are  well  known,  is 
chairman  of  the  committee.  But  if  I 
cannot  help  the  cause  myself,  I  may  do 
it  some  service  by  connecting  with  it 
the  name  of  a  lady  who  conferred  great 
benefits  upon  her  generation,  Avhose 
memory  all  who  knew  her  even  slightly 
would  wish  to  cherish,  and  who  cannot 
be  more  effectually,  gratefully  remem- 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


229 


bered  than  by  any  services  rendered  to 
this  Institution. 

There  are  no  charges  more  frequently 
brought  against  this  age  than  these  three; 
that  it  is  an  age  of  dilettantism,  that  it 
is  an  age  in  which  criticism  has  banished 
creative  power,  that  it  is  an  age  in  which 
women  aspire  to  a  dangerous  independ- 
ence. Everyone  feels  each  of  these 
charges  to  have  some  reason  in  it ; 
many  of  us  may  have  discovered  that  to 
repeat  any  one  of  them,  and  to  bring 
the  best  proofs  we  have  of  its  truth, 
is,  after  all,  of  very  little  service  to 
the  time  which  we  denounce,  or  to 
ourselves  who  belong  to  that  time. 
When  we  can  find  a  person  who  shows 
us  some  road  out  of  dilettantism,  into 
that  of  which  it  is  the  counterfeit ;  out 
of  criticism  that  crushes  all  creative 
power,  into  the  criticism  which  reverences 
and  fosters  it;  out  of  the  independence 
of  the  sexes  which  destroys  the  work  of 
both,  into  that  fellowship  and  co-opera- 
tion which  is  implied  in  their  exist- 
ence,— that  person  ought  to  be  welcomed 
as  one  who  is  fit  to  teach  us  and  help  us, 
because  one  who  evidently  cares  more  to 
correct  evils  than  to  point  them  out,  to 
call  forth  good  than  to  complain  of  its 
absence.  Anna  Jameson  won  this  title  to 
all  grateful  and  affectionate  recollection. 
Not  in  single  irregular  efforts,  but  by  her 
whole  life,  she  was  combating  dilettant- 
ism in  its  strongest  hold,  by  showing  how 
Art  has  connected  itself  with  the  most 
practical  convictions  of  mankind,  what  it 
has  done  to  embody  those  convictions, 
how  it  fails  to  satisfy  them.  She  delibe- 
rately selected  for  the  subject  of  her 
criticism  not  that  which  she  could  look 
down  upon  and  contemn,  but  that  which 
she  could  look  up  to  and  admire ;  she 
taught  the  members  of  her  own  sex, 
who  need  the  lesson  almost  as  much  as 
ours,  that  scorn  is  not  the  twin  sister  of 
wisdom,  but  of  weakness.  Vigorously 
and  courageously  identifying  herself  with 
much  that  men  dislike  or  dread — suffer- 
ing herself  to  be  called  one  of  the  ad- 
vanced or  fast  ladies,  who  claim  a  position 
which  was  not  intended  for  them — she 
really  did  more  than  almost  any  to 
counteract  the  tendencies  of  which  she 


was  willing  to  bear  the  disgrace-^to 
counteract  at  the  same  time  the  male 
vulgarity  which,  under  pretence  of  teach- 
ing women  to  keep  their  right  place, 
deprives  them  of  any  place  but  that  of 
their  servants  or  playthings. 

The  works  of  Mrs.  Jameson,  by  which 
she  vindicated  her  title  to  be  the 
daughter  of  an  artist,  and  by  which  she 
showed  how  much  she  had  cultivated 
all  the  gifts  which  she  inherited,  are 
her  "  Handbook  to  the  public  Galleries 
of  Art  in  and  near  London,"  her  "  Com- 
panion to  the  most  celebrated  Galleries 
of  Art  in  London,"  her  "Lives  of  the 
Early  Italian  Painters,"  her  "Poetry 
of  Sacred  and  Legendary  Art,"  her 
"  Legends  of  the  Monastic  Orders," 
her  "Legends  of  the  Madonna."  The 
work  which  was  to  complete  this  series, 
and  which  probably  will  interest  English 
readers  more  than  any  of  its  predecessors, 
is  said  to  be  in  good  hands,  and  will,  I 
hope,  appear  with  as  few  disadvantages 
as  a  posthumous  work  can  labour  under. 
The  handbooks,  and  even  the  delightful 
volume  of  biographies,  I  leave  to  those 
who  can  do  them  more  justice.  The 
other  books  deserve  to  be  looked  at 
from  the  unprofessional  as  well  as  the 
professional  point  of  view  ;  I  might  even 
say  from  the  point  of  view  which  a 
member  of  my  profession  is  likely  to 
occupy. 

Legends  will  overwhelm  history  if 
there  is  not  some  one  fairly  to  grapple 
with  them,  fairly  to  ask  what  they  mean, 
why  they  have  been  permitted  to  exist, 
what  lessons  they  impart.  No  policy  is 
more  foolish  than  that  which  pretends 
to  ignore  them,  as  if  their  existence  was 
not  a  fact,  as  if  that  did  not  belong  to 
history.  By  pursuing  this  policy  con- 
scientious writers  have  not  seldom  pro- 
duced the  effect  which  they  have  sought 
to  avert.  They  have  enlisted  the  sym- 
pathies of  their  readers  on  the  side  of 
fiction.  Nay,  they  have  done  worse. 
Through  indifference  to  the  real  meaning 
of  legends  they  have  become  inventors, 
and  very  coarse  inventors,  of  legends 
themselves.  The  story  of  the  wolf 
suckling  Eomulus  and  Eemus  had  no 
significance  for  them ;  so  they  must 


230 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


give  the  boys  a  nurse,  Lupa,  fashioned 
out  of  their  own  brains.  Philologers 
have  at  last  discovered  this  danger  ; 
they  have  learnt  to  appreciate  the  im- 
portance of  legends  as  expressing  the 
thoughts  and  beliefs  of  men  ;  they  have 
seen  that  these  thoughts  and  beliefs 
cannot  be  less  worthy  of  study  than 
mere  occurrences,  nay,  that  one  is  not 
intelligible  without  the  other.  Mebuhr, 
with  a  wonderful  discernment  of  the 
limits  between  fact  and  fiction,  has  yet 
done  more  justice  to  the  old  Roman 
fictions  than  any  of  his  predecessors. 

But  there  has  been  a  strange  deduc- 
tion from  Niebuhr's  doctrines.  It  has 
been  assumed  that  the  legendary  is 
another  name  for  the  spiritual;  the 
historical  for  the  material.  Those  who 
feel  that  they  need  spiritual  lessons  and 
principles  therefore  begin  to  think  that 
legends  are  worth  at  least  as  much  as 
facts  ;  perhaps  a  little  more  :  those  who 
cultivate  a  severe  veracity  treat  all  that 
lies  beyond  the  commonest  experience 
as  the  product  of  men's  high  concep- 
tions of  their  own  destiny  ;  in  plain 
language,  as  not  real  at  all.  The  former 
seem  to  believe  anything,  and  yet  are 
in  hazard  every  moment  of  believing 
nothing.  The  latter  seem  to  care  for 
nothing  but  what  is  substantial,  and  yet 
suggest  the  thought  that  all  which  has 
produced  most  effect  in  the  world,  and 
has  done  most  good  in  it,  is  vapour. 

Female  reverence  and  good  sense  has 
done  what  men's  scholarship  has  failed 
to  do.  Mrs.  Jameson  makes  us  feel  the 
difference  between  the  narratives  of 
Scripture  and  the  legends  that  have  been 
grounded  upon  them.  She  does  not 
treat  the  latter  with  scorn.  She  does 
not  force  any  Christian  or  Protestant 
moral  upon  us.  Had  she  done  so  her 
works  would  have  been  far  less  honest,. 
and  therefore  far  less  useful.  The 
legends  have  their  honour.  <  They  ex- 
press thoughts  about  the  spiritual  world 
which  have  been  working  in  different 
times.  They  are  not  all  good,  or  all  evil 
They  have  embodied  themselves  in 
paintings  which  rich  men  and  poor  men 
have  looked  at  and  learnt  from.  But 
the  thoughts  are  not  the  spiritual  world 


of  which  they  testify.  They  presume 
reality  as  their  basis.  They  could  not 
have  been  if  the  spiritual  had  not  first 
revealed  itself  in  facts.  Eeduce  the 
facts  to  the  level  of  the  stories,  and  the 
last  become  unaccountable.  Raise  the 
stories  to  the  level  of  the  facts,  and  they 
perish  together.  Yes,  and  in  doing  so 
you  destroy  the  hope  that  in  the  nine- 
teenth century, — in  England,  at  least, — 
we  can  ever  have  an  honest  and  an  ex- 
alted school  of  sacred  art.  English 
landscape  painters  have  been  great 
because  they  have  refused  to  sacrifice 
the  facts  of  nature  to  conventional  rules. 
Does  not  the  greatness  of  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt's  picture,  that  which  the  most 
ignorant  of  us  confess  as  much  as  the 
learned,  arise  from  a  refusal  still  more 
valiant?  He  is  sure  that  the  divine 
does  not  mean  the  artificial.  He  de- 
sires to  believe  that  he  shall  be  most 
reverent  when  he  is  most  delivered 
from  the  fetters  of  artifice.  Is  not  this 
the  condition  upon  which  our  painters 
must  paint,  upon  which  we  shall  accept 
their  paintings  as  speaking  to  us  ? 

Mrs.  Jameson  then,  I  believe,  did  a 
great  work  for  her  age  when  she  plucked 
the  flowers,  and  with  no  cowardly  fingers 
grasped  the  nettles,  of  middle-age  le- 
gendary lore.  If  she  had  cared  for  her 
reputation  as  a  Protestant,  she  would 
not  have  done  the  service  in  this 
case  as  in  others  to  Protestants  and 
Romanists  both,  which  she  has  done. 
She  adds  one  example  more  to  the  long 
catalogue  which  proves  that  those  will 
serve  a  cause  best  who  will  incur  the 
risk  of  being  called  traitors  to  it.  Her 
courage  was  owing  to  the  simplicity  of 
her  purpose.  She  knew  that  her  own 
sex  wanted  the  kind  of  help  she  was 
giving  them  to  admire  and  discriminate, 
and  therefore  she  did  not  stop  to  ask 
herself  what  sentence  captious  men 
might  pass  upon  her. 

This  object  becomes  even  more  appa- 
rent in  her  criticism.  I  own  I  do  not  like 
the  title  to  the  book  which  she  wrote 
on  the  female  characters  of  Shakspeare, 
"  Characteristics  of  Women,  Moral,  His- 
torical, and  Political."  There  is  a  grandi- 
loquence in  it  (as  there  was  a  senti- 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


231 


mentality  in  the  previous  title,  "Loves 
of  the  Poet ")  which  does  no  justice  to 
the  writer  or  to  the  book.  That  book 
is  in  no  sense  a  piece  of  vulgar  Shak- 
spearian  idolatry.  Mrs.  Jameson  does 
not  care  to  inform  us  how  great  her 
author  was,  or  how  he  came  to  be  great ; 
he  can  tell  us  all  that  himself.  She 
assumes  that  he  had  something  to  com- 
municate which  she  would  be  the  better 
for  learning.  She  desired  to  understand 
her  own  sex  better;  to  perceive  more 
closely  what  is  great  in  them,  and  what 
is  little  ;.  how  they  become  strong 
through  weakness,  and  weak  through 
the  ambition  of  strength  ;  what  qualities 
belong  to  them  as  women ;  what  are 
those  individual  traits,  which  ordinary 
writers  confound  through  a  vague  admi- 
ration,, or  a  foul  and  brutal  contempt. 
She  saw  that  this  knowledge  was,  for 
some  reasons  or  other,  given  to  Shak- 
speare ;  given,  certainly,  for  this  reason 
— that  his  countrymen  and  country- 
women might  profit  by  it.  They  would 
miss  it  if  they  cared  chiefly  to  say 
clever  things  about  the  author,  or  to  re- 
peat clever  things  which  they  had  heard 
from  others ;  they  would  receive  it  so 
far  as  they  tried  to  do  their  own  work 
in  the  world.  It  seems  to  me  that  this 
criticism  for  business  must  be  better 
criticism  than  that  which  is  the  fruit 
of  even  the  most  refined  perception, 
which  is  only  artistic  or  literary.  I 
do  not  know  what  those  notes  of  Tieck 
are  which  are  said  to  be  found  in  a  copy 
of  Mrs.  Jameson's  book  now  in  the 
British  Museum ;  but  I  can  suppose 
that  that  accomplished  man  may  have 
learnt  from  an  Englishwoman  some 
lessons  which  all  his  studies  in  Shak- 
speare  and  in-  art  had  not  imparted  to 
him.  I  should  like  to  know  whether  his 
coarse  apprehensions  of  the  character  of 
Opheliay  natural  icnough  to  one  who  con- 
templated it  chiefly  with  reference  to  the 
stage,  would  have  sustained  themselves 
against'the  judgment  of,  one  wb,o .lopked 
at  it  in  relation  to  actual  life. 

For  the  power  of  exercising  this  kind 
of  judgment,  Mrs:  Jameson,  must  have 
been  indebted  to  experience- — piobably 
painful  experience.  In  her  earliest  book, 


"The  Diary  of  an  Ennuye*e,"  written 
when  she  was  Miss  Murphy,  and  a 
governess,  she  was  too  ready  to  make  the 
world  a  confidant  of  the  restless  yearn- 
ings which  belong  to  one  who  is  con- 
scious of  undeveloped  power  and  sympa- 
thies. She  afterwards  learned  greater 
reticence,  and,  knowing  greater  sorrows, 
cared  less  to  speak  of  them.  But  she 
was  able  to  understand  the  meaning  of 
books  from  what  she  had  felt,  and,  what 
was  of  far  more  importance  than  under- 
standing the  female  characters  of  Shak- 
speare,  learnt  to  know  those  of  her  own 
time.  All  that  she  had  studied  in  paint- 
ing and  poetry  was  more  and  more 
turned  in  the  later  years  of  her  life  to  a 
practical  use.  Her  lectures  "  On  Sisters 
of  Charity  and  the  Communion  of 
Labour,"  could  only  have  been  written 
by  a  person  who  had  studied  the  mo- 
nastic legends,  and  the  monastic  history 
— studied  it  with  the  direct  purpose  of 
getting  all  the  good  out  of  both  which 
could  be  got  for  her  own  time  ;  with 
a  steady  conviction  that  all  which  was 
artificial  in  them,  all  which  belonged  to 
a  mere  notion  of  saintliness  and  not  to 
work,  cannot  be  appliable  to  our  time, 
because  it  is  not  real,  not  godly.  The 
text  of  these  lectures  is  the  sentence  of 
St.  Paul,  "  Neither  the  man  without  the 
"vornan,  nor  the  woman  without  the 
"man,  in  the  Lord."  They  are  therefore 
strong  testimonies  against  that  separa- 
tion of  the  sexes  which  the  mediaeval 
devotion  authorized,  by  a  person  who  is 
determined  to  do  the  fullest  justice  to 
whatever  in  that  devotion  had  a  really 
divine  and  human  ground,  and  could 
stand  the  test  of  change  in  time,  place, 
and  circumstances^ 

These  lectures  happily  attracted  some 
serious  attention.  The  self-denial  of  the 
writer  in  forcing  herself  to  deliver  them, 
so  encountering  the  strongest  prejudices 
of  our  sex  and  hers,  had  some  effect;  the 
work  of  Miss  Nightingale  in  the  hospitals 
of  Turkey  and  of  England,  far  more. 
Moreover,  the  lectures  were  maintain- 
ing, not  a  paradox,  but  a  commonplace, 
which  all  persons  admitted  when  it  was 
stated,  and  yet  which  all  knew  to  be 
habitually  disregarded.  If  Mrs.  Jameson 


232 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


had  earned  less  popularity  by  her  pre- 
vious works, — if  she  had  given  less 
proofs  of  thorough  acquaintance  with 
her  subject  in  this — she  might  have 
counted  at  such  a  moment  on  awaken- 
ing an  interest  in  the  minds  of  not  a 
few  whom  it  was  desirable  to  interest 
But  she  did  not  trust  to  a  temporary 
excitement  She  was  quite  convinced 
that  the  cause  she  was  advocating  con- 
cerned the  well-being  of  the  whole  land ; 
she  was  aware  that  it  must  therefore 
encounter  that  vis  inertice  in  male  and 
female  minds  which  is  so  much  more 
perilous  than  open  opposition.  She  re- 
solutely kept  alive  attention  to  the  sub- 
ject Last  year  she  re-published  her 
lectures,  introducing  them  by  a  letter  to 
Lord  John  EusselL  It  was*  suggested 
by  some  weighty  words  respecting  the 
influence  of  women,  which  he  had 
spoken  in  1858,  at  the  second  meeting 
of  the  Association  for  the  promotion  of 
Social  Science.  As  the  letter  contains 
the  last  message  of  a  very  remarkable 
woman — as  it  is  written  with  the 
earnestness  and  solemnity  of  one  who 
felt  that  it  might  be  the  last — I  propose 
to  make  one  or  two  extracts  from  it, 
hoping  that  my  readers  will  procure 
the  book  which  contains  them,1 

The  following  passage  deserves  to  be 
gravely  considered  by  those  who  receive 
the  dogmas  of  newspapers  as  if  they  were 
messengers  from  Heaven  : — 

"No  injured  vnves  or  suffering  children  are 
ever  benefited  by  an  appeal  to  the  public, — such 
is  the  fiat  recently  pronounced  by  an  influ- 
ential periodical.  The  absolute  tone  of  this 
assertion,  as  if  it  were  some  indisputable 
truth,  strikes  into  silent  acquiescence  a  timid 
unreflecting  mind :  but  is  it  true  ?  Your 
Lordship's  long  experience  as  a  statesman 
must  have  proved  to  you  that  it  is  altogether 
false.  It  may  be  true  as  regards  individual 
cases.  Too  certainly  an  injured  wife,  who  has 
suffered  all  she  can  be  made  to  suffer,  is  not 
restored  to  happiness  by  '  an  appeal  to  the 
public.'  The  wretched  child,  who  has  been 
sacrificed  in  body  and  soul  by  the  mistakes 

1  "  Sisters  of  Charity  and  the  Communion 
of  Labour."  Two  Lectures  on  the  Social 
Employments  of  "Women,  by  Mrs.  Jameson. 
A  new  edition,  enlarged  and  improved.  With 
a  Prefatory  Letter  to  Lord  John  Russell. 
Longman,  1858. 


and  neglects  of  society,  is  not  made  good, 
healthy,  or  happy,  by  '  an  appeal  to  the 
public.'  Public  sympathy  in  the  one  case, 
public  indignation  in  the  other,  cannot  heal, 
cannot  recall  the  past :  but  is  it  not  to  the 
awakening  of  the  '  public '  conscience  by  re- 
iterated appeals  against  such  individual  cases 
of  irreparable  wrong,  that  we  owe  the  pro- 
tection of  many  women,  the  salvation  of  many 
children  ?  "With  regard  to  other  subjects  just 
touched  upon  in  the  following  Essays,  we  are 
not  now  called  upon  to  demonstrate  that  such 
and  such  objects  are  right  or  desirable.  How 
they  shall  best  be  carried  out  is  now  the 
question.  It  has  been  proved  by  experience, 
that  where  men  have  tried  to  accomplish  some 
well-considered,  carefully  planned  philan- 
thropic purpose,  they  have,  in  the  long  run, 
fallen  into  confusion,  and  found  themselves 
stumbling,  as  it  were,  blindfold,  amid  ill-un- 
derstood, half-acknowledged  obstacles  and 
difficulties  : — and  that  where  women  have 
set  about  organising  on  their  part  some  united 
action  for  certain  very  laudable  purposes,  they 
fall  to  pieces  like  bricks  without  cement. 
But  when  men  and  women,  who  together  con- 
stitute the  true  social  public,  come  to  an 
agreement  in  any  object,  and  heartily  work 
together,  it  is  then  no  partial,  divided  under- 
taking; it  works  its  way  surely  from  theory 
into  practice,  and  does  not  fall  back  into  a 
chaos  of  confusion  and  disappointment.  Some 
of  our  public  institutions  remind  one  of  those 
unhappy  ships  which  are  to  be  seen,  I  am 
told,  in  our  great  dockyards,  constructed  on 
no  ascertained  requirement  or  principle  ;  then 
taken  to  pieces,  remodelled,  remade,  patched, 
new-engined,  new-named ;  rotten  before  they 
are  launched,  or  leaky  when  launched.  •'  Sails 
or  engines  ?'  that  was  the  question ; — and  now 
we  find  that,  if  the  vessel  is  to  stem  safely 
both  winds  and  waves,  we  cannot  do  with- 
out both  sails  and  engines, — sails  to  catch 
the  favouring  winds  of  heaven,  and  engines  to 
force  a  way  through  the  opposing  waters.  So 
if  men  and  women  are  united  in  combining 
and  working  any  great  social  machinery,  it 
will  then  work  well  These  principles,  my 
Lord,  based  on  natural  and  immutable  laws, 
were  perhaps  disputed  yesterday,  are  faintly 
recognised  to-day,  but  will  become  the  com- 
mon faith  of  to-morrow.  Therefore  with 
regard  to  this  'woman  question' — so  called 
— as  I  have  no  misgivings,  so  I  have  no  desire 
to  precipitate  the  inevitable  ;  no  wish  to  hurry, 
and  by  hurry  ing  perplex  or  defeat  for  a  time 
that  matured  and  practical  result  to  which  we 
all  look  forward.  For  myself,  I  have  a  deep- 
seated  solemn  conviction  that  the  great  social 
want  of  our  time  is  a  more  perfect  domestic 
union,  and  a  more  complete  social  communion 
of  men  and  women ;  and  that  this  want, 
more  and  more  felt  through  the  thinking 
brain  and  throbbing  heart  of  the  people,  will, 
in  God's  good  time,  be  fulfilled  by  natural 
means,  and  work  to  natural  issues  of  good 
and  happiness  beyond  our  present  imagining." 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


233 


The  following  is  even  more  important, 
both  as  a  protest  against  a  calumny,  and 
as  a  testimony  of  personal  experience  in 
two  different  quarters  of  the  earth  : — 

"  It  has  been  said  in  a  popular,  well-written 
review,  that  women  consider  themselves,  and 
desire  to  be  considered,  as  a  separate  class  in 
the  community,  with  separate  interests,  pur- 
suits, and  aims,  from  those  of  men.  We  are 
reproached  at  once  with  a  desire  to  assimilate 
ourselves  to  men,  and  a  desire  to  separate  our- 
selves from  men ;  and  we  are  solemnly  warned 
against  the  social  evils  and  moral  perils  of  such 
an  assumption  to  ourselves  and  to  the  commu- 
nity at  large. 

"  My  Lord,  I  deny  absolutely,  on  the  part 
of  my  countrywomen,  any  such  desire,  any  such 
assumption.  No  more  fatal,  more  unjust  mis- 
conception could  prevail,  with  regard  to  the 
views  and  feelings  entertained  by  intelligent 
Englishwomen  on  their  own  condition  and 
requirements.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  desire 
and  ambition  of  women  to  be  considered  in  all 
the  relations,  all  the  conditions  of  life,  domestic 
and  social,  as  the  helpmate.  We  pray  not  to  be 
separated  from  men,  but  to  be  allowed  to  be 
nearer  to  them  ;  to  be  considered  not  merely 
as  the  appendage  and  garnish  of  man's  outward 
existence,  but  as  a  part  of  his  life,  and  all  that 
is  implied  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word.  We 
see  the  strong  necessity  in  many  cases,  yet  we 
do  regret  that  the  avocations  of  men  accustom 
them  to  dispense  with  much  of  our  sympathy 
and  society,  and  that  thus  a  great  number  of 
women  are  thrown  upon  their  own  resources, 
mental  and  social.  Every  circle  of  men  from 
which  women  are  excluded  supposes  a  certain 
number  of  women  separated  from  them.  I  do 
not  find  that  this  state  of  things  has,  hitherto, 
made  men  uncomfortable.  Now,  however,  they 
seem,  all  at  once,  to  be  struck  with  it  as  an 
anomalous  state ;  and  I  am  glad  of  it ;  but 
surely  it  is  not  to  be  imputed  to  women  as  a 
fault,  or  as  an  assumption.  I  saw  the  effects 
of  this  kind  of  social  separation  of  the  sexes 
when  I  was  in  America.  I  thought  it  did  not 
act  well  on  the  happiness  or  the  manners  of 
either.  The  men  too  often  become  coarse  and 
material  as  clay  in  private  life,  and  in  public 
life  too  prone  to  cudgels  and  revolvers;  and 
the  effect  of  the  women  herding  so  much  toge- 
ther was  not  to  refine  them,  but  the  contrary  ; 
to  throw  them  into  various  absurd  and  unfe- 
minine  exaggerations.  This,  at  least,  was  my 
impression.  I  confine  my  observations  as  much 
as  possible  to  our  own  time  and  country,  else 
I  might  enlarge  on  these  influences,  and  show 
that  in  Italy,  as  in  America,  the  separation  of 
the  two  sexes,  arising  from  quite  different 
causes,  is  producing  even  worse  results.  It 
struck  me  in  Italy  that  the  absence  of  all  true 
sympathy,  a  sort  of  disdain  felt  by  the  men  for 
the  women,  as  the  mere  amusement  of  an  idle 
hour,  might  be  fatal  to  the  spirit  of  liberty. 
The  women,  ill  educated,  thrown  on  the 
priests  for  sympathy,  consideration,  and  com- 

]S"0.  9. — VOL.  II. 


panionship,  were  distrusted  and  contemned  by 
the  liberal  party.  The  men  could  not  live 
without  the  love  of  women — it  is  rather  an 
abuse  of  the  sentiment  so  to  speak — but  they 
aimed  to  live  without  the  social  '  comforts 
locked  up  in  woman's  love,'  without  the 
sympathy,  esteem,  or  approbation  of  women. 
Of  the  deep  taint  of  corruption,  the  gross  ma- 
terialism, the  discord  between  scepticism  and 
the  most  ignorant  superstition,  and  other  even 
worse  results,  I  forbear  to  say  more  in  this 
place.  I  thought,  when  I  was  in  Italy,  that  it 
might  be  difiicult  to  establish  political  liberty 
on  such  a  rotten  basis  ;  but  it  is  fair  to  add 
that  accomplished  Italians,  while  admitting 
the  whole  extent  of  this  social  mischief,  attri- 
buted it  to  the  anomalous  state  of  their  poli 
tical  and  religious  institutions.  I  write  this 
while  rumours  of  war  are  around  us,  and  while 
the  deepest  sympathies  of  my  nature  are 
aroused  in  the  cause  of  the  Italian  people  ; 
but  not  the  less  do  I  feel  that,  let  the  issue  be 
what  it  may,  they  cannot  build  up  a  perma- 
nent national  and  political  existence  except  on 
a  healthier  social  basis.  I  am  speaking  only  of 
the  general  impression  I  brought  away  from 
America  and  from  Italy,  and  do  not  presume 
to  judge  either  country;  only  I  should  be  sorry 
to  see  the  same  causes  prevail  and  produce  the 
same  effects  in  this  England  of  ours.  The  best 
safeguard  against  ruffianism,  as  against  profli- 
gacy, lies  in  the  true  relation  between  men 
and  women.  There  ai'e  professions  which  neces- 
sarily divide  us  from  men  during  some  hours  of 
the  day.  Lawyers,  government  officers,  mer- 
chants, soldiers,  sailors,  even  when  they  are 
married  and  have  homes,  spend  much  of  their 
time  out  of  them.  They  should  be  careful 
that  it  is  not  too  much.  Why  should  this 
separation  be  carried  farther  than  is  inevit- 
ab]  3  ?  Why  do  clubs,  academies,  charitable 
boards,  literary  and  scientific  societies  so  tena- 
ciously exclude  women,  except  when  tolerated 
as  an  occasional  and  merely  ornamental  element  ? 
Men  may  say — they  do  say — '  What  prevents 
you  women  from  having  charitable,  literary, 
scientific  societies  and  academies  of  your  own? ' 
But  this  is  precisely  the  state  of  things  which 
every  wise  man,  every  feeling  woman,  will 
deprecate.  If,  where  no  law  of  expediency  or 
necessity  require  it,  men  studiously  separate 
themselves  from  us,  and  then  reproach  us  that 
we  form,  in  mere  self-defence,  some  resources 
for  ourselves,  what  can  ensue  but  the  moral 
deterioration  of  both  ?  Let  not  woman  be 
driven  to  this  :  we  do  not  seek  it,  nor  does  it 
rest  with  us  to  avoid  it." 

I  am  afraid  I  must  not  omit  the 
following  sentences.  The  regret  which 
they  will  perhaps  cause  to  some  clever 
writer,  who  fancied  when  he  had  con- 
cluded his  article  and  received  the 
homage  of  his  club,  that  it  was  done 
with  for  ever,  may  be  salutary,  however 


234 


Female  School  of  Art ;  Mrs.  Jameson. 


bitter.  Few  accomplished  men  care  to 
inflict  pain  upon  accomplished  and  noble 
women  ;  fewer  still  would  like  to  think 
that  those  had  suffered  from  it  to  whom 
compensation  is  impossible. 

"'In  former  days  women  did  not  usually 
read  the  satires  written  by  men  against  our 
sex ;  they  were  too  gross — in  soine  instances 
too  atrocious  even  for  men  to  endure,  unless 
recommended  by  their  classical  latinity  to  the 
study  of  otir  school-boys,  or  those  who  instruct 
our  school-boys ;  but  reviews  and  journals  are 
now  a  part  of  the  reading  of  all  well-educated 
people ;  they  lie  on  every  drawing-room  table. 
A  woman  takes  up  one  of  these  able  periodi- 
cals, expecting  to  find  instruction,  moral  suste- 
nance, religious  guidance.  Possibly  she  lights 
upon  some  article,  wrjtten,  not  in  Latin,  but  in 
choice  and  vigorous  English,  by  one  of  those 
many  clever  young  writers  who,  it  is  said, 
have  come  to  a  determination  'to  put  down 
women.'  Here  she  finds  her  honest  endea- 
vours to  raise  her  position  in  life,  or  to  reclaim 
her  fallen  sisters,  traduced  and  ridiculed.  She 
perceives  that  these  gentlemanly  adversaries 
do  not  argue  the  question  of  right  or  wrong ; 
they  simply  use  a  power  for  a  purpose.  She 
sees  the  wit  and  ability  she  admires,  the  supe- 
rior power  to  which  she  would  willingly  look 
up  for  help,  here  turned  against  her ;  the 
privilege  of  working  out  good  in  any  path  but 
that  which  obsolete  custom  has  prescribed  to 
her  is  positively  refused.  If  her  success  in  any 
such  path  be  undeniable,  it  ia  acknowledged 
in  an  insolently  complimentary  style  as  an 
exceptional  case  ;  while  the  mistakes  or 
failures  of  certain  women  are  singled  out  as  a 
theme  of  the  bitterest  ridicule,  and  visited 
upon  all.  Well  !  the  woman  who  reads  this 
well-written,  brilliant,  '  unanswerable '  article, 
is  perhaps  at  the  very  time  working  hard  with 
all  the  power  God  has  given  her,  trained  by 
such  means  as  society  has  provided  for  her, 
to  gain  her  daily  bread,  to  assist  her  strug- 
gling family ;  perhaps  she  may  be  sustaining 
an  indigent  father,  or  paying  the  college  debts, 
or  supporting  the  unacknowledged  children  of 
a  dissipated  brother  (we  have  known  such  cases 
though  we  do  not  speak  of  them).  She  reads, 
— and  the  words,  winged  by  eloquence  and  en- 
venomed by  a  cynical  impertinence,  sink  into 
her  heart,  and  leave  an  ulcer  there.  It  is  not 
the  facts  or  the  truths  which  offend,  it  is  the 
vulgar  flippant  tone,  the  slighting  allusion,  the 
heartless  'jocosity' — to  borrow  one  of  their 
own  words — with  which  men,  gentlemanly, 
accomplished,  otherwise  generous  and  honour- 
able men,  can  sport  with  what  is  most  sacred 
in  a  woman's  life — most  terrible  in  a  woman's 
fate.  Those  who  say  to  us,  '  Help  yourselves ! ' 
might  say  in  this  case,  '  Retort  is  easy  ! '  It 
is  so  — too  easy  !  Suppose  a  woman  were  to 
take  up  the  pen  and  write  a  review,  headed  in 
capital  letters,  'MEN  in  the  19th  Century!' 
and  pom  ting  to  absurd  mistakes  in  legislation; 


to  the  want  of  public  spirit  in  public  men  ;  to 
fraudulent  bankruptcies ;  to  mad  or  credulous 
speculations  with  borrowed  gold — to  social 
evils  of  the  masculine  gender,  corrupting  the 
homes  of  others,  and  polluting  their  own,  and 
wind  up  the  philippic  with — '  Of  such  are  our 
pastors  and  our  masters '  I  Or  respond  to  an 
article  on  'Silly  Novels  by  Lady  Novelists,' 
by  an  article  headed  '  Silly  Novels  by  Gentle- 
men Novelists '  ?  True  !  this  might  be  done — 
but  God  forbid  that  it  ever  should  be  done  ! — 
God  forbid  that  women  should  ever  enter  an 
arena  of  contest  in  which  victory,  were  it 
possible,  would  be  destruction  !  The  aggra- 
vating words  of  angry  women  never  did  any 
good,  written  or  spoken  ;  and  of  all  things  we 
could  look  to  for  help,  recrimination  were  the 
most  foolish  and  the  most  fatal.  If  men  can 
sport  with  that  part  of  the  social  happiness 
and  virtue  which  has  been  entrusted  to  them, 
it  is  bad  enough  ;  but  I  trust  in  God  that  no 
woman  will  ever  profane  the  sanctities  of  life 
left  in  her  keeping  by  retorting  scorn  with 
scorn,  or  avenging  licence  by  licence,  for  that 
were  not  merely  to  deface  the  social  edifice, 
but  to  pull  it  down  upon  our  heads. 

"  Meantime,  those  who  look  on  cannot  but  see 
that  fare  is  a  mischief  done  which  men  have 
not  calculated,  and  which  women  cannot  avert. 
It  is  still  worse  when  these  accomplished 
writers  stoop  to  a  mode  of  attack  which  allows 
of  no  possible  retort,  and  insinuate  imputations 
which  no  woman  can  hear  without  shrinking, 
and  against  which  self-defence  is  ignominious. 
Now,  as  formerly,  reviewers  perfectly  under- 
stand this ;  '  but,'  men  say,  'if  women  will  ex- 
pose themselves  to  these  attacks,  they  must 
endure  them ;'  so  then,  we  may  depend  on 
'  man's  protection  '  only  so  long  as  we  do  not 
need  it  ?  I  have  known  a  lady  who,  bent  on 
some  mission  of  mercy,  ventured,  at  an  unusual 
hour,  to  pass  through  Oxford-street,  and  was 
grossly  insulted  by  a  gentleman  who  mistook 
her  calling  :  but  then,  '  why  did  she  expose 
herself  to  such  an  accident  f.  Why  ? — because 
there  are  cases  in  which  a  woman  must  do  the 
duty  that  lies  before  her  even  at  the  risk  of  a 
derisive  satire  or  a  cowardly  insult ;  just  as 
there  are  occasions  when  a  man  must  march 
straight  forward,  though  he  knows  he  will  be 
shot  at  from  behind  a  hedge." 

This  is  strongly  and  eloquently  writ- 
ten ;  not  without  anger,  yet  more  in 
sorrow  than  in  anger.  It  cannot,  how- 
ever, be  entirely  just.  Where  the  article 
on  "  Silly  Novels  by  Lady  Novelists " 
appeared,  I  know  not ;  but  it  must  have 
been  intended  in  a  different  spirit  from 
that  which  Mrs.  Jameson  supposed.  An 
extravagant  and  highly  spiced  compli- 
ment was  concealed  under  it.  There 
cannot  be  the  least  occasion  to  show  that 
gentlemen  write  silly  novels.  Every- 
body is  aware  of  that.  The  world  is 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


235 


full  of  them.     But  an  ambitious  critic 
wishing  to  propound  something  new,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  defend  the  honour 
of  his   own   sex,  might  exclaim   with 
something  of  triumph  and  satisfaction, 
'Talk   as  you   please  of  your  'Adam 
'  Bede,'  your  '  Mary  Barton/  your  '  Heir 
'of  Kedclyffe/   your   'John   Halifax,' 
'your  'Villette/  your   'Old  Debt' — 
'we  have  discovered  that  even  women 
'  can   write   silly  Novels  ! "      Perhaps 
the   instances    produced   did  not  esta- 
blish even  this  exceptional  accusation. 
I  do  not  deny  that  the  evil  spirit  to 
which  Mrs.  Jameson  alludes,   has   got 
possession  of  the  minds  of  some  of  the 
ablest  young  men  in  England ;    and, 
that  any  person,  man  or  woman,  who 
helps    to   exorcise   it,   deserves    to   be 
canonised.     But  it  is  not  directed  more 
against  women  than  against  men ;   and 
it  is  far  more  fatal  to  those  in  whom  it 
dwells  than  to  those  whom  it  tempts 
them  to  revile.     My  last  extract  will 
connect  the  main  subject  of  this  article 
with  the  Institution  which  first  led  me 
to  speak  of  her. 


"  I  merely  suggest  these  considerations  to 
our  Education  Committees,  and  to  the  So- 
ciety for  the  Promotion  of  Social  Science. 
But  in  regard  to  education,  we  Englishwomen 
require  something  more.  We  wish  to  have 
some  higher  kinds  of  industrial,  and  profes- 
sional, and  artistic  training  more  freely  ac- 
cessible to  women.  We  wish  to  have  some 
share,  however  small,  in  the  advantages  which 
most  of  our  large  well-endowed  public  insti- 
tutions extend  to  men  only.  When  the 
National  School  of  Design  was  opened  to 
female  students,  it  met  with  the  strongest 
opposition,  and,  strange  to  say,  the  principal 
objection  was  on  the  score  of  morality; — one 
would  have  thought  that  all  London  was  to 
be  demoralised,  because  a  certain  number  of 
ladies  and  a  certain  number  of  gentlemen  had 
met  under  the  same  roof  for  the  study  of  art. 
True,  the  two  schools  were  in  distinct,  in  far- 
separated  apartments,  but  it  was  argued  the 
pupils  might  perhaps  meet  on  the  stairs,  and 
then,  when  going  home,  who  was  to  protect 
the  young  ladies  from  the  young  gentlemen  ? 
You,  my  Lord,  may  have  forgotten  some  of 
the  disgraceful  absurdities  which  gentlemen 
and  artists  were  not  ashamed  to  utter  publicly 
and  privately  on  that  occasion ; — I  blush  to 
recall  them ; — I  trust  we  have  done  with 
them ;  and  as  I  am  sxire  men  have  no  reason 
to  fear  women  as  their  rivals,  so  I  hope  women 
will,  in  all  noble  studies,  be  allowed  hence- 
forth to  be  their  associates  and  companions." 


GAEIBALDI  AND   THE   SICILIAN    KEVOLUTION. 


BY   AURELIO   SAFFI. 


THE  Sicilian  insurrection  is,  both  in 
its  moral  and  in  its  political  character, 
an  event  of  the  greatest  importance  in 
contemporary  history.  Originated  in 
the  most  legitimate  protest  of  a  whole 
people  against  the  worst  government  of 
the  present  age,  it  teaches  the  oppressors 
and  the  oppressed  that  no  contrivance 
of  brutal  force  can  withstand  the  una- 
nimous effort  of  a  nation  rising  to  vin- 
dicate its  right;  whilst,  at  the  same 
time,  it  powerfully  tends  to  link  toge- 
ther the  severed  limbs  of  a  great  country 
— Italy;  and  thereby  materially  to 
modify  the  whole  system  of  inter- 
national policy  in  Europe. 

The  chief  events  of  the  struggle  being 
well  known,  I  will  limit  myself  to  a 
brief  sketch  of  the  proceedings. 

On  the  night  between  the  2d  and  the 


3d  of  April  last,  a  nucleus  of  Sicilian 
patriots,  who  had  met  in  arms  in  the 
convent  of  Gancia  at  Palermo,  to  con- 
sider the  opportunity  of  rising,  were 
attacked  by  the  police,  who  had  traced 
them  out.  After  an  obstinate  contest, 
and  many  severe  losses,  they  withdrew 
to  the  country.  The  insurrection  spread. 
The  revolutionary  bands,  led  by  influen- 
tial landowners,  were  able  to  hold  out 
for  more  than  a  month  against  troops 
disheartened  by  the  consciousness  of  a 
bad  cause.  Meantime  the  news  of  tho 
Sicilian  movement  was  rousing  men's 
hearts  throughout  the  peninsula.  A 
wide  agitation  pervaded  all  the  towns  of 
Northern  and  Central  Italy.  "  Help  to 
the  Sicilians  "  became  the  watchword  of 
all  active  patriots.  Subscriptions  were 
opened ;  volunteers  from  all  parts  of 

R  2 


236 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


the  country  flocked  to  Genoa.  There 
Garibaldi,  assisted  by  the  efforts  of  the 
people,  noiselessly  organized  his  expe- 
dition. Eluding  official  interference,  he 
succeeded  in  collecting  arms  and  en- 
listing men.  On  the  appointed  day 
some  of  his  followers  took  possession  of 
two  commercial  steamers — the  Piemonte 
and  the  Lombardo — belonging  to  the 
Rubattino  Company  of  Genoa,  and  got 
them  out  to  the  open  sea.  At  eve  the 
volunteers  were  gathering  in  the  gardens 
of  the  Villa  Spinola,  outside  the  town, 
where  Garibaldi  with  his  officers  was  in 
attendance.  A  number  of  boats  was 
ready  near  the  beach.  At  ten  o'clock 
Garibaldi  gave  the  signal,  betaking  him- 
self to  one  of  the  boats,  in  which  eight 
brave  seamen  of  the  Riviera  were 
eagerly  waiting  to  carry  their  gallant 
fellow-countryman  to  one  of  the  steamers, 
the  Piemonte;  and  in  a  short  time 
the  whole  band  was  on  board  with  arms 
and  ammunition.  Crowds  of  friends — 
men,  women,  and  youngsters,  reluctantly 
remaining  behind — were  bidding  God 
speed  from  the  shore  to  the  departing 
patriots,  many  of  whom  were  leaving 
wives  and  children.  The  two  brave 
vessels  went  proudly  floating  across  the 
great  main  in  the  darkness  of  night, 
carrying  on  their  decks  the  fortunes 
of  a  nation.  Garibaldi  and  Nino  Bixio1 
— both  of  them  experienced  sailors — 
were  watching  at  the  helm,  successfully 
struggling  with  a  stormy  sea.  On  the 
7th  they  stopped  for  coal  and  arms  at 

1  Nino  Bixio  is  a  Genoese  of  a  very  honour- 
able family,  and  a  relative  of  the  ex-member 
of  Parliament  of  that  name  in  Paris.  In  1848, 
when  yet  very  young,  he  distinguished  himself 
fighting  with  the  volunteers  in  Lombardy,  and 
was  raised  to  the  rank  of  captain.  In  '49,  he 
followed  Garibaldi  to  Rome,  as  an  officer  of 
his  staff,  and  was  wounded  at  S.  Pancrazio, 
during  the  siege.  In  the  years  that  followed, 
when  there  was  no  hope  of  action  for  Italy, 
Bixio,  who  from  his  boyhood  had  been  brought 
up  a  sailor,  undertook  long  and  difficult  voyages 
at  sea,  visited  Australia  and  the  Antarctic 
regions,  keeping  an  interesting  journal  of  his 
maritime  expedition,  and  returned  to  his 
native  town  to  work  again  for  his  country. 
When  Garibaldi,  at  the  beginning  of  last 
year's  war,  crossed  the  Ticino  with  his  Caccia- 
tori  delle  Alpi,  Nino  Bixio  was  among  the  first 
to  take  the  field.  He  has  lately  been  slightly 
wounded  at  Calata  Fimi. 


Talamone ;  on  the  9th  at  Orbetello  ;  on 
the  llth,  skilfully  avoiding  the  Neapo- 
litan  cruisers,  they  landed  at  Marsala. 
What  took  place  after  the  landing — 
namely,  the  joining  of  the  bands  of 
native  insurgents  with  the  Cacciatori 
delle  Alpi ;  the  rapid  march,  and  the 
impetuous  attack  with  the  bayonet 
against  the  royal  troops  on  the  slopes 
of  Calata  Fimi,  taking  one  of  their 
mountain-guns  and  putting  them  to 
flight ;  then  the  skirmishes  at  Partenico 
and  S.  Martino,  and  the  sudden  appa- 
rition of  Garibaldi  on  the  heights  of 
Palermo — all  this  is  familiar  to  English 
readers  through  the  narrative  of  the 
Times'  Correspondent. 

The  strategic  ingenuity  of  Garibaldi's 
operations  to  mislead  the  royalists  con- 
centrated on  the  plateau  beneath ;  his 
mock-retreat  from  Parco,  his  wonderful 
march  to  Misilnieri,  the  unexpected 
assault  at  Porta  di  Termini,  and  his 
triumphal  entrance  in  the  market-place, 
the  Vecchia  Fiera,  amidst  the  enthusias- 
tic cheering  of  the  liberated  population, 
are  equally  known ;  then  followed  the 
street-fight  for  three  days,  the  brutal 
and  cowardly  bombardment,  the  cruelties 
perpetrated  by  the  troops  on  the  citizens, 
and  the  glorious  victory  of  the  patriots, 
compelling  the  Neapolitan  Generals  to 
accept  a  capitulation,  of  which  Garibaldi 
dictated  the  terms.  I  shall,  therefore, 
abstain  from  a  detailed  account  of  the 
immediate  facts,  and  will  enter,  instead, 
into  the  causes  which  have  prepared  the 
Sicilian  revolution,  and  which  explain 
its  success. 

There  have  been  two  powerful  agencies 
at  work  in  the  Sicilian  rising  :  one  local, 
and  called  forth  by  the  iniquitous  acts 
of  the  rulers ;  the  other  general,  and 
inherent  in  the  movement  of  national 
ideas  throughout  Italy.  The  local  ques- 
tion is  one  of  long  standing  between  the 
Sicilians  and  the  Bourbonic  dynasty. 
Earlier  than  any  other  European  country, 
Sicily  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  a  regular 
constitution,  the  foundation  of  which 
was  first  laid  by  the  Normans  in  the 
eleventh  century.  Their  successors,  the 
Swabian  kings,  and  particularly  the 
Emperor  Frederic  II.,  not  only  respected 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


237 


but  enlarged  the  fundamental  law  of 
the  country,  and  more  regularly  called 
the  deputies  of  the  towns,  or  commons, 
to  a  seat  in  Parliament.  When,  in  1266, 
Charles  of  Anjou,  supported  by  the 
Pope,  usurped  the  throne  of  the  unfor- 
tunate Swabians, .  enforcing  by  right- 
divine  an  absolute  form  of  government 
on  both  Naples  and  Sicily,  the  Sicilians, 
who  had  been  awakened  to  the  energies 
of  a  free  nation,  put  an  end  to  French 
tyranny  and  Papal  encroachments  by 
the  famous  Yespers,  and  turned  for  pro- 
tection to  the  constitutional  House  of 
Aragon.  The  Aragonese  kings  were 
freely  elected  by  the  Sicilian  people, 
and  dependent  in  their  administration 
on  the  control  of  their  Parliaments. 
Charles  V.  himself — the  great  destroyer 
of  mediaeval  liberties  in  Europe — having 
succeeded,  as  the  representative  of  the 
dynastic  rights  of  Aragon  and  Castille, 
to  the  Sicilian  throne,  swore  to  the  con- 
stitution and  opened  the  Parliament  in 
person  in  1535.  Nor  were  the  franchises 
of  the  island  abolished-  or  curtailed 
during  the  two  centuries  of  Spanish 
vice-royal  government.  After  the  war 
of  succession,  at  the  beginning  of  last 
century,  the  Congress  of  Utrecht  gave 
Sicily  to  Victor  Amedeus  of  Savoy,  en- 
joining to  him.  in  the  7th  article  of  the 
treaty,  in  the  name  of  the  allied  powers, 
to  "  approve,  confirm,  and  ratify  all  the 
privileges,  liberties,  etc."  ....  of  the 
Sicilians;  and.  Victor  Amedeus  duly 
ful filled  his  obligations.  To  violate 
the  sacredness  of  old  tradition,  over- 
throw a  constitution  hallowed  by  seven 
centuries  of  national  records,  break 
through  all  personal  and  public  secu- 
rities, and  forswear  the  most  solemn 
promises  and  oaths,  was  the  unenvi- 
able distinction  of  the  House  of  Bour- 
bon. The  founder  of  this  dynasty, 
Charles  III.  of  Bourbon,  son  of  Philip 
V.  of  Spain,  and  of  the  ambitious 
Isabella  Farnese,  entered  Naples  and 
occupied  Sicily,  in  1734,  with  the  con- 
sent of  the  powers  allied  against  Austria, 
and  under  the  condition  of  a  permanent 
separation  of  those  provinces  from  the 
Spanish  crown.  He  acknowledged,  how- 
ever, the  local  privileges  of  the  island, 


and  ruled,  according  to  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  as  a  philosopher  and  a  reformer. 
But  when,  at  the  time  of  the  French 
revolution,  the  old  powers  of  Europe 
leagued  themselves  against  liberal  ideas, 
Ferdinand  I.  of  Naples,  and  his  wife, 
Caroline  o±  Austria,  followed  the  dic- 
tates of  the  most  lawless  despotism. 
They  requited  the  generous  hospitality 
and  help  which  the  Sicilians  had  afforded 
them,  by  attempting,  in  1811,  to  deprive 
them  of  their  rights.  No  sooner  had 
Ferdinand,  on  his  return  to  Naples  in 
1814,  secured  his  sway  under  Austrian 
protection,  than  he  established  a  system 
of  absolute  government  ;  forced  the 
island  into  Neapolitan  centralization, 
and  allowed  it  to  be  invaded  by  a  rapa- 
cious bureaucracy  and  police,  who  have 
ever  since  treated  the  Sicilians  like 
hereditary  bondsmen. 

"  An  all-powerful  and  unrestrained 
"  police  "  (says  the  protest  of  the  Sicilian 
Parliament,  in  1 848,  to  the  Great  Powers) 
'  entangled  both  penal  and  civil  laws  in 
'  its  vast  meshes,  mocking  at  justice,  and 
'  respecting  neither  personal  safety  nor 
'  the  privacy  of  the  domestic  sanctuary. 
'.  .  .  The  Sicilians  were  thrown  into 
'prison  and  exiled  without  even  the 
'  formality  of  a  writ  of  judgment;  they 
'  were  tortured  in  the  barracks  of  the 
'  gendarmes,  and  in  the  gloomy  dens  of 
'  the  Commissaries ;  in  spite  of  custom 
'  and  national  institutions,  the  episcopal 
'  sees  were  not  filled  by  Sicilians,  while 
'  the  holy  calling  of  priesthood  was  de- 
'secrated  by  a  system  of  espionage 
'  enjoined  upon  the  minister  of  God  as 
'  one  of  his  duties." 

The  House  of  Bourbon  having  again, 
in  1849,  trampled  down  by  treachery 
and  massacre  the  liberties  of  its  subjects 
both  at  Naples  and  in  Sicily,  did  not 
change  its  policy.  The  atrocities  per- 
petrated by  Maniscalchi 1  and  his  asso- 
ciates upon  innocent  and  defenceless 
men,  women,  and  children,  down  to  the 
very  eve  of  the  present  insurrection,  add 
a  fearful  testimony  to  the  inexpiable 
crimes  of  a  dynasty  whose  conduct  has 
forced  into  a  protest,  in  the  name  of 

1  See  the  pamphlet  "  La  Torture  en  Sicile,' 
by  M.  De  Varenne,  an  eye-witness. 


238 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


justice  'and  humanity,  not  only  the  mo- 
derate liberals,  but  the  very  supporters 
of  legitimacy  and  right-divine. 

Thus  much  as  to  the  local  grievances 
of  the  island.  But  local  wrongs  were 
not  the  only  motive  which  impelled  the 
Sicilians  to  rise.  The  restoration  of 
their  provincial  privileges,  in  the  old 
form  at  least,  was  not  their  object.  The 
principle  which  inspired  the  movement 
from  the  beginning,  and  brought  the 
people  to  rally  with  enthusiasm  around 
Garibaldi,  arises  from  the  tendency  now 
common  to  all  Italians  towards  national 
unity.  We  must  bear  in  mind,  with  re- 
ference to  the  Italian  question,  a  funda- 
mental truth,  which,  though  manifested 
by  all  the  facts  of  contemporary  history 
in  the  peninsula,  is  often  contradicted  by 
a  certain  class  of  politicians,  who  affect 
scepticism  about  everything  that  does  not 
suit  their  taste.  The  fact  is  this :  that  the 
real  cause  of  all  the  revolutions  Avhich 
have  "taken  place  in  our  days,  in  the  dif- 
ferent states  of  Italy,  is  the  necessity  of 
national  organization  as  a  security  against 
domestic  tyranny  and  foreign  interference. 

The  division  of  the  peninsula  under 
separate  governments,  which,  with  the 
exception  of  one,  had  nothing  in  common 
with  the  aspirations  of  the  country,  and 
were  ever  ready  to  secure  their  local 
sway  by  foreign  occupation,  rendered 
utterly  impossible  any  internal  ameliora- 
tion, and  necessarily  placed  the  country 
in  a  state  of  dependence  and  helpless- 
ness with  respect  to  its  external  relations. 
It  was  through  this  that  the  Italians, — 
after  a  long  series  of  conciliatory  but 
fruitless  attempts  to  obtain  gradual  re- 
forms and  a  national  policy  at  the  hands 
of  their  rulers, — were  at  last  convinced 
that  nothing  would  avail  them  until  the 
twenty-six  millions  of  men  inhabiting 
the  country  should  be  brought  to  join 
in  one  common  life  and  action.  Thus 
every  protest  that  has  arisen,  especially 
in  the  last  ten  years,  has  revealed  the 
powerful  growth  of  the  national  idea. 

The  experiment  of  1848  has  left  deep 
traces  on  the  Italian  mind.  The  nation 
was  then  beguiled  into  the  dream  of  a 
confederation  of  States,  with  the '  Pope 
and  the  other  princes  at  the  head  of  it, 


and  of  a  war  of  independence  under 
their  united  guidance.  The  confedera- 
tion never  took  place — the  war  was  lost. 
Each  separate  province  was  left  to  fight 
single-handed ;  and  the  consequence  was 
that,  one  after  the  other,  they  fell  back 
into  slavery.  After  a  proof  of  heroism 
which  served  at  least  to  show  what  the 
Italian  race,  if  once  united,  could  be 
capable  of,  and  was  an  undying  protest 
in  the  name  of  the  country  against 
foreign  invasion,  Bologna,  Brescia,  Pa- 
lermo, Messina,  Rome,  and  Venice  fell 
under  the  arms  of  foreign  and  domestic 
oppressors.  But,  amidst  their  repeated 
drawbacks,  the  lessons  of  the  past  and 
the  hopes  of  the  future  never  ceased  to 
inspire  confidence  in  the  hearts  of  the 
Italians.  Ever  renewed  protests,  by 
words,  by  writings,  by  acts  of  desperate 
daring,  by  endless  appeals  to  action, 
were  set  to  work,  chiefly  by  men  who 
have  been  often  accused  of  anarchical 
views,  because  they  never  consented  to 
make  the  cause  of  their  country  sub- 
ordinate to  selfish  calculations,  or  to 
diplomatic  conveniences.  As  before  ;48 
the  Brothers  Bandiera  had  offered  their 
life,  to  call  forth  by  a  sublime  example 
the  dormant  energies  of  the  Italian 
youth, — so,  within  the  last  ten  years, 
Bentivegna,1  Ificotera,2  Pisacane,  and 

1  Bentivegna,  a  rich  Sicilian  proprietor,  was 
the  leader  of  an  attempt  at  insurrection  in  the 
island  a  few  years  ago;  and  he  is  even  now 
one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  insurgents. 

2  Nicotera,  a  Neapolitan  of  noble  birth,  ac- 
companied Pisacane  and  the  three  hundred, 
who    knded    at   Sapri    in   1857.     The   bold 
attempt,  as  it  is  well  known,  was  unsuccessful. 
Colonel  Pisacane,  formerly  of  the  Neapolitan 
army,  and,  in  '49,  one  of  the  leading  officers  of 
the  Roman  Republic,  fell,  with  many  others, 
fighting  against  the  royalists.     Nicotera  and 
the  rest  were  made  prisoners.     His  conduct 
in  presence  of  the  Neapolitan  tribunals,  his 
having  assumed  the  whole  responsibility,  as  a 
chief,  in  order  to  exonerate  his  companions, 
his  noble  silence  when  his  judges  sought  by 
threats  and  compulsions  to  elicit  from  him  the 
cry  of  "  Viva  il  re,"  his  constancy  and  serenity 
during  three  years  of  confinement  in  the  hor- 
rible dungeon  of  Favignana,  rank  him  among 
the  most  elevated  characters  of  our  days.    His 
deliverance  from  the  fort  of  Favignana,  which 
took  place  on  the  3d  of  June,  is  an  event  of 
happy  omen  for  Italy.     He  is  now  actively  at 
work  for  his  country's  cause  in  Palermo. 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


239 


others,  have  kept  alive,  by  individual 
acts  of  the  noblest  self-devotion,  the 
sacred  fire  of  freedom  and  nationality  in 
the  heart  of  the  people.  And  it  was 
owing  to  them,  and  to  the  party  to 
which  they  belonged, — a  party  which 
has  never  ceased  to  hold  up  at  home 
and  abroad  the  banner  of  Italian  unity, 
— that  the  country  was  raised  to  the 
consciousness  of  her  destinies. 

A  national  revolution  in  Italy  was 
recognised  as  unavoidable  and  impend- 
ing by  diplomacy  itself,  through  Count 
Cavour's  representations  at  the  Congress 
of  Paris  ;  and  it  is  my  conviction,  that, 
sooner  or  later,  even  independently  of 
any  military  help  from  without,  Italy 
must  by  her  own  means  have  achieved 
the  work  of  her  emancipation.  The 
French  complication  was  a  result  of  the 
want  of  faith  in  the  ministers  of  the 
crown  with  respect  to  the  efficiency  of 
the*  national  forces  to  withstand  the 
power  of  Austria ;  of  their  unwilling- 
ness to  meet  the  responsibility  of  the 
whole  bearing  of  the  Italian  question ; 
and  of  a  necessity,  beyond  their  control, 
arising  from  the  political  plans  of  the 
formidable  neighbour  who  offered  his 
help  in  the  Italian  war.  The  spirit  of 
the  people  of  Italy,  however,  warded  oif 
the  dangers  of  the  ministerial  policy. 
They  steadfastly  insisted  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  nationality  and  unity ;  and 
since  then  the  Sardinian  monarchy  has 
been  unavoidably  brought  to  the  alter- 
native either  of  losing  all  hold  of  the 
movement,  or  of  furthering  it  as  the 
nature  of  things  and  public  opinion 
command. 

The  Sicilian  revolution  has  forced  the 
work  back  to  its  true  direction,  and  the 
insurgents  and  their  Italian  brethren 
have  met  to  consecrate  the  bond  of  the 
common  country  on  the  field  of  their 
patriotic  battles. 

Let  us  consider  the  circumstances  and 
dispositions  under  which  it  took  place, 
the  better  to  understand  its  national 
character.  I  must  start,  in  my  exposi- 
tion, from  the  turning  point  of  the 
peace  of  Villa  Franca.  Whilst  thewarwas 
going  on  in  Lombardy,  French  influence 
was  paramount  in  Italy.  War,  policy,  and 


public  opinion  depended  on  the  maa 
who  had  crossed  the  Alps  with  200,000 
soldiers,  to  create  a  new  Napoleonic 
episode  on  a  field  well  known  to  Napo- 
leonic tradition.  And  yet,  even  at  that 
time,  the  relations  between  the  Italian 
people  and  the  power  of  France  were 
.  greatly  altered  from  what  they  had  been 
sixty  years  before.  Italy,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  century,  was  the  hand- 
maiden of  France.  Napoleon  fashioned 
her  motions  according  to  his  dictatorial 
will.  But  in  1859  she  had  a  life  of  her 
own.  Though  still  dismembered  and 
ill-organized,  she  was  aspiring,  adven- 
turous, and  capable  of  self-reliance. 
The  active  patriots  joined  Garibaldi, 
and  raised  the  national  banner  for  the 
purpose  of  giving  it  a  distinct  Italian 
character  amidst  foreign  friends  and 
foreign  foes.  The  victories  of  Como 
and  Varese  crowned  it  with  imperish- 
able laurels.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Piedmontese  army,  faithful  to  its  ancient 
traditions  of  gallantry,  and  inspired, 
besides,  by  the  new  life  of  the  country, 
accomplished  its  work  in  the  campaign 
with  signal  success.  The  nation  felt 
that  something  had  grown  within  her 
that  must  be  kept  sacred  and  uncon- 
taminated  j  and  that  she  might  owe 
gratitude,  but  not  passive  submission, 
to  France.  When  the  peace  of  Villa 
Franca  blasted  her  hopes,  leaving  her 
in  the  most  perplexing  difficulties,  she 
recoiled  in  awe,  but  did  not  lose  confi- 
dence in  her  moral  strength.  The 
central  Italian  provinces  resisted  all 
diplomatic  intrigues,  and  persevered 
cautiously  but  unflinchingly  in  the 
work  of  their  fusion.  Up  to  that  time 
Naples  and  Sicily  had  been  silently 
awaiting  the  result  of  the  struggle  in 
Northern  Italy.  The  tendency  that  had 
prevailed,  of  limiting  the  question  for 
the  present  to  the  provinces  emanci- 
pated during  the  war,  naturally  excluded 
Home,  Sicily,  and  Naples  from  any  co- 
operation in  the  movement.  Besides 
this,  there  was  an  apprehension,  com- 
mon to  all  Italian  patriots,  lest  a  rising 
in  Southern  Italy,  while  the  Napoleonic 
prestige  was  everywhere  so  great,  should 
offer  an  opportunity  to  Muratist  preten- 


240 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


sions.  Therefore  that  part  of  the  coun- 
try  appeared  calm  whilst  the  rest  was 
stormy ;  outwardly  calm  it  was,  but  in 
fact  active  preparations  for  the  future, 
particularly  in  the  island,  were  going 
on.  Sicily,  ever  since  the  triumph  of 
Neapolitan  reaction  in  1849,  had  been 
secretly  organizing  her  patriotic  elements 
for  a  new  rising.  The  peculiar  relations 
of  the  island  with  the  Bourbonic  dynasty 
render — for  it,  even  more  than  for  the 
main  land — utterly  impossible  any  scheme 
of  constitutional  reconciliation;  and  in 
their  locally  helpless  condition  the  Sici- 
lians were  brought  by  the  very  instinct 
of  safety  earnestly  to  look  to  the  merg- 
ing of  their  political  life  into  that  of 
the  Italian  nation  as  the  only  chance  of 
salvation.  They  consequently  embraced 
the  idea  of  Italian  unity  both  from 
patriotism  and  from  practical  reasons. 
The  "  Societa  Nazionale,"  directed  in 
Turin,  by  the  Sicilian  La  Farina,  and 
representing  the  moderate  party,  sought 
to  exercise  its  influence  in  the  island  on 
that  very  ground ;  but — dependent  as  it 
was  for  action  on  ministerial  inspiration 
and  the  oracles  of  diplomacy,  and  sys- 
tematically opposed  to  popular  initiative 
and  insurrection  against  regular  armies — 
would  never  have  brought  about  the 
Sicilian  revolution,  if  other  more  reso- 
lute influences  had  not  been  there  at 
work  beforehand. 

Active  preparations  for  the  rising  of 
the  Sicilians,  in  the  name  of  Italian 
unity,  had  been  carried  on,  at  their  own 
personal  risk,  by  men  who  belonged  to 
the  party  which,  in  antagonism  to  the 
wily  calculations  of  the  "Societa  Na- 
zionale,"  styled  itself  the  "Party  of 
Action."  In  constant  communication 
with  the  Sicilian  patriots,  from  Genoa, 
from  Malta,  from  England,  from  Paris, 
these  men  collected  money,  bought  arms, 
sent  instructions  and  plans  of  combined 
action.  When  the  peace  of  Villa  Franca 
made  everywhere  more  intense  the  feel- 
ing that  the  Italians  had  no  hope  of 
emancipation  except  in  their  own  right 
arm,  the  same  instinct  that  attracted 
the  Sicilians  towards  the  common  coun- 
try prompted  the  patriots  of  Central 
Italy  to  work  for  the  expansion  of  the 


movement  towards  the  south.  They 
were  looking  to  the  Marche,  Umbria, 
and  Abbruzzi  as  the  way  through  which 
the  electric  wire  of  national  affinity  be- 
tween the  north  and  the  south  of  the 
Peninsula  was  to  be  carried  through  by 
means  of  national  insurrection.  The 
horrors  committed  at  Perugia  by  the 
mercenaries  of  the  Pope  had  already 
stimulated  this  disposition  by  feelings 
of  sympathy  towards  the  victims,  and 
by  just  indignation  towards  their  assas- 
sins ;  and  it  was  not  without  difficulty 
that  the  provisional  governments  of 
Tuscany  and  the  Emilia  prevented  the 
troops  and  the  volunteers  from  crossing 
the  frontier.  Then  a  painful  contest 
took  place  between  the  national  impulse 
of  those  who  felt  the  duty  of  carrying 
on  the  movement  and  the  party  who 
were  in  power.  Nor  did  the  latter,  in 
its  resistance,  have  recourse  to  fair 
means.  Availing  themselves  of  the 
prejudice,  often  refuted  by  facts,  yet 
always  rife,  that  Mazzini  and  his  friends 
were  working  for  the  Eepublic,  the 
rulers  of  Central  Italy,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Farini,  organized  a  regular  pro- 
scription against  all  active  patriots. 
Then  it  was  that,  among  others,  Eosolino 
Pilo,  one  of  the  chief  promoters,  and 
now  but  too  likely  a  martyr,1  of  the 
Sicilian  insurrection,  was,  on  the  plea 
of  his  relations  with  Mazzini,  kept  a 
prisoner  for  more  than  a  month  by  the 
police  of  Bologna,  who  gave  the  people 
to  understand  that  he  was  an  Austrian 
agent  in  disguise. 

Then  Garibaldi,  who  had  opened  the 
subscription  for  "  II  Milione  di  Fucili," 

1  Kosolino  Pilo,  of  the  marquises  of  Capace, 
has  undoubtedly  been  the  most  active  organ- 
izer of  the  Sicilian  insurrection.  Well  known 
to  his  countrymen  for  his  patriotism  and 
courage  since  1848,  when  he  was  yet  almost  a 
boy,  he  has  been,  during  the  last  ten  years  of 
servitude,  more  than  once  in  his  native  island 
under  different  disguises,  encouraging  his 
fellow-countrymen  to  the  work  of  deliverance. 
He  was  one  of  the  purest  minds  and  most 
earnest  hearts  that  I  ever  came  in  contact 
with.  The  accounts  given  of  the  severity  of 
his  wounds  seem  to  leave  no  hope  of  recovery. 
— Since  the  preceding  lines  were  written,  I  have 
received  melancholy  assurance  that  he  died  of 
Ms  wounds  on  the  13th  of  June. 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


241 


and  was  organizing  the  volunteers  in  the 
Eomagna,  through  a  commission  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  the  king  himself, 
was  obliged  to  resign  his  office ;  and  when, 
withdrawing  from  the  "  Societa  Nazi- 
onale,"  and  protesting  against  its  system 
of  policy,  he  proposed  a  new  association 
of  Italian  patriotism  under  the  name  of 
"La  Nazione  Armata,"  he  was  again 
compelled  to  renounce  his  purpose  and 
retire,  discouraged,  into  inactivity.  Maz- 
zini  had  been,  meanwhile,  sojourning 
for  two  months  in  Florence  (July  and 
August,  1859).  I  have  a  private  docu- 
ment which  proves  beyond  doubt  the 
singlemindedness  of  his  intentions.  Some 
friend  wrote  to  him,  exhorting  him  to 
abstain  from  any  interference  in  the  state 
of  affairs,  as  any  action  of  his,  amidst  the 
apprehensions  then  prevailing,  would 
only  have  tended  to  misconstrue  his 
designs,  excite  opposition,  and  afford  a 
pretext  to  persecution  and  calumny.  He 
answered :  "  I  do  nothing  but  look,  and 
'  wait,  and  propose  my  ideas  to  some  of 
'  the  chiefs,  who  probably  will  not  accept 
'  them.  As  to  coming  forward  myself, 
'  or  acting  in  any  exclusive  way,  with 
'  elements  of  my  own,  I  do  not  even 
'  dream  of  it.  Let  then  my  friends  be 
'  tranquil  on  this  ground."  When  he 
saw  that  there  was  no  chance  of  having 
his  programme  of  action  for  national 
unity  carried  out  by  the  men  in 
power,  he  again  left  the  country,  and 
wrote  his  famous  letter  to  Victor  Em- 
manuel, which  (if  report  be  true)  pro- 
duced a  deep  impression  on  the  mind  of 
the  king  himself.  Still  the  work  in  the 
south  was  going  on,  and  Mazzini  effi- 
ciently contributed  to  its  progress.  Crispi, 
the  present  secretary  of  the  Provisional 
Government  at  Palermo,  went  twice  to 
the  island  to  urge  on  the  movement. 
The  Sicilian  patriots  were  in  constant 
communication  with  Rosolino  Pilo,  who, 
nothing  daunted  by  the  treatment  under- 
gone in  Central  Italy,  was  earnestly 
working  with  them  in  the  name  of 
Italian  unity. 

During  the  time  of  his  sojourn  in 
Florence,  Mazzini  wrote  to  Baron  Rica- 
soli,  who  was  seeking  him  in  order  to 
banish  him  a  prisoner  to  some  remote 


quarter  of  the  world,  the  following  lines : 
"Eight  or  ten  thousand  men,  and  the 
"name  of  Garibaldi,  with  the  Sicilian 
"movement  now  ripe  through  a  long 
"  preparation,  will  lead  to  the  insurrec- 
"  tion  of  the  kingdom.  The  insurrec- 
"  tion  of  the  kingdom  would  place  the 
"  Italian  movement  in  such  a  position 
"as  to  enable  the  country  to  deal,  on 
"  equal  terms,  with  any  power  whatso- 
"  ever."  Thus  careless  of  persecution, 
he  was  thinking  of,  and  working  for,  only 
the  greatness  of  that  country  —  his 
country — in  which  he  was  not  allowed 
even  freely  to  breathe.  Again,  in  Feb- 
ruary last,  on  the  occasion  of  the  sub- 
scriptions opened  at  Glasgow  for  the 
Garibaldi  fund,  whilst  acting  in  accord- 
ance with  the  great  leader  of  the  Italian 
volunteers,  he  wrote  to  that  city  as 
follows  :  "  We  are  working  actively  in 
"  the  South  (of  Italy)  to  promote  there 
"  a  change  which  would  reach  the  aim 
"at  once.  You  helped  us,  through 
"  pecuniary  assistance,  when  we  were  at 
"  work  in  Northern  Italy ;  help  us  if 
"you  can  for  the  South.  Explain  to 
"  your  countrymen  that  our  aim  is  unity ; 
"  that  there  is  the  root  of  the  question ; 
"  that  Italy  will  never  be  tranquil,  Eu- 
"rope  never  be  at  peace,  whilst  that 
"  supreme  aim  of  ours  is  not  reached." 
And,  in  that  very  letter,  as  in  all  other 
papers  written  of  late  by  him,  he  dis- 
tinctly declares  that  he  postpones  his 
political  opinions  to  that  aim.  "  You 
ought,"  he  says  to  his  correspondent,  "  to 
"  trust  our  sincere  love  of  our  country, 
"  to  see  from  our  self-abdication  as  to 
"  questions  of  form  that  we  are  neither 

"  exclusive  nor  rash The  only 

"  question  between  a  fraction  now  in 
"  power  of  the  moderate  party  and  our 
"  own,  comprising,  nuances  a  part,  every 
"  man,  from  Garibaldi,  as  a  citizen  sol- 
"  dier,  to  me,  as  an  Italian  citizen — from 
"the  volunteers  in  the  army  to  the 
"working  and  middle  classes  of  our 
"  towns — is  a  question  of  means.  Shall 
'  we  depend  on  diplomacy,  Congress, 
'French  protectorate,  &c.,  or  shall  we 
'  depend  on  our  own  forces,  on  the  loud, 
'  incessant  proclamation  of  our  wish  and 
'  right,  on  our  identifying  the  life  of  the 


242 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


"  emancipated  provinces  with  that  of  the 
"still  oppressed,  and  in  onr  unfolding 
"  a  whole,  straightforward  Italian  policy 
"in  that  direction,  and  seizing  boldly 
"the  opportunity  for  carrying  it  out? 
"  Are  we  to  allow  the  movement  to  be 
"localised,  or  are  we  to  try  to  nation- 
"  alise  it  1 "  This  is  the  question  ; 
and  the  writer  of  the  letter  just 
quoted,  has  again,  a  few  days  ago,  re- 
peated the  same  declaration,  through  an 
article  in  the  Unita  Italiana  of  Genoa, 
in  answer  to  attacks  made  against  him, 
on  the  one  side  by  the  ministerial  party, 
who  accuse  him  of  plotting  for  an  ex- 
clusive form  of  government,  and  on  the 
other  by  the  uncompromising  repub- 
licans, who  accuse  him  of  betraying  his 
political  ideal  to  his  scheme  of  Italian 
unity.  "Our  cry,"  he  says,  "is  unity, 
"  liberty.  As  regards  the  rest  we  bow  to 
"  the  will  of  the  country/'  But  there 
is  a  stereotyped  phraseology  of  calumny, 
which  is  kept  up  by  certain  Italian 
correspondents  of  influential  English 
papers,  either  to  curry  favour  with 
the  official  party,  or  from  personal 
motives  beneath  the  notice  of  upright 
minds,  according  to  which  Mazzini  and 
the  Italian  Republicans  are  obstinately 
conspiring,  for  their  political  dream, 
against  the  very  life  of  then1  country. 

The  relations  between  the  different 
parties  in  Italy  are  now  these  :  the 
great  majority  of  the  nation,  in  which 
all  earnest  patriots,  whether  of  constitu- 
tional or  of  republican  opinions,  have 
joined,  wish  for  independence  and  unity ; 
every  question  of  formal  politics  is  set 
aside ;  and  the  cry  of  Italy  and  Victor 
Emmanuel  calls  upon  the  monarchy  to 
follow  out  the  programme  of  the  nation. 
The  party  which  tended  to  localise  the 
movement,  and  would  have  been  for- 
merly satisfied  with  a  confederation  of 
separate  constitutional  states,  is  almost 
entirely  dwindling  away.  Any  minister 
in  the  free  state  who  dared  now  openly 
to  countenance  such  schemes,  would 
lose  his  popularity.  Thus  the  only  real 
antagonism  which  survives  the  old  par- 
ties in  Italy  is  simply  a  practical  one 
among  those  who  admit  in  common  that 
unity  is  the  work  of  the  times,  but  are 


divided  as  to  the  opportunity  of  carrying 
it  out  by  national  means  and  self-depen- 
dent action,  or  entrusting  it  to  even- 
tuality and  diplomatic  subtlety.  The 
former  party  is  now  growing  far  more 
influential  than  the  latter,  especially 
since  the  fact  of  Garibaldi's  success  has 
justified  its  views.  It  has  for  it  the 
authority  of  that  heroic  leader  himself, 
who,  on  leaving  for  Sicily,  trusted  to 
the  hands  of  his  friend  Dr.  Bertani,  an 
appeal  to  the  Italians  for  joint  action ; 
and  is  supported  by  that  true  foresight 
of  the  people  which  leads  them  to  feel 
that  every  spot  of  their  country  not 
taken  possession  of  by  the  nation  will 
be  invaded  by  foreign  intrigue. 

But  to  return  to  the  Sicilians.     On 
the  25th  of  March  past,  Rosolino  Pilo, 
who    had    received    information    from 
Sicily  that  a  crisis  was  at  hand,  set  off 
from  Genoa,  with  a  military  companion" 
of  the  name  of  Corrado,   in  a  sailing 
vessel,   for  his   native    island.      After 
many  hardships  at  sea,  they  landed  near 
Messina  on  the  10th  of  April,  and  were 
able  to  enter  the  town  in  disguise,  while 
the   royal   troops  were   bombarding   it 
from  the  fort.     Pilo  wrote,  on  the  12th, 
an  account  of  the  state  of  things,  say- 
ing :  "  Sicily  feels  more  than  any  other 
province  in  Italy  that  the  question  is, 
— 'to  be  Italians.7     I  am  sure  of  the 
triumph ;  yet  you  must  think  of  assist- 
ing us.     Shame  to  the  other  Italian 
provinces  if  they  do  not  help  the  Si- 
cilian movement,  which  is  not  a  sepa- 
ratist movement,  but  only  and  deeply 
Italian." 

This  young  man,  belonging  to  one  of 
the  most  ancient  and  noble  families  of 
the  island,  having  put  himself  at  the 
head  of  his  Messinian  friends,  joined 
with  them  the  other  bands  from  the  in- 
terior, and  fought  gallantly  in  several 
encounters.  He  was  thus  an  efficient 
instrument  to  give  time  to  Garibaldi  for 
his  expedition ;  and  was  by  the  latter, 
on  his  arrival  in  Sicily,  appointed  to 
organize  the  insurrection  in  the  district 
of  Carini.  He  wrote  again  from  that 
place  a  letter  full  of  confidence  and  of 
generous  feeling ;  but,  alas !  it  was  de- 
creed by  Providence  that  he  should  fall 


Garibaldi  and  the  Sicilian  Revolution. 


243 


among  the  first  martyrs  in  his  country's 
cause.  "  On  the  21st,"  wrote  a  friend 
from  Palermo,  "  one  of  our  columns, 
"  headed  by  the  gallant  and  generous 
"  Eosolino  Pilo,  had,  at  S.  Martino,  a 
"  fierce  encounter  with  the  royalists  : 
"  the  Sicilians  were  few ;  still  they 
"  fought  valiantly — Pilo  foremost ;  but 
"  through  his  ardent  nature,  and  full  of 
"  noble  courage,  he  exposed  himself  to 
"  the  last ;  and  the  last  shot  of  the 
"  royalists  wounded  him  mortally.  The 
"  loss  of  this  man  is  a  great  misfortune 
"  for  the  Sicilians." 

Garibaldi's  expedition  was  entirely 
the  work  of  patriots,  who  acted  inde- 
pendently of  any  assistance  or  favour 
from  the  government.  Money,  arms, 
ammunition,  were  provided  by  means  of 
popular  contributions ;  and,  at  the  end, 
from  the  funds  raised,  in  the  name  of 
Garibaldi,  for  "II  Milione  di  Fucili," 
though  not  without  difficulty,  owing  to 
official  control  on  the  money  thus  col- 
lected. Garibaldi  has  been  and  is  also 
not  indifferently  helped  by  private  sub- 
scriptions in  England,  from  different 
quarters,  with  a  unanimity  which  is  the 
highest  testimonial  to  the  noble  devo- 
tion of  his  glorious  enterprise. 

Men  of  democratic  principles,  as 
Bixio,  Sirtori,1  Savi,  the  editor  of  the 
Unitd  Italian®  of  Genoa,  Mosto,  the 

1  Giuseppe  Sirtori  was  originally  a  priest. 
He  is  a  Lombard.  At  an  early  age  he  became 
convinced  of  the  falsehood  of  Roman  Catholi- 
cism, and  then,  consistently  with  the  sincerity 
of  his  conscience,  gave  up  the  priestly  office. 
But  deeply  religious  at  heart,  he  turned 
to  the  cause  of  the  moral  and  national 
regeneration  of  his  country  that  spirit  of  de- 
votion which  he  would  have  given  to  the 
Church  if  true  to  its  mission.  Thus  he 
became  a  soldier  of  libei'ty  and  indepen- 
dence. In  '49,  during  the  siege  of  Venice,  his 
perfect  calmness  in  the  very  face  of  death 
made  him  an  object  of  admiration  to  his 
soldiers.  He  commanded  there  the  battalion 
of  Lombard  volunteers.  During  the  exile,  he 
applied  himself  with  assiduity  to  military 
studies,  preparing  himself  for  the  expected 
national  wars.  He  is  now  one  of  the  most 
able  officers  of  Garibaldi,  and  the  chief  of  his 
staff.  He  was  slightly  wounded  at  Calata  Fimi. 
La  Masa  is  a  Sicilian,  who  took  a  prominent 
part  in  the  insurrection  of  Palermo  in  '48; 
Orsini,  a  Sicilian  also,  a  very  experienced 
officer,  and  an  exile  since  '49. 


leader  of  those  "  Cacciatori  Genovesi " 
who  did  wonders  of  courage  and  were 
decimated  at  Calata  Fimi ;  Orsini  and  La 
Masa,  both  Sicilians,  and  many  others 
like  them,  joined  as  brothers  in  the  same 
patriotic  work  with  persons  of  the 
highest  nobility.  Lads  of  aristocratic 
families,  as  well  as  of  humble  extrac- 
tion, inspired  from  their  childhood  with 
the  love  of  their  country  by  their  own 
parents,  have  abandoned  their  homes  to 
fight  for  Italy,  writing,  on  their  depar- 
ture, the  most  touching  letters,  full  of 
a  deep  sense  of  duty,  to  soften  their 
mothers'  grief.  You  see  in  all  this  the 
symptoms  of  the  resurrection  of  a  coun- 
try, the  youthfulness  of  a  race,  which, 
though  trampled  down  for  centuries,  has 
in  itself  the  seeds  of  a  noble  future. 

The  success  of  the  Sicilian  revolution, 
under  the  leadership  of  Garibaldi  and 
his  companions,  will  necessarily  lead  to 
the  re-opening  of  the  whole  Italian 
question.  The  news  from  the  peninsula 
seem  already  to  point  to  the  spreading 
of  the  revolution  in  the  continental 
portion  of  the  kingdom  as  unavoid- 
able. The  party  which  desires  national 
unity  has  greatly  increased  even  at 
Naples  :  the  most  distinguished  minds 
of  the  kingdom  (the  greater  number 
of  them  in  exile)  have  declared  for 
annexation.  Many  of  them  form  now 
part  of  the  Italian  Parliament  at  Turin ; 
and  they  will  not  easily  be  induced 
to  renounce  their  independent  con- 
stitutional position,  to  venture  their 
freedom  and  life  under  a  sham-constitu- 
tion granted,  through  compulsion,  by 
the  descendant  and  imitator  of  a  series 
of  sovereigns  who  have  repeatedly 
broken  through  all  constitutional  secu- 
rities, and  laid  violent  hand  on  the  re- 
presentatives of  the  country  in  the  very 
sanctuary  of  their  parliamentary  func- 
tions. The  army  itself,  worked  upon 
by  patriotic  ideas,  will  not  long  resist 
the  call  of  the  nation.  All  these  cir- 
cumstances exercise  a  deep  influence  on 
the  subjects  of  Francis  II.;  whilst  on  the 
other  side  the  Italians  know  well  that  a' 
separate  dynasty  in  the  south  of  the 
pBninsula  will  never  be  a  faithful  ally 
to  the  rest  of  the  country.  Diplomacy 


244  The  Boot. 

may  delay,  but  will  not  be  able  to  pre-  lier  forces,   a  new  law  of  equilibrium 

vent,  the  formation  of  a  united  Italy,  conformable  to  national  exigencies,  as  a 

Will  force  then  be  used  ?      We  hope  condition   of  peace   and  improvement, 

.that  no  European  power  will  commit  Italy  free,  independent,  united,  within 

itself  to  such  a  course  ;  we  trust  that  the  limits   of  her  Alps,  will  help  in 

England  will  efficiently  back  with  its  keeping  France  and  Germany  at  peace  ; 

moral  influence  the  cause  of  the  Italian  she  will  naturally  co-operate  with  Eng- 

nation.      Any  interference  would  lead  land  in  preserving  the  freedom  of  the 

not  only  to  a  regress  in  Italian  affairs  sea.      Geography,    experience    of    past 

which,  sooner  or  later,  the  Italians  would  errors,  and  social  condition  appoint  the 

retrieve  by  revolution ;  but  it  would  also  Italian  nation  to  a  pacific   mission  in 

create  a  complication  of  a  serious  nature  Europe.     But  let,  above  all,  the  Italians 

as  regards   the   interests  of  the  naval  of  all  parties  earnestly  act  for  themselves, 

powers  in  the  Mediterranean.    Let  Sicily  with    energy    and    comprehensiveness 

solve  the  question  of  her  destinies  by  equal  to  the  great  task  they  have  in 

her  own  free  vote  ;  let  the  principle  of  hand.     Let  them  be  convinced  that  any 

non-intervention  be  fairly  applied  to  the  division  in  the  camp  is  fatal,  that  all 

progressive  development  of  Italian  na-  political  and  personal  antagonisms  must 

tionality,  and,  if  national  unity  should  be  waived  in  presence  of  their  country's 

be  the  result,  let  the  world  acknowledge  cause,  and  that  if  they  manfully  rely 

and  welcome  the  event.  on  their  own  action  and  on  the  justice 

Europe   requires  a  redistribution   of  of  their  cause,  Italy  is  theirs. 


THE  BOOT. 

FROM    THE   ITALIAN   OP   GIUSEPPE   GIUSTI. 

WHEN  Giusti  wrote  the  poem  of  which  we  here  offer  a  translation,  a  quarter 
of  a  century  back,  Italy  was  in  the  apprehension  of  most  minds  a  geographical 
expression,  and  nothing  more.  That  unique  physical  configuration  of  the  penin- 
sula, which  has  arrested  the  attention  of  every  boy  or  girl  Avho  has  ever  studied  a 
map  of  Europe  since  maps  were  first  correctly  drawn,  was  the  sole  tangible  "  unity" 
of  Italy  in  which  anybody  north  of  the  Alps  could  then  profess  a  belief,  without 
laying  himself  open  to  the  imputation  of  being  a  mere  political  enthusiast  and 
dreamer.  The  undeniable  resemblance  to  the  shape  of  a  boot  is  the  basis  upon 
which  Giusti  built  this  poem.  It  was  natural  for  a  poet,  whose  every  line  was 
written  with  the  view  of  awakening  among  his  countrymen  that  strength  of  feeling 
and  purpose  which  alone  might  enable  them  to  restore  Italy  to  the  rank  of  a  free 
nation,  to  take  hold  in  some  shape  or  other  of  a  permanent  fact,  which  neither 
native  municipal  jealousy,  local  tyranny,  nor  foreign  contempt  or  repression,  could 
contradict  or  do  away  with.  The  Boot,  with  its  strong  hem  or  fringe  of  Alps  at 
top,  and  its  broad  seam  of  Apennine  down  the  middle — coinciding  in  its  extent 
with  the  spoken  Italian  language — was  a  symbol  of  unity  so  pointedly  at  variance 
with  the  existing  subdivision  of  despotic  principalities,  as  readily  to  form  a  speak- 
ing text  for  a  suggestive  sermon.  The  historical  fortunes  of  the  poor  Boot,  as  it 
has  been  torn  and  pulled  out  of  its  pristine  and  native  compactness  by  the  rapa- 
city of  one  appropriator  after  another,  until,  from  being  the  wonder  of  the  world 
as  the  cradle  and  centre  of  the  Roman  Empire,  it  has  fallen  to  its  patchwork  con- 
dition of  the  nineteenth  century,  shaped  themselves  in  Giusti's  mind  into  a 
humorous  and  pointed  allegory.  It  is  difficult  for  those  who  have  lived  in  a 
land  where  freedom  of  political  discussion  has  been  long  coextensive  with  freedom 
of  thought,  to  appreciate  the  skill  of  the  irony  which,  under  the  censorship  of  an 
Austrian  police,  was  at  once  the  most  necessary  and  the  most  effective  weapon  of 


The  Boot.  245 

offence  and  defence  for  an  anonymous  writer  whom  everybody  knew.  To  the  subtle 
apprehension  of  all  among  his  own  countrymen  who  sympathized  with  his  yearn- 
ings for  a  nobler  national  life,  at  a  time  when  such  sympathy  involved  frequent  in- 
convenience, and  some  danger,  Giusti's  Boot  conveyed  a  truth  and  a  moral  spur  in 
the  most  forcible  manner.  At  a  time  when  the  calm  firmness  of  the  attitude 
taken  by  the  Italians  of  North  and  Central  Italy  has  baffled  foreign  intrigue, 
falsified  the  sneer  which  spoke  of  "  La  Terre  des  Morts,"  and  won  for  themselves 
the  conditions  of  a  national  existence — at  a  moment  when  a  noble  and  unselfish 
heroism  is  still  struggling  in  the  South  against  enormous  odds  to  give  an  equal 
share  of  liberty  to  the  long-oppressed  subjects  of  the  Sicilian  kingdom — English 
readers  will  not  be  unready  to  listen  to  the  utterances  of  a  foreign  humour,  and  to 
value,  as  they  have  been  valued  by  his  countrymen,  the  words  of  the  greatest  and 
most  national  poet  of  the  present  generation  of  Italians. 

The  particular  allusions  to  different  wearers  of  the  Boot  will  in  geijeral  be 
easily  understood  by  readers  of  Italian  history ;  though  one  or  two  of  them  are 
rather  puzzling.  The  "  German  full  of  bluster,"  probably  refers  not  so  pointedly 
to  any  single  invader,  as  to  the  contests  between  the  German  emperors,  the  great 
towns,  and  the  Church,  at  intervals,  from  Barbarossa  to  Henry  the  Seventh.  The 
rise  of  the  Venetian  and  Genoese  republics,  the  struggles  of  Charles  of  Anjou  and 
Peter  of  Aragon,  the  Sicilian  Vespers,  and  the  magnificent  tyranny  of  the  Medici, 
are  in  their  turn  sufficiently  indicated.  The  rivalry  between  French  and  Spaniards 
for  the  rich  prize  of  Italy,  which  culminated  in  the  wars  of  Francis  the  First  and 
Charles  the  Fifth,  is  balanced  by  a  reference  to  the  shameless  nepotism  of  the 
Popes,  repeated  in  the  instances  of  Bertrand  de  Poiet,  John  and  Caesar  Borgia, 
and  so  many  other  illegitimate  scions  of  successive  Papal  families.  The  misused 
power  and  "  crooked  courses  "  of  the  first  Napoleon,  who  might  have  made  Italy 
free  and  great  in  unity,  if  he  had  wished  to  do  so,  are  finely  pointed  out  in  the 
last  allusion  to  the  past  fortunes  of  the  Boot ;  and  the  half-dozen  concluding 
verses*  are  as  clear  and  forcible  an  exposition  of  the  spirit  and  policy  which  are  still 
required  for  the  best  solution  of  the  Italian  problem  as  if  they  had  been  written 
in  the  present  year.  No  foreign  interference  or  usurpation — "  no  French  or  Ger- 
man leg,  you  understand,"  to  fill  the  Boot,  and  no  French  or  German  bootmaker  to 
manipulate  the  material,  or  to  fix  the  pattern  !  Italy,  if  left  alone — -fard,  da  se. 

I  AM  not  made  of  ordinary  stuff, 

Nor  am  I  such  a  boot  as  rustics  wear  ; 
And  if  my  shape  seem  hewn  out  in  the  rough, 

No  bungler's  stamp  of  workmanship  I  bear  : 
With  double  soles,  and  action  firm  and  free, 
I'm  formed  for  any  work  by  land  or  sea. 

Up  to  mid-thigh  I  stand,  nor  ever  stir, 

Deep  in  the  water,  yet  am  just  as  sound  ; 
I'm  good  for  sporting,  good  to  wear  the  spur, 

As  many  asses  to  their  cost  have  found  : 
All  stitched  compact  and  firm  by  vigorous  needle, 
With  hem  at  top,  and  seam  straight  down  the  middle. 

But  then,  I'm  not  drawn  on  with  so  much  ease, 

Nor  am  I  fit  for  any  trifler's  use  ; 
A  slender  foot  I  should  but  lame  or  tease, 

To  suit  the  vulgar  leg  I  should  not  choose  : 
There's  no  one  yet  has  kept  me  on  throughout ; 
They've  worn  me  just  a  little,  turn  about. 


246  The  Boot. 

I  won't  inflict  on  you  the  category 

Of  all  who've  tried  to  get  me  for  their  own, 

But  only  here  and  there,  to  fit  my  story, 

Note  such  and  such,  most  worthy  to  be  known  ; 

Eclating  how  my  ruin  first  was  planned, 

And  thieves  have  passed  me  down  from  hand  to  hand. 

You'll  think  it  past  belief,  but  once  I  started 

Off  at  full  gallop  of  my  own  accord, 
And  right  across  the  whole  known  world  I  darted, 

Till  overhaste  betrayed  me, — I  was  floored  : 
My  equilibrium  lost,  I  lay  extended 
This  way  and  that,  and  so  the  matter  ended. 

A  grand  confusion  followed  :  o'er  me  surged 
A  flood  of  every  race  and  savage  fashion, 

Tumbling  from  all  outlandish  quarters,  urged 
By  a  priest's  counsel,  or  a  demon's  passion; 

One  seized  me  by  the  instep,  one  the  calf, 

And  jeering  cried,  "  Who'll  get  the  bigger  half  2  " 

The  priest,  despite  his  cloth,  to  try  the  boot 
Upon  his  own  account  showed  some  desire, 

But,  finding  that  I  did  not  suit  his  foot, 
Hither  and  thither  let  me  out  on  hire  : 

Now  to  the  earliest  bidder  in  the  mart 

He  yields  me,  acting  but  the  boot-jack's  part. 

To  wrestle  with  the  priest,  and  plant  his  heel 
Firm  in  me,  came  a  German  full  of  bluster; 

But  oft  to  bear  him  home,  as  turned  the  wheel, 

Those  heels  were  forced  their  utmost  speed  to  muster  : 

He  tried  and  tried  enough  to  gall  his  foot, 

But  never  yet  could  pull  on  all  the  boot. 

Left  for  a  century  upon  the  shelf, 

A  simple  trader  next  I'll  name  who  wore  me, 

Gave  me  a  blacking,  made  me  stir  myself, 
And  o'er  the  sea  to  Eastern  climates  bore  me, 

In  rough  condition,  but  a  perfect  whole, 

And  set  with  good  hob-nails  about  the  sole. 

My  merchant  friend,  grown  rich,  a  fitting  act 
Deemed  it  to  deck  me  out  with  greater  cost ; 

Tassels  and  golden  spurs  were  on  me  tacked, 
But  something  of  solidity  was  lost ; 

And  in  the  long  run,  finding  out  the  difference, 

For  those  good  primitive  nails  I  own  a  preference. 

You  could  not  find  in  me  a  crack  or  wrinkle 
When  I  one  day  a  Western  rascal  saw 

Leap  from  his  galley  plump  upon  my  ankle, 
And  try  to  clutch  it  with  his  little  claw ; 

But  fair  and  softly — two  could  play  that  game  ; 

One  vesper  at  Palermo,  he  went  lame. 

Among  the  other  foreign  dilettanti, 

A  certain  King  of  Spades  with  all  his  might 

Would  pull  me  on — but  while  he  toiled  and  panted 
Found  himself  plants  Id  in  sorry  plight; 


The  Boot 

A  capon,  jealous  of  the  hen-roost,  crowed 
And  threatened  to  alarm  the  neighbourhood. 

In  those  same  times,  my  fortune's  underminer, 

Cunningly  bent  its  ruin  to  complete, 
Sprang  from  his  shop  a  certain  Mediciner, 

Who  next,  to  make  me  easy  to  his  feet, 
And  profitable  wearing,  spun  a  thread 
Of  plots  and  frauds  that  o'er  thre'e  centuries  spread. 

He  smoothed  me,  decked  me  out  with  tinsel,  rubbed 
Unguents  and  humbugs  in  at  such  a  rate, 

My  very  leather  into  holes  was  scrubbed, 

And  all  who  since  have  meddled  with  my  fate 

Set  about  tinkering  me  by  the  receipt 

Of  that  same  school  of  black  and  vile  deceit. 

Thus  harassed,  tossed  about  from  hand  to  hand, 

The  aim  and  object  of  a  harpy-swarm, 
I  felt  a  Frank  and  Spaniard  take  their  stand, 

Contending  which  could  prove  the  stronger  arm ; 
At  length  Don  Quixote  bore  me  off,  but  found  me 
Crushed  out  of  shape  with  all  the  blows  around  me. 

Those  who  beheld  me  on  his  foot  have  told  me 
This  Spaniard  wore  me  in  most  evil  style  ; 

He  smeared  me  o'er  with  paint  and  varnish,  called  me 
Most  noble,  most  illustrious  ;  but  the  file 

He  worked  by  stealth,  and  only  left  me  more 

Bagged  and  tattered  than  I  was  before. 

Still  half-way  down  me  grew,  in  vermeil  coloured, 
One  lily,  token  of  departed  splendour  ; 

But  this  a  shameless  Pope,  of  birth  dishonoured 
(To  whom  all  glory  may  the  Devil  render), 

Gave  the  barbarians,  making  compact  base 

To  crown  a  scion  of  his  guilty  race. 

"Well,  from  that  moment  each  one  at  his  will 

With  awl  and  shears  in  cobbler-craft  might  dabble 

And  so  from  frying-pan  to  fire  I  fell ; 

Viceroys,  police,  and  all  that  sort  of  rabble, 

To  grind  me  down  struck  out  a  new  idea, 

Et  diviserunt  vestimenta  mea. 

Thus  clutched  alternately  by  paw  of  famished 
Or  vicious  beast  in  rude  and  clumsy  revel, 

That  old  impression  by  degrees  had  vanished 
Of  well-cut  feet,  firm  planted  on  the  level, 

Such  as  without  a  single  step  perverse 

Had  borne  me  safely  round  the  universe. 

Ah  me  !  poor  boot,  I  have  been  led  astray, 
I  own  it  now,  by  this  most  foolish  notion, 

While  yet  to  walk  or  run  I  had  free  play, 
By  stranger  legs  I  would  be  put  in  motion, 

Nor  from  my  mind  the  dangerous  dream  could  pluck, 

That  change  of  limb  would  bring  me  change  of  luck. 


248  TJieBoot. 

I  feel — I  own  it — but  withal  I  now 
Find  myself  in  so  damaged  a  condition, 

The  very  ground  seems  to  give  way  below 
If  I  attempt  one  step  on  self-volition ; 

Long  subject  to  false  guides,  both  great  and  small, 

I've  lost  the  faculty  to  move  at  all. 

My  greatest  grievance,  though,  to  priests  is  owing — 
A  sect  malignant,  void  of  all  discretion  ; 

And  certain  poets,  race  degenerate,  growing 
Mere  hypocrites,  who  flatter  by  profession. 

Say  what  you  please,  the  Canon-laws  prohibit 

That  priests  in  mundane  boots  their  legs  exhibit. 

And  here  I  am,  meanwhile,  threadbare,  despised, 
Tattered  on  every  side,  all  mud  and  mire ; 

Still  for  some  kind  limb's  advent,  well  advised 
To  shake  me  out  and  smooth  me,  I  aspire  : 

"No  French  or  German  leg,  you  understand ; 

I  want  one  grown  upon  my  native  land. 

A  certain  worthy's  once  I  took  on  trial ; 

Alas  !  my  hero  would  a- wandering  go, 
Or  might  have  boasted  his,  without  denial, 

The  stoutest  boot  in  the  whole  world's  depot ; 
Ah !  crooked  courses  !  down  the  snowdrift  came, 
Freezing  his  limbs,  ere  half  played  out  the  game. 

Patched  up  again  after  the  ancient  style, 
And  once  more  carried  to  the  skinning  place, 

I,  of  prodigious  worth  and  weight  erewhile, 
Scarce  my  original  leather  now  can  trace  : 

Look  you,  to  piece  these  various  holes  of  mine 

There's  something  wanting  more  than  tacks  and  twine. 

Both  toil  and  cost  it  needs,  nor  too  much  haste ; 

Each  separate  shred  must  be  resewn  together; 
The  mud  cleaned  off,  the  stout  old  nails  replaced, 

Smoothed  into  shape  both  calf  and  upper  leather  : 
Let  this  be  done,  I'll  thank  you  from  my  heart ; 
But,  oh  !  take  care  who  plays  the  workman's  part  ! 

Look  at  me,  also,  on  this  side  I'm  blue, 

There  red  and  white,  and  up  here  black  and  yellow  ;- 

A  very  harlequin  of  chequered  hue  ; 

To  make  my  tone  harmonious  and  mellow, 

Remodel  me  discreetly  (may  I  hint  1) 

All  in  one  piece,  and  one  prevailing  tint. 

Search  diligently  if  the  world  supplies 

A  man, — I  care  not  what,  so  not  a  coward ; — 

And,  when  in  me  his  foot  securely  lies, 

If  any  prig  peer  in  with  schemes  untoward 

Of  practising  once  more  the  usual  quacking, 

We'll  pay  him  off  with  kicks,  and  send  him  packing. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


AUGUST,  1860. 


THE  NAVIES   OF  FKANCE   AND   ENGLAND. 


THE  scene  is  a  gently  heaving  purple 
sea,  and  the  time  is  the  morning  of  a 
calm  autumn  day.  The  porpoises  are 
splashing  in  the  sun,  and  the  flying-fish 
are  whirring  from  wave  to  wave  like 
silver  dragon-flies,  and  the  white  sea 
birds  rise  and  fall  and  float  on  snowy 
wings.  Far  to  the  south-east  a  blue 
Cape  looms  through  the  haze  with  one 
long  white  building  half  way  up.  All 
these  things  may  be  seen  any  day,  but 
there  is  a  sight  to  be  seen  this  morning, 
the  like  of  which  a  man  has  never  seen 
before. 

On  the  sparkling  morning  waters 
there  lies  in  single  line  a  mighty  fleet, 
thirty-eight  sail  of  the  line,  besides 
frigates ;  while  upon  them/coming  down 
before  the  wind,  advances  another  fleet, 
inferior  to  them  in  numbers,  but  evi- 
dently far  superior  in  audacity.  Of  this 
last  flotilla  we  count  fourteen  in  one 
line  and  thirteen  in  the  other ;  we  see 
the  foremost  ship  of  the  fourteen  out- 
strip the  others  and  engage  three  of  the 
enemy  at  once ;  then  in  twenty  minutes 
the  whole  brave  show  is  wrapt  in  smoke, 
and  fire,  and  destruction,  and  the  wind 
is  laid  with  the  concussion.  When  that 
smoke  clears  away  a  deed  will  have  been 
done  which  will  make  the  ears  of  him 
that  heareth  it  to  tingle  ;  for  this  is  the 
21st  of  October,  1805,  and  that  faint 
blue  promontory  a^way  to  the  south-east 
is  called  Cape  Trafalgar. 

Shall  I  go  on?  I  think  not.  We 
have  given  out  our  text;  now  for  our 

No.  10. — VOL.  n. 


sermon.  Every  Englishman  knows  the 
rest  of  that  chapter ;  but  we  wish  to 
call  your  attention  to  one  fact  in  con- 
nexion with  that  victory — namely,  that 
8,000  British  in  27  ships  beat  12,000 
Spanish  and  French  in  33  ships,  and 
that  of  these  last  only  13  got  back 
into  port.  And  then  we  wish  to  put 
this  question,  "  Could  we  do  the  same 
thing  again  1 " 

Just  think  of  the  conditions  under 
which  such  a  victory  became  possible, 
and  the  quiet,  patient,  practical  efforts 
by  which  such  successes  must  be  pre- 
ceded. Maritime  supremacy,  like  every- 
thing else  that  is  worth  having,  can 
only  be  obtained  by  proportionate  effort ; 
and  though  we  are  the  countrymen  of 
Jervis,  Collingwood,  and  Nelson,  the 
maritime  supremacy  which  their  splen- 
did victories  secured  to  this  country  will 
assuredly  slip  through  our  fingers  if  we 
imagine  that  it  can  be  retained  on  any 
other  terms  than  those  by  which  it  was 
acquired — that  is,  by  maintaining  at  all 
costs  adequate  armaments.  At  the  out- 
break of  the  French  Revolutionary  War 
there  were  three  powers  of  considerable 
maritime  pretensions — France,  Spain, 
and  Holland;  and  it  was  against  the 
coalesced  forces  of  the  three  that  we 
had  then  to  contend.  Of  these  the 
Navy  of  France  has  alone  recovered  from 
the  blows  that  we  then  struck;  and, 
in  the  event  of  hostilities  breaking  out, 
.France  is  now  the  only  power  that  can  be 
looked  upon  as  in  any  degree  our  rival. 


250 


The  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


Indeed,  so  far  has  her  Navy  and  that  of 
this  country  outstripped  those  of  the 
other  nations  of  Europe  that,  perhaps, 
with  the  exception  of  Russia,  there  is 
now  no  country  whose  steam  navy  could, 
even  if  they  were  inclined  to  join  in 
the  strife,  give  any  material  assistance 
to  either  party.  Russia,  it  is  true,  pos- 
sesses somewhere  about  ten  screw  line-of- 
battle  ships  and  eleven  frigates ;  which, 
if  they  are  good  ships,  presents  an  im- 
posing appearance ;  but  from  the  fact 
that  they  are  to  a  great  extent  manned 
by  agricultural  labourers,  they  can  hardly 
come  up  to  the  French  or  English 
standard  of  excellence — so  that  in 
spite  of  their  numbers  we  may  dismiss 
them  cavalierly.  "Whatever  be  their 
worth,  however,  the  probabilities  are 
that  they  would  go  to  reinforce  France 
in  case  of  a  quarrel ;  and  so,  by  simply 
considering  the  navy  of  France,  we  shall 
get  pretty  nearly  at  the  strength  of  pos- 
sible combinations  against  us, — minus 
Russia  and  her  ten  liners.  It  would 
be  a  great  error  to  imagine  that  a  dimi- 
nution in  the  number  of  our  antagonists 
has  at  all  altered  the  conditions  of  a 
possible  struggle  in  favour  of  this  coun- 
try, and  we  are  much  mistaken  if  we 
cannot  prove  that,  quality  as  well  as 
numbers  being  taken  into  consideration, 
the  present  navy  of  France,  single- 
handed,  promises  to  be  quite  as  much 
of  a  match  for  England  of  the  present 
day,  as  the  united  navies  of  the  three 
powers  were  for  England  of  the  Revo- 
lutionary war.  The  mere  fact  that  at 
the  outbreak  of  that  war  the  number 
of  our  line-of-battle  ships  was  148,  and 
those  of  France  only  77,  while  at  the 
beginning  of  last  year  both  nations  pos- 
sessed an  equal  number,  is  sufficient 
to  show  the  probable  accuracy  of  our 
estimate. 

At  the  close  of  the  war  this  dispro- 
portion between  the  two  navies  had 
considerably  increased — England  then 
possessing  218  ships  of  the  line  and 
309  frigates,  while  France  had  only  69 
ships  of  the  line  and  38  frigates.  Until 
the  time  when  sailing  vessels  ceased  to 
be  the  force  with  which  a  naval  contest 
was  to  be  determined,  though  subject 


of  course  to  fluctuations,  England  never 
ceased  to  preserve  a  decided  naval  supe- 
riority over  her  neighbour.  During  the 
earlier  of  those  years  the  proportions 
may  be  roughly  stated  as  somewhere 
about  three  to  one,  while  in  the  later 
ones  it  had  dwindled  down  to  two  to 
one.  Wonderful  as  have  been  the 
changes  effected  by  the  introduction 
of  steam  in  all  that  relates  to  our 
manufactures  and  social  economy,  they 
certainly  have  not  surpassed,  if  they 
can  be  fairly  said  to  have  equalled,  those 
that  it  has  occasioned  in  all  that  relates 
to  the  navy.  Ten  years  ago,  and  for  all 
practical  purposes,  not  one  of  the  ships 
which  are  now  alone  thought  worth 
taking  account  of  existed,  while  those 
which  then  were  the  pride  of  the  country 
and  the  guardians  of  our  shores  are 
now,  unless  capable  of  conversion,  looked 
upon  as  comparatively  little  better  than 
lumber. 

In  1818  our  steam  mercantile  tonnage 
was  1,633  tons,  but  in  1859,  416,132. 
This  called  our  Government's  attention 
to  the  fact  of  the  success  of  steam, 
and  they  took  it  up.  The  history  of 
the  steam  navy  since  then  may  be  given 
in  a  few  lines.  In  1811  they  made  an 
abortive  attempt  to  build  paddle  cor- 
vettes. In  1840  they  tried  it  again 
with  some  success  (in  the  Vesuvius  and 
Gorgon,  which  were  at  Acre);  but,  the 
Rattler,  800  tons,  the  first  screw  corvette, 
which  was  built  the  same  year,  seeming 
to  possess  none  of  the  disadvantages  of 
the  paddle  frigates  (we  all  know  what 
they  are),  others  on  her  model  were 
constructed,  and  the  foundation  of  our 
present  navy  was  laid,  and  the  system 
of  naval  tactics  altered.  This  we  have 
heard  too  often  already.  Let  us  turn 
for  a  moment  to  another  alteration  in 
ship-fighting,  more  interesting  because 
more  recent. 

The  old  British  and  French  ships 
of  war  do  not  present  a  greater  con- 
trast to  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  La 
Bretagne,  than  does  an  old  32-pounder 
to  the  new  rifled  ordnance.  Some 
idea  may  be  formed  of  this  difference, 
and  of  the  superior  range  and  ac- 
curacy of  the  new  gun,  when  we  state 


The  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


that  at  a  high  angle  Sir  W.  Armstrong's 
gun  throws  its  projectile  9,000  yards, 
and  that  the  results  of  an  extended 
series  of  experiments  at  1,000  yards 
against  an  ordinary  9-pounder  field-piece 


were — 


ARMSTRONG      SERVICE 
GUN.  GUN. 


For  mean  difference  in 

range 231  yds.  147'2  yds. 

For  mean  lateral  devia- 
tion   0-8  yds.  9-1  yds. 

And  Sir  W.  Armstrong  declares  himself 
confident,  that  with  one  of  his  guns  at 
the  distance  of  600  yards  an  object  no 
larger  than  the  muzzle  of  an  enemy's 
gun  may  be  struck  at  almost  every  shot, 
while  at  a  distance  of  3,000  yards  a  tar- 
get of  nine  feet  square,  which  at  that 
distance  looks  a  mere  speck,  has,  on  a 
calm  day,  been  struck  five  times  out  of 
ten  shots :  a  ship,  therefore,  which  offers 
a  much  larger  surface,  would  be  hit  at 
much  greater  distances,  and  towns  might 
be  shelled  by  ships  five  miles  off.  There 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  so  far 
the  French  have  not  been  behind  in 
the  race,  and  that  their  artillery  is  at 
least  equal  to  that  of  Sir  W.  Armstrong. 
The  process,  however,  by  which  they 
manufacture  it,  and  the  results  that  have 
been  obtained  with  it,  have  been  so 
effectually  kept  secret,  that  it  is  difficult 
to  speak  with  any  accuracy  on  this  very 
interesting  subject.  The  best  informed, 
however,  affirm  that  these  cannon  are 
calculated,  with  the  same  charge  of 
powder,  to  project  a  missile  twice  the 
weight  of  an  ordinary  ball  thrice  the 
distance,  and  that,  unlike  our  own,  it  is 
not  intended  to  fire  solid  shot  from 
them,  but  shells,  which  explode  on 
striking  an  object.  These  latter  are 
said  to  be  made  with  leaden  bands 
round  them.  This,  if  true,  favours  the 
idea  that  the  principle  on  which  they 
are  rifled  is  the  same  as  that  adopted 
by  Sir  "W.  Armstrong.  Great  as  is  the 
improvement  which  this  ordnance  shows 
when  compared  with  that  which  it  has 
supplanted,  it  seems  destined  that  even 
it  is  to  be  distanced  by  a  more  formidable 
competitor.  The  experiments  of  Mr. 
"Whitworth  at  Southport  have  shown 


that  he  has  produced  a  cannon  which, 
while  it  exceeds  Sir  W.  Armstrong's  in 
range,  promises  to  rival  it  in  accuracy. 
The  principles  on  which  he  has  proceeded 
in  his  manufacture  are  original.     The 
Armstrong  barrel   is  made  of  rods  of 
wrought  iron,  welded  into  a  tube,  the 
pitch  of  whose  rifling  is  one  turn  in  10 
feet,   and   the   rifling   itself    38   sharp 
grooves.     Instead  of  the  rolled  bar-iron, 
of  which  Sir  W.  Armstrong's  guns  are 
made,  Mr.  Whitworth' s  gun   is  bored 
from  a  solid  cylinder  of  homogeneous 
iron.     The  barrel  is  of  hexagonal  shape, 
making  one  complete  turn,  which  varies 
as  the  diameter  of  the  gun.     This  con- 
stitutes the  only  rifling,  and  it  extends 
from  one  end  of  the  barrel  to  the  other. 
The  projectile,  which  is  of  a  longitu- 
dinal shape,  tapering  towards  both  ends, 
is  cut  at  the  middle  so  as  to  fit  with 
accuracy  the  sides  of  the  barrel.    In  the 
very    important   item    of    weight,    the 
superiority  in  the  larger  kinds  of  ord- 
nance still  remains  with   Sir  William. 
But  we  shall  be  much  mistaken  if  Mr. 
Whitworth's   scheme   of  reducing   the 
diameter  of  the.  projectile,  and  conse- 
quently the   bore — which   enables   the 
same  relative  strength  of  metal  to  be 
obtained  in  lighter  guns — will  not  result 
in  the  production  of  heavy  ordnances, 
whose  weight,  for  their  size,  will  be  less 
than  any  that  have  yet  been  produced. 
In  the  lighter  kinds,   Mr.  Whitworth 
even  now  can  well  bear  comparison  with 
his  rival,  as  his    3-pounder,   of  which 
we  have  heard  so  much,  can  be  easily 
manoeuvred  and  served  with  2  horses 
and  2  irien.    This  gun,  at  one  elevation, 
in  the  course  of   10  .shots,    showed  a 
mean  range  of  1,579  yards,  with  a  lon- 
gitudinal deviation  of  12  yards,  and  a 
lateral  one  of  '52,  whilst,  at  an  elevation 
of  35  degrees,  it  showed  on  an  average 
of  5  shots  a  mean  range  of  9,580  yards, 
with   a   longitudinal    deviation   of    81 
yards,    and    a    lateral    one    of    19-33. 
This  superiority  in  point  of  range  must 
in  a  great  degree  be  attributed  to  the 
fact  we  have  before  noticed,   that  the 
chamber  for  the  shot  which  exists  in 
the  Armstrong  gun  is  dispensed  with, 
thus  enabling  the  rifling  to  extend  from 

a  2 


252 


The  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


one  end  of  the  barrel  to  the  other.  The 
advantages  of  this  arrangement  are  not 
confined  to  range  alone.  The  chamber 
in  the  Armstrong  gun  is  an  effectual 
limit  to  the  length  of  the  shot  that  can 
be  used  in  it,  while  that  of  Whitworth 
can  be  used  indifferently  for  shot  of  any 
length  :  the  distance  to  which  it  can  be 
projected  diminishing,  of  course,  as  the 
weight  of  the  shot  is  increased ;  thus  en- 
abling an  almost  infinite  variety  of  results 
to  be  obtained  from  the  same  gun.  "Whit- 
worth's  gun  can  be  loaded  from  the 
muzzle,  should  anything  go  wrong; 
Armstrong's  cannot  be.  In  the  forth- 
coming trial  this  ought  to  weigh  consi- 
derably in  the  balance. 

The  enormous  cost  of  building  the 
new  ships,  combined  with  the  fact  that 
the  fire  to  which  they  will  be  subjected 
from  the  new  ordnance  is  likely  to  be  of 
so  much  more  destructive  a  nature,  has 
suggested  the  possibility  of  making 
snips  shot-proof.  The  idea  first  oc- 
curred to  our  ingenious  neighbours 
across  the  water,  and  they  accordingly 
set  to  work  to  build  some  frigates  of 
enormous  scantling,  and  plate  them 
with  metal-work  of  the  thickness  of 
4^  inches.  Ships  v  of  this  nature,  if 
successful,  promise  such  extraordinary 
advantages,  that  there  was  nothing  left 
SOT  this  country  but  to  follow  the  exam- 
ple of  France  and  build  some  too.  This 
has  been  accordingly  done,  and  a  series 
of  experiments  have  been  made  for  the 
purpose  of  ascertaining  how  far  the 
metal  casing  has  effected  its  object.  Ko 
trial  of  the  effect  of  Mr.  Whitworth's 
ordnance  was  made  till  the  latter  part 
of  last  May,  when  its  fire  was  directed 
against  a  new  iron-cased  floating  bat- 
tery. The  result  of  some  previous  trials 
on  the  same  vessel  with  Sir  William 
Armstrong's  gun  and  one  of  the  smooth- 
bore ordinary  68-pounders  had  been 
somewhat  indecisive.  At  the  distance  of 
200  yards  the  battery  appears  to  have 
been  impervious  to  the  heaviest  shot. 
When  close  to  it  a  single  shot  from 
the  68-pounder  indented  the  armour- 
plate  to  a  depth  varying  from  one  to 
two  inches.  Sir  William  Armstrong's 
gun  was,  as  was  to  be  expected,  more 


successful.  Where  two  or  more  shots 
struck,  the  plating  was  considerably 
damaged;  and  it  very  nearly  succeeded 
in  forcing  the  conical-shaped  shot  fired 
from  it  through  the  plating;  but,  though 
very  near,  it  never  succeeded  in  quite 
penetrating  the  metal.  The  gun  selected 
by  Mr.  Whitworth  for  his  experiment 
was  an  80-pounder.  The  distance  at 
which  it  was  placed  was  two  hundred 
yards.  The  first  shot  was  fired  with  a 
121b.  charge  of  powder.  It  struck  on 
the  edge  of  two  plates,  and,  having  gone 
clean  through  the  metal  work  and 
eleven  inches  of  the  oak  boarding,  it 
glanced  against  an  iron  bolt,  the  effect 
of  which  was  that  it  was  driven  up- 
wards, burying  itself  between  the  plates 
and  the  inside  of  the  ship.  An  increase 
of  two  pounds  of  powder  was  tried  on 
firing  the  second  shot.  This  time  the 
shot  struck  the  vessel  in  the  centre  of 
an  armour-plate,  and  penetrated  to  the 
main-deck,  leaving  as  clean  a  hole 
through  wood-work  and  metal-plating 
as  a  pistol-bullet  would  do  if  discharged 
against  an  ordinary,  pane  of  glass. 

We  have  already  observed  that  a 
great,  and  at  present  an  unknown,  revo- 
lution in  all  that  relates  to  naval  war- 
fare has  been  effected  by  these  means ; 
but  there  is  another  change  which  has 
likewise  taken  place,  and  that  by  no 
means  one  slow  in  making  itself  felt. 
We  refer  to  the  enormous  increase  of 
expense  occasioned  by  the  introduction 
of  these  inventions.  Our  navy  estimates 
have  this  year  reached  the  almost  alarm- 
ing figure  of  12,800,000?.,  being  by  a 
great  deal  the  largest  that  this  country 
has  ever  seen  in  time  of  peace.  The 
increase  of  expense  incident  on  the  em- 
ployment of  the  new  machinery  presses 
upon  us  on  every  side.  Not  only  is 
there  the  original  cost  of  construction 
of  the  ship  itself,  double  that  of  a  sail- 
ing ship  of  the  same  rate,  but  the  daily 
expenses  show  a  proportionate  increase. 
There  is  the  item  of  coal,  for  instance, 
which  in  a  first-rate  ship  of  the  line  in 
commission  cannot  be  estimated  at  much 
less  than  100?.  per  diem.  There  are  also 
the  sums  paid  for  the  employment  of  the 
skilled  labour  of  engineers  and  stokers; 


The  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


253 


which,  change  has  raised  the  wages  paid 
on  board  a  first-rate  line-of-battle  ship  by 
an  annual  sum  of  8,55  5£.  To  this  must 
be  added  the  sums  for  wear  and  tear  of 
the  ships.  The  new  method  of  propul- 
sion is  not  only  itself  more  expensive, 
but,  by  the  shaking  of  the  ship  which  it 
occasions,  renders  the  more  costly  struc- 
ture the  less  durable  one.  The  screw, 
in  this  respect,  is  even  worse  than  the 
paddle.  Some  idea  of  the  magnitude 
of  this  item  may  be  formed  from  the 
fact  that  the  sum  of  14,325£.  has  to  be 
spent  annually  in  keeping  a  first-class 
ship-of-the-line  in  working  order.  How- 
ever, it  is  satisfactory  to  reflect  that  these 
expenses  must  be  borne  equally  by 
every  nation  that  aspires  to  maintain  a 
large  steam  navy,  and  must  eventually 
tell  most  against  those  whose  resources 
are  least  able  to  stand  such  an  exhaust- 
ing drain. 

So  much  then  for  quality.  In  that 
respect  we  seem  nearly  equal.  As  far  as 
we  have  the  means  of  knowing,  the  me- 
chanical contrivances  of  France  are  as 
good  as  our  own.  Let  us  now  see  how  we 
stand  with  regard  to  numerical  strength 
since  the  reconstruction  of  both  navies. 

The  year  1850  was  destined  to  begin 
a  new  era  in  the  French  Navy.  The 
commission  of  inquiry  appointed  by  the 
Revolutionary  Government  had  com- 
menced its  sittings.  It  would  be  a 
mistake  to  imagine  that  the  change  of 
government  in  France  was  the  cause  of 
its  appointment.  The  policy  which  its 
existence  indicated  had  already  been  in- 
augurated and  steadily  pursued  by  one 
of  the  Princes  of  the  fallen  Dynasty. 
As  far  back  as  the  year  1844  the  Prince 
De  Joinville  was  appointed  head  of  the 
French  Navy.  Possessed  of  consider- 
able scientific  knowledge  and  patriotism, 
and,  from  his  position,  enjoying  better 
opportunities  than  any  one  else  for  carry- 
ing out  his  plans,  he  set  to  work  to  re- 
create the  French  Navy,  and  by  that 
means  to  restore  to  his  country  the 
maritime  influence  of  which  the  unsuc- 
cessful issue  of  the  last  war  had  deprived 
her.  The  experiments  in  the  construction 
of  steam  ships  of  war  which  this  country 
had  been  making  were  not  lost  upon  the 


Prince.  His  sagacity  anticipated  the 
revolution  with  which  his  success  must 
be  attended.  Accordingly,  his  chief  care 
was  directed  to  build  and  improve  steam 
ships  of  war ;  and  specimens  highly 
creditable  to  French  skill  were  turned 
out  of  the  dockyards.  The  revolution, 
of  1848  put  a  stop  to  his  maturing  his 
plans ;  but  the  policy  which  he  had 
traced  was  adopted  and  expanded  by 
the  government  which  succeeded  him. 
The  commission  to  which  we  have  before 
alluded  was  appointed.  It  first  reduced 
to  a  determined  scheme  the  visions  of 
naval  aggrandizement  which  had  been 
floating  before  Joinville's  eyes,  and 
sketched  the  gigantic  proportion  of  the 
present  steam  navy  of  France.  To  the 
present  Emperor  has  fallen  the  task  of 
realising  the  designs  of  his  predecessors ; 
and  it  is  but  bare  justice  to  him  to  say 
that  he  has  applied  himself  to  it  with 
great  skill  and  indomitable  energy. 
Some  idea  of  the  way  in  which  he  has 
worked  may  be  formed  from  the  fact 
that,  from  the  year  1851  to  the  begin- 
ning of  the  year  1854,  France  has  pro- 
duced not  less  than  twenty-four  line-of- 
battle  ships,  and  that  in  the  course  of 
the  year  1854,  thirteen  men-of-war 
were  launched  from  French  dockyards, 
nine  of  which  were  ships  of  the  line. 
These  efforts  have  produced  a  very 
sensible  effect  upon  the  relative  naval 
strength  of  the  two  countries,  inasmuch 
as  the  superiority  of  four  to  one  in  ships 
of  the  line  which  England  had  at  the 
end  of  the  war,  was  in  the  course  of 
1859  reduced  to  equality.  Great  as 
have  been  the  energies  displayed  by  the 
French  government  in  the  construction 
of  ships  of  war,  no  less  pains  have  been 
taken  to  man  them  with  efficient  crews. 
During  the  late  war  it  is  scarcely  pos- 
sible to  conceive  anything  more  clumsy 
than  the  way  in  which  a  French  fleet 
was  manned.  On  board  every  ship 
were  two  distinct  corps,  separately 
officered,  neither  of  which  possessed 
any  knowledge  of  the  duties  of  the 
other — the  seamen  who  navigated  the 
ship,  the  artillerymen  who  had  charge  of 
the  guns.  A  divided  command  was  the 
necessary  consequence,  and  confusion 


254 


TJie  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


worse  confounded  the  necessary  result. 
This  evil  has  now  been  remedied,  and  a 
body  denominated  Corps  des  equipages  de 
Ligne,  the  members  of  which  combine 
the  seaman  and  artilleryman  in  one, 
have  been  substituted  in  their  place: 
other  improvements  have  been  likewise 
effected.  Alive  to  the  fact  that  no 
small  part  of  English  success  in  the  last 
war  was  due  to  precision  of  aim  and  the 
rapidity  of  fire,  special  attention  has 
been  directed  to  all  that  relates  to  naval 
artillery..  A  subdivision  in  the  equi- 
pages de  la  ligne  has  been  effected,  and 
a  corps  of  8,500  matelots  cannoniers,  or 
picked  gunners,  has  been  formed.  These 
men  undergo  a  special  training.  Every- 
thing relating  to  the  manning  of  the 
French  fleet  bespeaks  the  most  careful 
organization,  and  every  improvement 
which  could  be  derived  from  our  own 
navy,  or  that  of  any  other  nation,  has 
been  sedulously  adopted. — "The  equi- 
pages de  la  ligne"  numbering  in  the 
whole  rather  above  60,000  men,  are 
stationed  at  the  five  great  naval  ports  of 
Prance,  —  Brest,  Toulon,  Cherbourg, 
Kochefort,  and  Lorient.  This,  however,  is 
by  no  means  the  only  force  available  for 
manning  the  fleet.  Besides  these,  there 
is  the  corps  de  TartUlerie  de  la  marine, 
engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  ordnance 
and  ammunition,  who  number  above 
6,000  men  ;  the  infanterie  de  la  marine, 
who  are  20,000  strong ;  400  gend- 
armerie maritime  stationed  at  Lorient ; 
1,600  gardes  maritimes  ;  500  corps  Im- 
perial du  Genie  Maritime  or  engineers  ; 
to  say  nothing  of  a  body  of  shipwrights, 
riggers,  and  other  workmen  employed 
about  the  dockyards,  who  may  be  col- 
lectively reckoned  at  3,500.  The  sum 
of  these  figures  presents  a  total  of  92,000 
men,  which  represents  the  effective 
strength  of  the  French  navy.  The 
number  of  French  merchant-seamen, 
according  to  the  returns  of  last  year, 
was  102,000  men.  Like  that  of  this 
country,  the  merchant-service  in  France 
forms  the  body  of  reserve,  from  whose 
ranks. the  navy  must  be  recruited.  But 
unlike  ourselves,  ^the  French  for  a 
long  time  past  have  done  their  utmost 
to  make  their  reserve  as  efficient  and 


available  as  possible.  The  system  that 
has  been  pursued  operates  upon  the 
whole  of  the  maritime  populations  of 
the  country.  Every  Frenchman  who 
takes  to  a  sea-faring  life  is  obliged  by 
law  to  register  himself.  While  his  name 
remains  upon  the  register  he  is  allowed 
certain  advantages,  and  subject  to  certain 
duties.  The  advantages  are  the  exemption 
from  military  service,  and  right  to  fish 
and  navigate  in  the  waters  of  France.  The 
duties  are  those  of  compulsory  service 
on  board  the  fleet  at  stated  periods.  The 
whole  number  of  men  on  the  rolls  is  di- 
vided into  classes.  The  first  class  includes 
all  seamen  between  twenty  and  forty,  as 
well  as  officers  of  the  merchant-service 
under  forty-five ;  the  second  class,  men 
who  have  served  above  four  years;  the 
third  class,  men  above  six  years.  Six  years' 
men  are  exempt  from  ordinary  levies. 
Men  who  have  served  three  years  are 
free  till  their  turn  comes  round ;  and  so 
by  means  of  this  machinery,  in  the  course 
of  nine  years,  the  entire  body  of  French 
merchant  seamen  must  pass  through  the 
Imperial  Navy  and  learn  its  duties — 
while,  in  case  of  sudden  emergency,  it 
enables  the  Government  to  know  the 
whereabouts  of  these  seamen,  whether 
they  are  at  home  or  in  port.  Thus 
France  not  only  possesses  a  fleet  of 
enormous  strength,  perfectly  equipped 
and  manned,  but  also  a  powerful  reserve, 
easy  of  access,  by  which  she  may  at 
pleasure  recruit  or  increase  her  power. 

We  have,  before  proceeding  to  inquire 
into  the  state  of  our  own  navy,  spoken 
of  and  examined  into  the  resources  and 
condition  of  that  of  France,  because 
it  is,  with  reference  to  it,  and  it  alone, 
that  the  efforts  we  are  now  making  can 
be  explained,  or  their  efficiency  tested. 
Nothing  can  be  so  mischievously  mis- 
leading as  any  attempt  to  estimate  our 
present  strength  by  retrospective  com- 
parisons ;  and  we  confess  we  trembled 
when  we  heard  our  First  Lord  of  the 
Admiralty  state,  with  evident  satisfac- 
tion, "  that  at  NO  TIME  were  our  naval 
"  preparations  in  so  forward  a  state  as  at 
"present."  Let  us  proceed  briefly  to 
investigate  what  are  the  naval  necessities 
of  the  country ;  how  far  they  are  at  pre- 


The  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


255 


sent  supplied,  and  what  are  the  reserve 
resources  available  for  recruiting  them. 
The  necessities  of  this  country  are  not 
confined  to  the  means  of  self-defence. 
A  large  commerce  and  numerous  colo- 
nies make  large  demands  upon  us.  In 
the  year  1858,  the  total  force  thus  em- 
ployed, exclusive  of  the  Mediterranean 
fleet,  was  139  ships,  manned  by  21,928, 
or  something  very  like  half  our  effective 
navy  for  that  year.  With  France,  the 
reverse  of  this  is  the  case;  her  trade  is 
not  a  quarter  the  amount  of  that  of  this 
country ;  and  with  the  exception  of 
Algeria,  which,  so  to  speak,  lies  at  her 
door,  and  her  settlements  on  the  South 
American  coast,  she  is  destitute  of  colo- 
nies. This  would  enable  her  to  concen- 
trate what  forces  she  possesses,  whilst 
ours  must  necessarily  be  dispersed  :  a 
fact  which  is  alone  sufficient  to  convert 
a  numerical  equality  in  the  fleets  of  the 
two  countries  into  a  practical  inferiority 
on  the  part  of  this  country.  But  in  the 
early  part  of  last  year  such  an  allowance 
need  not  have  been  made,  as  in  the 
larger  and  more  important  ships  France 
not  only  enjoyed  a  practical  but  even  a 
numerical  superiority — both  nations 
having  29  first-rate  screw  line-of-battle 
ships,  while  the  French  frigates  were  34 
to  our  26.  It  is  true  that  this  alarming 
disparity  has  been  somewhat  diminished 
by  the  efforts  of  the  late  and  present 
Governments,  so  that  the  following  lists 
of  the  relative  strength  of  both  powers 
present  a  more  reassuring  aspect. 

LIST  OF  ENTIRE  STEAM  NAVY, 

Including  Ships   fit   for    conversion,  up   to 
Feb.  13, 1860. 


48  Line-of-battle-ships  afloat,  and  11  building. 
12  Sailing  line-of-battle  ships  fit  for  conver- 
sion. 
34  Frigates  afloat,  and  9  building. 

6  Sailing  frigates  fit  for  conversion. 

9  Steam  block  ships. 

4  Iron-cased  ships  building. 
16  Corvettes  afloat,  and  5  building. 
80  Sloops  afloat,  and  15  building. 
27  Small  vessels  afloat. 
169  Gunboats  afloat,  and  23  building. 

8  Floating  batteries. 
61  Transports. 


FHANOE. 

32  Ships-of-the-line  afloat,  and  5  building. 
34  Frigates  afloat,  and  13  building. 

6  Iron-cased  ships  building. 
17  Corvettes  afloat,  and  2  building. 
39  Gunboats  afloat,  and  29  building. 

5  Floating  batteries  afloat,  and  4  build'.ng. 
31  Transports. 
86  Avesus. 

This  is  better,  but  terribly  bad.  If 
both  nations  had  finished  their  frigates 
we  should  again  be  inferior,  and  in  the 
very  arm  calculated  to  harass  our  com- 
merce, especially  our  gold  ships.  We 
look,  however,  for  better  things ;  Go- 
vernment proposes  in  addition  8  line-of- 
battle  ships,  12  frigates,  4  iron-cased 
ships,  and  4  corvettes.  When  this  ad- 
dition is  made  (supposing  France  sud- 
denly to  leave  off  ship-building)  we  shall 
be  again  superior,  though  not  com- 
fortably so.  Let  us  now  turn  from  ships 
to  men. 

The  prospect  here  is  far  from  satisfac- 
tory, though,  like  most  things  in  these 
days,  mending.  Previous  to  the  year 
1853,  men  were  only  hired  nominally 
for  eight  years,  but  generally  paid  off  in 
four,  or  thereabouts.  The  fruits  of  this 
system  were  seen  in  the  difficulty  we 
had  in  manning  the  Baltic  fleet,  and  in 
the  quality  of  the  men  we  got  together 
with  such  infinite  trouble.  According 
to  Sir  Charles  Napier,  they  were  by  no 
means  first-rate.  Now,  however,  the 
Duke  of  Somerset  tells  us  that  he  can 
afford  to  pick  and  choose,  and  that  he 
takes  none  but  able  or  ordinary  seamen. 
Let.  us,  however,  see  what  we  require, 
and  what  we  have  got.  According  to 
the  latest  returns  of  the  number  of 
men  that  would  be  required  to  provide 
established  or  estimated  complements 
for  the  whole  of  our  steam  vessels  afloat, 
building,  or  converting,  it  seems  that 
for  the  59  steamships  of  the  line,  50,620 
men  would  be  required  ;  for  the  43 
frigates,  20,055  ;  for  block  ships,  5,535; 
for  iron-cased  ships,  1,900;  for  21  cor- 
vettes, 5,690;  for  95  sloops,  13,545; 
for  27  smaller  batteries,  1,987  ;  for  192 
gunboats,  8,086  ;  for  8  floating-batteries, 
1,680;  for  61  transports,- tenders,  &c., 
2,804 ;  and  for  4  mortar-vessels,  840. 
In  all,  the  total  number  of  men  would 


256 


The  Navies  of  France  and  England. 


be  112,742,  or  95,813  officers  and  sea- 
men, and  16,927  marines.  The  number 
voted  in  the  present  year  for  the  navy 
is  85,500  men  and  boys  ;  and  this  in- 
cludes 18,000  marines  and  6,862  coast- 
guards, which  latter  force  is  generally 
reckoned  as  forming  part  of  the  re- 
serves. These  figures  show  a  deficiency 
of  27,242,  which  would  have  to  be  made 
good  before  all  our  ships  built,  or  in 
process  of  construction,  could  be  made 
actually  available.  We  have  already,  in 
the  course  of  our  observations  on  the 
French  Navy,  pointed  out  that  a  body 
of  92,000  men  now  in  the  employ  of 
Government  could  be  made  use  of  for 
manning  their  fleet.  It  is  true  that 
these  numbers  comprise  artizans  work- 
ing in  the  dockyards,  which  are  not  in- 
cluded in  our  own  85,500  men ;  but 
allowing  for  the  deduction  of  these 
latter,  consisting  of  somewhere  about 
3,500  men,  the  result  would  still  show 
a  balance  in  favour  of  the  French  Navy 
of  something  like  2,000  fighting  men. 
Were  the  reserve  forces  of  both  nations 
in  an  equal  state  of  efficiency,  this  dis- 
parity would  be  of  comparatively  small 
importance.  But  this  is  not  the  case  : 
the  inscription  maritime  before  de- 
scribed maintains  a  reserve  of  at  least 
102,000  men,  now  employed  in  the 
merchant  service.  Upon  the  most  mo- 
derate computation,  a  third  of  these  may 
be  looked  upon  as  immediately  available 
should  an  emergency  occur.  Our  own 
reserves,  on  the  other  hand,  fall  far 
short  of  such  a  number.  Exclusive  of 
the  coast-guardsmen,  which  form  part 
of  the  85,500  men,  they  are  only  7,988, 
or  little  more  than  one-tenth  of  the 
number  recommended  by  the  Commis- 
sioners. If  the  men  are  really  pressing 
to  be  regularly  employed  in  the  navy  in 
the  manner  described  by  the  Duke  of 
Somerset,  it  seems  hard  to  understand 
why — considering  that  the  terms  were  at 
first  said  only  to  be  too  liberal,  and  that 
there  has  been  sufficient  time  to  allow  of 
the  men  understanding  that  it  is  a  bond 
fide  offer  that  is  made — there  should  be 
such  difficulty  in  obtaining  men.  Mis- 
management there  must  be  somewhere  ; 
but  at  whose  door  ought  it  to  be  laid  ? 


An  answer  to  this  question  may  perhaps 
be  found  in  the  Duke  of  Somerset's 
speech  on  the  2d  of  last  May,  when  he 
stated  that  one  of  the  reasons  for  the 
little  progress  made  in  the  enlistment  of 
men  for  the  Eoyal  Naval  Reserve  was 
the  fact  that  Government  did  not  begin 
to  pay  the  men  till  last  April ;  adding, 
by  way  of  making  his  reason  conclusive, 
that  it  was  well  known  that  seamen 
were  not  likely  to  come  forward  till  pay 
began.  Now  the  Report  of  the  Com- 
missioners was  presented  to  both  Houses 
on  the  9th  of  February  of  the  preceding 
year,  and  it  does  not  argue  any  extra- 
ordinary zeal  or  alacrity  on  the  part  of 
the  authorities,  considering  the  matter 
was  so  important  and  pressing,  to  allow 
a  whole  year  to  elapse  before  any  attempt 
was  made  to  carry  out  the  suggestions 
it  contained.  It  is  idle  to  talk  of  the 
difficulty  of  raising  money  for  such  a 
purpose,  when  we  are  spending  millions 
in  building  ships,  which  without  men  to 
man  them  must  be  useless.  Nor  are  we 
able  to  understand  the  Duke's  arguments 
against  increasing  the  bounty  paid  to  the 
volunteers,  or  the  objection  to  enrolling 
an  inferior  class  of  men.  With  regard 
to  the  first  of  these  questions,  his  argu- 
ment, when  he  urges  that  such  an  in- 
crease would  prevent  men  from  regu- 
larly joining  the  navy,  by  making  the 
Royal  Volunteer  Corps  too  popular, 
would  be  a  perfectly  legitimate  one,  if 
the  recruiting  for  that  body  was  to  be 
indefinite ;  but  as  the  number  is  limited, 
its  competition  with  the  regular  navy 
could  only  be  temporary,  and  the  effect 
of  the  increase  of  bounty,  supposing  it 
to  have  any,  would  simply  be  that  the 
Reserve  Corps  would  be  filled  up  first, 
and  might  consist  of  better  men.  As 
for  the  objection  that  first-class  men 
would  refuse  to  join  the  reserve  if  in- 
ferior men  are  allowed  to  do  so,  we 
cannot  help  being  sanguine  enough  to 
believe  that  any  such  reluctance  might 
be  overcome  by  the  very  simple  process 
of  dividing  the  corps  into  two  divisions, 
distinguished,  if  thought  advisable,  by 
pay  and  dress;  the  first  of  which  should 
alone  be  open  to  the  best  men,  while 
the  latter  should  embrace  the  inferior 


The  Names  of  France  and  England. 


257 


class.  Thus,  without  any  sacrifice  of 
efficiency,  numbers  might  be  obtained. 
But,  while  we  thus  boldly  examine  into 
our  difficulties,  it  is  satisfactory  to  re- 
flect that  they  proceed  solely  from  in- 
ability to  utilize  our  resources,  not  from 
any  paucity  in  the  resources  themselves. 
The  mercantile  marine  is  that  alone 
which  will  sustain  a  lasting  maritime 
supremacy.  The  tonnage  of  the  English 
merchant  service  is  four  times  that  of 
France,  and  the  number  of  men  engaged 
in  it  is  more  than  double  that  of  France. 
If,  with  such  advantages,  we  are  unable 
to  man  our  fleets  as  speedily  and  effec- 
tually as  France  can  man  hers,  some- 
thing may  without  injustice  be  laid  at 
the  door  of  official  blundering.  Second 
only  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  a  suffi- 
cient number  of  men  to  man  our  ships, 
is  that  of  getting  rid  of  a  sufficient 
number  of  the  officers  who  compete  for 
the  command  of  them.  Two  distinct 
schemes  for  effecting  this  object  are 
now  before  the  public, — that  of  the  late 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  and  that 
of  the  present  Secretary  to  the  Admi- 
ralty. On  the  nature  of  the  evil  both 
these  gentlemen  are  agreed.  The  only 
question  between  them  is,  whether  it 
can  be  dealt  with  by  means  of  a  per- 
manent and  comprehensive  scheme,  or 
whether  the  remedy  must  be  applied 
from  time  to  time  as  the  exigencies 
of  the  case  may  require.  The  varia- 
tion in  the  number  of  officers,  accord- 
ing as  the  navy  is  on  a  war  or 
peace  footing,  constitutes,  according  to 
Lord  C.  Paget,  an  insuperable  objec- 
tion to  dealing  with  the  question  sys- 
tematically. A  system  of  retirement 
which  would  only  promote  a  wholesome 
emulation  when  the  lower  ranks  of  the 
service  are  full,  would,  when  they  have 
ceased  to  be  so,  be  imposing  a  heavy 
burden  on  the  country  without  conferring 
corresponding  advantages.  The  force  of 
such  an  argument  depends  materially 
upon  the  probable  duration  of  the  present 
state  of  things.  If  it  can  be  proved  to 
be  permanent,  Lord  C.  Paget's  argument 
falls  to  the  ground ;  as  the  slowness  of 
promotion  would  be  a  crying  evil  with 
the  navy  011  a  peace  footing. 


In  the  course  of  the  foregoing  obser- 
vations we  have  already  pointed  out 
what  must  regulate  the  amount  of  our 
naval  forces.  Is  there  any  chance,  and 
if  any,  what,  of  the  French  armaments 
being  reduced  1  To  this  query  we  must 
reply  in  the  negative.  Fostered  by  three 
successive  governments,  resulting  from 
three  successive  constitutions,  there  is 
nothing  in  these  eflbrts  that  can  make 
us  hope  that  they  are  of  a  transient 
nature.  Our  navy  may  therefore  now  be 
considered  in  its  normal  condition,  and 
we  submit  that  it  is  on  that  assumption 
that  any  scheme  for  regulating  promotion 
in  it  should  be  based.  But  its  want  of 
system  is  not  the  only  objection  that 
forbids  the  adoption  of  Lord  C.  Paget's 
plan.  The  fact  that  it  deals  in  a  dif- 
ferent way  with  different  orders  of 
officers,  is  alone  sufficient  to  condemn  it. 
Why  should  septuagenarian  admirals  be 
allowed  to  impede  the  promotion  of 
captains  any  more  than  sexagenarian 
captains  are  allowed  to  impede  that  of 
lieutenants  1  With  all  deference  to 
Lord  C.  Paget,  we  are  not  quite  sure 
that  this,  which  to  ordinary  individuals 
appears  to  be  a  slight  flaw  in  his  plan, 
was  not  in  fact  the  reason  for  its  adop- 
tion ;  and,  without  imputing  to  him  guilt 
of  the  deepest  dye,  we  cannot  help  sus- 
pecting that  the  thought  of  having  to 
encounter  the  expostulations  and  re- 
monstrances of  his  sorrowing  brother 
admirals  has  been  slightly  too  much  for 
his  official  virtue.  Even  we,  to  some 
extent,  must  sympathise  with  the  weak- 
ness, if  such  it  can  be  called,  and  it 
would  give  us  real  pain  to  feel  that  any 
mortification  had  been  reflected  on  a 
class  of  men  who  have  deserved  so  well 
of  their  country.  But  the  public  interest 
is  paramount  even  to  such  a  considera- 
tion as  this,  and  we  are  bound  to  say 
that  preference  should  be  given  to  any 
plan  which,  while  meting  out  the  same 
measure  to  every  rank  in  the  service, 
promises  to  deal  with  the  question  sys- 
tematically. In  conclusion,  although, 
as  we  have  before  told  our  readers,  there 
is  everything  in  the  vast  extent  of  our 
resources  to  inspire  a  legitimate  confi- 
dence, there  is  nothing  that  authorizes 


258 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


apathy  and  carelessness.  It  is  our  posi- 
tion, if  hostilities  suddenly  broke  out,  to 
which  we  must  look,  and  it  is  no  use  to 
disguise  from  ourselves  the  fact  that  in 


such  an  emergency  the  means  of  man- 
ning our  ships  would  not  be  equal  to 
that  of  our  antagonist. 


TOM  BKOWN  AT  OXFOKD. 

BY   THE   AUTHOR   OF    "TOM   BROWN' S   SCHOOL-DATS.' 


CHAPTEE  XXIV. 

THE   SCHOOLS. 

THERE  is  no  more  characteristic  spot 
in  Oxford  than  the  quadrangle  of  the 
schools.  Doubtless  in  the  times  when 
the  University  held  and  exercised  the 
privileges  of  infang-thief  and  outfang- 
thief,  and  other  such  old-world  rights, 
there  must  have  been  a  place  some- 
where within  the  liberties  devoted  to 
examinations  even  more  exciting  than 
the  great-go.  But  since  alma  mater  has 
ceased  to  take  cognizance  of  "  treasons, 
insurrections,  felonies,  and  mayhem "  it  _ 
is  here  in  that  fateful  and  inexorable 
quadrangle,  and  the  buildings  which  sur- 
round it,  that  she  exercises  her  most 
potent  spells  over  the  spirits  of  her 
children.  I  suppose  that  a  man  being 
tried  for  his  life  must  be  more  uncom- 
fortable than  an  undergraduate  being 
examined  for  his  degree,  and  that  to 
be  hung — perhaps  even  to  be  pilloried 
— must  be  worse  than  to  be  plucked. 
But  after  all,  the  feelings  in  both  cases 
must  be  essentially  the  same,  only  more 
intense  in  the  former ;  and  an  institu- 
tion which  can  examine  a  man  (in  literis 
humanioribus,  in  humanities  so  called) 
once  a  year  for  two  or  three  days  at  a 
time,  has  nothing  to  complain  of,  though 
it  has  no  longer  the  power  of  hanging 
him  at  once  out  of  hand. 

The  schools'  quadrangle"  is  for  the 
most  part  a  lonely  place.  Men  pass 
through  the  melancholy  iron-gates  by 
which  that  quadrangle  is  entered  on 
three  sides — from  Broad  Street,  from 
the  Eatcliffe,  and  from  New  College 
Lane — when  necessity  leads  them  that 
way,  with  alert  step  and  silently.  No 


nursemaids  or  children  play  about  it. 
Nobody  lives  in  it.  Only  when  the 
examinations  are  going  on  you  may  see 
a  few  hooded  figures  who  walk  as 
though  conscious  of  the  powers  of  aca- 
demic life  and  death  which  they  wield, 
and  a  good  deal  of  shuddering  under- 
graduate life  flitting  about  the  place — 
luckless  youths,  in  white  ties  and  bands, 
who  are  undergoing  the  peine  forte  et 
dure  with  different  degrees  of  compo- 
sure ;  and  their  friends  who  are  there 
to  look  after  them.  You  may  go  in  and 
watch  the  torture  yourself  if  you  are  so 
minded,  for  the  vivd  wee  schools  are 
open  to  the  public.  But  one  such  ex- 
periment will  be  enough  for  you,  unless 
you  are  very  hard-hearted.  The  sight 
of  the  long  table,  behind  which  sit 
Minos,  Bhadamanthus,  and  Co.  full- 
robed,  stern  of  face,  soft  of  speech, 
seizing  their  victim  in  turn,  now  letting 
him  run  a  little  way  as  a  cat  does  a 
mouse,  then  drawing  him  back,  with 
claw  of  wily  question,  probing  him  on 
this  side  and  that,  turning  him  inside 
out — the  row  of  victims  opposite,  pale 
or  flushed,  of  anxious  or  careless  mien, 
according  to  temperament,  but  one  and 
all  on  the  rack  as  they  bend  over  the 
alloted  paper,  or  read  from  the  well- 
thumbed  book — the  scarcely -less-to-be- 
pitied  row  behind,  of  future  victims, 
"  sitting  for  the  schools  "  as  it  is  called, 
ruthlessly  brought  hither  by  statutes,  to 
watch  the  sufferings  they  must  here- 
after undergo — should  fill  the  friend  of 
suffering  humanity  with  thoughts  too 
deep  for  tears.  Through  the  long  day 
till  four  o'clock,  or  later,  the  torture 
lasts.  Then  the  last  victim  is  dismissed ; 
the  men  who  are  "sitting  for  the  schools" 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


259 


fly  all  ways  to  their  colleges,  silently,  in 
search  of  relief  to  their  over-wrought 
feelings — probably  also  of  beer,  the 
undergraduate's  universal  specific.  The 
beadles  close  those  ruthless  doors  for  a 
mysterious  half-hour  on  the  examiners. 
Outside  in  the  quadrangle  collect  by 
twos  and  threes  the  friends  of  the  vic- 
tims waiting  for  the  re-opening  of  the 
door  and  the  distribution  of  the  "  testa- 
murs." The  testamurs,  lady  readers  will 
be  pleased  to  understand,  are  certificates 
under  the  hands  of  the  examiners  that 
your  sons,  brothers,  husbands  perhaps, 
have  successfully  undergone  the  torture. 
But,  if  husbands,  oh,  go  not  yourselves, 
and  send  not  your  sons  to  wait  for  the 
testamur  of  the  head  of  your  house  ;  for 
Oxford  has  seldom  seen  a  sight  over 
which  she  would  more  willingly  draw 
the  veil  with  averted  face  than  that  of 
the  youth  rushing  wildly,  dissolved  in 
tears,  from  the  schools'  quadrangle,  and 
shouting,  "  Mamma  !  papa's  plucked  j 
papa's  plucked ! " 

On  the  occasion  at  which  we  have 
now  arrived,  the  pass-schools  are  over 
already ;  the  paper- work  of  the  candidates 
for  honours  has  been  going  on  for  the 
last  week.  Every  morning  our  three 
St.  Ambrose  acquaintance  have  mustered 
with  the  rest  for  the  anxious  day's 
work,  after  such  breakfasts  as  they 
have  been  able  to  eat  under  the  circum- 
stances. They  take  their  work  in  very 
different  ways.  Grey  rushes  nervously 
back  to  his  rooms  whenever  he  is  out  of 
the  schools  for  ten  minutes,  to  look  up 
dates  and  dodges.  He  worries  himself 
sadly  over  every  blunder  which  he  dis- 
covers himself  to  have  made,  and  sits 
up  nearly  all  night  cramming,  always 
hoping  for  a  better  to-morrow.  Blake 
keeps  up  his  affected  carelessness  to  the 
last,  quizzing  the  examiners,  laughing 
over  the  shots  he  has  been  making  in 
the  last  paper.  His  shots,  it  must  be 
said,  turn  out  well  for  the  most  part ; 
in  the  taste  paper  particularly,  as  they 
compare  notes,  he  seems  to  have  almost 
struck  the  bull's-eye  in  his  answers  to 
one  or  two  questions  which  Hardy  and 
Grey  have  passed  over  altogether.  When 
he  is  wide  of  the  mark  he  passes  it  off 


with  some  jesting  remark  "that  a  fool 
can  ask  in  five  minutes  more  questions 
than  a  wise  man  can  answer  in  a  week," 
or  wish  "  that  the  examiners  would  play 
fair,  and  change  sides  of  the  table  for 
an  hour  with  the  candidates,  for  a 
finish."  But  he,  too,  though  he  does  it 
on  the  sly,  is  cramming  with  his  coach 
at  every  available  spare  moment.  Hardy 
had  finished  his  reading  a  full  thirty-six 
hours  before  the  first  day  of  paper-work, 
and  had  braced  himself  for  the  actual 
struggle  by  two  good  nights'  rest  and  a 
long  day  on  the  river  with  Tom.  He 
had  worked  hard  from  the  first,  and  so 
had  really  mastered  his  books.  Arid 
now,  feeling  that  he  has  fairly  and 
honestly  done  his  best,  and  that  if  he 
fails  it  will  be  either  from  bad  luck  or 
natural  incapacity,  and  not  from  his 
own  fault,  he  manages  to  keep  a  cooler 
head  than  any  of  his  companions  in 
trouble. 

The  week's  paper-work  passes  off  un- 
eventfully :  then  comes  the  vivd  voce 
work  for  the  candidates  for  honours. 
They  go  in,  in  alphabetical  order,  four 
a  day,  for  one  more  day's  work,  the 
hardest  of  all,  and  then  there  is  nothing 
more  to  do  but  wait  patiently  for  the 
class  list.  On  these  days  there  is  a 
good  attendance  in  the  inclosed  space 
to  which  the  public  are  admitted.  The 
front  seats  are  often  occupied  by  the 
private  tutors  of  the  candidates,  who 
are  there,  like  Newmarket  trainers,  to 
see  the  performances  of  their  stables, 
marking  how  each  colt  bears  pressing 
and  comports  himself  when  the  pinch 
comes.  They  watch  the  examiners  too, 
carefully,  to  see  what  line  they  take, 
whether  science,  or  history,  or  scholar- 
ship is  likely  to  tell  most,  that  they 
may  handle  the  rest  of  their  starters  ac- 
cordingly. Behind  them,  for  the  most 
part,  on  the  hindermost  benches  of  the 
flight  of  raised  steps,  anxious  younger 
brothers  and  friends  sit,  for  a  few 
minutes  at  a  time,  flitting  in  and  out  in 
nmch  unrest,  and  making  the  objects  of 
their  solicitude  more  nervous  than  ever 
by  their  sympathy. 

It  is  now  the  afternoon  of  the  second 
day  of  the  vivd  voct  examinations  in 


260 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


honours.  Blake  is  one  of  the  men  in. 
His  tutor,  Hardy,  Grey,  Tom,  and  other 
St.  Ambrose  men,  have  all  been  in  the 
schools  more  or  less  during  his  exa- 
mination, and  now  Hardy  and  Tom  are 
waiting  outside  the  doors  for  the  issuing 
of  the  testamurs. 

The  group  is  small  enough.  It  is  so 
much  of  course  that  a  class-man  should 
get  his  testamur  that  there  is  no  excite- 
ment about  it  •  generally  the  man  him- 
self stops  to  receive  it. 

The  only  anxious  faces  in  the  group 
are  Tom's  and  Hardy's.  They  have  not 
exchanged  a  word  for  the  last  few 
minutes  in  their  short  walk  before  the 
door.  Now  the  examiners  come  out 
and  walk  away  towards  their  colleges, 
and  the  next  minute  the  door  again 
opens  and  the  clerk  of  the  schools 
appears  with  the  slips  of  paper  in  his 
hand. 

"Now  you'll  see  if  I'm  not  right," 
said  Hardy,  as  they  gathered  to  the  door 
with  the  rest.  "  I  tell  you  there  isn't 
the  least  chance  for  him." 

The  clerk  read  out  the  names  inscribed 
on  the  testamurs  which  he  held,  and 
handed  them  to  the  owners. 

"Haven't  you  one  for  Mr.  Blake  of 
St.  Ambrose  1 "  said  Tom,  desperately,  as 
the  clerk  was  closing  the  door. 

"  No,  sir ;  none  but  those  I  have  just 
given  out,"  answered  the  clerk  shaking 
his  head.  The  door  closed,  and  they 
turned  away  in  silence  for  the  first 
minute. 

"  I  told  you  how  it  would  be,"  said 
Hardy,  as  they  passed  out  of  the  south 
gate  into  the  Ratclifie  Quadrangle. 

"  But  he  seemed  to  be  doing  so  well 
when  I  was  in.'" 

"  You  were  not  there  at  the  time.  I 
thought  at  first  they  would  have  sent 
him  out  of  the  schools  at  once." 

"  In  his  divinity,  wasn't  it  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  he  was  asked  to  repeat  one  of 
the  Articles,  and  didn't  know  three 
words  of  it.  From  that  moment  I  saw  it 
was  all  over.  The  examiner  and  he  both 
lost  their  tempers,  and  it  went  from  bad 
to  worse,  till  the  examiner  remarked 
that  he  could  have  answered  one  of  the 
questions  he  was  asking  when  he  was 


ten  years  old,  and  Blake  replied,  So 
could  he.  They  gave  him  a  paper  in 
divinity  afterwards,  but  you  could  see 
there  was  no  chance  for  him." 

"  Poor  fellow !  what  will  he  do,  do  you 
think  1  How  will  he  take  it  V 

"  I  can't  tell.  But  I'm  afraid  it  will 
be  a  very  serious  matter  for  him.  He 
was  the  ablest  man  in  our  year  too. 
What  a  pity!" 

They  got  into  St.  Ambrose  just  as  the 
bell  for  afternoon  chapel  was  going 
down,  and  went  in.  Blake  was  there, 
and  one  look  showed  him  what  had 
happened.  In  fact  he  had  expected 
nothing  else  all  day  since  his  break- 
down in  the  Articles.  Tom  couldn't 
help  watching  him  during  chapel,  and 
afterwards,  on  that  evening,  acknow- 
ledged to  a  friend  that  whatever  else 
you  might  think  of  Blake,  there  was  no 
doubt  about  his  gameness. 

After  chapel  he  loitered  outside  the 
door  in  the  quadrangle,  talking  just  as 
usual,  and  before  Hall  he  loitered  on 
the  steps  in  well-feigned  carelessness. 
Everybody  else  was  thinking  of  his 
breakdown ;  some  with  real  sorrow  and 
sympathy  ;  others  as  of  any  other  nine- 
days'  wonder — pretty  much  as  if  the 
favourite  for  the  Derby  had  broken 
down ;  others  with  ill-concealed  triumph, 
for  Blake  had  many  enemies  amongst 
the  men.  He  himself  was  conscious 
enough  of  what  they  were  thinking  of, 
but  maintained  his  easy  gay  manner 
through  it  all,  though  the  effort  it  cost 
him  was  tremendous.  The  only  allusion 
he  made  to  what  had  happened  which 
Tom  heard  was  when  he  asked  him  to 
wine. 

"  Are  you  engaged  to-night,  Brown?" 
he  said.  Tom  answered  in  the  negative. 
"  Come  to  me,  then,"  he  went  on. 
"  You  won't  get  another  chance  in  St. 
Ambrose.  •  I  have  a  few  bottles  of  old 
wine  left ;  we  may  as  well  floor  them  : 
they  won't  bear  moving  to  a  Hall  with 
their  master." 

And  then  he  turned  to  some  other 
men  and  asked  them,  everyone  in  fact 
whom  he  came  across,  especially  the 
dominant  fast  set  with  whom  he  had 
chiefly  lived.  These  young  gentlemen 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


261 


(of  whom  we  had  a  glimpse  at  the  out- 
set, but  whose  company  we  have  care- 
fully avoided  ever  since,  seeing  that  their 
sayings  and  doings  were  of  a  kind  of 
which  the  less  said  the  better)  had  been 
steadily  going  on  in  their  way,  getting 
more  and  more  idle,  reckless,  and  inso- 
lent. Their  doings  had  been  already  so 
scandalous  on  several  occasions  as  to 
call  for  solemn  meetings  of  the  college 
authorities ;  but,  no  vigorous  measures 
having  followed,  such  deliberations  had 
only  made  matters  worse,  and  given  the 
men  a  notion  that  they  could  do  what 
they  pleased  with  impunity.  This  night 
the  climax  had  come ;  it  was  as  though 
the  flood  of  misrule  had  at  last 
broken  banks  and  overflowed  the  whole 
college. 

For  two  hours  the  wine  party  in 
Blake's  large  ground-floor  rooms  was 
kept  up  with  a  wild  reckless  mirth,  in 
keeping  with  the  host's  temper.  Blake 
was  on  his  mettle.  He  had  asked  every 
man  with  whom  he  had  a  speaking  ac- 
quaintance, as  if  he  wished  to  face  out 
his  disaster  at  once  to  the  whole  world. 
Many  of  the  men  came  feeling  uncom- 
fortable, and  would  sooner  have  stayed 
away  and  treated  the  pluck  as  a  real 
misfortune.  But  after  all  Blake  was 
the  best  judge  of  how  he  liked  it  to  be 
treated,  and,  if  he  had  a  fancy  for  giving 
a  great  wine  on  the  occasion,  the  civilest 
thing  to  do  was  to  go  to  it.  And  so 
they  went,  and  wondered  as  much  as  he 
could  desire  at  the  brilliant  coolness  of 
their  host,  speculating  and  doubting 
nevertheless  in  their  own  secret  hearts 
whether  it  wasn't  acting  after  all.  Act- 
ing it  was,  no  doubt,  and  not  worth  the 
doing;  no  acting  is.  But  one  must 
make  allowances.  No  two  men  take  a 
thing  just  alike,  and  very  few  can  sit 
down  quietly  when  they  have  lost  a  fall 
in  life's  wrestle,  and  say,  "  "Well,  here  I 
am,  beaten  no  doubt  this  time.  By  my 
own  fault  too.  Now,  take  a  good  look 
at  me,  my  good  friends,  as  I  know  you 
all  want  to  do,  and  say  your  say  out,  for 
I  mean  getting  up  again  directly  and 
having  another  turn  at  it." 

Blake  drank  freely  himself,  and  urged 
his  guests  to  drink,  which  was  a  super- 


fluous courtesy  for  the  most  part.  Many 
of  the  men  left  his  rooms  considerably 
excited.  They  had  dispersed  for  an 
hour  or  so  to  billiards,  or  a  stroll  in  the 
town,  and  at  ten  o'clock  reassembled  at 
supper  parties,  of  which  there  were  seve- 
ral in  college  this  evening,  especially 
a  monster  one  at  Chanter's  rooms — 
a ;  "  champagne  supper,"  as  he  had 
carefully  and  ostentatiously  announced 
on  the  cards  of  invitation.  This 
flaunting  the  champagne  in  their  faces 
had  been  resented  by  Drysdale  and 
others,  who  drank  his  champagne 
in  tumblers,  and  then  abused  it  and 
clamoured  for  beer  in  the  middle  of  the 
supper.  Chanter,  whose  prodigality  in 
some  ways  was  only  exceeded  by  his 
general  meanness,  had  lost  his  temper 
at  this  demand,  and  insisted  that,  if 
they  wanted  beer,  they  might  send  for 
it  themselves,  for  he  wouldn't  pay  for  it. 
This  protest  was  treated  with  uproarious 
contempt,  and  gallons  of  ale  soon  made 
their  appearance  in  college  jugs  'and 
tankards.  The  tables  were  cleared,  and 
songs  (most  of  them  of  more  than  doubt- 
ful character),  cigars,  and  all  sorts  of 
compounded  drinks,  from  claret  cup  to 
egg  flip,  succeeded.  The  company,  re- 
cruited constantly  as  men  came  into  col- 
lege, was  getting  more  and  more  excited 
every  minute.  The  scouts  cleared  away 
and  carried  off  all  relics  of  the  supper, 
and  then  left ;  still  the  revel  went  on, 
till,  by  midnight,  the  men  were  ripe  for 
any  mischief  or  folly  which  those  among 
them  who  retained  any  brains  at  all 
could  suggest.  The  signal  for  breaking 
up  was  given  by  the  host's,  falling  from 
his  seat.  Some  of  the  men  rose  with  a 
shout  to  put  him  to  bed,  which  they  ac- 
complished with  difficulty,  after  drop- 
ping him  several  times,  and  left  him  to 
snore  off  the  effects  of  his  debauch  with 
one  of  his  boots  on.  Others  took  to 
doing  what  mischief  occurred  to  them 
in  his  rooms.  One  man,  mounted  on  a 
chair  with  a  cigar  in  his  mouth  which 
had  gone  out,  was  employed  in  pouring 
the  contents  of  a  champagne  bottle  with 
unsteady  hand  into  the  clock  on  the 
mantel-piece.  Chanter  was  a  particular 
man  in  this  sort  of  furniture,  and  his 


262 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


clock  was  rather  a  specialty.  It  was  a 
large  bronze  figure  of  Atlas,  supporting 
the  globe  in  the  shape  of  a  time-piece. 
Unluckily  the  maker,  not  anticipating 
the  sort  of  test  to  which  his  work  would 
be  subjected,  had  ingeniously  left  the 
hole  for  winding  up  in  the  top  of  the 
clock,  so  that  unusual  facilities  existed 
for  drowning  the  world-carrier,  and  he 
was  already  almost  at  his  last  tick.  One 
or  two  men  were  morally  aiding  and 
abetting,  and  physically  supporting  the 
experimenter  on  clocks,  who  found  it 
difficult  to  stand  to  his  work  by  himself. 
Another  knot  of  young  gentlemen  stuck 
to  the  tables,  and  so  continued  to  shout 
out  scraps  of  song,  sometimes  standing 
on  their  chairs,  and  sometimes  tumbling 
off  them.  Another  set  were  employed 
on  the  amiable  work  of  pouring  beer 
and  sugar  into  three  new  pairs  of 
polished  leather  dress  boots,  with 
coloured  tops  to  them,  which  they  dis- 
covered in  the  dressing-room.  Certainly, 
as  they  remarked,  Chanter  could  have 
no  possible  use  for  so  many  dress  boots 
at  once,  and  it  was  a  pity  the  beer  should 
be  wasted ;  but  on  the  whole,  perhaps, 
the  materials  were  never  meant  for  com- 
bination, and  had  better  have  been  kept 
apart.  Others  had  gone  away  to  break 
into  the  kitchen,  headed  by  one  who 
had  just  come  into  college  and  vowed 
he  would  have  some  supper ;  and  others, 
to  screw  up  an  unpopular  tutor,  or  to 
break  into  the  rooms  of  some  inoffensive 
freshman.  The  remainder  mustered  on 
the  grass  in  the  quadrangle,  and  began 
playing  leap-frog  and  larking  one  another. 
Amongst  these  last  was  our  hero,  who 
had  been  at  Blake's  wine  and  one  of 
the  quieter  supper  parties;  and,  though 
not  so  far  gone  as  most  of  his  com- 
panions, was  by  no  means  in  a  state  in 
which  he  would  have  cared  to  meet  the 
Dean.  He  lent  his  hearty  aid  accord- 
ingly to  swell  the  noise  and  tumult, 
which  was  becoming  something  out  of 
the  way  even  for  St.  Ambrose's.  As  the 
leap-frog  was  flagging,  Drysdale  suddenly 
appeared  carrying  some  silver  plates 
which  were  used  on  solemn  occasions  in 
the  common  room*,  and  allowed  to  be 
issued  on  special  application  for  gentle- 


men commoners'  parties.     A  rush  was 
made  towards  him. 

"  Halloa,  here's  Drysdale  with  lots  of 
swag,"  shouted  one.  "  What  are  you 
going  to  do  with  it?"  cried  another. 
Drysdale  paused  a  moment  with  the 
peculiarly  sapient  look  of  a  tipsy  man  who 
has  suddenly  lost  the  thread  of  his  ideas, 
and  then  suddenly  broke  out  with — 

"Hang  it;  I  forget.  But  let's  play 
at  quoits  with  them." 

The  proposal  was  received  with  ap- 
plause, and  the  game  began,  but  Drys- 
dale soon  left  it.  He  had  evidently 
some  notion  in  his  head  which  would 
not  suffer  him  to  turn  to  anything  else 
till  he  had  carried  it  out.  He  went  off 
accordingly  to  Chanter's  rooms,  while 
the  quoits  went  on  in  the  front  quad- 
rangle. 

About  this  time,  however,  the  Dean 
and  bursar,  and  the  tutors  who  lived  in 
college,  began  to  be  conscious  that  some- 
thing unusual  was  going  on.  They  were 
quite  used  to  distant  choruses,  and  great 
noises  in  the  men's  rooms,  and  to  a  fair 
amount  of  shouting  and  skylarking  in 
the  quadrangle,  and  were  long-suffering 
men  not  given  to  interfering ;  but  there 
must  be  an  end  to  all  endurance,  and 
the  state  of  things  which  had  arrived 
could  no  longer  be  met  by  a  turn  in 
bed  and  a  growl  at  the  uproars  and 
follies  of  undergraduates. 

Presently  some  of  the  rioters  on  the 
grass  caught  sight  of  a  figure  gliding 
along  the  side  of  the  quadrangle  towards 
the  Dean's  staircase.  A  shout  arose 
that  the  enemy  was  up,  but  little  heed 
was  paid  to  it  by  the  greater  number. 
Then  another  figure  passed  from  the 
Dean's  staircase  to  the  porter's  lodge. 
Those  of  the  men  who  had  any  sense 
left  saw  that  it  was  time  to  quit,  and, 
after  warning  the  rest,  went  off  towards 
their  rooms.  Tom  on  his  way  to  his 
staircase  caught  sight  of  a  figure  seated, 
in  a  remote  corner  of  the  inner  quad- 
rangle, and  made  for  it,  impelled  by 
natural  curiosity.  He  found  Drysdale 
seated  on  the  ground  with  several  silver 
tankards  by  his  side,  employed  to  the 
best  of  his  powers  in  digging  a  hole 
with  one  of  the  college  carving-knives. 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


263 


"  Holloa,  Drysdale  !  what  are  you  up 
to  ?"  he  shouted,  laying  his  hand  on 
his  shoulder. 

"Providing  for  poshterity,"  replied 
Drysdale  gravely,  without  looking 
up. 

"  What  the  deuce  do  you  mean  1 
Don't  be  such  an  ass.  The  Dean,  will 
be  out  in  a  minute.  Get  up  and  come 
along." 

"I  tell  you,  old  fellow,"  said  Drys- 
dale, somewhat  inarticulately,  and  driv- 
ing his  knife  into  the  ground  again,  "  the 
dons  are  going  to  spout  the  college 
plate.  So  I  am  burying  these  articles 
for  poshterity — " 

"  Hang  posterity,"  said  Tom  ;  "  come 
along  directly,  or  you'll  be  caught  and 
rusticated." 

"  Go  to  bed,  Brown — you're  drunk, 
Brown,"  replied  Drysdale,  continuing  his 
work,  and  striking  the  carving-knife 
into  the  ground  so  close  to  his  own 
thigh  that  it  made  Tom  shudder. 

"  Here  they  are  then,"  he  cried  the 
next  moment,  seizing  Drysdale  by  the 
arm,  as  a  rush  of  men  came  through  the 
passage  into  the  back  quadrangle,  shout- 
ing and  tumbling  along,  and  making  in 
small  groups  for  the  different  staircases. 
The  Dean  and  two  of  the  tutors  followed, 
and  the  porter  bearing  a  lantern.  There 
was  no  time  to  be  lost ;  so  Tom,  after 
one  more  struggle  to  pull  Drysdale  up 
and  hurry  him  off,  gave  it  up,  and  leav- 
ing him  to  his  fate,  ran  across  to  his 
own  staircase. 

For  the  next  half-hour  the  Dean  and 
his  party  patrolled  the  college,  and  suc- 
ceeded at  last  in  restoring  order,  though 
not  without  some  undignified  and  dis- 
agreeable passages.  The  lights  on  the 
staircases,  which  generally  burnt  all 
night,  were  of  course  put  out  as  they 
approached.  On  the  first  staircase 
which  they  stormed,  the  porter's  lantern 
was  knocked  out  of  his  hand  by  an  un- 
seen adversary,  and  the  light  put  out  on 
the  bottom  stairs.  On  the  first  landing 
the  bursar  trod  on  a  small  terrier  be- 
longing to  a  fast  freshman,  and  the  dog 
naturally  thereupon  bit  the  bursar's  leg ; 
while  his  master  and  other  enfants  per- 
dues,  taking  advantage  of  the  diversion, 


rushed  down  the  dark  stairs,  past  the 
party  of  order,  and  into  the  quadrangle, 
where  they  scattered  amidst  a  shout  of 
laughter.  While  the  porter  was  gone 
for  a  light,  the  Dean  and  his  party 
rashly  ventured  on  a  second  ascent. 
Here  an  unexpected  catastrophe  awaited 
them.  On  the  top  landing  lived  one  of 
the  steadiest  men  in  college,  whose  door 
had  been  tried  shortly  before.  He  had 
been  roused  out  of  his  first  sleep,  and, 
vowing  vengeance  on  the  next  comers, 
stood  behind  his  oak,  holding  his  brown 
George,  or  huge  earthenware  receptacle, 
half  full  of  dirty  water,  in  which  his 
bed-maker  had  been  washing  up  his  tea- 
things.  Hearing  stealthy  steps  and 
whisperings  on  the  stairs  below,  he 
suddenly  threw  open  his  oak,  dis- 
charging the  whole  contents  of  his 
brown  George  on  the  approaching  au- 
thorities, with  a  shout  of,  "Take  that 
for  your  skulking." 

The  exasperated  Dean  and  tutors 
rushing  on,  seized  on  their  astonished 
and  innocent  assailant,  and  after  re- 
ceiving explanations,  and  the  offer  of 
clean  towels,  hurried  off  again  after  the 
real  enemy.  And  now  the  porter  ap- 
peared again  with  a  light,  and,  con- 
tinuing their  rounds,  they  apprehended 
and  disarmed  Drysdale,  collected  the 
college  plate,  marked  down  others  of 
the  rioters,  visited  Chanter's  rooms, 
held  a  parley  with  the  one  of  their 
number  who  was  screwed  up  in  his 
rooms,  and  discovered  that  the  bars  had 
been  wrenched  out  of  the  kitchen  win- 
dow. After  which  they  retired  to  sleep 
on  their  indignation,  and  quietly  settled 
down  again  on  the  ancient  and  vener- 
able college. 

The  next  morning  at  chapel  many  of 
the  revellers  met;  in  fact,  there  was  a 
fuller  attendance  than  usual,  for  every- 
one felt  that  something  serious  must  be 
impending.  After  such  a  night  the 
dons  must  make  a  stand,  or  give  up 
altogether.  The  most  reckless  only  of 
the  fast  set  were  absent.  St.  Cloud 
was  there,  dressed  even  more  precisely 
than  usual,  and  looking  as  if  he  were  in 
the  habit  of  going  to  bed  at  ten,  and 
had  never  heard  of  milk  punch.  Tom 


264 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


turned  out  not  much  the  worse  himself, 
but  in  his  heart  feeling  not  a  little 
ashamed  of  the  whole  business  ;  of  the 
party,  the  men ;  but,  above  all,  of  him- 
self He  thrust  the  shame  back,  how- 
ever, as  well  as  he  could,  and  put  a  cool 
face  on  it  Probably  most  of  the  men 
were  in  much  the  same  state  of  mind. 
Even  in  St.  Ambrose's,  reckless  and 
vicious  as  the  college  had  become,  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  the  undergra- 
duates would  gladly  have  seen  a  change 
in  the  direction  of  order  and  decency, 
and  were  sick  of  the  wretched  licence 
of  doing  right  in  their  own  eyes,  and 
wrong  in  everyone's  else. 

As  the  men  trooped  out  of  chapel, 
they  formed  in  corners  of  the  quadran- 
gle, except  the  reading  set,  who  went 
off  quietly  to  their  rooms.  There  was 
a  pause  of  a  minute  or  two.  Neither 
principal,  dean,  tutor,  nor  fellow,  followed 
as  on  ordinary  occasions.  "They're 
hatching  something  in  the  outer  cha- 
pel," said  one. 

"  It'll  be  a  coarse  time  for  Chanter,  I 
take  it,"  said  another. 

"Was  your  name  sent  to  the  buttery 
for  his  supper?" 

"  No,  I  took  d — d  good  care  of  that," 
said  St.  Cloud,  who  was  addressed. 

"Drysdale  was  caught,  wasn't  he?" 

"  So  I  hear,  and  nearly  frightened  the 
Dean  and  the  Porter  out  of  their  wits 
by  staggering  after  them  with  a  carving- 
knife." 

"  He'll  be  sacked,  of  course." 

"  Much  he'll  care  for  that." 

"Here  they  come,  then;  by  Jove, 
how  black  they  look!" 

The  authorities  now  came  out  of  the 
antechapel  door,  and  walked  slowly 
across  towards  the  Principal's  house  in 
a  body.  At  this  moment,  as  ill-luck 
would  have  it,  Jack  trotted  into  the 
front  quadrangle,  dragging  after  him  the 
light  steel  chain  with  which  he  was 
usually  fastened  up  in  Drysdale's  scout's 
room  at  night.  He  came  innocently 
towards  one  and  another  of  the  groups, 
and  retired  from  each  much  astonished 
at  the  low  growl  with  which  his 
acquaintance  was  repudiated  on  all 
sides. 


"Porter,  whose  dog  is  that?"  said 
the  Dean,  catching  sight  of  him. 

"  Mr.  Drysdale's  dog,  sir,  I  think,  sir," 
answered  the  Porter. 

"  Probably  the  animal  who  bit  me 
last  night,"  said  the  bursar.  His  know- 
ledge of  dogs  was  small ;  if  Jack  had 
fastened  on  him  he  would  probably  have 
been  in  bed  from  the  effects. 

"Turn  the  dog  out  of  college,"  said 
the  Dean. 

"  Please,  sir,  he's  a  very  savage  dog, 
sir,"  said  the  Porter,  whose  respect  for 
Jack  was  unbounded. 

"  Turn  him  out  immediately,"  replied 
the  Dean. 

.The  wretched  Porter,  arming  himself 
with  a  broom,  approached  Jack,  and 
after  some  coaxing  managed  to  catch 
hold  of  the  end  of  his  chain,  and  began 
to  lead  nim  towards  the  gates,  carefully 
holding  out  the  broom  towards  Jack's 
nose  with  his  other  hand,  to  protect 
himself.  Jack  at  first  hauled  away  at 
his  chain,  and  then  began  circling  round 
the  Porter  at  the  full  extent  of  it,  evi- 
dently meditating  an  attack.  Notwith- 
standing the  seriousness  of  the  situation 
the  ludicrous  alarm  of  the  Porter  set  the 
men  laughing. 

"  Come  along,  or  Jack  will  be  pinning 
the  wretched  Copas,"  said  Jervis,  and 
he  and  Tom.  stepped  up  to  the  terrified 
little  man,  and,  releasing  him,  led  Jack, 
who  knew  them  both  well,  out  of 
college. 

"Were  you  at  that  supper  party," 
said  Jervis,  as  they  deposited  Jack  with 
an  ostler,  who  was  lounging  outside  the 
gates,  to  be  taken  to  Drysdale's  stables. 

"  No,"  said  Tom. 

"  I'm  glad  to  hear  it,  there  will  be  a 
pretty  clean  sweep  after  last  night's 
doings." 

"  But  I  was  in  the  quadrangle  when 
they  came  out." 

"Not  caught,  eh?"  said  Jervis. 

"  No,  luckily  I  got  to  my  own  rooms 
at  once." 

"Were  any  of  the  crew  caught?" 

"Not  that  I  know  of." 

"Well,  we  shall  hear  enough  of  it 
before  lecture-time." 

Jervis  was  right.     There  was  a  meet- 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


265 


ing  in  the  common  room  directly  after 
breakfast.  Drysdale,  anticipating  his 
fate,  took  his  name  off  before  they  sent 
for  him.  Chanter  and  three  or  four 
others  were  rusticated  for  a  year,  and 
Blake  was  ordered  to  go  down  at  once. 
He  was  a  scholar,  and  what  was  to  be 
clone  in  his  case  would  be  settled  at  the 
meeting  at  the  end  of  term. 

For  twenty-four  hours  it  was  sup- 
posed that  St.  Cloud  had  escaped  al- 
together, but  at  the  end  of  that  time  he 
was  summoned  before  a  meeting  in  the 
common  room.  The  tutor,  whose  door 
had  been  so  effectually  screwed  up  that 
he  had  been  obliged  to  get  out  of  his 
window  by  a  ladder  to  attend  morning 
chapel,  proved  wholly  unable  to  appre- 
ciate the  joke,  and  set  himself  to  work 
to  discover  the  perpetrators  of  it.  The 
door  was  fastened  with  long  gimlets, 
which  were  screwed  firmly  in,  and  when 
driven  well  home  their  heads  had  been 
knocked  off:  The  tutor  collected  the 
shafts  of  the  gimlets  from  the  carpenter, 
who  came  to  effect  an  entry  for  him  ; 
and  after  careful  examination,  discovered 
the  trade  mark.  So,  putting  them  in 
his  pocket,  he  walked  off  into  the  town, 
and  soon  came  back  with  the  informa- 
tion he  required,  which  resulted  in  the 
rustication  of  St.  Cloud,  an  event  which 
was  borne  by  the  college  with  the 
greatest  equanimity. 

Shortly  afterwards  Tom  attended  in 
the  schools'  quadrangle  again,  to  be  pre- 
sent at  the  posting  of  the  class  list. 
This  time  there  were  plenty  of  anxious 
faces  ;  the  quadrangle  was  full  of  them. 
He  felt  almost  as  nervous  himself  as  if 
he  were  waiting  for  the  third  gun.  He 
thrust  himself  forward,  and  was  amongst 
the  first  who  caught  sight  of  the  docu- 
ment. One  look  was  enough  for  him, 
and  the  next  moment  he  was  off  at  full 
speed  to  St.  Ambrose,  and,  rushing  head- 
long into  Hardy's  rooms,  seized  him  by 
the  hand,  and  shook  it  vehemently. 

"It's  all  right,  old  fellow,"  he  cried, 
as  soon  as  he  could  catch  his  breath ; 
"  it's  all  right.  Four  firsts  ;  you're  one 
of  them  :  well  done  ! " 

"  And  Grey,  where' s  he ;  is  he  all 
right?" 

No.  10. — VOL.  ii. 


"  Bless  4me,  I  forgot  to  look,"  said 
Tom,  "  I  only  read  the  firsts,  and  then 
came  off  as  hard  as  I  could." 

"  Then  he  is  not  a  first." 

"No;  I'm  sure  of  that." 

"  I  must  go  and  see  him  j  he  deserved 
it  far  more  than  I." 

"No,  by  Jove,  old  boy,"  said  Tom, 
seizing  him  again  by  the  hand,  "  that  he 
didn't ;  nor  any  man  that  ever  went  into 
the  schools." 

"Thank  you,  Brown,"  said  Hardy, 
returning  his  warm  grip.  "You  do 
one  good.  Now  to  see  poor  Grey,  and 
to  write  to  my  dear  old  father  before 
Hall.  Fancy  him  opening  the  letter  at 
breakfast  the  day  after  to-morrow  !  I 
only  hope  it  won't  hurt  him." 

"Never  fear.  I  don't  believe  in 
people  dying  of  joy,  and  anything  short 
of  sudden  death  he  won't  mind  at  the 
price." 

Hardy  hurried  off,  and  Tom  went  to 
his  own  rooms,  and  smoked  a  cigar  to 
allay  his  excitement,  and  thought  about 
his  friend  and  all  they  had  felt  together 
and  laughed  and  mourned  over  in  the 
short  months  of  their  friendship.  A 
pleasant  dreamy  half-hour  he  spent 
thus,  till  the  hall  bell  roused  him,  and 
he  made  his  toilette  and  went  to  his 
dinner. 

It  was  with  very  mixed  feelings  that 
Hardy  walked  by  the  servitors'  table  and 
took  his  seat  with  the  bachelors,  an 
equal  at  last  amongst  equals.  No  man 
who  is  worth  his  salt  can  leave  a  place 
where  he  has  gone  through  hard  and 
searching  discipline  and  been  tried  in 
the  very  depths  of  his  heart  without 
regret,  however  much  he  may  have 
winced  under  the  discipline.  It  is  no 
light  thing  to  fold  up  and  lay  by  for 
ever  a  portion  of  one's  life,  even  when  it 
can  be  laid  by  with  honour  and  in 
thankfulness. 

But  it  was  with  no  mixed  feelings, 
but  with  a  sense  of  entire  triumph  and 
joy,  that  Tom  watched  his  friend  taking 
his  new  place,  and  the  Dons  one  after 
another  coming  up  and  congratulating 
him,  and  treating  him  as  the  man  who 
had  done  honour  to  them  and  his 
college. 


266 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


CHAPTER    XXV., 

COMMEMORATION. 

THE  end  of  the  academic  year  was 
now  at  hand,  and  Oxford  was  beginning 
to  put  on  her  gayest  clothing.  The 
college  gardeners  were  in  a  state  of 
unusual  activity,  and  the  lawns  and 
flower-beds,  which  form  such  exquisite 
settings  to  many  of  the  venerable  grey- 
gabled  buildings,  were  as  neat  and  as 
bright  as  hands  could  make  them. 
Cooks,  butlers,  and  their  assistants,  were 
bestirring  themselves  in  kitchen  and 
butlery,  under  the  direction  of  bursars 
jealous  of  the  fame  of  their  houses,  in 
the  preparation  of  the  abundant  and 
solid  fare  with  which  Oxford  is  wont  to 
entertain  all  comers.  Everything  the 
best  of  its  kind,  no  stint  but  no  non- 
sense, seems  to  be  the  wise  rule  which 
the  University  hands  down  and  lives  up 
to  in  these  matters.  However  we  may 
differ  as  to  her  degeneracy  in  other 
departments,  all  who  have  ever  visited 
her  will  admit  that  in  this  of  hospitality 
she  is  still  a  great  national  teacher, 
acknowledging  and  preaching  by  ex- 
ample the  fact,  that  eating  and  drinking 
are  important  parts  of  man's  life,  which 
are  to  be  allowed  their  due  prominence, 
and  not  thrust  into  a  corner,  but  are  to 
be  done  soberly  and  thankfully,  in  the 
sight  of  God  and  man.  The  coaches 
were  bringing  in  heavy  loads  of  visitors ; 
carriages  of  all  kinds  were  coming  in 
from  the  neighbouring  counties ;  and 
lodgings  in  the  High-street  were  going 
up  to  fabulous  prices. 

In  one  of  these  High-street  lodgings,  on 
the  evening  of  the  Saturday  before  Com- 
memoration, Miss  Winter  and  her  cousin 
are  sitting.  They  have  been  in  Oxford 
during  the  greater  part  of  the  day,  hav- 
ing posted  up  from  Englebourn,  but 
they  have  only  just  come  in,  for  the 
younger  lady  is  still  in  her  bonnet,  and 
Miss  Winter's  lies  on  the  table.  The 
windows  are  wide  open,  and  Miss  Winter 
is  sitting  at  one  of  them,  while  her 
cousin  is  busied  in  examining  the  furni- 
ture and  decorations  of  their  temporary 
home,  now  commenting  upon  these,  now 
pouring  out  praises  of  Oxford. 


"  Isn't  it  too  charming  ?  I  never 
dreamt  that  any  town  could  be  so  beau- 
tiful. Don't  you  feel  wild  about  it, 
Katie?" 

"  It  is  the  queen  of  towns,  dear.  But 
I  know  it  well,  you  see,  so  that  I  can't 
be  quite  so  enthusiastic  as  you." 

"  Oh,  those  dear  gardens  !  what  was 
the  name  of  those  ones  with  the  targets 
up,  where  they  were  shooting?  Don't 
you  remember  1 " 

"New  College  Gardens,  on  the  old 
city  wall,  you  mean  ?  " 
.  "  No,  no.  They  were  very  nice  and 
sentimental.  I  should  like  to  go  and 
sit  and  read  poetry  there.  But  I  mean 
the  big  ones,  the  gorgeous,  princely  ones ; 
with  wicked  old  Bishop  Laud's  gallery 
looking  into  them." 

"  Oh  !  St.  John's,  of  course." 

"  Yes,  St.  John's.  Why  do  you  hate 
Laud  so,  Katie  1 " 

"  I  don't  hate  him,  dear.  He  was  a 
Berkshire  man,  you  know.  But  I  think 
he  did  a  great  deal  of  harm  to  the 
Church." 

"How  did  you  think  my  new  silk 
looked  in  the  gardens  ?  How  lucky  I 
brought  it,  wasn't  it  1  I  shouldn't  have 
liked  to  have  been  in  nothing  but  mus- 
lins.' They  don't  suit  here  ;  you  want 
something  richer  amongst  the  old  build- 
ings, and  on  the  beautiful  velvety  turf 
of  the  gardens.  How  do  you  think  I 
looked?" 

"  You  looked  like  a  queen,  dear ;  or  a 
lady  in  waiting  at  least." 

"  Yes,  a  lady  in  waiting  on  Henrietta 
Maria.  Didn't  you  hear  one  of  the 
gentlemen  say  that  she  was  lodged  in 
St.  John's  when  Charles  marched  to  re- 
lieve Gloucester  ?  Ah !  can't  you  fancy 
her  sweeping  about  the  gardens,  with 
her  ladies  following  her,  and  Bishop 
Laud  walking  just  a  little  behind  her, 
and  talking  in  a  low  voice  about — let 
me  see — something  very  important  ? " 

"  Oh  Mary,  where  has  your  history 
gone  ?  He  was  Archbishop,  and  was 
safely  locked  up  in  the  Tower." 

"  Well,  perhaps  he  was ;  then  he 
couldn't  be  with  her  of  course.  How 
stupid  of  you  to  remember,  Katie. 
Why  can't  you  make  up  your  mind 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford, 


267 


to  enjoy  yourself  when  you  come   out 
for  a  holiday  ?  " 

"  I  shouldn't  enjoy  myself  any  the 
more  for  forgetting  dates,"  said  Katie, 
laughing. 

"Oh,  you  would  though;  only  try. 
But,  let  me  see,  it  can't  he  Laud.  Then 
it  shall  be  that  cruel  drinking  old  man, 
with  the  wooden  leg  made  of  gold,  who 
was  governor  of  Oxford  when  the  king 
was  away.  He  must  be  hobbling  along 
after  the  queen  in  a  buff  coat  and  breast- 
plate, holding  his  hat  with  a  long  droop- 
ing white  feather  in  his  hand." 

"  But  you  wouldn't  like  it  at  all, 
Mary,  it  would  be  too  serious  for  you. 
The  poor  queen  would  be  too  anxious 
to  gossip,  and  you  ladies  in  waiting 
would  be  obliged  to  walk  after  her 
without  saying  a  word. 

"Yes,  that  would  he  stupid.  But 
then  she  would  have  to  go  away  with 
the  old  governor  to  write  despatches  ; 
and  some  of  the  young  officers  with 
long  hair  and  beautiful  lace  sleeves,  and 
large  boots,  whom  the  king  had  left 
behind,  wounded,  might  come  and  walk 
perhaps,  or  sit  in  the  sun  in  the  quiet 
gardens." 

Mary  looked  over  her  shoulder  with 
the  merriest  twinkle  in  her  eye,  to  see 
how  her  steady  cousin  would  take  this 
last  picture.  "  The  college  authorities 
would  never  allow  that,"  she  said  quietly, 
still  looking  out  of  the  window ;  "if  you 
wanted  beaus,  you  must  have  them  in 
black  gowns." 

"  They  would  have  been  jealous  of 
the  soldiers,  you  think  1  Well,  I  don't 
mind ;  the  black  gowns  are  very  pleasant, 
only  a  little  stiff.  But  how  do  you  think 
my  bonnet  looked?" 

"  Charmingly.  But  when  are  you 
going  to  have  done  looking  in  the  glass  ? 
You  don't  care  for  the  buildings,  I 
believe,  a  bit.  Come  and  look  at  St. 
Mary's ;  there  is  such  a  lovely  light  on 
the  steeple  !" 

"I'll  come  directly,  but  I  must  get 
these  flowers  right.  I'm  sure  there  are 
too  many  in  this  trimming." 

Mary  was  trying  her  new  bonnet  on 
over  and  over  again  before  the  mantel- 
glass,  and  pulling  out  and  changing  the 


places  of  the  blush-rose  buds  with 
which  it  was  trimmed.  Just  then  a 
noise  of  wheels,  accompanied  by  a  merry 
tune  on  a  cornopean,  came  in  from  the 
street. 

"What's  that,  Katie?"  she  cried, 
stopping  her  work  for  a  moment. 

"A  coach  coming  up  from  Magdalen 
bridge.  I  think  it  is  a  cricketing  party 
coming  home." 

"Oh  let  me  see,"  and  she  tripped 
across  to  the  window,  bonnet  in  hand,, 
and  stood  beside  her  cousin.  And 
then,  sure  enough,  a  coach  covered  with 
cricketers  returning  from  a  match,  drove 
past  the  window.  The  young  ladies 
looked  out  at  first  with  great  curiosity ; 
but,  suddenly  finding  themselves  the 
mark  for  a  whole  coach-load  of  male 
eyes,  shrank  back  a  little  before  the 
cricketers  had  passed  on  towards  the 
"  Mitre."  As  the  coach  passed  out  of 
sight,  Mary  gave  a  pretty  toss  of  her 
head,  and  said, — 

"  Well,  they  don't  want  for  assurance, 
at  any  rate.  I  think  they  needn't  have 
stared  so." 

"  It  was  our  fault,"  said  Katie  ;  "  we 
shouldn't  have  been  at  the  window. 
Besides,  you  know  you  are  to  be  a  lady 
in  waiting  on  Henrietta  Maria  up  here, 
and  of  course  you  must  get  used  to 
being  stared  at." 

"  Oh  yes,  but  that  was  to  be  by 
young  gentlemen  wounded  in  the  wars,, 
in  lace  ruffles,  as  one  sees  them  in 
pictures.  That's  a  very  different  thing 
from  young  gentlemen  in  flannel  trousers 
and  straw  hats,  driving  up  the  High 
Street  on  coaches.  I  declare  one  of 
them  had  the  impudence  to  bow,  as  if 
he  knew  you." 

"  So  he  does.     That  was  my  cousin." 

"  Your  cousin !  Ah,  I  remember. 
Then  he  must  be  my  cousin  too." 

"  No,  not  at  alL  He  is  no  relation 
of  yours." 

"Well,  I  sha'n't  break  my  heart. 
But  is  he  a  good  partner  ? " 

"I  should  say,  yes.  But  I  hardly 
know.  We  used  to  be  a  great  deal 
together  as  children,  but  papa  has  been 
such  an  invalid  lately." 

"  Ah,  I  wonder  how  uncle  is  getting 

T2 


268 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


on  at  the  Yice-Cliancellor's.  Look,  it  is 
past  eight  by  St.  Mary's.  "When  were 
we  to  go  ? " 

"  We  were  asked  for  nine." 

"  Then  we  must  go  and  dress.  Will 
it  be  very  slow  and  stiff,  Katie  1  I 
wish  we  were  going  to  something  not 
quite  so  grand." 

"  You'll  find  it  very  pleasant,  I  dare 
say." 

"  There  won't  be  any  dancing,  though, 
I  know  ;  will  there  1 " 

"  No  ;  I  should  think  certainly  not." 

"  Dear  me  !  I  hope  there  will  be  some 
young  men  there — I  shall  be  so  shy,  I 
know,  if  there  are  nothing  but  wise 
people.  How  do  you  talk  to  a  Regius 
Professor,  Katie  ?  It  must  be  awful." 

"  He  will  probably  be  at  least  as  un- 
comfortable as  you,  dear,"  said  Miss 
Winter,  laughing,  and  rising  from  the 
window  ;  "  let  us  go  and  dress." 

"  Shall  I  wear  my  best  gown  ? — 
What  shall  I  put  in  my  hair  ] " 

At  this  moment  the  door  opened,  and 
the  maid-servant  introduced  Mr.  Brown. 

It  was  the  St.  Ambrose  drag  which 
had  passed  along  shortly  before,  bearing 
the  eleven  home  from  a  triumphant 
match.  As  they  came  over  Magdalen 
bridge,  Drysdale,  who  had  returned  to 
Oxford  as  a  private  gentleman  after  his 
late  catastrophe,  which  he  had  managed 
to  keep  a  secret  from  his  guardian,  and 
was  occupying  his  usual  place  on  the 
box,  called  out — 

"Now,  boys,  keep  your  eyes  open, 
there  must  be  plenty  of  lionesses  about ;'' 
and  thus  warned,  the  whole  load,  in- 
cluding the  cornopean  player,  were  on 
the  look-out  for  lady  visitors,  profanely 
called  lionesses,  all  the  way  up  the 
street.  They  had  been  gratified  by  the 
sight  of  several  walking  in  the  High- 
street  or  looking  out  of  the  windows, 
before  they  caught  sight  of  Miss  Winter 
and  her  cousin.  The  appearance  of 
these  young  ladies  created  a  sensation. 

"  I  say,  look !  up  there  in  that  first- 
floor." 

"  By  George,  they're  something  like." 

"  The  sitter  for  choice." 

"No,  no,  the  standing-up  one;  she 
loo'is  so  saucy." 


"  Hullo,  Brown  !  do  you  know  them1?" 

"  One  of  them  is  my  cousin,"  said 
Tom,  who  f  had  just  been  guilty  of  the 
salutation  which,  as  we  saw,  excited  the 
indignation  of  the  younger  lady. 

"What  luck! — You'll  ask  me  to  meet 
them — when  shall  it  be  1  To-morrow  at 
breakfast,  I  vote." 

"I  say,  you'll  introduce  me  before  the 
ball  on  Monday  ?  promise  now,"  said 
another. 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  shall  see  any- 
thing of  them,"  said  Tom  ;  "  I  shall  just 
leave  a  pasteboard,  but  I'm  not  in  the 
humour  to  be  dancing  about  lionizing." 

A  storm  of  indignation  arose  at  this 
speech  :  the  notion  that  any  of  the 
fraternity  who  had  any  hold  on  lionesses, 
particularly  if  they  were  pretty,  should 
not  use  it  to  the  utmost  for  the  benefit 
of  the  rest,  and  the  glory  and  honour 
of  the  college,  was  revolting  to  the 
undergraduate  mind.  So  the  whole 
body  escorted  Tom  to  the  door  of  the 
lodgings,  impressing  upon  him  the 
necessity  of  engaging  both  his  lionesses 
for  every  hour  of  every  day  in  St. 
Ambrose's,  and  left  him  not  till  they  had 
heard  him  ask  for  the  young  ladies,  and 
seen  him  fairly  on  his  way  upstairs. 
They  need  not  have  taken  so  much 
trouble,  for  in  his  secret  soul  he  was  no 
little  pleased  at  the  appearance  of 
creditable  ladies,  more  or  less  belonging 
to  him,  and  would  have  found  his  way 
to  see  them  quickly  and  surely  enough 
without  any  urging.  Moreover,  he  had 
been  really  fond  of  his  cousin,  years 
before,  when  they  had  been  boy  and 
girl  together. 

So  they  greeted  one  another  very 
cordially,  and  looked  one  another  over 
as  they  shook  hands,  to  see  what  changes 
time  had  made.  He  makes  his  changes 
rapidly  enough  at  that  age,  and  mostly 
for  the  better,  as  the  two  cousins  thought. 
It  was  nearly  three  years  since  they  had 
met,  and  then  he  was  a  fifth-form  boy 
and  she  a  girl  in  the  schoolroom.  They 
were  both  conscious  of  a  strange  pleasure 
in  meeting  again,  mixed  with  a  feeling 
of  shyness,  and  wonder  whether  they 
should  be  able  to  step  back  into  their 
old  relations. 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


269 


Mary  looked  on  demurely,  really 
watching  them,  but  ostensibly  engaged 
on  the  rosebud  trimming.  Presently 
Miss  Winter  turned  to  her  and  said,  "  I 
don't  think  you  two  ever  met  before  ;  I 
must  introduce  you,  I  suppose ; — my 
cousin  Tom,  my  cousin  Mary." 

"  Then  we  must  be  cousins  too,"  said 
Tom,  holding  out  his  hand. 

"No,  Katie  says  not,"  she  answered. 

"  I  don't  mean  to  believe  her,  then," 
said  Tom ;  "but  what  are  you  going  to  do 
now,  to-night  1  Why  didn't  you  write 
and  tell  me  you  were  coming  ? " 

"We  have  been  so  shut  up  lately, 
owing  to  papa's  bad  health,  that  I  really 
had  almost  forgotten  you  were  at  Oxford." 

"By  the  bye,"  said  Tom,  "where  is 
uncle?" 

"  Oh !  he  is  dining  at  the  Yice- 
Chancellor's,  who  is  an  old  college  friend 
of  his.  We  have  only  been  up  here 
three  or  four  hours,  and  it  has  done  him 
so  much  good.  I  am  so  glad  we  spirited 
him  up  to  coming." 

"  You  haven't  made  any  engagements 
yet,  I  hope?" 

"  Indeed  we  have  ;  I  can't  tell  how 
many.  We  came  in  time  for  luncheon 
in  Balliol.  Mary  and  I  made  it  our 
dinner,  and  we  have  been  seeing  sights 
ever  since,  and  have  been  asked  to  go 
to  I  don't  know  how  many  luncheons 
and  breakfasts." 

"  What,  with  a  lot  of  dons,  I  suppose  ? " 
said  Tom  spitefully  ;  "you  won't  enjoy 
Oxford  then;  they'll  bore  you  to  death." 

"  There  now,  Katie ;  that  is  just  what 
I  was  afraid  of,"  joined  in  Mary;  "you 
remember  we  didn't  hear  a  word  about 
balls  all  the  afternoon." 

"  You  haven't  got  your  tickets  for  the 
balls,  then  ? "  said  Tom,  brightening  up. 

"No,  how  shall  we  get  them?  " 

"  Oh !  I  can  manage  that,  I've  no 
doubt." 

"  Stop ;  how  are  we  to  go  ?  Papa  will 
never  take  us." 

"You  needn't  think  about  that;  any 
body  will  chaperone  you.  Nobody  cares 
about  that  sort  of  thing  at  commemora- 
tion." 

"  Indeed  I  think  you  had  better  wait 
till  I  have  talked  to  papa." 


"  Then  all  the  tickets  will  be  gone," 
said  Tom. "  You  must  go.  Why  shouldn't 
I  chaperone  you  ?  I  know  several  men 
whose  sisters  are  going  with  them." 

"  No,  that  will  scarcely  do,  I'm  afraid. 
But  really,  Mary,  we  must  go  and  dress." 

"Where  are  you  going  then?"  said 
Tom. 

"  To  an  evening  party  at  the  Yice- 
Chancellor's ;  we  are  asked  for  nine 
o'clock,  and  the  half-hour  has  struck." 

"  Hang  the  dons ;  how  unlucky  that 
I  didn't  know  before  !  Have  you  any 
flowers,  by  the  way?" 

"  Not  one." 

"Then  I  will  try  to  get  you  some  by 
the  time  you  are  ready.  May  I  ? " 

"Oh  yes,  pray  do,"  said  Mary.  "That's 
capital,  Katie,  isn't  it  ?  Now  1  shall  have 
something  to  put  in  my  hair  ;  I  couldn't 
think  what  I  was  to  wear." 

Tom  took  a  look  at  the  hair  in  question, 
and  then  left  them  and  hastened  out  to 
scour  the  town  for  flowers,  as  if  his  life 
depended  on  success.  In  the  morning, 
he  would  probably  have  resented  as 
insulting,  or  laughed  at  as  wildly  im- 
probable, the  suggestion  that  he  would 
be  so  employed  before  night. 

A  double  chair  was  drawn  up  opposite 
the  door  when  he  came  back,  and  the 
ladies  were  coming  down  into  the  sitting 
room. 

"Oh  look,  Katie !  What  lovely  flowers ! 
How  very  kind  of  you." 

Tom  surrendered  as  much  of  his 
burden  as  that  young  lady's  little  round 
white  hands  could  clasp,  to  her,  and 
deposited  the  rest  on  the  table. 

"Now,  Katie,  which  shall  I  wear — 
this  beautiful  white  rose  all  by  itself, 
or  a  wreath  of  these  pansies?  Here,  I 
have«a  wire  :  I  can  make  them  up  in  a 
minute."  She  turned  to  the  glass,  and 
held  the  rich  cream-white  rose  against 
her  hair,  and  then  turning  on  Tom,  added, 
"What  do  you  think?" 

"  I  thought  fern  would  suit  your  hair 
better  than  anything  else,"  said  Tom ; 
"and  so  I  got  these  leaves,"  and  he 
picked  out  two  slender  fern  leaves. 

"  How  very  kind  of  you  !  Let  me 
see,  how  do  you  mean  ?  Ah !  I  see ;  it 
will  be  charming ; "  and  so  saying,  she 


270 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


held  the  leaves  one  in  each  hand  to  the 
sides  of  her  head,  and  then  floated 
about  the  room  for  needle  and  thread, 
and  with  a  few  nimhle  stitches  fastened 
together  the  simple  green  crown,  which 
her  cousin  put  on  for  her,  making  the 
points  meet  above  her  forehead.  Mary 
was  wild  with  delight  at  the  effect,  and 
full  of  thanks  to  Tom  as  he  helped  them 
hastily  to  tie  up  bouquets,  and  then, 
amidst  much  laughing,  they  squeezed  into 
the  wheel  chair  together  (as  the  fashions 
of  that  day  allowed  two  young  ladies  to 
do),  and  went  off  to  their  party,  leaving 
a  last  injunction  on  him  to  go  up  and 
put  the  rest  of  the  flowers  in  water, 
and  to  call  directly  after  breakfast  the 
next  day.  He  obeyed  his  orders,  and 
pensively  arranged  the  rest  of  the 
flowers  in  the  china  ornaments  on  the 
mantelpiece,  and  in  a  soup  plate,  which 
he  got  and  placed  in  the  middle  of  the 
table,  and  then  spent  some  minutes 
examining  a  pair  of  gloves  and  other 
small  articles  of  women's  gear  which  lay 
scattered  about  the  room.  The  gloves 
particularly  attracted  him,  and  he  flat- 
tened them  out  and  laid  them  on  his  own 
large  brown  hand,  and  smiled  at  the 
contrast,  and  took  other  unjustifiable 
liberties  with  them ;  after  which  he 
returned  to  college  and  endured  much 
banter  as  to  the  time  his  call  had 
lasted,  and  promised  to  engage  his 
cousins,  as  he  called  them,  to  grace 
some  festivities  in  St.  Ambrose's  at  their 
first  spare  moment. 

The  next  day,  being  show  Sunday, 
was  spent  by  the  young  ladies  in  a 
ferment  of  spiritual  and  other  dissipa- 
tion. They  attended  morning  service  at 
eight  at  the  cathedral ;  breakfasted  at  a 
Merton  fellow's,  from  whence  they  ad- 
journed to  University  sermon.  Here, 
Mary,  after  two  or  three  utterly  in- 
effectual attempts  to  understand  what 
the  preacher  was  meaning,  soon  relapsed 
into  an  examination  of  the  bonnets 
present,  and  the  doctors  and  proctors 
on  the  floor,  and  the  undergraduates  in 
the  gallery.  On  the  whole,  she  was, 
perhaps,  better  employed  than  her 
cousin,  who  knew  enough  of  religious 
party  strife  to  follow  the  preacher,  and 


was   made  very  uncomfortable  by  his 
discourse,  which  consisted  of  an  attack 
upon  the  recent  publications  of  the  most 
eminent  and  best  men  in  the  Univer- 
sity.     Poor  Miss  Winter   came   away 
with  a  vague  impression  of  the  wicked- 
ness of  all  persons  who  dare  to  travel 
out  of  beaten  tracks,  and  that  the  most 
unsafe  state  of  mind  in  the  world  is 
that  which  inquires  and   aspires,   and 
cannot  be  satisfied  with  the  regulation 
draught   of   spiritual   doctors   in   high 
places.      Being  naturally  of  a  reverent 
turn  of  mind,  she  tried  to  think  that 
the  discourse  had  done  her  good.     At 
the  same  time  she  was  somewhat  troubled 
by  the  thought  that  somehow  the  best 
men  in  all  times  of  which  she  had  read 
seemed  to  her  to  be  just  those  whom 
the   preacher  was  in  fact  denouncing, 
although  in  words  he  had  praised  them 
as  the  great  lights  of  the  Church.     The 
words  which  she  had  heard  in  one  of 
the  lessons  kept  rxinning  in  her  head, 
"  Truly  ye   bear  witness   that  ye    do 
allow   the   deeds  of    your   fathers,  for 
they  indeed  killed  them,  but  ye  build 
their  sepulchres."     But  she  had  little 
leisure  to  think  on   the   subject,   and, 
as  her  father  praised  the  sermon  as  a 
noble  protest  against  the  fearful  tenden- 
cies of  the  day  to  Popery  and  Pantheism, 
smothered  the  questionings  of  her  own 
heart  as  well  as  she  could,  and  went  off  . 
to  luncheon  in  a  common  room ;  after 
which  her  father  retired  to  their  lodgings, 
and  she  and  her  cousin  were  escorted 
to  afternoon   service   at  Magdalen,    in 
achieving  which  last  feat  they  had  to 
encounter  a  crush  only  to  be  equalled 
by  that  at  the  pit  entrance  to  the  opera 
on  a  Jenny  Lind  night.     But  what  will 
not  a  delicately  nurtured  British  lady 
go  through  when  her  mind  is  bent  either 
on  pleasure  or  duty  1 

Poor  Tom's  feelings  throughout  the 
day  may  be  more  easily  conceived  than 
described.  He  had  called  according  to 
order,  and  waited  at  their  lodgings  after 
breakfast.  Of  course  they  did  not  arrive. 
He  had  caught  a  distant  glimpse  of  them 
in  St.  Mary's,  but  had  not  been  able  to 
approach.  He  had  called  again  in  the 
afternoon  unsuccessfully,  so  far  as  seeing 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


271 


them  was  concerned ;  but  he  had  found 
his  uncle  at  home,  lying  upon  the  sofa. 
At  first  he  was  much  dismayed  by  this 
rencontre,  but,  recovering  his  presence 
of  mind  he  proceeded,  I  regret  to  say, 
to  take  the  length  of  the  old  gentleman's 
foot,  by  entering  into  a  minute  and 
sympathizing  inquiry  into  the  state  of 
his  health.  Tom  had  no  faith  whatever 
in  his  uncle's  ill  health,  and  believed — 
as  many  persons  of  robust  constitution 
are  too  apt  to  do  when  brought  face  to 
face  with  nervous  patients — that  he 
might  shake  off  the  whole  of  his 
maladies  at  any  time  by  a  resolute 
effort,  so  that  his  sympathy  was  all  sham, 
though,  perhaps,  one  may  pardon  it, 
considering  the  end  in  view,  which  was 
that  of  persuading  the  old  gentleman  to 
entrust  the  young  ladies  to  his  nephew's 
care  for  that  evening  in  the  long  walk ; 
and  generally  to  look  upon  his  nephew, 
Thomas  Brown,  as  his  natural  prop  and 
supporter  in  the  University,  whose  one 
object  in  life  just  now  would  be  to  take 
trouble  off  his  hands,  and  who  was  of  that 
rare  and  precocious  steadiness  of  character 
that  he  might  be  as  safely  trusted  as  a 
Spanish  duenna.  To  a  very  considerable 
extent  the  victim  fell  into  the  toils.  He 
had  many  old  friends  at  the  colleges,  and 
was  very  fond  of  good  dinners,  and  long 
sittings  afterwards.  This  very  evening 
he  was  going  to  dine  at  St.  John's,  and 
had  been  much  troubled  at  the  idea  of 
having  to  leave  the  unrivalled  old  port 
of  that  learned  house  to  escort  his 
daughter  and  niece  to  the  long  walk. 
Still  he  was  too  easy  and  good-natured 
not  to  wish  that  they  might  get  there, 
and  did  not  like  the  notion  of  their  going 
with  perfect  strangers.  Here  was  a  com- 
promise. His  nephew  was  young,  but 
still  he  was  a  near  relation,  and  in  fact  it 
gave  the  poor  old  man  a  plausible  excuse 
for  not  exerting  himself  as  he  felt  he 
ought  to  do,  which  was  all  he  ever  re- 
quired for  shifting  his  responsibilities 
and  duties  upon  other  shoulders. 

So  Tom  waited  quietly  till  the  young 
ladies  came  home,  which  they  did  just 
before  hall-time.  Mr.  Winter  was  get- 
ting impatient.  As  soon  as  they  arrived 
he  started  for  St.  John's,  after  advising 


them  to  remain  at  home  for  the  rest  of 
the  evening,  as  they  looked  quite  tired 
and  knocked  up ;  but  if  they  were 
resolved  to  go  to  the  long  walk,  his 
nephew  would  escort  them. 

"  How  can  Uncle  Robert  say  we  look 
so  tired1?"  said  Mary,  consulting  the  glass 
on  the  subject;  "I  feel  quite  fresh.  Of 
course,  Katie,  you  mean  to  go  to  the  long 
walk?" 

"I  hope  you  will  go,"  said  Tom;  "I 
think  you  owe  me  some  amends.  I 
came  here  according  to  order  this  morn- 
ing, and  you  were  not  in,  and  I  have 
been  trying  to  catch  you  ever  since." 

"We  couldn't  help  it,"  said  Miss 
Winter ;  "  indeed  we  have  not  had  a 
minute  to  ourselves  all  day.  I  was  very 
sorry  to  think  that  we  should  have 
brought  you  here  for  nothing  this  morn- 
ing." 

"  But  about  the  long  walk,  Katie  ?" 

"  Well,  don't  you  think  we  have  done 
enough  for  to-day  1  I  should  like  to 
have  tea  and  sit  quietly  at  home,  as  papa 
suggested." 

"  Do  you  feel  very  tired,  dear?"  said 
Mary,  seating  herself  by  her  cousin  on 
the  sofa,  and  taking  her  hand. 

"No,  dear;  I  only  want  a  little  quiet 
and  a  cup  of  tea." 

"  Then  let  us  stay  here  quietly  till  it 
is  time  to  start.  When  ought  we  to 
get  to  the  long  walk  1" 

"About  half-past  seven,"  said  Tom; 
"  you  shouldn't  be  much  later  than  that." 

"There  you  see,  Katie,  we  shall  have 
two  hours'  perfect  rest.  You  shall  lie 
upon  the  sofa  and  I  will  read  to  you, 
and  then  we  shall  go  on  all  fresh  again." 

Miss  Winter  smiled  and  said,  "  Very 
well."  She  saw  that  her  cousin  was 
bent  on  going,  and  she  could  deny  her 
nothing. 

"  May  I  send  you  in  anything  from 
college?"  said  Tom;  "you  ought  to 
have  something  more  than  tea  I'm 
sure." 

"Oh  no,  thank  you.  We  dined  in 
the  middle  of  the  day." 

"  Then  I  may  call  for  you  about  seven 
o'clock,"  said  Tom,  who  had  come  un- 
willingly to  the  conclusion  that  he  had 
better  leave  them  for  the  present. 


272 


The  Mystery. 


"Yes,  and  mind  you  come  in 
time  ;  we  mean  to  see  the  whole  sight, 
remember.     We  are  country  cousins." 

"You  must  let  me  call  you  cousin 
then,  just  for  the  look  of  the  thing." 

"Certainly,  just  for  the  look  of  the 
thing,  we  will  be  cousins  till  further 
notice." 

"  Well,  you  and  Tom  seem  to  get  on 
together,  Mary,"  said  Miss  Winter,  as 
they  heard  the  front  door  close.  "  I'm 
learning  a  lesson  from  you,  though  I 
doubt  whether  I  shall  ever  be  able  to 
put  it  in  practice.  What  a  blessing  it 
must  be  not  to  be  shy  !" 

"  Are  you  shy,  then,"  said  Mary,  look- 
ing at  her  cousin  with  a  playful  loving 
smiie. 

"  Yes,  dreadfully.'  It  is  positive  pain 
to  me  to  walk  into  a  room  where  there 
are  people  I  do  not  know." 

"  But  I  feel  that  too.     I'm  sure  now 


you  were  much  less  embarrassed  than  I 
last  night  at  the  Vice- Chancellor's.  I 
quite  envied  you,  you  seemed  so  much 
at  your  ease." 

"  Did  III  would  have  given  anything 
to  be  back  here  quietly.  But  it  is  not 
the  same  thing  with  you.  You  have  no 
real  shyness,  or  you  would  never  have 
got  on  so  fast  with  my  cousin." 

"  Oh  !  I  don't  feel  at  all  shy  with 
him,"  said  Mary,  laughing.  "How 
lucky  it  is  that  he  found  us  out  so  soon. 
I  like  him  so  much.  There  is  a  sort  of 
way  about  him  as  .if  he  couldn't  help 
himself.  I  am  sure  one  could  turn  him 
round  one's  finger.  Don't  you  think  so  1 " 

"I'm  not  so  sure  of  that.  But  he 
always  was  soft-hearted,  poor  boy.  But 
he  isn't  a  boy  any  longer.  You  must 
take  care,  Mary.  Shall  we  ring  for 
tea?" 

To  be  continued. 

?  f  f 

^  \J . 


THE  MYSTEEY. 

"  Through  desire  a  man,  having  separated  himself,  seeketh  and  intermeddleth  with  all 
wisdom." — PKOV.  xviiL  1. 


0  THE  haunted  house  on  the  moorland,  how  lone  and  desolate, 
In  its  antique  fashions  grand,  it  seems  to  frown  upon  its  fate  ! 
Looking  over  the  bleak  moorland,  looking  over  to  the  sea, 
Defiant  in  the  haughtiness  of  some  great  memory. 

Few  trees  are  there  and  stunted,  for  the  salt- wind  blows  across, 

And  swathes  their  twigs  in  lichens  grey,  and  flakes  of  ragged  moss ; 

And  the  cotton-grass  nods  in  the  fish-pond  beside  the  spotted  rush, 

And  the  newt  creeps  thro'  their  sodden  roots  where  they  grow  rank  and  lush. 

But  moor  and  marsh  and  stunted  tree,  with  mosses  overrun, 
And  the  Druid  stone  where  the  raven  sits  blinking  in  the  sun — 
All  are  bleaker  from  its  neighbourhood,  and  grouped  around  it  lie, 
As  round  a  desolate  thought  that  fills  a  subtle  painter's  eye. 

Straggling  over  half  an  acre,  with  a  rough-hewn  masonry, 
There  are  portals  heavy-arched,  and  gables  crested  with  the  fleur-de-lis, 
Mounting  turrets,  curious  windows,  and  armorial  bearings  quaint, 
Full  of  rare  fantastic  meanings  as  the  dreams  of  some  old  saint. 

And  the  grim  old  tower  looms  darkly  with  its  shadow  over  all; 

Beast  unclean  and  bird  unholy  brood  or  burrow  in  its  wall ; 

Moans  the  wind  thro'  long  blind  lobbies — distant  doors  are  heard  to  slap, 

And  the  paint  falls  from  the  panels,  and  the  mouldering  tapestries  flap. 


The  Mystery.  273 

Falls  the  paint  from  scripture  stories,  all  blurred  with  mildew  damp, 
Fade  the  ancient  knights  and  ladies  from  the  tapestries  quaint  and  cramp  ; 
And  of  all  the  rare  carved  mantels  only  here  and  there  are  seen 
A  bunch  of  flowers  and  vine  leaves,  with  a  satyr's  face  between. 

Through  chinks  the  sun  is  breaking,  the  rain  breaks  tKrough  the  roof; 
There  are  sullen  pools  in  the  corners,  and  sullen  drops  aloof ; 
And  flitting  as  in  woodlands,  strange  lights  are  in  the  rooms, 
And  to  and  fro  they  glimmer,  alternating  with  glooms. 

And  him  that  shelters  there  a-night  from  the  wild  storm  or  rain, 
Will  death  or  madness  set  upon,  and  leaguer  him  amain 
With  eldrich  shapes,  and  eerie  sounds  of  sorrow  and  of  sin, 
And  cries  of  utter  wailing  that  make  the  blood  grow  thin. 

0  the  haunted  house  on  the  moorland,  how  lone  and  desolate, 

In  its  antique  fashions  grand,  it  seems  to  frown  upon  its  fate  ! 

But  sit  not  thou  in  its  tapestried  rooms  about  the  midnight  drear, 

When  the  chains  clank  on  the  staircase,  and  the  groaning  step  draws  near. 

The  chains  clank  on  the  staircase,  and  the  step  is  coming  slow, 
And  the  doors  creak  on  their  hinges,  and  the  lamp  is  burning  low, 
And  thou  listenest  too  intently,  and  thy  heart  is  throbbing  fast ; — 
Be  thou  coward  now  or  bold,  'twere  better  face  the  stormy  blast. 

Better  face  the  storm  without,  you  think  ?     Alas  !  I  cannot  tell : 
Perhaps  we  lose  the  power,  perhaps  we  lose  the  wish  as  well ; 
For  I  have  watched  and  pondered  many  a  weary  night  and  day, 
Ever  listening  thus  intently  in  our  mystic  house  of  clay  • 

Ever  listening  to  its  strangeness,  to  its  sorrow  and  its  sin, 
With  a  boldness  and  a  terror,  and  a  throbbing  heart  within ; 
Bold  to  know  the  very  thing  which  I  feared  indeed  to  see, 
Would  the  lamp  but  only  hold  till  I  searched  the  mystery. 

For  is  not  this  our  human  life  even  such  a  wreck  of  greatness, 
Where  the  trace  of  an  ancient  grandeur  marks  an  equal  desolateness  1 
Since  that  which  hath  been  is  not,  or  only  serves  to  wake 
A  thirst  for  truth  and  beauty,  which,  alas  !  it  cannot  slake. 

And  the  ruin  of  its  greatness  casts  all  round  an  air  of  gloom ; 
Earth's  loveliness  is  darkened  by  the  shadow  of  our  doom  ; 
And  the  riclmess  of  our  nature  only  adds  a  bitter  point 
Of  irony  to  the  thought  that  all  is  plainly  out  of  joint. 

And  fitfully,  as  through  a  chink,  the  higher  world  of  God 
Breaks  in  to  make  more  visible  our  waste  and  drear  abode  ; 
And  syllables  and  whispers,  all  discordant  to  rehearse, 
Hint  unutterable  harmonies  in  the  great  Universe. 

And  there  are  pictured  tapestries  in  chambers  of  the  brain, 
The  memories  of  a  higher  state  which  still  with  us  remain, 
But  faded  all  and  mildewed  they  but  deepen  our  regret, 
Like  twilight  glories  telling  of  a  glory  that  is  set. 


274  The  Mystery. 

And  mingling  with  the  traces  of  a  wondrous  beauty  still, 
There  are  lustful  satyr  faces  turning  all  the  good  to  ill ; 
And  like  birds  unholy  nestling  and  defiling  every  part, 
O  the  broods  of  evil  passions  in  the  corners  of  the  heart. 

And  if  thou  watch  there  thoughtful,  in  silence  of  the  night, 
With  a  longing  and  a  listening  too  intent  to  know  the  right ; 
Have  a  care,  for  there  are  phantoms — be  thou  cowardly  or  bold, — 
That  syllable  and  whisper  what  shall  make  the  blood  run  cold. 

0  to  rid  me  of  that  longing  !  to  stand  aloof  and  free 
From  the  dread,  or  from  the  power  of  the  dread  Infinity  ! 
0  to  grasp,  or  to  be  careless  of,  the  subtle  thoughts  that  fly 
And  shun  the  sense,  like  flower-smells,  the  closer  we  come  nigh ! 

Just  to  dwell  among  the  little  things  of  life,  and  be  content 
"With  its  ordinary  being  and  its  ordinary  bent ; 
Still  to  wade  in  the  clear  shallows  and  the  old  accustomed  fords, 
'Mong  the  thin  and  easy  truths  and  the  babbling  of  old  words  ! 

To  think  and  feel,  and  comprehend  all  I  might  think  and  feel, 
With  a  heart  that  never  sickened,  and  a  brain  that  did  not  reel 
Under  the  sense  of  mystery  and  mighty  shadows,  cast 
Upon  the  soul  from  life  and  death — the  future  and  the  past. 

So  thou'rt  crushed  beneath  a  shadow  ! — Ah !  I  would  that  I  could  smile 

With  your  satisfied  philosophy  ;  but  on  my  heart  the  while 

The  shadow  of  the  Infinite  is  laid  oppressively, 

And  though  I  know  that  it  is  light,  alas  !  it  darkens  me. 

In  the  lonesomeness  and  thoughtfulness  of  the  still  midnight  hour, 
Hast  thou  never  felt  the  mystery  of  being,  and  its  power  1 — 
The  great  bight  from  the  Godhead,  and  the  cross-bight  from  man, 
Prom  that  which  is  and  ought  to  be — the  portion  and  the  plan  ? 

How  they  are  twined  and  parted,  yet  firmly  linked  still 

By  necessity  of  being  in  the  dread  Almighty  will ! 

Hast  thou  never  yearned  to  see  the  sun  break  thro'  this  gathered  haze, 

Though  he  quenched  thy  little  hearth-fire  by  the  glory  of  his  blaze  ? 

Never  felt  the  eager  longing  in  the  inner  heart  of  men, 

Like  a  tiger  pacing  restless  to  and  fro  his  narrow  den, 

For  his  mighty  limbs  grow  irksome  with  the  lack  of  room  to  play, 

And  he  pineth  for  a  leap — a  bound  into  the  night  or  day  ? 

Ah,  me  !  to  be  a  botanist  or  bookworm  !  just  to  task 

A  herbal  or  a  history  to  answer  all  I'd  ask  ; 

And  be  content  to  live,  and  work,  and  die,  and  rot — nor  ever 

Writhe  with  a  mighty  longing  and  a  sense  of  high  endeavour. 

Why  are  all  things  yet  a  question  ?     What  is  nature  ?     What  is  man  ? 
What  is  truth  1  and  what  is  duty  ?     Why,  answer  as  we'  can, 
Has  the  soul  a  deeper  question  still  to  put,  when  all  is  done, 
Which  goes  echoing  into  darkness,  and  answer  there  is  none  ? 


The  Mystery.  275 

0,  I've  heard  that  echo  often  die  in  mockery  away 
In  the  distance  of  conception,  like  the  waters  of  a  bay 
Surging  far  into  a  lone  sea  cave — you  cannot  tell  how  far — 
And  there  is  neither  light  of  torch,  nor  light  of  moon  or  star. 

Can  I  will,  and  can  I  be,  and  do,  all  I  have  thought  and  felt  ? 
Can  I  mould  mine  opportunity,  and  shake  off  sin  and  guilt  1 
Is  life  so  thin-transparent,  as  men  have  thought  and  said  1 
And  God  a  mere  onlooker  to  see  the  game  well  played  1 

'Twixt  the  willing  and  the  being — 'twixt  the  darkness  and  the  light, 

Is  there  no  interval  for  Him  to  exercise  His  might  ] 

Then  perish  all  my  hesitance,  and  all  your  power  and  pelf  j — 

I  will  be  loyal  to  the  truth,  and  royal  to  myself. 

I  will  call  out  from  the  depths  a  boundless  truth — a  certain  key 
To  unlock  the  ancient  secrets  of  our  hoar  perplexity ; 
For  the  glow  of  one  vast  certainty  would  banish  chaos-night, 
And  canopy  my  soul  as  with  a  dome  of  rainbow  light. 

0  the  sounding  waves  should  speak  to  me,  and  be  well  understood  j 
The  violet  should  tell  the  secret  of  its  pensive  mood ; 

And  the  dew-drops  why  their  tears  are  formed  on  the  eyelash  of  the  light, 
And  that  lorn  wind  in  the  woodland  why  it  sobs  the  livelong  night. 

For  the  whole  creation  groaneth  with  a  sorrow  not  its  own, 
And  to  all  its  many  voices  grief  is  still  the  undertone, 
And  on  all  its  sunny  aspects  lies  a  shadow  I  would  fain 
Lift,  and  know  with  what  a  birth  it  is  travailing  in  pain. 

1  would  speak  with  the  wild  Arab  deep-throat  guttural  truth,  and  sound 
The  heart^depths  of  ascetic  squatting  loathsome  on  the  ground : 

Taste  all  truths  of  past  or  present,  and  all  truths  of  clime  and  race, 
Where'er  a  true  Divinity  was  deemed  to  have  a  place. 

I  would  know  all  creeds  and  gospels,  and  how  they  played  their  part, 
Each  with  its  place  appointed  for  this  changeful  human  heart : 
Each  with  a  dawn  of  progress,  and  a  share  of  good  and  ill, 
Each  with  its  work  appointed  by  the  Eternal  will. 

But  tossing  on  the  ocean  of  a  changeable  belief, 

To  deem  there  is  no  certainty  and  hope  for  no  relief, 

With  no  faith  in  the  old  causeways  and  the  lamplights,  it  is  dreary 

To  be  wandering  as  I  wander  now,  so  aimless,  dark,  and  weary. 

Woe's  me  !  but  life  is  rigid — is  not  plastic  to  my  will ; 

Thoughts  they  come  and  go,  like  spirits  with  the  mist  about  them  still ; 

And  the  strife  is  ineffectual  towards  lighting  up  the  soul, 

Like  the  faint  and  glimmering  twilights  that  creep  around  the  pole. 

To  myself  I  am  all  mystery  :  I  fain  would  act  my  part ; 
But  the  problem  of  existence  aches  unsolved  within  my  heart. 
How  can  this  life  be  possible  ? — What  matter  now  to  ask  1 
'Tis  already  a  necessity — an  urgent,  hourly  task. 


276  Froudes  History,  Vols.  V.  and  VI. 

All  !  there  the  clouds  break  up  ;  and  lo  !  a  clear  bright  star  uprearing, 
Its  face  deep,  deep  in  heaven,  beside  the  crystal  throne  appearing  : 
Though  life  be  dreary,  and  truth  be  dark  ;  yet  duty  is  not  so  : 
Lay  thy  hand  then  to  its  labour,  and  thy  heart  into  the  blow. 

like  the  light  of  a  dark  lantern  is  the  guiding  light  for  thee, 
A  circle  on  the  earth  just  where  thy  foot  should  planted  be  : 
But  turn  it  to  the  mountains  that  encompass  life  and  doom, 
And  it  flickers  like  a  shadow,  and  only  shows  the  gloom. 

O  the  haunted  house  on  the  moorland,  all  lone  and  desolate, 
Let  it  stand  in  its  antique  fashions  frowning  grimly  on  its  fate  ; 
But  brood  not  thou  with  thought  intense  about  the  dark  midnight, 
But  turn  thee  to  thy  task,  and  do  thy  work  with  all  thy  might. 

The  day  is  short  and  changeful,  the  night  is  drawing  on, 
And  maybe  there  is  light  beyond,  and  maybe  there  is  none  ; 
But  the  grief  and  pain  and  straggle,  and  the  hoar  perplexity, 
"Will  not  yield  their  secrets  up  to  any  questioning  of  thee. 

ORWELL. 


FROUDE'S    HISTORY— VOLS.  V.  AKD  VL 


BY   THE   BEV.    F.   D.    MAUKICE. 


TEN  years  ago  an  eminent  German 
scholar  expressed  his  astonishment  at 
the  amount  and  the  value  of  the  contri- 
butions which  England  had  recently 
made  to  historical  literature.  That  two 
great  histories  of  Greece  should  not 
only  have  been  undertaken,  but  should 
have  become  popular — among  us,  was  a 
fact  which,  he  said,  no  experience  in  his 
country  of  books  enabled  him  to  account 
for.  He  accepted,  if  he  did  not  suggest, 
the  interpretation,  that  those  who  were 
in  the  midst  of  political  action  must  feel 
an  interest  in  political  experiences,  from 
whatever  age  or  nation  they  are  derived, 
which  the  most  diligent  students  can- 
not feel.  There  was  some  hope  in  1850 
that  what  had  been  given  to  one  part  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  would  not  always 
be  denied  to  the  other.  That  hope  may 
not  be  less  in  1860.  Certainly,  the  in- 
tervening years  which  have  put  us  in 
possession  of  Lord  Macaulay's  splendid 
fragment,  of  several  volumes  of  Mr. 
Merivale's  "Roman  Empire,"  of  Dean 
Milman's  "Lathi  Christianity"  (at  least 
in  its  complete  form),  of  Mr.  Car- 


lyle's  "Frederick,"  and  of  Mr.  Froude's 
"Tudors,"*  have  not  diminished  the  evi- 
dence that  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria 
is  likely  to  be  at  least  as  illustrious  in 
the  department  of  history  as  in  that  of 
physical  science. 

That  Mr.  Froude's  first  four  volumes 
have  established  a  place  for  themselves 
among  our  English  classics,  is,  it  seems 
to  me,  a  greater  witness  for  the  historical 
tendency  of  our  minds  in  this  day,  than 
even  the  success  of  such  works  as  Bishop 
ThirlwalTs,  or  Mr.  Grote's. 

We  know  that  we  have  accepted  many 
loose  traditions  and  many  false  opinions 
about  the  classical  periods.  We  can  have 
patience  with  the  scholars  who  under- 
take to  set  us  right.  We  can  even  feel 
a  sort  of  gratitude  to  them.  We  expect 
them  to  adopt  a  solemn  Gibbonic  style 
of  writing.  But  our  own  history  we  of 
course  understand  ;  there  may  be  points 
in  it  which  require  to  be  cleared  up ; 

*  I  have  not  ventured  to  include  our  Trans- 
atlantic brethren ;  otherwise  Mr.  Prescott 
and  Mr.  Mottley  would  have  made  splendid 
additions  to  my  list. 


Froudes  History,  Vols.  V,  and  VI. 


277 


Whigs  and  Tories  have  their  own  theories 
and  predilections  ;  but  one  or  other  of 
these  we  take  it  for  granted  must  be  right. 
All  we  want  is  to  have  the  story  of  our 
kings  rendered  to  us  in  short,  epigram- 
pnatic  sentences ;  to  have  our  own 
opinions  presented  to  us  in  an  agreeable 
form ;  to  be  occasionally  relieved  from 
the  necessity  of  admiring  some  one  who 
has  been  reputed  a  hero. 

In  all  these  particulars  Mr.  Froude  has 
set  at  nought  our  demands.  Without 
relapsing  into  Gibbonism,  he  positively 
refuses  to  cast  his  sentences  in  the 
"Edinburgh  Eeview"  moulds.  He  is 
resolved  to  write  simple,  quiet  Eng- 
lish, such  as  a  man  writes  who  thinks 
seriously  of  the  generations  of  old,  and 
dares  not  treat  them  as  we  treat  the 
writer  of  the  last  new  novel.  He  has 
not  introduced  any  affectations  of  his 
own,  while  he  has  eschewed  those  of  his 
contemporaries.  The  experiment  is  a 
very  courageous  one.  Great  intrinsic 
merits  are  necessary  to  make  a  kind 
of  writing  acceptable  which  is  so  good 
that  it  never  forces  itself  upon  our  notice, 
which  presents  its  subject  with  such 
clearness,  that  the  medium  is  almost 
forgotten. 

But  even  if  he  could  be  forgiven  for 
being  without  mannerism,  could  our 
English  conservative  nature  tolerate  his 
departure  from  some  of  our  most 
approved  and  fundamental  historical 
maxims'?  We  may  be  glad  if  some 
writer,  especially  some  female  writer, 
will  persuade  us  that  we  are  under  no 
obligation  to  respect  Elizabeth.  Those 
who  are  Eomanists,  and  those  who 
nibble  at  Romanism,  may  be  pleased  if 
they  are  told  that  Mary  has  been  un- 
justly disparaged.  The  opposition  to 
such  innovations  in  some  quarters  may 
cause  them  to  be  more  welcomed  in 
others.  But  Henry  the  Eighth  is  an 
object  of  fervent  detestation  to  Eoman- 
ists and  Protestants,  Whigs  and  Tories, 
English  Churchmen  and  Dissenters.  To 
speak  a  word  in  his  favour  would  have 
been,  a  few  years  ago,  to  incur  the 
denunciation  of  the  most  moderate  and 
the  most  equitable.  Sir  James  Mack- 
intosh, on  this  topic,  is  as  fierce  as 


Lingard.  If  a  respectable  writer  like 
Sharon  Turner  raised  a  timid  voice  in 
protest,  it  was  drowned  in  a  shout  of  in- 
dignation, mixed,  as  it  would  naturally 
be,  with  gentle  female  cries  of  horror 
and  pity. 

The  love  of  paradox  must  be  stronger 
than  I  believe  it  ever  was  in  any  man, 
if  it  led  him  to  resist  a  clamour  so  gene- 
ral, and  having  such  obvious  justifica- 
tion.    The  love  of  truth  might  be  strong 
enough  in  one  who  was  undertaking  to 
write  a  history  which  must  either  ratify 
or  disturb  the  existing  opinion,  to  make 
him  seriously  debate  with  himself  a  few 
such  questions  as  these  :  "  This  English 
"Reformation  had  very  much  to    do 
"with  this  King  Henry,  had  it  not? 
"Eomanists  say,   Protestants   say — the 
'  plain  evidence  of  history  says — that 
'  his   image    is   very   deeply    stamped 
'  upon  it ;    that  whatever  most  distin- 
'  guished  it  from  the  Eeformations  else- 
'  where,  it  owed  to  the  fact  that  a  Bang 
'  was  more  directly  concerned  in  it  than 
'  Divines.     Am  I  prepared  to  say  that 
'  all  which  was  characteristic  and  pecu- 
'  liar  in  this  Eeformation  was  evil  ?  Am 
'  I  prepared  to  say  that  it  ought  to  have 
'  followed  another  course  ;  that  if  I  had 
'  had  the  management  of  it,  it  should 
'  have  been  committed  to  the  divines ; 
'and  that  the   universe    would    have 
'  been  much  better  off  if  I  h  ad  had  the 
'  management   of  that,  and  of  sundry 
'other  matters  about  which,  unfortu- 
'  nately,  I  have   not  been  consulted  ? 
'  It  may  be,  no  doubt,  that  I  have  been 
"  mistaken  altogether,  in  thinking  the 
"  Eeformation  to  be  a  good.     If  so,  I 
"  will  go  to  the  history ;  I  will  study 
"it  fairly;    it  will  no  doubt  tell  me. 
"  And  then  I  shall  not  be  the  least  sur- 
"  prised  to  find  that  the  main  agent  in 
"  it  was  simply  a  Bluebeard,  simply  a 
"  monster.  But  if  it  turns  out  to  be  good 
"in  principle,   with  whatever   evils  it 
"  may  have  been  accompanied,  and  if  I 
"  do  not  find  that  the  King  had  less  to 
'  do  with  it  than  my  predecessors  say 
'that  he  had,  is  it  not  possible,  also, 
'  that  I  may  find  that  there  was  some- 
•  thing  in  him  besides  that  blackness 
'  which  appears  in  certain  of  his  actions 


278 


Froude's  History,  Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


<  — some  whiteness  which  perhaps  will 
'make  that  blackness  look  more  ter- 
'  rible,  but  which  will  also  account  for 
'  doings  that  it  will  not  account  for  ? 
'Certainly  Shakspeare  did  not  regard 
"  him  as  an  unmitigated  villain ;  and 
"make  what  allowances  you  will  for 
"  Shakspeare' s  willingness  to  flatter  his 
"  daughter,  is  not  his  portrait  a  some- 
"  what  more  credible  one  than  that  of 
"  the  post-Stuart  chroniclers  1  Have  not 
"  modern  French  historians,  such  as 
"  Michelet,  though  not  specially  inclined 
"  to  favour  English  sovereigns,  been 
"  forced  by  the  evidence  of  documents 
"  to  confess  that  he  had  more  notion  of 
"  the  sacredness  of  the  royal  word,  more 
"  reverence  for  treaties  and  promises, 
"than  Francis  or  Charles,  or  any  of 
"those  contemporaries  who  have  been 
"  magnified  to  his  disparagement  1 " 

I  say  that  such  thoughts  as  these 
must  come  at  times  into  our  minds, 
and  though  they  may  not  displace  the 
opinions  we  have  received  in  our  nur- 
series, may  make  us  disposed  to  look  a 
little  more  sharply  into  the  evidence. 
Mr.  Froude  assures  us  that  he  came  to 
the  study  with  a  decided  bias  in  favour 
of  the  common  opinion.  Shakspeare's 
authority  had  not  the  weight  with  him 
that  it  might  have  with  some  of  us. 
He  suspects  the  poets  almost  as  much  as 
Plato  or  Bacon  might  do.  He  probably 
had  early  prepossessions  against  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  royal  Supremacy,  doubts 
whether  the  Reformation  was  not  marred 
by  the  royal  influence.  The  sheer  con- 
scientious study  of  facts  and  documents, 
has,  it  seems  to  me,  led  him  to  that  con- 
ception of  the  King's  character  which  is 
the  groundwork  of  his  history.  That 
conception  has  nothing  necessarily  to  do 
with  the  opinions  which  he  has  formed 
respecting  particular  points.  He  may 
have  understated  the  case  of  Catherine  ; 
he  may  be  wrong  in  thinking  Anne 
Boleyn  guilty ;  we  may  not  hold  with  him 
about  the  suddenness  of  the  marriage 
with  Jane  Seymour ;  we  may  believe 
that  Cromwell  was  unjustly  given  up 
to  his  enemies.  All  these  questions 
are  open  to  fresh  examination.  Mr. 
Froude  has  the  merit  of  having  dis- 


turbed our  settled  conclusions  upon 
them ;  he  may  not  have  established  the 
opposite.  But  it  is  not  true — as  some 
have  ignorantly  and  some  dishonestly 
represented — that  he  has  written  an 
apology  for  the  acts  of  an  immoral  and 
lawless  tyrant.  No  charge  was  ever 
more  directly  refuted  by  the  tone  and 
spirit  of  his  book.  I  do  not  know  any 
English  history  which  exhibits  more 
unfeigned  reverence  for  goodness,  more 
contempt  for  baseness,  or  which  is  so 
utterly  free  from  pruriency,  even  when 
the  subject  aiforded  great  temptations  to 
indulge  in  it. 

What  Mr.  Froude  has  attempted  to 
show  is  this  ;  that  passion  was  by  no 
means  the  characteristic  of  Henry,  by 
no  means  the  source  of  even  his  worst 
acts.  He  was,  first  of  all,  a  Tudor  king, 
inheriting  from  his  father  and  cherish- 
ing in  his  own  mind  an  intensely  strong 
sense  of  the  power  and  office  of  a  King ; 
possessing  in  a  high  degree  many  of  the 
peculiarly  royal  qualities — a  strong  will, 
a  reverence  for  law,  clear  sense,  appli- 
cation to  business — not  possessing  at 
all  in  the  same  proportion  the  humane 
qualities,  though  not  absolutely  deficient 
in  these;  therefore  at  any  time  disposed 
for  political  ends — for  what  seemed  to 
him  the  duty  of  a  monarch — to  sweep 
away  the  personal  regards  and  attach- 
ments which  stood  in  his  way.  This 
policy  of  Henry  Mr.  Froude  believes 
not  to  have  been  the  cunning  Machi- 
avellian policy  of  his  time,  but  to  have 
been  in  the  main  honest  and  manly. 
He  believes,  as  Shakspeare  did,  that 
the  King  felt  and  did  not  feign  con- 
scientious scruples  on  the  subject  of 
his  marriage  with  Catherine;  that  his 
scruples  may  at  a  certain  period  have 
mingled  with  affection  for  Anne,  but 
that  that  affection  did  not  determine 
his  conduct ;  that  it  was  determined 
mainly  by  considerations  respecting  the 
peril  of  the  nation  if  he  left  no  male 
issue.  Such  a  character  is  far  from 
attractive.  No  one  can  fall  into  a  senti- 
mental admiration  of  it.  But  it  contains 
dispositions  which  belong  to  the  strong 
English  mould ;  a  vigorous  sense  of 
responsibility,  comparatively  cold  affec- 


Froudes  History,  Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


279 


tions.  It  is  as  unlike  as  possible  to  a 
form  of  character  with  which  it  has 
been  compared.  Lord  Byron  talks  of 
George  IV.  as  compounded  of  two  ele- 
ments, Henry's  being  the  principal. 
Such  an  opinion  falls  in  well  with  the 
popular  theory  ;  according  to  that,  the 
elder  prince  was  worse  than  his  succes- 
sor by  all  that  Catherine  of  Arragon 
was  better  than  Caroline  of  Brunswick. 
But  if  the  besetting  sin  of  Henry  was 
a  disregard  of.  family  and  personal  ties, 
when  set  against  the  supposed  obliga- 
tions of  the  sovereign,  and  the  besetting 
sin  of  George  an  impatience  of  all 
restraint  upon  his  appetites  and  ease, 
whether  it  came  through  the  laws  of 
the  household  or  the  business  of  the 
kingdom,  we  perceive  that  the  imaginary 
likeness  is  a  striking  contrast ;  we  learn 
too,  perhaps,  wherein  the  temptations 
of  the  nineteenth  century  differ  from 
those  of  the  sixteenth. 

On  all  these  grounds,  but  especially 
on  the  last,  I  hold  Mr.  Froude's  idea  of 
the  King  to  be  more  consistent  with 
itself,  less  dangerous  to  morality,  fuller 
of  historical  light  -than  that  which  it 
supersedes.  The  Tudor  age  is  that  age 
which  was  to  show  what  the  sovereign 
could  do,  as  the  Stuart  was  that  which 
was  to  show  what  he  could  not  do. 
Strictly  speaking,  one  is  not  less  im- 
portant for  the  history  of  the  constitu- 
tion than  the  other ;  but  if  we  throw 
back  the  mere  constitutional  watchwords 
of  Prerogative  and  Privilege,  which  are 
most  important  for  the  second  period,  to 
the  first,  we  involve  ourselves  in  great 
confusion.  The  privileges  of  the  Com- 
mons, if  they  were  sometimes  affronted, 
were  quite  as  often  vindicated  by  that 
very  prerogative  which  was  afterwards 
set  in  opposition  to  them.  The  power  of 
the  Commons  as  against  the  Lords,  as 
against  the  ecclesiastical  authority,  was 
never  more  brought  out  than  in  Henry's 
time.  The  King's  supremacy  was  felt 
to  be  the  assertion  of  a  national  princi- 
ple ;  the  Nation  realised  its  own  exist- 
ence in  the  existence  of  its  ruler.  And 
that  perilous  blasphemy  which  threat- 
ened under  James  and  Charles  to  con- 
found the  king  with  God,  existed  far 


less  in  the  time  when  the  royal  power 
was  a  fact,  and  not  a  theory.  The  King, 
casting  off  his  allegiance  to  a  foreign 
bishop,  was  claiming  indeed  an  autho- 
rity which  became  fearful  ;  but  the 
claim  was  in  itself  one  of  subjection  to 
an  actual  spiritual  Ruler,  the  confes- 
sion of  an  invisible  King  of  kings,  and 
Lord  of  lords.  In  that  confession  lay 
the  faith  of  England  in  the  sixteenth 
century  ;  its  faith  and  its  morality  also. 
Faith  or  trust  was  the  watchword  of  the 
Reformation.  But  faith  or  trust  in  a 
doctrine,  or  as  a  doctrine,  had  no  worth 
for  the  practical  English  mind.  Trust 
or  faith  in  a  Person,  and  that  not  chiefly 
because  He  was  powerful,  but  because  He 
was  righteous,  was  that  which  associated 
itself  with  their  old  loyalty.  It  could 
not  be  satisfied  with  any  visible  monarch 
who  so  ofEen  showed  himself  to  be  un- 
righteous ;  but  without  the  visible  mon- 
arch, the  invisible  would  have  been 
indistinct  and  shadowy.  The  represen- 
tative of  generations  of  Welsh  and 
Saxon  sovereigns,  now  no  longer  bow- 
ing to  a  foreign  priest,  educated  his 
subjects  into  a  belief  in  One  who  lived 
for  ever  and  ever.  All  the  doctors  in 
the  world  could  supply  no  such  educa- 
tion ;  they  could  only  do  good  so  far  as 
they  helped  to  administer  that  which  a 
better  Wisdom  had  provided ;  in  so  far 
as  they  used  the  open  English  Bible 
to  explain  to  the  English  people  how 
kings  had  ruled  in  old  time  the  chosen 
people  in  the  name  of  the  unseen  Lord 
of  Hosts,  how  all  visible  idolatry  had 
been  the  cause  of  their  degradation  and 
his. 

Mr.  Froude's  insurrection  against  our 
prevalent  and  customary  notion  of 
Henry's  character  has  been  exceedingly 
helpful  in  restoring  this  older  and 
simpler  apprehension  of  our  annals. 
His  two  last  volumes  will  do  much  to 
strengthen  and  deepen  it.  Many  who 
fancied  they  disliked  the  former  for 
their  parodox,  will  dislike  these  for 
their  freedom  from  paradox.  They  will 
complain  of  them  as  wanting  excitement 
and  novelty,  as  maintaining  very  much 
those  old  notions  respecting  the  charac- 
ters and  events  of  the  time  which  (under 


280 


Fronde's  History,  Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


protest)  we  should  like  to  exchange  for 
others  more  racy  and  startling.  When 
we  had  hoped  that  Lord  Macaulay  had 
given  us  reasons  for  despising  Cranmer, 
we  find  him  resuming  his  claims  upon 
our  affection  and  admiration.  Somerset 
and  Northumberland  prove  to  be  much 
what  we  supposed  they  were  ;  Edward 
is  still  a  hopeful,  conscientious,  highly 
cultivated  boy.  Whether  Foxe  is  a  safe 
authority  or  not,  Mr.  Froude  will  not  ex- 
cuse us  from  paying  our  ancient  homage 
to  the  Marian  martyrs.  Nevertheless, 
these  two  volumes  respecting  Edward 
and  Mary  are,  I  conceive,  at  least  equal 
in  originality,  in  historical  research,  in 
biographical  interest,  in  right  and  noble 
feeling,  and  in  clearness  and  simplicity 
of  style,  to  those  which  preceded  them. 
I  should  have  added  as  a  more  marked 
characteristic  of  them  than  all,  a  rigid 
impartiality,  if  that  title  were  not  open 
to  the  greatest  mistake.  Most  just  Mr. 
Froude  is  in  bringing  forth  the  virtues 
both  of  Protestants  and  Catholics  ;  most 
just  in  exposing  their  sins.  But  there 
is  no  impartiality  in  this  sense,  that 
he  looks  down  upon  both  as  from  a 
higher  judgment-seat  of  his  own ;  or  in 
this  sense,  that  he  treats  their  differences 
as  insignificant,  such  as  only  school  con- 
troversialists would  trouble  themselves 
with.  From  this  arrogance  and  frivolity, 
which  are  the  great  diseases  of  modern 
historians,  he  is,  if  not  absolutely  free, 
yet  more  free  than  any,  so  far  as  I  know, 
who  have  handled  the  subject  before 
him,  unless  they  have  lent  themselves 
to  the  views  of  a  faction,  and  have  made 
the  history  repeat  its  decrees.  His  im- 
partiality arises  from  no  love  for  an 
Anglican  Via  Media,  which  gives  those 
who  walk  in  it  a  title  to  insult  the  pas- 
sengers on  either  side  of  the  road.  He 
regards  the  attempt  of  divines  to  cut 
such  a  path  as  this  as  feeble  and  abor- 
tive. He  always  prefers  strong  men  to 
weak  men ;  he  does  not  condemn  vehe- 
mence except  where  he  believes  it  to  be 
wholly  or  partly  insincere.  But  he  sees 
more  clearly,  I  think,  than  any  previous 
historian,  that  the  Protestant  dogma- 
tizers  of  Edward's  reign,  and  the 
Catholic  dogmatizers  of  Mary's  reign, 


were  not  only  of  necessity  persecutors, 
but  were  of  necessity  trucklers  to  dis- 
honest statesmen,  practisers  of  state- 
craft. They  might  affect  to  hate  com- 
promises ;  but  the  ends  which  they  pro- 
posed to  themselves  made  very  discre- 
ditable compromises  inevitable.  They 
could  not  establish  the  opinions  which 
they  thought  it  all-important  to  esta- 
blish, except  by  the  sacrifice  of  both 
manliness  and  godliness.  Those  who 
fancied  they  were  pushing  the  Eeforma- 
tion  to  the  furthest  point,  had  to  dis- 
cover that  they  were  forgetting  the  very 
meaning  of  reformation,  that  all  the 
moral  abuses  which  they  had  denounced 
were  re-appearing  under  another  name, 
and  could  justify  themselves  as  well  on 
Protestant  as  on  Popish  maxims ;  that 
they  had  swept  away  the  barriers  which 
hindered  man's  access  to  God,  only  that 
they  might  with  more  comfort  and  satis- 
faction present  their  offerings  to  the 
devil. 

It  is  in  showing  how  these  discoveries 
forced  themselves  upon  the  minds  of 
the  better  Protestant  teachers  during 
their  prosperity,  how  manfully  they 
spoke  againt  the  evils  which  their  own 
system  was  developing,  yet  how  hard, 
how  impossible  it  was  for  them  to  dis- 
cover where  the  evil  lay,  or  to  devise  a 
remedy  for  it  :  it  is  in  showing  how  the 
Divine  medicine  of  adversity  provided 
that  for  them  which  they  were  wanting 
and  could  not  invent  for  themselves, 
and  how  courageously  some  of  them 
drank  that  medicine  to  the  dregs  ;  how 
others,  who  had  been  loudest  in  using 
all  the  cant  phrases  of  their  school,  in 
denouncing  the  most  earnest  men  as 
half-hearted,  and  in  invoking  the  judg- 
ments of  God  and  man  upon  their  oppo- 
nents, were  shown  in  the  day  of  trouble 
to  be  the  atheists  they  had  always  really 
been — it  is  for  these  discoveries  that 
Protestants  owe  so  much  gratitude  to 
Mr.  Froude.  It  is  not  for  me  to  say  what 
Roman  Catholics  ought  to  learn  or  may 
learn  from  him ;  but  1  cannot  help  hoping 
that  they  will  appreciate  the  frankness 
of  his  confessions  respecting  the  first 
reign,  his  desire  to  do  Mary  justice,  his 
acknowledgment  of  the  advantage  which 


Fronde's  History — Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


281 


Gardiner  had  over  his  opponents  whilst  • 
he  was  their  prisoner,  his  readiness  to 
show  that  much  of  the  Catholic  feeling 
of  the  English  people  was  a  genuine 
reverence  for  what  was  sacred,  which 
the  Reformers  could  not  insult  without 
imperilling  all  which  it  was  most  their 
duty  to  maintain.  To  both  Protestant 
and  Eomanist,  and  still  more,  perhaps, 
to  the  English  Churchman,  the  great 
worth  of  the  volumes  lies  in  the  com- 
parison which  they  afford  between  the 
two  reigns,  and  in  the  proof  which  is 
derived  from  them  that  the  refusal  of 
Henry  and  Elizabeth  to  sanction  Protes- 
tantism or  Eomanism  merely  as  such, 
may  have  been  inspired  by  a  good 
spirit  (however  much  in  either  or  both 
it  degenerated  into  tyranny),  and  may 
have  led  to  results  for  which  all  genera- 
tions have  to  be  grateful.  Protestants 
in  the  strongest  sense  (though  not  ex- 
actly in  the  sense  of  the  Diet  of  Spyers) — 
because  they  maintained  that  indepen- 
dence of  the  English  Sovereign  upon 
any  foreign  rule  which  all  the  Planta- 
genets  had  been  trying  to  maintain ; 
Catfiolics  (though  in  the  opposite  sense 
to  that  of  the  Catholic  League) — inas- 
much as  they  had  no  wish  to  separate 
England  from  the  general  fellowship 
of  Christendom,  provided  she  were 
not  forced  to  outrage  any  Christendom 
principle — they  discovered  by  instinct 
what  the  doctors  could  not  discover  by 
logic  ;  they  saved  their  country  from 
becoming  utterly  the  victim  of  theo- 
logical dissensions,  which  threatened  its 
highest  spiritual  interests  as  well  as  its 
common  earthly  honesty  ;  they  vindi- 
cated the  connexion  between  its  poli- 
tics and  its  worship  ;  they  prepared  the 
way  for  a  time  when  their  own  efforts 
to  produce  uniformity  of  faith  should 
be  felt  to  be  poor  and  futile,  when  they 
should  yield  to  a  desire  for  unity  of 
faith,  which  no  schemes  of  statesmen  or 
of  Churchmen  shall  be  able  to  stifle  or 
to  satisfy. 

I  have  preferred  to  speak  of  the  total 
impression  which  these  volumes  have 
made  upon  me,  of  the  general  lessons 
which  they  have  taught  me,  than  to 
comment  upon  particular  passages.  It 

No.  10. — VOL.  ii. 


is  a  book  written  for  study  and 
not  for  effect ;  yet  there  are  narra- 
tives which  are  most  effective.  The 
rising  in  the  West  and  in  Norfolk  in 
the  year  1549  is  admirably  described  ; 
Wyatt's  insurrection,  especially  the  ter- 
mination of  it,  with  still  greater  spirit. 
We  can  only  give  the  beginning,  not  the 
best  part  of  the  latter  story.  Mr.  Froude 
has  exhibited  the  Queen  in  all  the 
weakness,  discontent,  and  mawkishness 
of  her  passion  for  Philip ;  he  has  to 
show  her  hereafter  soured  and  darkened 
by  fanaticism ;  he  can  represent  her  also 
in  all  the  true  dignity  of  a  Tudor 
princess. 

"  Had  Wyatt,  said  Noailles,  been  able  to 
reach  London  simultaneously  with  this  answer, 
he  would  have  found  the  gates  open  and  the 
whole  popxilation  eager  to  give  him  welcome. 
To  his  misfortune  he  lingered  on  the  way,  and 
the  queen  had  time  to  xise  his  words  against 
him.  The  two  gentlemen  returned  indignant 
at  his  insolence.  The  next  morning  Count 
Egmont  waited  on  Mary  to  say  that  he  and 
his  companions  were  at  her  service,  and  would 
stand  by  her  to  their  death.  Perplexed  as  she 
was,  Egmont  said  he  found  her  '  marvellously 
firm.'  The  marriage,  she  felt,  must,  at  all 
events,  be  postponed  for  the  present ;  the 
prince  could  not  come  till  the  insurrection 
was  at  an  end ;  and,  while  she  was  grateful  for 
the  offer,  she  not  only  thought  it  best  to  de- 
cline the  ambassadors'  kindness,  but  she  re- 
commended them,  if  possible,  to  leave  London 
and  the  country  without  delay.  Their  party 
was  large  enough  to  irritate  the  people,  and 
too  small  to  be  of  use.  She  bade  Egmont,  there- 
fore, tell  the  Emperor  that  from  the  first  she 
had  put  her  trust  in  God,  and  that  she  trusted 
in  Him  still ;  and  for  themselves,  she  told 
them  to  go  at  once,  taking  her  best  wishes 
with  them.  They  obeyed.  Six  Antwerp  mer- 
chant sloops  were  in  the  river  below  the  bridge, 
waiting  to  sail.  They  stole  on  board,  dropped 
down  the  tide,  and  were  gone. 

"  The  afternoon  of  the  same  day  the  queen 
herself,  with  a  studied  air  of  dejection,  rode 
through  the  streets  to  the  Guildhall,  attended 
by  Gardiner  and  the  remnant  of  the  guard. 
In  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  she  met  Pembroke, 
and  slightly  bowed  as  she  passed  him.  Gar- 
diner was  observed  to  stoop  to  his  saddle.  The 
hall  was  crowded  with  citizens  ;  some  brought 
there  by  hatred,  some  by  respect,  many  by 
pity,  but  more  by  curiosity.  When  the  queen 
entered  she  stood  forward  on  the  steps,  above 
the  throng,  and,  in  her  deep  man's  voice,  she 
spoke  to  them. 

"  Her  subjects  had  risen  in  rebellion  against 
her,  she  said ;  she  had  been  told  that  the  cause 
was  her  intended  marriage  with  the  Prince  of 

U 


282 


Frauds  s  History — Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


Spain ;  and,  believing  that  it  was  the  real  cause, 
she  had  offered  to  hear  and  to  respect  their 
objections.  Their  leader  had  betrayed  in  his 
answer  his  true  motives ;  he  had  demanded 
possession  of  the  Tower  of  London  and  of  her 
own  person.  She  stood  there,  she  said,  as 
lawful  Queen  of  England,  and  she  appealed  to 
the  loyalty  of  her  great  city  to  save  her  from 
a  presumptuous  rebel,  who,  under  specious 
pretences,  intended  to  '  subdue  the  laws  to  his 
will,  and  to  give  scope  to  rascals  anil  forlorn 
persons  to  make  general  havoc  and  spoil.' 
As  to  her  marriage,  she  had  supposed  that  so 
magnificent  an  alliance  could  not  have  failed 
to  be  agreeable  to  her  people.  To  herself,  and, 
she  was  not  afraid  to  say,  to  her  council,  it 
seemed  to  promise  high  advantage  to  the  com- 
monwealth. Marriage,  in  itself,  was  indifferent 
to  her ;  she  had  been  invited  to  think  of  it  by 
the  desire  of  the  country  that  she  should  have 
an  heir;  but  she  could  continue  happily  in 
the  virgin  state  in  which  she  had  hitherto 
passed  her  life.  She  would  call  a  parliament, 
and  the  subject  should  be  considered  in  all  its 
beatings ;  if,  on  mature  consideration,  the 
Lords  and  Commons  of  England  should  refuse 
to  approve  of  £he  Prince  of  Spain  as  a  fitting 
husband  for  her,  she  promised,  on  the  word 
of  a  queen,  that  she  would  think  of  him  no 
more. 

"  The  spectacle  of  her  distress  won  the  sym- 
pathy of  her  audience;  the  boldness  of  her 
bearing  commanded  their  respect;  the  pro- 
mise of  a  parliament  satisfied,  or  seemed  to 
satisfy,  all  reasonable  demands :  and  among 
the  wealthy  citizens  there  was  no  desire  to  see 
London  in  possession  of  an  armed  mob,  in 
whom  the  Anabaptist  leaven  was  deeply  inter- 
fused. The  speech,  therefore,  had  remarkable 
success.  The  queen  returned  to  Westminster, 
leaving  the  corporation  converted  to  the  pru- 
dence of  supporting  her.  Twenty-five  thousand 
men  were  enrolled  the  next  day  for  the  protec- 
tion of  the  crown  and  the  capital ;  Lord  William 
Howard  was  associated  with  the  mayor  in  the 
command ;  and  Wyatt,  who  had  reached  Green- 
wich on  Thursday,  and  had  wasted  two  days 
there,  uncertain  whether  he  should  not  cross 
the  river  in  boats  to  Blackwall,  arrived  on 
Saturday  morning  at  Southwark,  to  find  the 
gates  closed  on  London  Bridge,  and  the  draw- 
bridge flung  down  into  the  water." 

As  I  have  no  excuse  for  indulging  in 
the  narratives  of  the  deaths  in  Oxford 
or  at  Smithfield,  I  will  take  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  whole  matter. 

"This  was  the  14th  of  November.  The 
same  day,  or  the  day  after,  a  lady-in-waiting 
carried  the  queen's  last  wishes  to  her  succes- 
sor. They  were  the  same  which  she  had 
already  mentioned  to  De  Feria — that  her 
debts  should  be  paid,  and  that  the  Catholic 
religion  might  be  maintained,  with  an  addi- 


tional request  that  her  servants  should  be 
properly  cared  for.  Then,  taking  leave  of  a 
world  in  which  she  had  played  so  ill  a  part, 
she  prepared,  with  quiet  piety,  for  the  end. 
On  the  IGth,  at  midnight,  she  received  the 
last  rites  of  the  Church.  Towards  morning, 
as  she  was  sinking,  mass  was  said  at  her  bed- 
side. At  the  elevation  of  the  Host,  unable  to 
speak  or  move,  she  fixed  her  eyes  upon  the 
body  of  her  Lord ;  and  as  the  last  words  of  the 
benediction  were  uttered,  her  head  sunk,  and 
she  was  gone. 

"  A  few  hours  later,  at  Lambeth,  Pole  fol- 
lowed her,  and  the  reign  of  the  Pope  in 
England,  and  the  reign  of  terror,  closed  to- 
gether. 

"No  English  sovereign  ever  ascended  the 
throne  with  larger  popularity  than  Mary 
Tudor.  The  country  was  eager  to  atone  to 
her  for  her  mother's  injuries;  and  the  instinc- 
tive loyalty  of  the  English  towards  their 
natural  sovereign  was  enhanced  by  the  abor- 
tive efforts  of  Northumberland  to  rob  her  of 
her  inheritance.  She  had  reigned  little  more 
than  five  years,  and  she  descended  into  the 
grave  amidst  curses  deeper  than  the  accla- 
mations which  had  welcomed  her  accession. 
In  that  brief  time  she  had  swathed  her  name 
in  the  horrid  epithet  which  will  cling  to  it  for 
ever;  and  yet  from  the  passions  which  in 
general  tempt  sovereigns  into  crime,  she  was 
entirely  free ;  to  the  time  of  her  accession  she 
had  lived  a  blameless,  and,  in  many  respects, 
a  noble  life ;  and  few  men  or  women  have 
lived  less  capable  of  doing  knowingly  a  wrong 
thing. 

"Philip's  conduct,  which  could  not  extin- 
guish her  passion  for  him,  and  the  collapse 
of  the  inflated  imaginations  which  had  sur- 
rounded her  supposed  pregnancy,  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  affected  her  sanity.  Those 
forlorn  hours  when  she  would  sit  on  the 
ground  with  her  knees  drawn  to  her  face ; 
those  restless  days  and  nights  when,  like  a 
ghost,  she  would  wander  about  the  palace 
galleries,  rousing  herself  only  to  write  tear- 
blotted  letters  to  her  husband ;  those  bursts  of 
fury  over  the  libels  dropped  in  her  way ;  or 
the  marchings  in  procession  behind  the  Host 
in  the  London  streets — these  are  all  symptoms 
of  hysterical  derangement,  and  leave  little 
room,  as  we  think  of  her,  for  other  feelings 
than  pity.  But  if  Mary  was  insane,  the  mad- 
ness was  of  a  kind  which  placed  her  absolutely 
under  her  spiritual  directors ;  and  the  respon- 
sibility for  her  cruelties,  if  responsibility  be 
anything  but  a  name,  rests  first  with  Gardiner, 
who  commenced  them,  and,  secondly,  and  in 
a  higher  degree,  with  Reginald  Pole.  Because 
Pole,  with  the  council,  once  interfered  to  pre- 
vent an  imprudent  massacre  in  Smithfield  ; 
because,  being  legate,  he  left  the  common 
duties  of  his  diocese  to  subordinates;  he  is 
not  to  be  held  innocent  of  atrocities  which 
could  neither  have  been  commenced  nor  con- 
tinued without  his  sanction ;  and  he  was  no- 
toriously the  one  person  in  the  council  whom 


Froudes  History — Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


283 


the  queen  absolutely  trusted.  The  revenge  of 
the  clergy  for  their  past  humiliations,  and  the 
too  natural  tendency  of  an  oppressed  party  to 
abuse  suddenly  recovered  power,  combined  to 
originate  the  Marian  persecution.  The  rebel- 
lions and  massacres,  the  political  scandals,  the 
universal  suffering  throughout  the  country 
during  Edward's  minority,  had  created  a  gene- 
ral bitterness  in  all  classes  against  the  Re- 
formers ;  the  Catholics  could  appeal  with  jus- 
tice to  the  apparent  consequences  of  heretical 
opinions  ;  and  when  the  Reforming  preachers 
themselves  denounced  so  loudly  the  irreligion 
which  had  attended  their  success,  there  was 
little  wonder  that  the  world  took  them  at 
their  word,  and  was  ready  to  permit  the  use 
of  strong  suppressive  measures  to  keep  down 
the  unruly  tendencies  of  uncontrolled  fanatics. 

"  But  neither  these  nor  any  other  feelings 
of  English  growth,  could  have  produced  the 
scenes  which  have  stamped  this  unhappy  reign 
with  a  character  so  frightful.  The  parliament 
which  re-enacted  the  Lollard  statutes,  had  re- 
fused to  restore  the  Six  Articles  as  being  too 
severe  ;  yet  under  the  Six  Articles  twenty-one 
persons  only  suffered  in  six  years ;  while,  per- 
haps, not  twice  as  many  more  had  been  exe- 
cuted xinder  the  earlier  acts  in  the  century  and 
a  half  in  which  they  had  stood  on  the  Statute 
roll.  The  harshness  of  the  law  confined  the 
action  of  it  to  men  who  were  definitely  danger- 
ous ;  and  when  the  bishops'  powers  were  given 
back  to  them,  there  was  little  anticipation  of 
the  manner  in  which  those  powers  would  be 
misused. 

"  And  that  except  from  some  special  influ- 
ences they  would  not  have  been  thus  misused, 
the  local  character  of  the  prosecution  may  be 
taken  to  prove.  The  storm  was  violent  only 
in  London,  in  Essex  which  was  in  the  diocese 
of  London,  and  in  Canterbury.  It  raged  long 
after  the  death  of  Gardiner ;  and  Gardiner, 
though  he  made  the  beginning,  ceased  after 
the  first  few  months  to  take  further  part  in  it. 
The  Bishop  of  Winchester  would  have  had  a 
persecution,  and  a  keen  one  ;  but  the  fervour 
of  others  left  his  lagging  zeal  far  behind.  For 
the  first  and  last  time  the  true  Ultramon- 
tane spirit  was  dominant  in  England — the 
genuine  conviction  that,  as  the  orthodox  pro- 
phets and  sovereigns  of  Israel  slew  the  wor- 
shippers of  Baal,  so  were  Catholic  rulers  called 
upon,  as  their  first  duty,  to  extirpate  heretics 
as  the  enemies  of  God  and  man. 

"  The  language  of  the  legate  to  the  City  of 
London  shows  the  devout  sincerity  with  which 
he  held  that  opinion  himself.  Through  him, 
and  sustained  by  his  authority,  the  queen  held 
it ;  and  by  these  two  the  ecclesiastical  govern- 
ment of  England  was  conducted. 

"  Archbishop  Parker,  who  knew  Pole  and 
Pole's  doings  well,  called  him  Carnifex  etflagel- 
lum  Ecclesice  Anglicance,  the  hangman  and  the 
scourge  of  the  Church  of  England.  His  cha- 
racter was  irreproachable  ;  in  all  the  virtues  of 
the  Catholic  Church  he  walked  without  spot 
or  staiu  j  and  the  system  to  which  he  had  sur- 


rendered himself  had  left  to  him  of  the  com- 
mon selfishnesses  of  mankind  his  enormous 
vanity  alone.  But  that  system  had  extin- 
guished also  in  him  the  human  instincts,  the 
genial  emotions  by  which  theological  theories 
stand  especially  in  need  to  be  corrected.  He 
belonged  to  a  class  of  persons  at  all  times 
numerous,  in  whom  enthusiasm  takes  the 
place  of  understanding ;  who  are  men  of  an 
'  idea ;'  and  unable  to  accept  human  things  as 
they  are,  are  passionate  loyalists,  passionate 
churchmen,  passionate  revolutionists,  as  the 
accidents  of  their  age  may  determine.  Happily 
for  the  welfare  of  mankind,  persons  so  consti- 
tuted rarely  arrive  at  power ;  should  power 
come  to  them,  they  use  it,  as  Pole  used  it,  to 
defeat  the  ends  which  are  nearest  to  their 
hearts. 

"  The  teachers  who  finally  converted  the 
English  nation  to  Protestantism  were  not  the 
declaimers  from  the  pulpit,  nor  the  volumin- 
ous controversialists  with  the  pen.  These, 
indeed,  could  produce  arguments  which,  to 
those  who  were  al  ready  convinced,  seemed  as 
if  they  ought  to  produce  conviction  ;  but  con- 
viction did  not  follow  till  the  fruits  of  the 
doctrine  bore  witness  to  the  spirit  from  which 
it  came.  The  evangelical  teachers,  caving  only 
to  be  allowed  to  develope  their  own  opinions, 
and  persecute  their  opponents,  had  walked 
hand  in  hand  with  men  who  had  spared 
neither  tomb  nor  altar,  who  had  stripped  the 
lead  from  the  church  roofs,  and  stolen  the 
bells  from  the  church  towers;  and  between 
them  they  had  so  outraged  such  plain  honest 
minds  as  remained  in  England,  that  had  Mary 
been  content  with  mild  repression,  had  she 
left  the  Pope  to  those  who  loved  him,  and  had 
married,  instead  of  Philip,  some  English  lord, 
the  mass  would  have  retained  its  place,  the 
clergy  in  moderate  form  would  have  resumed 
their  old  authority,  and  the  Reformation 
would  have  waited  for  a  century.  In  an  evil 
hour,  the  queen  listened  to  the  unwise  ad- 
visers, who  told  her  that  moderation  in  reli- 
gion was  the  sin  of  the  Laodicaeans ;  and  while 
the  fanatics  who  had  brought  scandal  on  the 
Reforming  cause,  either  truckled,  like  Shax- 
ton,  or  stole  abroad  to  wrangle  over  surplices 
and  forms  of  prayer,  the  true  and  the  good 
atoned  with  their  lives  for  the  crimes  of 
others,  and  vindicated  a  noble  cause  by 
nobly  dying  for  it. 

"  And  while  among  the  Reformers  that 
which  was  most  bright  and  excellent  shone 
out  with  preternatural  lustre,  so  were  the 
Catholics  permitted  to  exhibit  also  the  preter- 
natural features  of  the  creed  which  was  ex 
piling. 

"  Although  Pole  and  Mary  could  have  laid 
their  hands  on  earl  and  baron,  knight  and 
gentleman,  whose  heresy  was  notorious,  al- 
though, in  the  queen's  own  guard,  there  were 
many  who  never  listened  to  a  mass,  they 
durst  not  strike  where  there  was  danger  that 
they  would  be  struck  in  return.  They  went 
out  into  the  highways  and  hedges ;  they 


284 


Fronde's  History — Vols.  V.  and  VI. 


gathered  up  the  lame,  the  halt,  and  the  blind  ; 
they  took  the  weaver  from  his  loom,  the  car- 
penter from  his  workshop,  the  husbandman 
from  his  plough ;  they  laid  hands  on  maidens 
and  boys  '  who  had  never  heard  of  any  other 
religion  than  that  which  they  were  called  on 
to  abjure ; '  old  men  tottering  into  the  grave  ; 
and  children  whose  lips  could  but  just  lisp 
the  articles  of  their  creed ;  and  of  these  they 
made  their  burnt-offerings ;  with  these  they 
crowded  their  prisons,  and  when  filth  and 
famine  killed  them,  they  flung  them  out  to 
rot.  How  long  England  would  have  endured 
the  repetition  of  the  horrid  spectacles  is 
hard  to  say.  The  persecution  lasted  three 
years,  and  in  that  time  something  less  than 
300  persons  were  burnt  at  the  stake.  '  By 
imprisonment/  said  Lord  Burleigh,  '  by  tor- 
ment, by  famine,  by  fire,  almost  the  number 
of  400  were,'  in  their  various  ways, '  lament- 
ably destroyed." 

"  Yet,  as  I  have  already  said,  interference 
was  impossible  except  by  armed  force.  The 
country  knew  from  the  first  that  by  the  course 
of  nature  the  period  of  cruelty  must  be  a 
brief  one ;  it  knew  that  a  successful  rebellion 
is  at  best  a  calamity ;  and  the  bravest  and 
wisest  men  would  not  injure  an  illustrious 
cause  by  conduct  less  than  worthy  of  it, 
so  long  as  endurance  was  possible.  They 
had  saved  Elizabeth's  life  and  Elizabeth's 
rights ;  and  Elizabeth,  when  her  time  came, 
would  deliver  her  subjects.  The  Catholics, 
therefore,  were  permitted  to  continue  their 
cruelties  till  the  cup  of  iniquity  was  full ; 
till  they  had  taught  the  educated  laity  of 
England  to  regard  them  with  horror;  and 
until  the  Eomanist  superstition  had  died, 
amidst  the  execrations  of  the  people,  of  its 
own  excess." 

Some  will  say  that  Pole  is  hardly 
treated  here  and  elsewhere  in  these 
volumes.  If  Mr.  Froude's  statements 
respecting  him  can  he  refuted,  English- 
men may  recover  that  estimate  of  him 
which  they  have  derived  from  the  older 
historians.  But  I  cannot  feel  that  the 
character  is  inconsistent  with  itself,  or 
that  Mr.  Froude  is  wrong  in  giving,  as  he 
certainly  does,  the  preference  to  Gardiner 
as  heing  more  of  an  English  statesman, 
and  not  a  worse  Churchman.  I  should 
he  more  inclined  to  dispute  Mr.  Froude's 
judgment  of  Paget.  That  he  should  feel 
a  real  respect  for  a  man  who  was  not 
only  keen-sighted,  and  in  the  main 
just,  hut  who  anticipated  the  modern 
opinions  respecting  persecution,  is  not 


wonderful.  Mr.  Froude  has  earned  a 
right  to  express  a  little  over-sympathy 
with  a  Latitudinarian,  hy  his  cordial 
appreciation  of  men  of  an  opposite  type 
of  character.  But  I  cannot  discover  that 
the  Pagets,  the  Halifaxes,  and  the  trim- 
mers of  the  sixteenth  or  the  seventeenth 
centuries,  really  did  anything  to  secure 
that  their  convictions — if  convictions 
they  are  to  he  called — should  be  the 
inheritance  of  the  ages  that  were  to 
succeed  them.  They  were  wise  for  them- 
selves. They  scorned  much  that  was 
worthy  of  scorn,  hut  they  could  not 
make  their  scorn  effective  for  the  cure  of 
it.  They  despised  persecutors ;  they  did 
not  seriously  curse  persecution.  When 
a  man  was  disagreeably  pertinacious  in 
his  opinions,  they  were  so  tolerant  of 
others  that  they  found  it  quite  justifiable 
to  be  intolerant  of  him.  They  thought 
it  very  absurd  to  kill  for  a  faith,  but 
they  thought  it  quite  as  absurd  to  die 
for  one.  And  this  alone  has  made  per- 
secution impossible  in  any  country  or 
any  age,  this  only  will  make  it  impos- 
sible in  all  countries  and  in  all  ages  : 
that  it  has  been  established  by  a  series 
of  demonstrations,  some  of  which  Mr. 
Froude  has  beautifully  recorded,  that 
he  who  kills  for  a  faith  must  be  weak, 
that  he  who  dies  for  a  faith  must  be 
strong.1 

1  Do  I  mean  to  endorse  the  pious  fraud  that 
the  persecutor  always  fails  of  his  immediate 
object,  and  strengthens  the  cause  which  he 
desires  to  crush  ?  Certainly  not.  The  impo- 
tency  of  his  material  force  in  the  spiritual 
battle  is  established  by  other  evidence  than 
that.  His  success  is  his  defeat.  He  cannot 
deprive  his  victims  of  their  faith.  Unless  he 
is  saved  by  becoming  a  sufferer,  he  loses  his 
own.  Unless  his  country  is  saved  by  similar 
suffering,  it  ceases  to  believe  when  it  is  re- 
duced into  acquiescence.  This  is  the  perse- 
cutor's curse ;  thus  the  divine  law  is  vindicated. 
I  do  not  say  that  the  remark  can  be  applied 
strictly  to  any  persecutions  except  those 
which  Christians  have  set  on  foot  against 
each  other  and  against  infidels.  If  the  Cross 
is  not  the  sign  and  the  power  of  conquest, 
there  is  no  manifest  direct  contradiction  in 
trying  to  conquer  for  a  faith  by  inflicting 
punishment  instead  of  bearing  it. 


285 


THE  ARTISAN'S   SATUEDAY  NIGHT. 

BY  PERCY  GREG. 


THOSE  who  have  read  the  "  Confessions 
of  an  English  Opium-Eater " — and  few 
of  us  have  not — will  recollect  in  the 
earlier  part  of  that  remarkable  volume 
the  author's  description  of  the  manner 
in  which  he  was  wont  to  spend  "an 
opium  evening"  in  his  youth.  Under 
the  peculiar  influence  exerted  by  that 
marvellous  drug,  in  a  frame  of  mind 
disposed  to  quiet  contemplation  and 
sentimental  entertainment,  but  wholly 
averse  from  laborious  thought  or  keen 
excitement,  he  was  wont  to  seek  amuse- 
ment and  interest  in  a  stroll  among 
the  unfashionable  marts  of  London  :  to 
watch  the  working  man  in  his  commer- 
cial dealings,  the  working  woman  in  her 
humble  round  of  weekly  shopping  ;  to 
hear  their  talk  and  gather  their  thoughts 
upon  their  lot  in  life,  upon  the  things 
and  persons  that  surround  them,  during 
the  few  gas-light  hours  in  which  it  is 
their  practice  to  purchase  wherewithal 
to  feed  and  clothe  and  warm  themselves 
and  their  children,  as  best  they  may, 
during  the  seven  days  that  are  to  follow. 
And  such  a  walk, — though  it  lie  not 
exactly  through  neighbourhoods  as  quiet 
and  pleasant  as  Kensington  Gardens,  or 
streets  and  squares  as  fair  to  look  upon 
as  those  of  Belgravia  and  Mayfair ; 
though  the  localities  through  which  it 
may  lead  us  are  not  always  clean,  and 
are  too  often  both  unsightly  and  un- 
savoury, offending  our  senses  in  no 
trivial  degree, — yet  has  its  picturesque 
and  interesting  aspect.  Humanity  can- 
not well  fail  of  picturesque  effect, 
wherever  it  has  to  wage  a  hard  and 
earnest  struggle,  however  ugly  and  ill- 
built  the  dwellings  it  haunts,  however 
squalid  the  rags  which  are  its  only  uni- 
form, in  the  Battle  of  Life. 

The  crowded  market  in  a  by-way, 
lighted  by  flaring  jets  of  gas  in  double 
rows,  and  crammed  with  purchasers  so 
closely  clustered  together  that  it  would 


seem  hardly  possible  to  reach  the  stalls 
at  its  further  end  in  time  to  effect  a 
purchase — the  little  shops  which  are 
making  an  effort  at  unusual  display  in 
order  to  attract  purchasers  who  are  not 
likely  to  scrutinize  very  closely  the  tex- 
ture of  that  showy  dress  which  is  marked 
at  a  figure  so  surprisingly  low,  and  who 
will  be  too  hurried  to  notice  that  yonder 
"cheap  and  elegant"  coat  and  vest  are 
got  up  to  sell  and  not  to  wear; — the 
shopkeepers  and  stallkeepers  who  stand 
at  their  doors  or  at  the  side  of  their 
handcarts,  keeping  up  a  continual  con- 
fused bawl,  which,  if  attentively  an- 
alysed, seems  to  run — "  Only  a  penny, 
gentlemen,  only  a  penny  !  no  better  in 
London,  marm,  twopence  half-penny  a 
pound — only  twopence  ha'penny — fine 
bacon — now  then  !  buy!  buy!  buy!" — 
and  the  eager,  hurried  throng  of  jostling 
purchasers,  glancing  at  everything,  covet- 
ing everything,  buying  at  last  that  which 
is  most  pressed  upon  them ;  with  here 
and  there  some  quiet  knowing  ones 
among  them,  who  have  set  their  hearts 
on  some  special  adornment  for  the  wife's 
bonnet,  or  some  new  delicacy  for  the 
husband's  Sunday  dinner,  and  are  not  to 
be  tempted  aside  by  the  noisy  offers 
which  beset  them  on  all  hands — all 
these  things  compose  a  scene  which  is 
worth  notice,  and  which,  at  first  sight,  is 
amusing  and  not  unpleasing  to  behold. 

If,  however,  we  walk  in  among  the 
crowd  of  sellers  and  buyers,  and  look  a 
little  more  closely  than  do  the  latter  at 
the  articles  offered  to  their  selection ; 
above  all,  if  we  do  so  not  when  noise 
and  business  have  reached  their  highest 
point,  but  before  the  thickest  press  has 
commenced,  and  before,  at  this  season, 
the  daylight  has  departed  from  those 
huge  screens  of  joints  of  unwholesome- 
looking  meat  which  veil  one  shop,  and 
the  piles  of  withered  peas  which  are 
heaped  on  the  rude  counter  of  another, 


286 


The  Artisans  Saturday  Night. 


we  shall  presently  obtain  a  glimpse  of 
the  underside  of  the  matter  -which  is 
more  instructive  than  agreeable.      We 
shall   then   see   at  what    disadvantage 
stands  the  shopping  which  is  done  by 
gaslight,  amid  the  confusion  of  incessant 
noise  and  the  hurry  of  impatient  cus- 
tomers.    That  beef,  for  instance,  is  not 
such  as  a  good  housewife  would  think 
of  buying ;  much  of  the  bacon  yonder  is 
of  a  kind  that  Do-the-boys  Hall  would 
be  ashamed  of;  and  the  smell  of  the 
mackerel  exposed  on  the  fish-stall  in  the 
corner  is  so  objectionable,  that  it  makes 
itself  felt  even  amid  the  innumerable 
odours  of  this  unsavoury  place,  and  com- 
pels us  to  form  a  decided  opinion  as  to 
the  fitness  of  the  fishmonger's  wares  for 
human  food.      Those  shoes,  too,  look 
very  much  as  if  they  were  the  unsale- 
able  refuse  of  some  more  fashionable 
locality — especially  those  dedicated  to 
the  "  ladies."     Of  those  which  seem  fit 
for  working  men,  the  more  serviceable 
were  possibly  bought  from  some  govern- 
ment establishment  as  "  old  stores,"  at  a 
fourth  of  the  price  that  will  to-night  be 
asked  for  them.    And  so  on  throughout. 
Everything — except,     of    course,     the 
prices — is  third-rate  at  best,  and  often 
merely  worthless.     The  customers  must 
go  home  ill-shod,  ill-fed,  unfitly  clothed, 
and  must  dine  to-morrow  on  meat  deci- 
dedly "high,"  and  fish  unmistakeably 
odorous ;  and  all  this  not  because  they 
cannot  afford  to  pay  for  proper  food  and 
clothing,  but  because  all  their  purchases 
are  made  at  once,  by  gaslight,  in  a  crowd 
and  in  a  hurry  ;  because  they  are  in  the 
hands  of  itinerant  stallkeepers,  and  shop- 
keepers  of  scarcely   higher   character ; 
and  because  too  many  of  them  come  to 
their  purchases  not  from  home,  but  from 
the  public-house,  with  heads  not  of  the 
clearest,  and  with  pockets  a  Httle  less 
heavy  than   they  were   three   or  four 
hours  ago. 

To  many  of  the  small  dealers  in  such 
localities  Saturday  night  is  worth  as 
much  as  the  rest  of  the  week  altogether  ; 
many  of  them  take  more  between  six 
and  twelve  on  Saturday  night  than  be- 
tween Monday  morning  and  Saturday 
afternoon.  Here  is  a  baker  doing  a 


more   regular   daily   business   than  his 
neighbours,  who  tells  us  that  his  receipts 
during  those  six  hours  are  equal  to  those 
of  any   other  three  days  in  the  week. 
And  outside  the  baker's  door  is  a  man 
with  a  small  hand-cart,   on  which  are 
piles  of  starved  cherries,  sour  apples,  and 
half-ripe  gooseberries.     He  never  comes 
there  except  on  Saturday  night,  and  he 
pays  the  baker  four  shillings  a  week  for 
leave  to  stand  there  on  the  little  strip  of 
pavement  which,  as  private  property,  is 
exempt  from  clearance  by  the  police.  He 
can  afford  to  pay  out  of  six  hours'  profit 
on   his   wretched  stock  a  rent  of  four 
shillings  for  the  square  yard  of  ground 
he  stands  on.     There  are  plenty  of  lads 
and  lasses  released  to-night  from  their 
week's  toil  with  a  few  shillings  in  their 
pockets  and  a  taste  for  fruit  rather  com- 
prehensive than  choice,  who  will  amply 
remunerate  him  for  his  outlay.    Kext  to 
his  stands  the  barrow  of  a  woman  who 
sells  penny  bottles  of  something  which 
she  calls  ginger-beer,   but  to  which  I 
should  hesitate  to  assign  a  name.     She 
stands  there  every  day  ;  but  she,  too, 
would  have  a  poor  living  of  it  were  it  not 
for  Saturday  night,  when  the  man  who 
has  seventeen  or  twenty  shillings  in  his 
pocket  thinks  less  of  a  penny  than  he 
will   do  by  Thursday  or  Friday  next. 
And  those  immense  heaps  of  peas  which 
on  a  summer  Saturday  night  are  piled 
over  half  the  green-grocer's  disposable 
space,  would  hardly  find  purchasers  on 
any   other   evening.      One   evening   of 
business  at  high  profits  pays  the  dealer 
in  the  poor  man's  market  for  a  week  of 
slack  trade  and  scanty  gains.     From  six 
hours'  profits  does  he  get  his  livirfg,  and 
those  profits  must  come  from  the  scanty 
resources  of  families  in  which  the  bread- 
winner earns  from  fifteen  to  thirty-five 
shillings  a  week. 

Very  different  is  the  case  of  the  west- 
end  ;  very  striking  the  contrast  between 
Saturday  night  in  western  shops  and  in 
Whitechapel  markets,  between  the  Satur- 
day of  the  rich  and  the  Saturday  of  the 
poor. 

Were  this  only  one  of  the  manifold 
instances  in  which  by  mere  force  of 
neighbourhood  the  distinctions  of  rank 


The  Artisan's  Saturday  Night. 


287 


and  fortune  are  so  painfully  illustrated 
in  all  great  cities,  it  would  hardly  be 
worth  while  to  notice  it  It  is  a  profit- 
less task  to  cite  instances  of  the  luxury 
of  the  affluent  here  brought  so  very 
close  to  the  destitution  of  the  indigent ; 
it  is  invidious  to  remind  the  wealthy  of 
the  near  proximity  of  want  and  hunger  ; 
it  is  much  worse  than  useless  to  hold  up 
before  the  eyes  of  the  pauper  the  envied 
enjoyments  of  the  millionaire.  These 
things  are  part  of  an  order  of  society 
which  I  leave  it  to  casuists  to  defend, 
and  to  utopists  to  dream  of  abolishing. 
But  when  the  differences  we  discern  are 
not  the  necessary  consequences  of  exist- 
ing social  conditions,  where  the  poor 
man  suffers  under  disadvantages  not 
essential  but  incidental ;  under  evils 
not  inherent  in  poverty,  but  the  fruit 
of  bad  arrangements,  where  the  evils  of 
his  lot  are  aggravated,  not  by  the  law  of 
nature,  but  by  the  mismanagement  of 
men  ;  above  all,  where  the  interests  of 
the  working  man-are  sacrificed  not  to  the 
pride  or  profit  of  others,  but  to  the 
tyranny  of  a  custom  which,  if  once 
natural  or  reasonable,  is  now  simply 
mischievous ;  or  when  he  suffers  under 
the  effects  of  his  own  vice,  or  weakness, 
or  improvidence — it  is  possible  that  some- 
thing may  be  done  towards  a  remedy  by 
merely  calling  attention  to  the  existence 
of  an  evil,  and  to  the  sources  from  which 
it  springs. 

The  shop  of  the  silversmith,  or  the 
perfumer,  or  the  fashionable  milliner,  is 
no  more  crowded  on  the  last  day  of  the 
week  than  on  any  other.  There  are  no 
more  carriages  in  Regent-street,  no  addi- 
tional crowd  on  its  pavements  ;  Bond- 
street  is  not  fuller  than  on  the  Monday. 
You  could  not  tell  by  the  appearance  of 
Oxford-street  that  it  was  not  Tuesday 
or  Thursday.  Swan  and  Edgar's  pre- 
sents no  scene  of  extraordinary  bustle  ; 
Savory  and  Moore  are  no  busier  than 
usual ;  nor  are  Fortnum  and  Mason  com- 
pelled to  keep  open  till  midnight. 
There  is  a  day's  work  to  be  done,  not  a 
iveek's.  The  lady  customers  have  not 
come  to  lay  in  provisions  for  a  week,  as 
if  they  were  about  to  stand  a  siege. 
They  do  not  come  down  in  anxious 


haste  to  pay  the  little  account  which  has 
been  standing  over  for  three  days  be- 
cause they  had  not  money  to  pay  it  till 
their  week's  income  should  have  been 
received.  They  are  not  obliged  to  post- 
pone their  shopping  till  late  in  the  eve- 
ning because  their  husbands  could  not 
get  paid  as  early  as  usual.  They  are  not 
in  a  hurry  to  make  their  purchases  and 
get  rid  of  their  cash  lest  their  lords, 
having  an  idle  day  to-morrow,  should 
squander  the  week's  income  at  the  club 
or  at  Greenwich.  All  days  are  alike  to 
them ;  and  but  for  the  impending  ser- 
vices of  the  morrow  they  would  have 
nothing  to  remind  them  that  this  is  the 
seventh  day  of  the  week  and  not  the 
second.  This  is  not  so  with  the  poor 
busy  women,  with  haggard  faces,  and 
anxious  hurried  steps,  who  crowd  around 
the  stalls  in  the  New  Cut,  lighted  by 
flaring  jets  of  gas,  about  the  hour  at 
which  the  West-End  remembers  that  it 
is  time  to  dress  for  dinner.  That  eager 
dame  must  needs  make  her  purchases 
to-night  to  keep  her  family  in  food  and 
out  of  rags  for  a  week ;  knowing  full 
well,  poor  soul,  that  if  she  postpone  her 
marketings,  she  has  small  chance  of 
keeping  her  money  by  her  till  the  hour 
when  she  actually  needs  it — so  many  and 
pressing  are  the  demands  on  the  poor 
man's  purse,  so  completely  does  he  live 
from  hand  to  mouth.  So  she  must  buy 
by  gaslight,  and  take  her  chance  of  the 
quality  of  the  articles,  half-spoiled  meat 
and  stale  vegetables,  leaky  shoes,  prints 
that  will  not  wash,  and  stockings  that 
will  not  wear.  The  uncertain  light — it 
is  in  these  places  that  one  learns  how 
bad  a  light  is  that  of  gas — gives  her  no 
chance  of  detecting  flaws ;  the  long 
train  waiting  to  be  served  compels  her  to 
take  what  she  can  get,  and  be  thankful. 
Every  one  is  short  of  time  ;  every  one  is 
in  that  degree  of  haste  which  proverbially 
makes  no  good  speed.  So  she  must  take 
her  goods,  such  as  they  are,  and  pass  on, 
having  paid  for  them  at  the  rate  of 
wholesome  beef,  sound  leather,  and  first- 
rate  calico — perhaps  even  more.  People 
do  say  that  these  markets  have  a  Satur- 
day price;  that,  owing  to  the  immense 
pressure  of  business  crowded  into  this 


288 


The  Artisans  Saturday  Night. 


one  night,  the  charges  of  the  sellers  are 
made  in  a  somewhat  more  arbitrary  man- 
ner than  is  consistent  with  very  scrupu- 
lous truth  and  fairness ;  that  Saturday 
evening  purchasers  are  not  only  put  off 
with  inferior  articles,  but  are  made  also 
to  pay  as  much  as  twenty  per  cent,  above 
the  every-day  value  of  the  best.  But 
even  without  imputing  any  such  mal- 
practices to  the  dealers, — even  admit- 
ting that  the  tradesmen  from  whom 
the  poor  must  purchase  are  as  superior 
to  the  tricks  of  trade  as  the  best  of 
Kegent-streetf  shopkeepers — it  is  evi- 
dent that  those  who  have  always  to  be 
served  in  a  hurry  must  always  be  served 
ill.  They  have  no  time  to  deliberate 
over  their  purchases,  to  choose  and  pick 
and  select  what  will  best  suit  their 
means  and  most  nearly  meet  their  wants  ; 
they  are  deprived  of  all  opportunity  of 
making  the  little  money  at  their  dis- 
posal go  as  far  as  possible ;  they  are, 
as  it  were,  forced  into  extravagance  and 
mismanagement.  Even  if  the  women 
of  the  poorer  classes  were  good  house- 
wives, well  skilled  in  matters  of  domes- 
tic economy,  as  they  are  notoriously  the 
reverse,  they  would  fare  ill  in  such  a 
rush  and  press  of  buyers,  and  the  work 
which  has  to  be  done  in  haste  and  con- 
fusion would  be  ill  done,  however  well 
they  understood  their  business.  As 
they  are  most  often  lamentably  deficient 
in  all  that  would  be  to  them  really 
"  useful  knowledge,"  while  subject  in 
the  market  to  disadvantages  which  must 
neutralize  skill  and  render  care  almost 
impossible,  what  wonder  that  the  arti- 
san's home  is  so  comfortless,  his  wages 
so  insufficient  and  ill-husbanded,  as  they 
are  found  in  practice  1  Which  of  the  op- 
pressions he  complains  against  weighs  so 
heavily  on  him  as  this  Saturday  night 
marketing,  of  which  he  makes  no  com- 
plaint ? 

Of  the  evils  here  exposed  there  are 
three  principal  causes :  the  improvi- 
dence of  the  working-classes  themselves, 
their  unfortunate  habits  of  Saturday  and 
Sunday  drinking,  and  the  custom  of 
paying  wages  on  Saturday  afternoons. 

The  first  affords  the  answer  to  the 
question,  why  might  not  the  poor  avoid 


this  hurried  marketing  ?  Though  they 
are  only  paid  on  Saturday  evening, 
might  they  not  let  the  Sunday  pass 
over,  and  make  purchases  on  the  Mon- 
day sufficient  to  last  till  the  Monday 
following  ]  Or  why  need  they  make  a 
week's  purchases  all  at  once?  Might  they 
not  buy  meat  and  potatoes  on  Monday, 
coal  and  wood  and  bread  on  Wednes- 
day? Might  they  not,  in  a  word,  by  a 
little  thought  and  prudence,  enjoy  the  ad- 
vantage of  buying,  at  their  own  option, 
on  any  evening  of  the  week  ?  Possibly 
they  might ;  but  those  greatly  miscon- 
ceive both  their  circumstances  and  their 
character  who  consider  it  at  all  proba- 
ble that  they  will.  It  is  a  matter  of 
painful  certainty  that  vast  numbers  of 
our  working  population  are  to  the  last 
degree  reckless  and  improvident ;  unable 
to  resist  the  temptations  of  to-day,  or 
steadily  regard  and  provide  for  the 
necessities  of  to-morrow. 

As  economists  would  say,  the  effec- 
tive desire  of  accumulation  is  very  weak 
with  them ;  in  Mr.  Mill's  expressive 
phrase,  the  present  occupies  a  wholly  dis- 
proportionate space  in  their  thoughts  as 
compared  evenwith  the  immediate  future. 
We  have  heard  of  the  disciples  of  the 
Jesuits  of  Paraguay — the  Indian  con- 
verts— who  could  hardly  be  brought  to 
regard  "  next  year "  as  a  time  within 
the  limits  of  human  thought ;  a  period 
for  which  they  were  bound  to  consider 
and  provide.  Scarcely  by  unremitting 
care  could  their  spiritual  pastors  and 
temporal  rulers  persuade  them  to  pre- 
serve sufficient  seed-corn  to  secure  an 
adequate  harvest ;  nor  was  it  an  uncom- 
mon occurrence  that  the  oxen  used  for 
ploughing  should  be  cut  up  for  sup- 
per, because  their  masters  were  hungry. 
And  this,  not  because  the  men  were 
idle,  or  stupid,  or  sensual  ;  but  be- 
cause they  were  incapable  of  taking 
to-morrow  into  account ;  because  they 
were,  in  the  literal  sense  of  the  word, 
improvident — unforeseeing.  Our  Eng- 
lish artisans  resemble  these  Indians  not 
a  little  in  the  economy  of  their  domes- 
tic arrangements.  They  think  far  too 
much  of  to-day ;  far  too  little  of  this 
day  week ;  little  or  nothing  of  this 


The  Artisan's  Saturday  Night. 


289 


day  six  months.  With  their  wages  in 
their  pocket  on  Saturday  night,  they 
provide  luxuries  for  Sunday,  without 
caring  much  if  scanty  comfort  remain 
for  Friday  next.  They  think  more  of 
the  Sunday's  ample  breakfast,  and  even 
luxurious  dinner,  than  of  the  supper 
which  they  Avill  not  be  able  to  buy  on 
Thursday  night — of  Friday's  meagre 
fare — of  the  dry  crusts  which  must 
satisfy  their  hunger  and  their  children's 
during  the  working  hours  of  Saturday, 
till  pay-time  comes  round  again.  One 
day's  feasting,  and  six  days'  fasting,  is 
their  choice ;  and  it  has  happened  to 
employers  in  moderate  circumstances,  to 
see  their  labourers,  earning  perhaps 
30s.  a  week  per  family,  take  home  the 
delicacies  of  the  season  for  their  Sunday 
dinner,  when  the  price  was  yet  so  high 
that  the  tradesman  or  manufacturer  of 
80(M.  or  1,000/.  a  year  did  not  feel  that 
he  could  afford  them.  A  six  days' 
pinching  follows.  By  Saturday  after- 
noon there  is  not  a  crust  of  bread  in  the 
cottage ;  the  children  are  hungry,  as 
well  they  may  be  ;  the  father  has  done 
his  work  fasting,  and  the  wages  which 
he  brings  home  must  be  at  once  spent 
in  buying  food,  even  if  they  have  not 
been  already  tithed  by  the  publican  be- 
fore they  reach  the  wife.  How  can  these 
people  postpone  their  purchases  till  Mon- 
day] Or  if  one  week  some  rare  good 
fortune  enabled  them  to  do  so,  is  it  not 
clear  that  the  effect  would  only  be,  with 
such  habits,  to  make  them  live  in  com- 
fort that  week,  consuming  in  six  days 
what  seven  days'  income  had  purchased  ; 
and  that  when  Saturday  night  came 
round,  the  cupboard  would  again  be 
bare,  and  the  Saturday  market  again  be 
sought  ?  We  have  most  of  us  heard  of 
worse  improvidence  than  this.  I  was 
told  of  one  district — a  district,  too,  of 
good  work  and  high  wages — where  the 
wife  keeps  house  by  pawning  clothes 
and  household  chattels  during  the  week, 
which  the  husband  must  for  his  own 
comfort  and  satisfaction  redeem  on 
Saturday  night — finding  this  the  only 
mode  of  securing  a  sufficient  share  of 
his  income  for  herself  and  children.  It 
is  this  improvidence  which  causes  the 


Saturday  market  to  display  so  many  o± 
the  workman's  favourite  luxuries,  and 
makes  -the  week-day  business  of  the 
shops  so  dull,  where  they  depend  on 
working  customers :  that  makes  the 
Sunday's  fare  so  great  a  contrast  to  the 
Friday's  scraps.  This  cause  of  waste 
and  discomfort  no  efforts  of  others  can 
remove  :  all  they  can  do  is  to  remodel 
arrangements  which  confirm  and  seem 
to  excuse  the  costly  and  disastrous 
habit. 

Unhappily  this  is  not  all ;  it  is  not 
the  worst.  Give  the  working  man  a 
prudent  and  thrifty  helpmate,  willing 
and  able  to  employ  his  wages  to  the 
best  advantage  :  the  Sunday  holiday  will 
sadly  derange  her  prudent  calculations. 
We  know  too  well  the  way  in  which 
that  day  of  rest  is  most  often  spent  by 
those  to  whom  it  should  be  more  blessed 
than  to  any  others — those  whose  six 
days'  toil  has  made  it  most  necessary  to 
them.  Most  generally,  Saturday  night 
and  Sunday  are  thought  a  good  occasion 
fof  "  a  spree  "  :  and  a  "  spree  "  seems  to 
mean  a  prolonged  visit  to  the  gin-shop 
or  the  beer-house.  The  London  artisan 
sometimes  indulges  in  a  Sunday  trip 
into  the  country;  too  frequently  he 
merely  lounges  about  the  streets,  picks  up 
a  stray  acquaintance,  and  goes  with  him 
to  the  working  man's  club — the  public- 
house.  If  the  wife  save  her  money  till 
Monday,  she  cannot  count  on  the  for- 
bearance of  her  husband.  In  many  and 
many  a  case,  were  we  to  watch  her  home 
from  the  Saturday  market,  we  should 
see  a  very  sufficient  reason  for  her  hasty 
expenditure  of  the  funds  which  she  had 
obtained  from  her  good  man  immediately 
after  he  received  his  wages.  The  idle 
day  that  follows  is  apt  to  make  the 
"  Cottar's  Saturday  Night"  in  towns  an 
occasion,  for  the  man  who  for  that  one 
night  is  "flush"  of  money,  of  boozing 
in  a  beer-shop  or  getting  maddened  with 
the  worst  of  adulterated  beverages  in  a 
gin-palace ;  and  if  the  week's  wages 
were  still  within  his  reach,  it  is  but  too 
probable  that  the  Sunday  would  be  still 
more  riotously  and  expensively  passed. 
Bad  and  wasteful  as  it  is,  the  Saturday 
evening  marketing  is  probably  the  safest 


290 


The  Artisan  s  Saturday  Night, 


plan  for  wives  whose  husbands  are  that 
day  paid  their  weekly  stipend. 

But  why  should  wages  be  paid  on 
Saturday  evening?  "Why  should  a 
working  man  receive  his  money -just 
when  he  has  most  temptation  to  mis- 
spend it,  and  least  chance  of  spending  it 
with  full  effect  and  advantage  1  Why 
should  those  who  are  as  a  class  noto- 
riously thriftless  and  improvident  be 
always  "  in  pocket"  at  the  moment  when 
they  have  a  day  before  them  which  they 
can  devote  to  idleness  and  pleasure — an 
evening  on  which  they  may  drink  their 
fill  with  the  certainty  of  having  time 
to  sleep  off  the  consequences,  unaroused 
by  the  bell  that  summons  to  work,  and 
taking  little  heed,  alas !  of  those  that  call 
to  prayer  ?  Is  there  any  reason,  except 
that  such  is  the  custom — a  custom  stu- 
pid, purposeless,  and  mischievous  1  Is 
it  that  the  employer  may  make  up  the 
account  of  the  week's  expenses  at  the 
week's  end  ?  A  poor  excuse  this  would 
be  for  an  arrangement  by  which  so  much 
substantial  injury  is  done  to  the  Avork- 
people.  Why  should  not  the  week  be 
made,  for  purposes  of  account,  to  end  on 
another  day  1  Is  it  that  the  poor  may 
always  have  wherewithal  to  enjoy  their 
one  weekly  holiday  ?  Probably  some 
feeling  of  this  kind  has  had  something 
to  do  with  the  practice.  But — putting 
aside  all  other  and  higher  considerations 
— is  it  not  obvious  that  the  expenses  of 
a  holiday  should  be  defrayed  from  the 
surplus  that  remains  after  the  ordinary 
expenses  of  living  are  paid — as  would 
be  the  case  if  the  artisan,  receiving  his 
wages  and  making  his  weekly  purchases 
on  Wednesday,  retained  something  for  a 
spree  on  Saturday  night  or  an  excursion 
trip  on  Sunday — not  deducted  before- 
hand from  the  week's  income,  as  now 
happens  1  Is  there  any  tenable  reason 
why  wages  should  be  paid  on  Saturday 
(or  even  late  on  Friday  night,  which  is 
found  to  amount  nearly  to  the  same 
thing)  and  not  on  Wednesday  or  Thurs- 
day ?  For  if  not,  certainly  it  is  absurd 
that  mere  use  and  custom  should  main- 
tain a  rule  so  prejudicial  to  the  real 
interests  of  all  parties  concerned.-  The 
workman  is  tempted  to  waste  his  money 


in  drink,  and  his  day  of  rest  at  the 
public-house.  His  wife  is  compelled  to 
waste  her  portion  in  hurried  and  uneco- 
nomical marketing.  She  and  her  chil- 
dren suffer  thereby  ;  and  her  husband  is 
none  the  better  for  his  Saturday  carouse, 
and  inevitably  the  worse  for  the  Sun- 
day's debauch  that  too  often  follows. 
On  the  Monday  he  is  listless  and 
slovenly  at  his  work  ;  by  which,  as  well 
as  by  the  deterioration  which  bad  habits 
cause  in  his  character  and  his  skill,  his 
employer  also  is  a  loser.  It  may  be 
said,  and  I  am  afraid  it  is  in  some  cases 
true,  that  if  wages  were  paid  on  Thurs- 
day, men  would  be  drunk  that  night, 
and  absent  or  late  on  Friday  morning. 
In  some  trades  the  workmen  have,  from 
incidental  circumstances,  so  completely 
the  upper  hand  that  this  would  very 
probably  be  the  case :  and  in  these 
trades  Monday  is  often  wasted  in  intoxi- 
cation or  idleness.  The  men  know  that 
the  masters  cannot  replace  them,  and 
will  not  dismiss  them,  and  they  take 
advantage  of  this  knowledge.  But  this 
is  only  the  case  in  trades  exceptionally 
situated ;  and  in  all  others  the  evils 
complained  of  would  be  greatly  lessened, 
if  not  absolutely  removed,  by  a  mere 
change  of  the  pay-day.  There  would 
not  then  be  before  the  artisan,  with  his 
week's  wages  in  his  pocket,  the  strong 
temptation  of  a  dies  non  wherein  to 
enjoy  himself  at  leisure  in  the  tap-room; 
or  to  rest  from  the  fatigues  of  a  mid- 
night carouse  that  very  night.  The 
necessity  of  resuming  work  at  an  early 
hour  next  morning  would  restrain  him 
from  changing  his  regular  time  of  in- 
dulgence from  Saturday  to  the  pay-day; 
and  if  he  still  continued  to  drink  on 
Saturday  night,  he  would  not  do  so  on 
a  newly-filled  pocket.. 

The  experiment  was  tried  some  years 
ago  by  a  clear-headed  Scotch  employer, 
who  gave  me  the  following  account  of 
its  results  : — 

"  When  I  was  in  business  in  Glasgow 
"  I  employed  about  a  hundred  persons, 
"  men  and  women.  I  used,  as  was  the 
'•'practice,  to  pay  them  on  Saturdays. 
"Saturday  is  rather  a  'light'  day  in 
"  Glasgow,  so  the  men  had  plenty  of 


The  Artisaris  Saturday  Night. 


291 


"  opportunity  to  get  drunk  that  night ;  a 
"  practice  which  they  often  followed  up 
"by  remaining  drunk  all  Sunday,  in 
"  which  case,  of  course,  their  work  was 
"  not  goodfor  much  on  Monday  morning, 
"  especially  as  they  got  drunk  on  whisky, 
"  which  is  much  worse  than  getting 
"  drunk  on  ale..  It  occurred  to  me  one 
"  day  to  try  whether  I  could  not  mend 
"  the  matter  by  altering  the  pay-day.  I 
"  called  the  men  and  women  together, 
"  and  told  them  my  ideas  about  it.  The 
"  women  heartily  agreed  with  me  ;  the 
"men  seemed  nothing  loth;  and  the 
"  change  was  made.  They  were  paid 
"  thenceforward  on  Thursday,  instead  of 
"  Saturday.  From  that  time  their  habits 
"  improved,  their  homes  became  more 
"  comfortable,  their  visits  to  the  public  - 
"  house  less  frequent.  The  women,  no 
"  longer  obliged  to  do  their  marketing 
"  in  a  hurry  on  Saturday  evening,  had 
"  the  pick  and  choice  of  articles,  instead 
"of  being  forced,  as  formerly,  to  take 
"  anything  they  could  get.  Before  long 
"  I  had  the  gratification  of  hearing  from 
"  many  quarters  that  my  people  were 
"the  most  sober,  well-to-do,  and  well- 
"  conducted  artisans  in  the  trade  to  be 
"  found  in  Glasgow." 

It  is  not  from  indifference  to  the 
welfare  of  their  workpeople,  or  from 
carelessness  of  their  own  interest,  that 
employers  generally  continue  a  practice 
so  deleterious  to  both.  Many  great  firms 
in  London  have  changed  the  day  of 
payment  with  excellent  effect ;  some 
have  tried  to  do  so  and  failed,  or  been 
compelled  to  return  to  the  old  practice  • 
numbers  would  be  glad  to  make  the 
alteration  if  they  were  convinced  of  its 
importance  and  its  feasibility.  But,  in 
the  first  place,  men  do  not  readily  re- 
cognise the  evil  effects  of  an  immemorial 
custom ;  they  conceive  them  rather  to 
be  part  of  the  natural  and  immutable 
order  of  things,  than  results  of  a  de- 
finite and  removable  cause ;  and  employ- 
ers are  very  generally  unsuspicious  that 
Saturday  marketing,  Sunday  trading, 
and  weekly  debauches,  result  from  any 
other  influence  than  the  natural  im- 
providence and  weakness  of  the  artisan 


class  :  faults  which  they  may  regret  but 
cannot  cure.  They  say,  and  very  justly, 
that  it  is  not  given  them  to  keep  their 
"  hands  "  provident  and  sober ;  but  they 
would  fully  recognise  the  duty  of  offer- 
ing no  temptation  to  excess,  and  no 
inducement  to  waste ;  and  anything 
that  will  awaken  them  to  a  sense  of  the 
mischiefs  of  the  present  custom,  will 
render  them  as  a  class  desirous  to  amend 
it.  On  their  part  the  "  evil  is  wrought 
by  want  of  thought."  But  change, 
where  the  working-classes  are  con- 
cerned, is  not  always  an  easy  matter. 
In  their  own  affairs,  in  regard  to  the 
time-honoured  customs  of  their  order 
and  occupations,  the  masses  share  the 
sturdy  Toryism  of  Lord  Eldon ;  and  it 
is  not  absolutely  certain  that  if  such  a 
boon  as  Thursday  payment  of  wages 
were  offered  them,  they  would  not  regard 
it  as  some  deep-laid  plot  for  their  enslave- 
ment. But  the  time  may  come  when 
they  will  understand  their  own  interest 
well  enough  to  ask  it  for  themselves ; 
and  the  simple  change,  costing  no 
trouble,  and  exciting  no  clamour,  will 
do  more  for  their  improvement  than 
many  schemes  of  much  more  ambitious 
seeming.  It  would  prevent  the  crowd- 
ing of  the  week's  marketing  into  its  last 
five  or  six  hours,  and  of  the  week's 
meals  into  the  Sunday  dinner.  It  would 
facilitate,  in  no  slight  degree,  what  is  a 
blessing  of  no  small  value  to  the  labourer 
— the  Saturday  half-holiday,  now  gene- 
rally enjoyed  in  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts of  the  north  of  England.  Above 
all,  it  would  cure  the  evil  that  now 
does  so  much  to  demoralize  the  popu- 
lation of  our  cities,  and  to  thwart  all 
efforts  to  counteract  the  prevalence  of 
that  drunkenness  which  more  than  any 
other  cause  keeps  them  poor  and  dis- 
contented ;  for  it  would  put  an  end  to 
the  practice  of  filling  the  artisan's 
pocket  with  money  at  the  very  hour 
when  the  tavern  doors  stand  most  in- 
vitingly open,  and  no  thought  of  to- 
morrow's work  exercises  a  wholesome 
restraint  over  the  temptation  to  imme- 
diate excesses. 


292 


TWO    LOVE   STOEIES. 


LAURA  LESLIE  has  a  lover ; 

She  is  lovely,  loving  he  ; 
The  summer  birds  that  sing  above  her 

Scarcely  are  so  blithe  as  she. 

Happy  days  !  when  she  awakens, 
Mowers  from  him  are  by  her  bed ; 

Every  lonely  hour  she  reckons 
Brings  a  gift  in  Harry's  stead. 

Every  sunset,  through  the  flowers, 

Laura  and  her  lover  stray, 
Heedless  of  the  fleeting  hours, 

Heedless  of  the  waning  day. 

Laura's  parents  watch,  admiring 
Love  so  tender,  so  complete  ; 

While  a  little  orphan  hireling 
Plies  her  needle  at  their  feet. 

What  should  now  delay  the  marriage  ? 

Every  comfort  they  prepare  ; 
House  and  gardens,  horses,  carriage, 

Fall  to  Laura  Leslie's  share. 

Soon,  upon  a  summer  morning, 
Mary  stands  by  Laura's  side, 

Little  orphan  hands  adorning 
Harry's  young  and  happy  bride. 


First,  when  she  had  seen  him  weary, 
Worn  and  wasted  by  the  heat, 

Simple-hearted  orphan  Mary 
Ask'd  him  in  to  take  a  seat. 

Twenty  little  minutes,  stolen 
From  her  working,  fled  away; 

Then  she  rose,  with  eyelids  swollen  : 
Laura  rang ;  she  must  not  stay. 

Mary  gave  one  kiss  at  parting, 
Turn'd,  and  lo,  across  the  hall, 

Angry  looks  at  her  were  darting  ; 
Angry  eyes  had  seen  it  all. 

Laura's  parents  watch' d,  regretting 
Time  so  shamefully  misspent : 

What  example  she  was  setting 
To  the  whole  establishment! 

Mary  blushed  and  stood  convicted  ; 

Often  had  she  heard  it  said 
Followers  were  interdicted ; 

Wherefore  had  she  disobeyed  ? 

What  though  John  was  true  and  loving 
What  though  he  was  all  to  her  ? 

In  the  sphere  where  she  was  moving 
He  was  but  "  a  follower." 


II. 

Orphan  Mary  has  a  lover ; 

Miles  away  from  her  is  he  ; 
The  wintry  clouds  that  hang  above  her 

Scarcely  are  so  sad  as  she. 

Every  morning  when  she  wakens, 
Prays  she  for  her  absent  John ; 

On  a  knotted  stick  she  reckons 
Every  lonely  day  that's  gone. 

Twice  a  year  he  leaves  his  labour, 
Walks  across  the  country  wide, 

And  waits  for  Mary  in  an  arbour, 
By  the  Leslies'  garden-side. 


Twice  a-year,  now,  orphan  Mary 
Waits  till  every  servant  sleeps  ; 

Then,  with  footsteps  slow  and  wary, 
To  the  lonely  arbour  creeps. 

There,  or  nowhere,  she  must  meet  him; 

Ere  the  morning,  he  must  go ; 
There,  unseen,  her  kiss  may  greet  him  ; 

There,  unchid,  her  tears  may  flow. 

Thus,  an  angry  witness  dreading, 
Mary  thinks  her  love  her  shame  : 

Should  it  never  end  in  wedding, 
Who  shall  bear  the  bitter  blame  ? 


293 


THE  CAEDEOSS  CASE  AND  THE  FEEE  CHUECH  OF  SCOTLAND. 


PUBLIC  attention  has  been  widely 
called  to  a  late  judgment  of  the  Master 
of  the  Eolls  on  certain  questions  affect- 
ing the  Baptist  Churches  in  England. 
During  some  months  Scotland  has  been 
the  field  of  a  contest  in  some  respects 
similar,  but  exciting  much  more  interest. 
There  have  been  published  pamphlets, 
sermons,  reviews  of  sermons,  speeches, 
letters,  and  other  forms  of  popular 
address  ;  and,  with  about  a  score  of  these 
selected  as  materials,  together  with  the 
pleadings  and  the  authentic  report  of 
the  Cause,  it  is  proposed  here  to  attempt 
a  brief  exposition  of  the  questions  and 
principles  involved. 

The  interest  in  ecclesio-political  ques- 
tions in  Scotland  is  both  deeper  and 
wider  than  in  England.  Two  causes  of 
this  difference  may  be  noticed  :  first, 
the  broad  basis  of  the  Scottish  reforma- 
tion, and  the  extent  to  which  the  common 
people  took  part  in  it ;  and,  secondly, 
the  mental  habits  of  the  Scotch.  The 
struggles  for  freedom  in  Scotland  have 
been  chiefly  in  connexion  with  eccle- 
siastical institutions ;  and  the  republican 
form  of  these  favoured  the  individual 
political  education  of  the  members,  and, 
in  the  absence  of  free  Parliamentary 
debate,  afforded  an  open  arena  for  the 
discussion  of  questions  of  national  or 
local  interest.  Indeed,  the  republi- 
can spirit,  in  connexion  with  exist- 
ing political  confusions  and  threatened 
political  dissolution,  had  at  one  time 
(if  we  may  trust  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
judgment  on  such  a  matter  of  history) 
all  but  subjugated  the  civil  constitution 
of  Scotland,  and  moulded  it  into  cor- 
responding forms.  Connect  with  this 
the  speculative  and  logical  mental  habits, 
— the  tendency  to  carry  out  a  principle 
or  idea  to  its  remotest  conclusions,  un- 
willingly admitting  the  control  of  prac- 
tical regulative  influences, — add  the 
sacred  and  patriotic  memories  and  asso- 
ciations which  have  gathered  round  those 
ideas  or  institutions  ;  and  some  explana- 
tion is  afforded  of  the  strong  hold  which 


questions  of  this  nature  have  taken  of 
the  popular  mind  in  Scotland. 

About  twenty  years  ago  a  conflict  was 
begun  in  the  Church  of  Scotland,  ending 
in  1843  in  a  crisis  which  has  been 
since  generally  known  as  "  the  Disrup- 
tion " — the  name  with  which  it  was 
baptized  by  Chalmers,  who  wholly  iden- 
tified himself  with  those  forming,  from 
that  time  forward,  the  Eree  Church  of 
Scotland. 

Now,  till  the  event  disclosed  some- 
thing obvious  to  the  most  careless  on- 
looker— the  spontaneous  withdrawal  of 
nearly  500  ministers,  and  large  bodies  of 
the  people,  from  a  national  establishment, 
of  which  they  formed,  probably,  in  num- 
ber fully  one-third  part,  in  value  consi- 
derably more — it  is  perhaps  not  far  from 
the  truth  to  say,  that  what  was  convuls- 
ing Scotland  from  the  Solway  to  the 
Pentland  Firth  was  generally  regarded 
in  England  rather  with  a  sort  of  puzzled 
wonder  than  with  any  intelligent  sym- 
pathy or  appreciation.  The  question  at 
issue  seemed  too  abstract  and  metaphy- 
sical to  take  any  hold  of  the  general 
mind ;  and  for  every  ten  persons  who 
looked  with  interest,  whether  in  admi- 
ration of  the  sacrifice,  or  in  censure  of 
its  rashness,  on  the  visible  results,  pro- 
bably scarcely  one  had  a  distinct  concep- 
tion of  the  processes  of  thought,  out  of 
which  these  results  came. 

The  conflict  between  the  Courts  of 
Law  and  the  Church  Courts  arose  out 
of  an  attempt  made  by  the  Church — in 
all  good  faith,  and  with  general  consent — 
to  limit  the  rights  of  the  patronage  of 
parochial  churches,  by  allowing  a  con- 
clusive negative  voice  to  the  congrega- 
tion ;  but  the  final  ground  of  separation 
was  the  refusal  of  the  Church  to  submit 
to  judgments  of  the  Courts  of  Law 
reversing  sentences  of  Suspension  and 
Deposition,  and  otherwise  directly  inter- 
fering with  ecclesiastical  censures.  The 
claim  of  the  Church  was  one  to  abso- 
lute independence  of  all  external  con- 
trol in  matters  of  government  and 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


discipline ;  practically,  that  at  least 
no  interference  should  be  allowed  to 
prevent  the  adoption  of  whatever  mea- 
sures Avere  thought  essential,  or  bene- 
ficial, and  expedient.  The  theoretical 
view  was  in  many  quarters  strongly 
presented,  and  gave  birth  to  the  idea 
which  fired  the  people.  But  many  felt  a 
difficulty  in  adopting  this  view,  at  least 
without  reserve,  inasmuch  as  it  appeared 
hardly  to  consist  with  the  history  of  the 
Church.  Such  unqualified  rights  seemed, 
indeed,  to  have  been  claimed,  but  never 
conceded  or  possessed.  The  practical 
view,  especially  as  it  modified  the  exer- 
cise of  patronage  which  had  been  much 
complained  of,  was  highly  popular. 

Yet  these  questions  were  so  closely 
intertwined  with  the  very  foundations 
and  fabric  of  the  Church,  regarded  as  an 
institution  fenced  with  special  laws,  and 
resting  on  historical  traditions,  that 
without  some  knowledge  of  these  the 
nature  and  urgency  of  that  crisis  can 
hardly  be  understood.  They  cannot  be 
here  dwelt  on,  but  the  subject  must  not 
be  touched  without  some  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  energy,  devotion,  powers 
of  organization,  and  practical  efficiency 
which  have  made  the  Free  Church 
eminent  even  in  a  country  where  these 
qualities  unusually  abound.  The  old  tra- 
ditions have  proved  themselves  an  invalu- 
able inheritance ;  and  it  may  have  hardly 
lived  long  enough  under  the  new  condi- 
tions to  have  altogether  tested  its  powers 
of  independent  existence,  or  to  be  en- 
titled to  claim  a  victory  over  the  new 
dangers.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether 
it  will  have  patience  and  faith  in  the 
future,  so  as  to  resist  the  pressing  tempta- 
tion to  choose  rather  an  apparent  pre- 
sent success,  than  strength,  dignity,  sta- 
bility, and  ultimate  triumph.  It  has 
already  shown  an  industry,  earnestness, 
and  ability  which,  if  only  regulated  by 
a  wise  regard  to  the  long  life  and  late 
maturity  of  institutions,  can  hardly  fail 
to  confer  blessings  on  Scotland. 

The  present  question  is  only  in  part 
the  same  as  that  which  was  involved  in 
the  former  struggles.  Then  the  Church 
and  its  opponents  equally  pleaded  the 
statutes  of  the  Legislature,  by  which  it 


was  at  once  protected  and  limited.  In 
the  present  case  there  are  no  statutes  to 
be  appealed  to,  unless  as  fixing  or  in- 
terpreting the  usages  of  the  Church  ; 
and  there  is  little  difficulty  in  making 
the  question  intelligible  even  to  readers 
who  may  not  be  well  versed  in  this  re- 
gion of  Scottish  history.  For  the  sake 
of  such  readers  it  may  be  well,  in  one 
or  two  sentences,  to  describe  the  organi- 
zation of  the  Presbyterian  Churches  in 
Scotland,  as  this  is  seen  in  that  Church 
to  which  these  remarks  specially  relate. 

The  congregational  court  known  as 
the  "  Kirk  Session,"  is  composed  of  the 
minister  and  the  elders,  both  elected  by 
the  members  of  the  congregation.  The 
elders  may  be  assumed  generally  to  range 
in  number  from  five  to  twenty  ;  are, 
with  few  exceptions,  married  men,  or 
"  heads  of  families  ;"  are  always,  it  may 
be  said,  of  good  character,  varying  in 
pecuniary  circumstances  and  social  status 
with  the  nature  of  the  congregation.  Its 
jurisdiction  extends  over  the  members  of 
the  congregation  ;  and  by  its  authority 
children  are  baptized,  or  adults  admitted 
to  the  communion ;  and  it  has  power  "  to 
"  suspend  from  the  Lord's  Table  a  person 
"not  yet  cast  out  of  the  Church/'  Of 
old  it  wielded  the  terrors  of  the  "  cutty 
stool."  The  minister  is  the  chairman, 
or  "moderator"  (the  preserver  of  order), 
a  word  which  is  applied  to  the  president 
of  each  of  the  Church  Courts. 

The  next  court  in  order  of  rank  is  the 
Presbytery,  consisting  of  the  ministers 
of  a  group  of  neighbouring  congregations, 
and  one  elder  from  each  of  them.  Be- 
sides an  appellate  jurisdiction  as  regards 
the  Kirk  Sessions,  its  authority  extends 
over  the  ministers  as  well  as  the  mem- 
bers of  the  congregations  within  its 
bounds.  Its  meetings  are  usually  month- 
ly. There  are  seventy-one  Presbyteries 
of  the  Free  Church  in  Scotland. 

Next  comes  the  Synod,  or  provincial 
assembly,  composed  of  the  members  of 
several  adjoining  Presbyteries.  Its  juris- 
diction is  not  original,  but  appellate,  or 
on  reference  only,  from  the  judgment 
or  on  the  application  of  one  of  these 
Presbyteries.  There  are  seventeen 
Synods. 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


295 


Lastly,  the  General  Assembly  consists 
of  ministers  and  elders  holding  commis- 
sions (hence  called  commissioners)  as 
representatives  from  the  Presbyteries  in 
a  fixed  proportion,  according  to  the 
number  of  ministers  they  contain  re- 
spectively. There  are  about  four  hun- 
dred members  (the  number  of  congrega- 
tions in  the  Free  Church  being  about 
eight  hundred),  half  of  them  ministers, 
and  half  of  them  elders.  It  meets  once 
a  year  in  Edinburgh,  in  the  month  of 
May,  holding  its  sittings  during  ten  or 
twelve  days.  Its  authority  is  legislative, 
judicial,  and  executive,  and  extends 
over  the  whole  area  of  the  Church,  and 
over  all  the  inferior  courts. 

In  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Es- 
tablished Church  there  have  been,  from 
very  early  times,  members  appointed  not 
by  any  ecclesiastical  court,  but  by  the 
Royal  Burghs ;  and  a  Commissioner 
(always  in  practice  a  peer  of  Scotland) 
appointed  by  the  Queen,  is  enthroned 
as  her  representative,  but  takes  no  active 
part  in  the  proceedings. 

In  the  Free  Church  Assembly  there 
is  no  representative  of  any  of  the  Burghs, 
nor,  of  course,  of  the  Queen.  Another 
difference  may  be  noticed  here  : — that 
persons  accused  are  not  permitted  to 
appear  by  their  counsel  in  any  of  its 
courts.  This  is  a  departure  (whether  wisely 
adopted  or  not)  from  the  settled  practice 
of  the  Established  Church.  AVith  these 
remarks,  by  way  of  introduction,  the 
facts  of  the  present  case  may  be  now 
narrated. 

The  Minister  of  Cardross,  having  been 
from  the  tune  of  the  Disruption  a  minis- 
ter of  the  Free  Church,  was  in  February, 
1858,  served  with  a  libel  (or  indictment) 
by  the  Presbytery-  of  Dumbarton,  to 
which  he  was  subject.  It  contained 
three  counts.  The  two  first  related  to 
alleged  instances  of  intoxication  ;  the 
third  accused  him  of  an  immodest  assault. 
The  Presbytery  found  the  first  count 
not  proven ;  the  second  substantially 
proven  (but  with  the  exception  of 
one  of  the  alleged  facts — indistinctness 
of  speech) ;  the  third  proven,  but  with 
exceptions  which  essentially  altered  its 
nature,  so  that  the  conviction  under  it 


was  only  of  rude  and  violent  behaviour. 
Against  this  judgment,  so  far  as  unfa- 
vourable to  himself,  the  accused  protested 
and  appealed  to  the  Synod  of  Glasgow 
and  Ayr.  There  was  no  complaint 
(which  would  have  been  quite  in  order) 
by  any  members  of  the  Presbytery,  who 
might  deem  the  sentence  too  favourable. 
The  judgment  of  the  Synod  was  in  these 
terms  :  "  The  Synod  did  and  hereby 
"  do  sustain  the  protest  and  appeal,  dis- 
"  charge  the  first  count  of  the  libel,  and 
"  find  the  second  and  third  counts  thereof 
"  not  proven." 

The  Presbytery  appealed  against  this 
judgment,  so  far  as  it  was  adverse  to 
their  own  sentence,  and  several  members 
of  the  Synod  also  dissented  and  com- 
plained to  the  General  Assembly;  whose 
decision  was  :  "  That  on  the  first  count 
"  of  the  minor  proposition  of  the  libel " 
(the    indictment    being    syllogistic    in 
form)  "the  Assembly  allow  the  judgment 
"  of  the  Synod  to  stand  ;  on  the  second 
"  count  of  the  minor  proposition  of  the 
"  Kbel,  sustain  the  dissent  and  complaint 
"  and  appeal,   reverse  the  judgment  of 
'  the  Synod,  and  affirm  the  judgment  of 
'  the  Presbytery,  finding  the  charge  in 
'  the  said  count  proven  ;  and  on  the 
'  third  count  of  the  minor  proposition 
'  of  the  libel,  sustain  the  dissent  and 
'  complaint,  reverse   the  judgment  of 
'  the  Synod,  and  find  the  whole  of  the 
'  charge  in  said  count,  as  framed  ori- 
'  ginally  in  the  libel,  proven."      There- 
after the  Assembly,  on  the  motion  of  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Candlish,  resolved   that   the 
Minister  of  Cardross  shouldbe  suspended 
from  his  office  sine  die,  and  be  loosed 
from  his  charge  ;  which  sentence  was  ac- 
cordingly pronounced,  with  the  further 
declaration,  that  he  "cannot  be  restored 
"  to  the  office  of  the  ministry,  except  by 
"  the  General  Assembly." 

By  the  next  step  the  first  point  of 
contact  with  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
civil  courts  is  reached.  The  Minister  of 
Cardross,  in  order  to  prevent  the  sen- 
tence against  him  being  carried  into 
effect,  applied  to  the  Court  of  Session1 

1  The  Court  of  Session  is  the  supreme  civil 
court  in  Scotland,  having  as  well  an  equitable 
as  a  legal  jurisdiction.  It  consists  of  thirteen 


296 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


for  suspension  of  the  sentence  and  in- 
terdict against  the  General  Assembly, 
on  the  ground  that  the  judgment  of  the 
Presbytery,    so    far    as    not    appealed 
against,  was  final,  and  that  the  Assem- 
bly had  no  power  to  revive  against  him 
a  charge   thus   conclusively  negatived. 
The  application  was  refused  by  the  Lord 
Ordinary,  as  incompetent.    The  General 
Assembly,  still  in  session,  learning  that 
such  an  application  had  been  made,  and 
finding  that  it  purported  to  be  an  appli- 
cation to  the  Civil  Court  to  suspend 
their  sentence,  resolved  to  summon  the 
(quondam)  Minister  of  Cardross  to  ap- 
pear at  their  bar  "to  answer  for  his 
conduct  thereanent"     The  citation  was 
accordingly  served  on  him,  on  the  28th 
of  May  (about  twelve  o'clock  at  night), 
to  appear  before  the  Assembly  on  the  1st 
of  June.      The  following  is  his  state- 
ment of  what  there  took  place,  and  its 
substantial    accuracy   seems    admitted. 
"  On  the  said  1st  of  June  the   pursuer 
'  accordingly  appeared  before  the  said 
'  General  Assembly  of  the  Free  Church, 
'  and  he  was  there  called  upon  by  the 
moderator  to  state  whether  or  not  he 
'  had  authorized  the  application  referred 
'  to  to  the  Civil  Court.    In' consequence 
'  of  and  in  compliance  with  this  call, 
'  the  pursuer  was  beginning  to  read  the 
'  explanation   and   protest,    a   copy  of 
'  which  is  produced,  when  he  was  in- 
'  terrupted  by  the  defender,  Dr.  Cand- 
'  lish,  who  moved  that  he  should  not  be 
'  allowed  to  give  any  explanation  what- 
'  ever,  but  that  his  answers  should  be 
'  restricted   to   a   categorical    '  yea '  or 
'  'nay';  and, though  the  pursuer  claimed 
'  and  insisted  on  his  right  to  be  heard, 
'  he  was,  in  consequence  of  the  motion 
'  of  the  defender,  Dr.  Candlish,  which 
'  was  carried,  peremptorily  commanded 
'  by  the  moderator  to  restrict  his  an- 

judges ;  of  whom  four  form  the  first,  and  four 
the  second  division,  or  "  Inner  House,"  as  each 
of  these  is  called ;  the  other  five  sitting  as 
single  judges,  or  "  Lords  Ordinary,"  and  decid- 
ing causes  in  the  first  instance  after  having 
superintended  them  until  ripe  for  final  judg- 
ment. Their  decision  is  subject  to  review  by 
one  or  other  division  of  the  Court.  The  judges 
in  rotation  dispose  of  urgent  and  summary 
applications  hi  chambers. 


" swer  to  'yea'  or  'nay,'  as  no  explana- 
"  tion,  or  anything  but  a  bare  affirmative 
"  or  negative  answer,  would  be  taken  or 
"heard  from  him."  Having  answered 
in  the  affirmative  he  was  then  ordered 
to  leave  the  bar,  and  retired  from  the 
Assembly.  Whereupon,  in  his  absence, 
the  Assembly,  on  the  motion  of  Dr. 
Candlish,  seconded  by  Dr.  Bannerman, 
resolved,  that  in  respect  of  the  reply  so 
given  he  should  "  be  deposed  from  the 
"  office  of  the  holy  ministry  ;  and  this 
"  was  accordingly  done.  This  is  the 
"  sentence,  deposition,  or  proceeding 
"complained  of,  and  such  are  the  cir- 
"  cumstances  in  which  it  was  passed  or 
"agreed  to."  "The  pursuer"  (it  is 
added)  "has  also,  in  consequence  of  the 
"  said  deposition,  been  removed  from  his 
"office  of  clerk  to  the  Free  Synod  of 
"  Glasgow  and  Ayr." 

The  Minister  of  the  Free  Church  of 
Cardross  had  thus  been  first  suspended, 
and  afterwards  deposed  from  his  office 
by  sentences  of  the  General  Assembly. 
In  the  hope  of  setting  these  aside,  or  at 
least  of  getting  pecuniary  compensation, 
he  instituted  two  actions  (or  suits)  in 
the  Court  of  Session.  The  first  of  these 
was  directed  against  the  General  Assem- 
bly and  its  representative  officers  ;  and 
called  for  the  production,  with  a  view  to 
its  being  declared  illegal,  of  the  sen- 
tence of  suspension.  The  second  action 
was  directed  against  the  same  persons ; 
and  also  against  certain  individual 
defenders — namely,  the  moderator  who 
pronounced  it,  and  the  Ministers  who 
moved  and  seconded  the  resolution 
which  led  to  its  being  pronounced. 
His  statement  is,  that  having  been  one 
of  the  ministers  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land at  the  time  of  the  Disruption,  he 
soon  afterwards  became  Minister  of  the 
Free  Church  of  Cardross,  and  was  ap- 
pointed clerk  to  the  Synod  of  Glasgow 
and  Ayr  in  1848  ;  and  that  his  emolu- 
ments, including  the  value  of  a  manse 
(or  parsonage-house),  amounted  to  about 
2147.  per  annum.  "And  in  conse- 
"  quence  of  the  decision,  sentence,  depo- 
"  sition  or  proceedings  complained  of, 
"  the  pursuer  has  been  deprived,  in  his 
"  old  age,  and  after  a  ministry  without 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


297 


"  reproach  of  above  thirty  years'  dura- 
"  lion,  of  his  only  means  of  obtaining  a 
"  livelihood,  and  he  has  been  otherwise 
f  greatly  injured  in  his  character,  credit, 
"  feelings,  and  prospects."  This  action 
aimed  at  the  reduction  of  the  sentence 
of  deposition ;  and  in  both  actions  dam- 
ages were  also  claimed  for  the  alleged 
injuries  suffered  or  anticipated. 

For  the  pursuer,  it  was  pleaded,  that 
the  sentences  of  the  Assembly  were 
illegal  and  invalid;  inasmuch  as,  (1) 
The  sentence  of  suspension  proceeded 
on  charges  which  were  not  lawfully 
under  the  cognisance  of  the  Assembly, 
no  appeal  or  complaint  having  been 
brought  against  the  sentence  of  ac- 
quittal by  the  Presbytery,  which  still 
in  fact  stood  unreversed.  (2)  Under 
the  proceedings  relating  to  the  depo- 
sition, no  libel  was  served  on  the 
accused,  which  the  laws  and  practice  of 
the  Church  required.  (3)  No  evidence 
was  adduced  to  prove  the  criminal  acts, 
while  on  the  other  hand  there  had  been 
no  admission  of  guilt ;  and  (4)  No  op- 
portunity was  allowed  to  the  accused  of 
being  heard  in  defence. 

It  was   pleaded   for    the    Church — 
"  The  action  is  incompetent,  and  cannot 
"and  ought  not  to  be  entertained  in 
"this  Court,  because,  (1st)  The  sentence 
u  complained  of  having  been  pronounced 
"  in  a  matter  of  ecclesiastical  discipline, 
"  by  a  judicatory  of  the  Free  Church  of 
"  Scotland,  an  association  of  Christians 
"  tolerated  and  protected  by  law,  any 
"review  of  or  complaint  against  that 
"  sentence  in  the  civil  courts  is  excluded : 
"  and  (2d)  the  pursuer,  as  a  minister  of 
"the    Free    Church,    contracted     and 
"  bound  himself  to  submit  to  the  disci- 
'  pline  and  government  of  that  Church. 
'(3d)  It  is  not  a  relevant  ground  for 
'  calling  for  production  and  reduction 
'  of  the  writs  in  question,  that  the  de- 
fenders have  deviated  from  the  ordi- 
'  nary  forms  of  process  in  observance  in 
'the  Free  Church,  the  same  being  a 
"matter  exclusively  within  the  cogni- 
"sance    and    regulation    of    the   Free 
"  Church  and  its  judicatories."     And  in 
the  written  argument  for  the  defendants, 
the   Free   Church,  it  is   pleaded,   that 
No.  10. — VOL.  u. 


"  while  the  Free  Church  cannot  prevent 
'persons  betaking   themselves   to   the 
'  civil  courts,  they  can  say,  and  have 
'  said,  that,  as  a  Church  of  Christ,  tole- 
'  rated  by  law,  they  have  an  indepen- 
'  dent  jurisdiction  in  spiritual  matters, 
'  and  that,  if  a  member  does  not  choose 
"  to  abide  by  their  sentences,  he  cannot 
"  remain  in  their  body.     That  is  their 
"  fundamental  principle."     And  again  : 
"  But  there  is  another  plea  not  less  im- 
"  portant  than  these.     It  is,  whether  the 
"  subject  matter  of  these  actions  is  such 
"  as   the   civil   courts   can  regard ;    or 
"whether,  in   any  circumstances,  they 
"will  undertake  to  reverse  the  merely 
'  spiritual    sentences    of    a    voluntary 
'  Church.      The    jurisdiction    of    the 
'  Court  of  Session  must  be  exercised 
'  consistently  with  the  toleration  which 
'  all  religious  societies  enjoy.     The  go- 
'vernment,    discipline,    and    worship, 
'  distinctive  of  such  religious  societies, 
"  are   essential  to   them   as   such,   and 
"are  therefore  as  much  sanctioned  by 
"  the  law  as  the  societies  themselves." 
And  Whately,  Locke,  and  Lord  Mans- 
field are  quoted  in  support  of  this  gene- 
ral view. 

The  position  of  the  Free  Church  is 
statedinthe  pleadings  tobe  strongly  forti- 
fied by  the  terms  of  certain  documents 
connected  with  the  "Disruption"— espe- 
cially the  Formula,  subscribed  by  all 
Free  Church  ministers  as  a  condition  of 
licence  and  of  ordination,  in  which  the 
general  principles  asserted  by  the  Free 
Church  are  professed,  and  an  express 
promise  is  made  "  to  submit  to  the  said 
"  discipline,  government,  and  exclusive 
"jurisdiction  of  this  Church,  and  not 
"endeavour  directly  or  indirectly  the 
"  prejudice  or  subversion  of  the  same." 

On  the  special  questions  thus  raised 
there  has  not  yet  been  any  judgment. 
But  there  has  been  a  preliminary  dis- 
cussion regarding  the  power  of  the  Court 
to  interfere,  which  took  the  technical 
form  of  an  argument  as  to  the  liability 
of  the  defendants  to  "satisfy  the  pro- 
duction"— that  is,  to  produce  judicially 
before  the  Court  the  sentences  com- 
plained of;  and  on  this  point  only  has 
a  judgment  been  pronounced.  There 


298 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


is  some  advantage  in  thus  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  case  in  its  present  immature 
condition.  The  question  now  under 
consideration  is,  not,  whether  the 
Minister  of  Cardross  was  or  was  not 
guilty  of  the  offences  charged  against 
him  ;  nor,  whether,  after  the  materials 
for  final  judgment  have  been  afforded, 
the  Court  will  find  reason  to  conclude 
that  the  proceedings  of  the  Assembly 
have  been,  or  have  not  been,  in  con- 
formity with  its  laws  and  constitution — 
a  question  on  which  any  expression  of 
opinion  would  be  premature.  It  is  a 
still  wider  and  more  important  inquiry 
to  which  attention  is  here  called ; 
namely,  whether,  a  civil  interest  being 
involved,  or  apparently  involved,  in  the 
proceedings  of  a  voluntary  Church,  taken 
with  an  immediate  view  to  internal 
order  and  discipline,  the  Courts  of  Law 
will,  on  the  suit  of  one  of  the  members, 
deeming  himself  wronged,  inquire  into 
the  laws  and  constitution  of  the  Church, 
in  order  to  determine  whether  these 
afford  probable  grounds  for  such  pro- 
ceedings, and,  in  the. event  of  its  being 
made  to  appear  in  the  contrary,  in  order 
to  give  such  redress  as  may,  in  the  cir- 
cumstances, be  just  and  practicable. 

The  judgment  of  the  Lord  Ordinary 
in  favour  of  the  defendants  "sustaining 
"the  preliminary  defences,  and  dis- 
"  missing  the  actions  as  incompetent," 
having  been  brought  under  the  review 
of  the  First  Division  of  the  Court,  was 
unanimously  reversed,  and  it  was  decided 
that  the  defendants  must  produce,  for 
the  consideration  and  judgment  of  the 
Court,  the  sentences  of  suspension  and 
deposition,  to  which  the  actions  related, 
together  with  the  warrants  on  which  the 
sentences  were  grounded.  The  opinions 
of  the  judges  are  elaborate  and  concur- 
rent; but  it  would  be  out  of  place 
here  to  do  more  than  indicate  the  general 
principles  on  which  they  all  profess  to 
be  rested.  These  are — that  in  a  volun- 
tary Church,  or  any  other  voluntary 
society,  there  is  no  jurisdiction,  properly 
so  called,  and  that  any  authority  exer- 
cised over  the  members  depends,  for  its 
justification,  on  their  own  consent ;  that 
the  laws  of  the  society  (unless  invalid 


because  inconsistent  with  public  policy) 
are  to  be  held  conclusive  as  between 
the  members  and  office-bearers,  but 
that  any  proceedings  not  authorized  by 
these  laws  will  not  be  protected  from 
question  by  the  mere  fact  that  they  are 
the  proceedings  of  such  a  Church  or  of 
its  office-bearers,  and  relate  directly  to 
internal  discipline  ;  and  that  the  Church 
or  its  office-bearers,  or  individual  mem- 
bers, may  become  liable  in  reparation  to 
any  member  who  has  suffered  in  conse- 
quence of  such  proceedings.1 

This  judgment  of  the  Court,  waited 
for  with  anxiety,  was  received  by  a 
large  part  of  the  Free  Church,  and  by 
some  members  of  other  non-conforming 
Churches,  with  indignation,  or  dismay  ; 
and  a  meeting  of  the  members  of  the 
General  Assembly  of  the  Free  Church 
(termed  a  meeting  of  its  "Commission") 
was  held,  on  the  18th  of  January,  to 
consider  the  course  to  be  taken.  Many 
members,  it  is  understood,  came  to  that 
meeting  prepared  to  recommend  extreme 
measures ;  but  the  counsels  of  the  less 
impetuous  and  more  influential  lay 
members  prevailed  in  the  meeting,  and 
the  recommendations  embodied  in  the 
Report  of  a  Committee  of  the  Assembly 
were  adopted.  It  was  accordingly  re- 
solved that  the  sentences  of  suspension 
and  deposition  should  be  judicially  pro- 
duced. The  speeches  made  at  an  ad- 
journed meeting,  to  which  the  public  were 
admitted  (the  meeting  for  consultation 
having  been  private)  have  been  pub- 
lished, as  revised  by  the  speakers  ;  but, 
being  all  on  one  side,  neither  give  ex- 
pression to  the  differences  of  temper  and 
sentiment  already  noticed,  nor  shew  the 
real  difficulties  of  the  question. 

In  the  case  of  the  Norwich  Baptists, 

already  referred  to,  public  attention  was 

called  in  the  Times  to  "  the  calm  and 

'  peaceable  resort  of  the  disputants  to  a 

'Court  of  Law,  the  quiet  and  natural 

'  action  of  the  Court  in  a  case  so  appa- 

'rently   strange,    as    features    forcibly 

'illustrative    of    English    feeling  and 

1  December  23,  1859.  See  "Cases  in  the 
Court  of  Session  &c.  vol.  xxii.  pp.  290  to 
328. 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


299 


"  habits."  It  may  be  a  question  if  these 
remarks  could  be  applied  with  truth  to 
the  Cardross  case ;  and,  indeed,  the 
manner  in  which  the  judgment  of  the 
Court  was  received  by  those  whom  it 
chiefly  concerned,  suggests  a  doubt 
whether  the  judges  of  Scotland  have  yet 
universally  earned  the  reputation  for 
calm,  dignified,  impartial  bearing  in  the 
administration  of  the  laws,  which  has 
long  so  honourably  distinguished  the 
judges  of  England,  and  won  for  their 
office  the  public  confidence.  And  it 
may  be  remarked,  that  a  reader  of  the 
opinions  by  which  the  judgment  in  the 
Cardross  case  was  prefaced,  will  hardly 
find  in  them  any  expressions  tending  to 
show  that  the  judges  were  much  im- 
pressed with  the  extreme  delicacy  of 
treatment  requisite  for  such  questions, 
and  the  respect  due  to  a  region  of  thought 
and  feeling  which,  although  too  high 
and  etherial  to  come  within  the  proper 
sphere  of  their  jurisdiction,  can  never  be 
safely  ignored  or  treated  with  levity. 
At  the  same  time,  some  of  the  quota- 
tions already  made  from  the  arguments 
for  the  Free  Church,  rather  seem  to  in- 
dicate that  these  sacred  elements  had 
been  from  that  quarter  imported  into  a 
question,  towards  the  solution  of  which 
they  can  probably  bring  no  contribu- 
tion. They  are  not  within  the  province 
of  Courts  of  Law,  and  can  only  be 
validly  pleaded  there  on  the  hypothesis 
that  the  judges  are  to  determine  what 
is  the  true  idea  of  a  Christian  Church, 
and  what  institutions,  claiming  authority 
in  that  character,  are  to  have  their 
authority  recognised  and  their  judg- 
ments executed  by  the  Courts  of  Law. 

Perhaps  in  no  way  could  the  liberties 
of  the  Churches  in  this  country  be  more 
effectually  undermined  and  destroyed 
than  by  the  establishment  of  such  a  prin- 
ciple; for,  since  there  are  certainly  no 
existing  laws  defining  what,  for  such  pur- 
poses, a  Christian  Church  is,  the  decision 
would  in  each  case  be  determined  by  the 
mere  theological  tenets  of  the  particular 
judges  ;  with  results  too  disastrous  to  be 
needlessly  depicted  or  imagined.  For 
the  danger  is  not  imminent ;  the  Courts 
of  Law  will  give  no  countenance  to 


such  a  proposition.  Nor  does  the  allied 
position  seem  capable  of  being  easily 
maintained — that  such  sentences  as 
those  under  question  in  this  case  are 
so  purely  spiritual  and  within  the  do- 
main of  the  conscience  as  not  to  contain 
any  elements  for  the  adjudication  of 
civil  courts.  It  would  rather  appear 
that  a  Church,  in  becoming  an  organized 
society  or  institution,  necessarily  comes 
under  the  conditions  common  to  all  such 
social  organisms.  It  may  also  contem- 
plate higher  aims,  and  possess  other 
special  qualities ;  but  at  least  it  must 
possess  those  which  are  general  or  uni- 
versal; and,  however  spiritual  such 
sentences  may  be  deemed,  they  have 
certain  civil  effects,  or  ought  to  have 
such  effects — which  can  only  be  made 
to  follow  them,  in  case  of  any  refusal 
to  submit,  by  the  intervention  of  the 
Courts  of  Justice. 

It  must  be  added  that,  in  the  argu- 
ment for  the  Free  Church,  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  Courts  of  Law  has  been 
admitted  to  extend  over  all  the  property, 
of  vhatever  nature,  which  the  Church 
may  be  possessed  of;  and  that  the 
refusal  to  give  effect  to  the  sentences  of 
the  Church,  in  so  far  as  they  relate  to  its 
disposal,  is  not  resented  as  an  invasion, 
of  the  region  claimed  as  sacred.  It 
needs  little  reflection,  however,  to  satisfy 
any  mind  familiar  with  inquiries  of  this 
nature,  that  the  distinction  here  assumed, 
though  plausible,  is  inadequate.  Legis- 
lative enactments,  and  the  daily  ex- 
perience of  Courts  of  Law,  equally  attest, 
that  restrictions  are  enforced,  rights 
protected,  and  wrongs  redressed,  affect- 
ing character,  feeling,  liberty,  as  falling 
within  the  domain  of  civil  government, 
which  the  assumed  distinction  would 
exclude ;  and  in  the  later  arguments  for 
the  Church  larger  concessions  have  been 
made. 

If,  then,  there  is  to  be  inquiry  by  the 
Courts  of  Law,  what  are  its  limits  1  It  is 
admitted,  that  the  only  questions  to  be 
put  are — (1)  Is  there  anything  in  the 
proceeding  immoral,  or  otherwise  con- 
trary to  public-  law  1  And  (2)  Is  it, 
apparently,  in  accordance  with  the  con- 
stitution of  the  Church  ?  The  autonomy 


300 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


of  the  Churches  is  entirely  admitted,  or, 
rather  assumed.  Subject  to  the  provi- 
sions of  public  law,  Churches  may 
organize  themselves  with  perfect  free- 
dom, and  the  Courts  of  Justice  will  recog- 
nise and  give  civil  effect  to  their  sen- 
tences. Here  is  the  conclusive  answer 
to  the  cry  of  persecution,  raised  in 
some  quarters  with  reference  to  the  pos- 
sible decision  in  the  present  case.  And, 
it  is  to  be  remarked,  that,  to  call  in 
question  and  refuse  civil  effect  to  a 
sentence  passed  in  disregard  or  defiance 
of  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the 
Church  in  whose  name  it  is  uttered,  may 
not  be  to  invade  the  liberties  of  the 
Church,  but  to  protect  these  from  the 
incursions  of  a  temporary  majority  of 
its  members  or  office-bearers.  For,  if  a 
Church  be  an  organism,  it  must  act 
through  its  laws  and  constitution,  which 
express  and  regulate  its  life  ;  and  what 
is  done  in  contradiction  of  these  is  the 
act  only  of  certain  individuals,  not  the 
act  of  the  Church.  And,  without  ascrib- 
ing to  Courts  of  Law  any  peculiar  exemp- 
tion from  human  error,  it  will  probably 
be  admitted  that,  on  the  whole,  at  least 
in  England,  the  rare  and  never  unso- 
licited interference,  exercised  by  them  in 
such  cases,  has  been  just  and  beneficial. 
Never  unsolicited — and  this  limitation  is 
of  the  utmost  importance — for  it  is  only 
when  the  refusal  to  submit  to  such  an 
ecclesiastical  sentence  proves  that  the 
question  is  no  longer,  in  a  strict  sense, 
within  the  forum,  or  court  of  conscience, 
that  the  interference  is  possible.  And 
when,  in  such  circumstances,  the  plea  of 
conscience  is  urged  by  the  Church,  as 
excluding  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Courts 
of  Law,  what  is  really  (although,  perhaps, 
not  consciously)  contended  for  is,  the 
right  of  the  Church,  or  of  a  majority, 
to  compel  the  submission  of  a  member  to 
a  sentence  which  his  own  conscience 
does  not  itself  acknowledge  and  make 
effectual.  This  is  plainly  not  a  mere 
question  of  conscience  ;  and  on  the 
rebellious  members  sentences  cannot 
become  operative  without  the  interven- 
tion of  the  Courts  of  Law.  A  power  to 
execute  their  own  sentences  would  be 
inconsistent  with  the  well-being  of  the 


Churches  themselves,  depriving  them  of 
their  most  peculiar  characteristic  ;  and 
the  evils-  would  be  scarcely  less  were  the 
Courts  of  Justice,  without  inquiry,  to 
carry  them  into  execution. 

The     alarm    with    which,    in    some 
quarters,   the  judgment   of    the   Court 
has  been  regarded,  can  hardly  be  under- 
stood  without   noticing  its  relation  to 
a  peculiar  dogma  (or,  perhaps,  rather  a 
peculiar  mode  of  expression),  giving  an 
exaggerated    importance   to    this    case. 
It  is   a   special    form   of    the   general 
idea  of  the  independenpe  or  autonomy 
of  the  Church  as  a  Divine  Institution. 
It  is  the  subject  of  many  recent  ser- 
mons  and   speeches ;    and   of   a  large 
part  of  a  "  Catechism  on  the  principles 
and  constitution  of  the  Free  Church," 
published    under  the    sanction   of   the 
General   Assembly   (although  of  ques- 
tionable authority),  in  which  the   fol- 
lowing questions  and  answers   on  the 
subject  occur  (pp.  9,10).     "  Q.  10.  Who 
"is  the  Head  of  the  visible  Church1? 
"A.  The   Lord   Jesus   Christ.      Q.  16. 
"What  is  your  meaning  when  you  say 
'  that  Christ  is  the  Head  of  the  visible 
'Church?     A.  I  mean   that  it  is   the 
'  kingdom  of  which  He  is  the  only  Lord 
•  and  Lawgiver ;  of  the  institutions  of 
'  which  He  is  the  sole  author ;  and  the 
'peculiar    privileges,    immunities,    and 
'benefits    enjoyed    by   which    proceed 
'  from,  and  are  conferred  by  Him  alone. 
'  Q.  17.  What  do  you  mean  when  you  say 
"  that  Christ  is  the  Head  of  every  par- 
"  ticular  Church,  or  branch  of  the  visible 
"  Church  ?     A.    The   meaning  is,   that 
"what  He  is  to  the  whole,  He  is,  and 
"  must  be,  to  every  part ;  since  it  would 
"  be  subversive  of  the  relation  in  which 
"  He  stands  to  the  universal  body  as  its 
"  Head,  to  suppose  Him  not  to  stand  in 
"  the  very  same  relation  to  the  several 
"communities   of   which  the   Catholic 
"  Church  is  made  up." 

As  an  example  of  the  practical  appli- 
cation of  this  doctrine  or  phraseology,  a 
few  sentences  may  be  quoted  from  a 
Sermon  by  Dr.  Candlish,  as  in  some  sort 
one  of  the  most  representative  of  the 
Sermons  recently  preached  on  this  topic ; 
its  author  being  one  of  the  most  eminent 


The  Gar  dross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


301 


and  influential  orators  and  preachers  in 
the  Church  to  which  he  belongs.1 

"I  cannot  consent  to  the  Church  visible 
"  being  dealt  with  as  if  it  were  less  truly 
"  the  body  of  Christ  than  the  Church 
"  invisible.  To  me  the  Church  visible  ; 
'  the  Church  of  which  I  am  a  member ; 
'is  most  practically  and  immediately, 
'  the  body  of  Christ ; — more  so,  I  would 
'  say,  in  an  important  sense,  than  even 
'  the  Church  invisible  ; — more  so,  at  all 
"  events,  when  a  testing  crisis  comes. 

"  With  the  Church  invisible,  the  true 
"  spiritual  body  of  Christ,  Caesar  cannot 
"  interfere.  The  sentences  passed  with 
"  reference  to  it,  he  cannot  review. 
"  With  perfect  ease  and  safety  therefore, 
'  I  can  maintain  the  independence  of 
'the  Church  invisible.  And  affecting 
'  a  high  and  transcendental  spirituality, 
'  which  looks  on  questions  of  outward 
'  rule  and  order,  touching  the  relations 
'of  Church  and  State,  as  beneath  its 
'  notice,  I  may  suffer  Caesar  to  have  his 
'  own  way  in  all  the  actual  ongoings  of 
'the  outstanding  Christian  community 
'  on  earth  ; — while  in  a  region  far 
'  apart  and  far  above,  I  place  the  un- 
"  seen  crown  of  a  practically  inoperative 
"  spiritual  headship,  upon  the  brows  of 
"  an  unseen  Lord,  allowed  to  reign  over 
"  an  unseen  realm. 

"  But  it  is  not  so  with  me  ;  it  cannot 
"  be,  if  I  rightly  apprehend  the  nature 
"  of  the  kingdom  which  Christ  meant 
"to  found,  and  has  founded,  in  the- 
"  world.  It  is  not  indeed  absolutely 
"  identical  with  the  kingdom  as  it  is  to 
"  exist  in  the  heavenly  state.  It  has  in 
"  it  worldly  elements  ;  it  is .  liable  to 
"  worldly  mischances  and  mistakes.  But 
"  it  is  Christ's  ordinance  nevertheless  ; 
"  it  is  Christ's  body.  It  is  to  be  treated 
"  as  his  body.  And  I  am  no  more  to 
"  suffer  the  interference  of  Caesar  in  its 
"  concerns,  than  I  would  do,  if  it  were 

1  "Church  and  State."  A  Sermon  on  the 
Principles  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 
By  R.  S.  Caudlish,  D.D.,  preached  in  St. 
George's  Free  Church,  Edinburgh,  on  Sabbath, 
Nov.  13  (1859),  the  day  appointed  by  the  As- 
sembly for  advocating  the  principles  of  the 
Free  Church  of  Scotland,  and  making  a  col- 
lection on  behalf  of  the  Ante-Disruption 
Ministers. 


"  the  new  Jerusalem  itself  come  down 
"  out  of  heaven,  prepared  as  a  bride 
"  adorned  for  her  husband  ! " 

From  these  quotations  it  is  apparent 
that  High-Church  doctrine  is  not  alto- 
gether unknown  to  present  Scotch  Pres- 
byterianism.  But  it  is  difficult  out  of 
such  discourse  on  a  subject  like  this  to 
extract  any  definite  thought,  which  might 
aid  in  the  decision  of  the  question, 
whether  there  truly  lies  hid  under  this 
language  (in  so  far  as  it  differs  from 
other  assertions  of  ecclesiastical  autho- 
rity) any  specific  doctrine  :  or  whether, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  only  a  tradi- 
tional mode  of  expression  extended  be- 
yond its  original  sense,  and  encrusted 
with  sacred  associations.  The  fact  that 
there  is  a  tenacious  adherence  to  the  old 
phraseology,  and  an  unwillingness,  or 
inability,  to  translate  it  into  more  mo- 
dern forms,  rather  supports  the  latter 
view,  which  might  be  confirmed  by  a 
reference  to  the  venerable  authoritative 
standards  of  the  Church  of  Scotland — 
from  the  first  of  these  (or  John  Knox's) 
Confession  of  Faith  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland,  ratified  by  the  Parliament  in 
1560,  to  the  latest  of  them,  the  West- 
minster Confession,  sanctioned  by  the 
General  Assembly  in  1 647. 

The  extreme  views  put  forth  in  most 
of  the  sermons,  preached  on  the  occasion 
referred  to,  that  have  been  published, 
have  not  been  uncontradicted.  In  a 
sermon  entitled  "  The  Church  and  its 
Living  Head,"  by  the  Rev.  Wm.  Hanna, 
LL.D.,2  preached  on  the  same  occasion, 
these  passages  occur  : — 

"  The  controversy  between  us  and  that 
"  Establishment  from  which  we  have  re- 


2  Dr.  Hanna  is  already  known  to  the  public 
as  the  biographer  and  son-in-law  of  Dr.  Chal- 
mers. Another  interesting  volume  has  been 
published  recently,  consisting  of  two  courses 
of  lectures,  which  he  delivered  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Philosophical  Institution  of  Edin- 
burgh ;  the  first  on  "  Wiclifie  and  his  Times," 
and  the  second  on  "  The  Huguenots."  They 
show  careful  study,  are  written  in  an  earnest, 
truthful,  candid  spirit,  and  will  incline  those 
who  may  have  perused  them  to  regard  with 
more  respect  the  sentiments  of  the  author  on 
the  subject  at  present  under  consideration. 


302 


The  Cardross  Case  and  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland. 


"tired,  does  not  touch  the  doctrine  of 
"Christ's  Headship  as  taught  in  Holy 
"  Writ,  so  as  to  give  any  true  ground  for 
"  saying  that  we  uphold,  and  that  the 
"  Established  Church  denies,  that  Head- 
ship. The  whole  question  at  issue 
"between  us  has  respect  alone  to  the 
"functions  and  government  of  the 
"Church,  regarded  as  an  external  or- 
"  ganized  society.  But  it  is  not  of  any 
"incorporated  society  of  professing 
"  Christians,  however  pure  its  member- 
"  ship,  however  exactly  its  institutions, 
"  laws,  and  government,  may  correspond 
"  with  those  set  up  by  our  Lord  and  his 
"  Apostles,  that  Christ  is  said  in  Scrip- 
"ture  to  be  the  Head.  The  Church, 
"  which  is  his  body,  is  composed  alone 
"of  those  who,  by  true  faith,  are  in 
"vital  union  with  Him  through  the 
"indwelling  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  All 
"  the  descriptions  given  of  that  Church, 
"all  the  attributes  and  prerogatives 
"assigned  to  it,  all  the  promises  held 
"  out  and  made  good  to  it,  are  such  as 
"  can  belong  alone  to  the  body  of  true 
"  believers,  the  company  of  faithful  men 
"in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord.  They  do 
"not  and  they  cannot  apply  to  any 
"  organized  society  whatever,  viewed  as 
"  such.  There  has  been  no  greater  per- 
"  version  of  Holy  Writ,  none  more 
"widely  and  fatally  misleading,  than 
"that  by  which  those  descriptions, 
"attributes,  powers,  prerogatives,  pro- 
"mises,  which  belong  alone  to  the 
"  spiritual  brotherhood  of  true  believers, 
"  have  been  transferred  and  attached  to 
"  an  external  institute  calling  itself  the 
«  Church." 

"  The  attempt  has  been  made  to  throw 
"a  peculiar  and  additional  sanctity 
"  around  that  testimony,  by  erecting  it 
"  into  a  separate  religious  dogma  or  doc- 
"  trine — that,  namely, -of  the  Headship  of 
"  Christ  over  the  visible  Church.  That 
"  attempt  I  have  endeavoured  to  expose, 
"by  showing  that  no  such  separate 
"  dogma  is  taught  in  Holy  Writ ;  that 
"  so  far  as  it  is  taught  there,  it  resolves 
"itself  into  the  general  truth  of  the 
"supremacy  of  Christ's  revealed  will, 
"and  that,  as  thus  taught,  our  oppo- 
"nents  cannot  fairly  be  charged  with 


"repudiating  it.  For  other  and  wider 
"purposes,  I  have  endeavoured  to  un- 
'  fold  to  you  the  true  idea  of  the  Church, 
'by  teaching  you  to  distinguish  care- 
'  fully  between  that  Church  of  the  first- 
'  born,  of  whose  birth  and  life,  dignities 
'  and  destiny,  such  glorious  things  have 
'been  spoken,  and  any  outward  and 
'organized  community  of  professing 
'  Christians.  Keep  this  distinction 
'  steadily  in  view,  and  the  spell  of  that 
'  arrogant  assumption  will  be  broken  by 
'  which  the  Church  of  Rome  claims  for 
'  herself  all  the  powers  and  prerogatives 
'  of  the  unseen  Church  of  God.  Keep 
'this  distinction  steadily  in  view,  and, 
"under  cover  of  an  unconscious  confu- 
"sion  of  the  two  different  meanings  of 
"the  term  Church,  you  will  discover 
"some  stern  substantial  embodiments, 
"and  some  thin  ghosts  of  the  Popish 
"theory  stalking  in  regions  remote 
"  enough  from  Rome." 

Some  of  the  other  recent  pamphlets 
show  this  sermon  to  have  met  with  a  re- 
ception from  a  large  and  influential  part 
of  the  Free  Church,  revealing  a  danger  to 
its  liberties  which  may  be  greatly  more 
serious,  although  more  insidious,  than 
any  which  can  be  anticipated  from  the 
Courts  of  Justice.  The  free  expression 
of  conviction  is  plainly  essential  to  its 
life  ;  and  all  attempts  by  means  of  mis- 
representation, calumny,  public  accusa- 
tions of  heresy  or  treachery,  or  by  other 
similar  too  familiar  weapons,  to  resent 
or  preclude  the  utterance  of  those  differ- 
ences, which  in  every  truly  Free  Church 
must  exist,  ought  to  be  regarded  as  acts 
of  hostility  to  its  liberties,  and  disavowed 
and  reprobated  by  all  its  real  friends. 
One  or  two  of  these  publications  might, 
indeed,  justly  fall  under  this  censure, 
but  they  had  best  be  forgotten,  and  will 
not  be  here  named.  From  another  out 
of  this  bundle  a  few  sentences  may  be 
quoted,  as  written  in  a  different  spirit.1 
"It  will  surprise  no  careful  observer  to 
"find  that,  while  the  simply  practical 
"  Free  Churchmen  have  been  for  years 
"  quiet  and  silent,  the  other  party  in  the 

1  "The  Recent  Sermons  on  the  Headship 
Reviewed,"  by  the  Rev.  Walter  Smith,  Free 
Roxburgh  Church,  Edinburgh. 


A  Talk  about  the  National  Rifle  Meeting  at  Wimbledon.  303 


"  church,  who  held  the  doctrine  of  the 
" '  Headship  of  Christ ' — or  rather,  who 
"  identified  that  doctrine  with  the  posi- 
"  tion  which  they  maintained — have  been 
"ceaselessly  busy,  disseminating  their 
"  opinion  within  the  church  and  with- 
"out.  The  consequence  is,  that  any 
"modification  of  that  opinion  is  apt  to 
ube  regarded  as  a  kind  of  treason 
"against  the  Disruption,  an  attempt  to 
"  whitewash  the  Establishment,  and  to 
"make  the  sacrifice  of  the  Free  Church 
"  a  sort  of  martyrdom  by  mistake.  The 
"extreme  party  have  managed  so  to 
"diffuse  the  leaven  of  their  idea,  that 
"  all  freedom  of  opinion  is  well-nigh 
"  silenced;  and  thoughtful,  living,  earnest 
"  Free  Churchmen  are  terrified  into  mere 
"disruption  formulas.  Nothing  could 
"more  emphatically  illustrate  this  spirit 
"than  the  way  in  which  Dr.  Hanna's 
"  sermon  was  greeted  on  its  appearance, 
"  and  is  still  very  generally  regarded." 

Again,  with  reference  to  the  sermons 
on  the  other  side,  there  is  this  important 
testimony,  —  "I  believe^  indeed,  that 
"they  only  represent  a  portion  of  the 
"  Free  Church  community.  The  men  of 


'thought  among  us, — those  who  give 
'the  tone  to  opinion,  and  lead  on  the 
'  progress  of  the  present  into  the  future, 
' — think,  we- are  assured,  far  otherwise. 
'The  whole  current  of  opinion  in  the 
'  higher  circles  of  intelligence  is  to  exalt 
'  the  spiritual,  and  to  make  less  and 
'less  of  mere  forms  and  machineries." 
P.  9. 

The  Cardross  case  has  already  given 
rise  to  valuable  discussions  of  important 
principles  ;  and  may  have  also  disclosed 
hidden  internal  dangers  to  the  Church 
immediately  concerned.  The  final  deci- 
sion of  the  Cause  iray  probably  be 
waited  without  great  solicitude.  The 
Church  which  Knox  planted,  having 
during  three  centuries  survived  all  the 
storms  and  convulsions  under  which 
Scotland  has  suffered  and  attained  the 
present  maturity,  and  having  been  able 
to  keep  its  hold  against  the  assaults  of  a 
powerful  neighbour,  must,  although 
weakened  by  divisions,  be  too  deeply 
rooted  in  the  affections  of  the  nation 
to  be  likely  to  perish  by  any  external 
violence. 


A  TALK  ABOUT  THE  NATIONAL  EIFLE  ASSOCIATION  MEETING 

AT  WIMBLEDON. 

BY    J.    0.    TEMPLES,    CAPTAIN    COMMANDING    18lH    MIDDLESEX. 


Tom.  You  were  at  Wimbledon,  at  the 
great  national  rifle  meeting.  By  all  the 
accounts  I  have  seen  of  it,  it  must  have 
been  a  great  success  ;  but  I  should  like 
to  hear"  some  of  the  details  from  an  eye- 
witness ;  so  tell  me  about  it,  for  I  was 
confined  to  my  post  here  by  work  of  all 
sorts. 

Jack.  Well,  in  a  desultory  sort  of  way, 
I  will ;  but,  remember,  I  was  not  pre- 
sent the  whole  time,  as  my  avocations 
called  me  back  to  London  nearly  every 
day.  You  shall  have,  and  welcome, 
what  passed  under  my  own  observation ; 
and  I  will  also  give  you  some  thoughts 
that  have  occurred  to  me  since. 

T.  Do  so. 

J.  The  first  thing  that  struck  one  was 


the  complete  mixture  of  classes  ; — it 
forced  itself  on  your  notice  immediately, 
and  although  in  the  formation  of  our 
company  I  had  been  somewhat  accus- 
tomed to  it,  it  did  not  come  so  home  as 
when  I  saw  it  on  a  large  scale,  and 
amongst  strangers.  There  were  men 
holding  the  highest  social  positions  mix- 
«jing  as  equals  with  others  not  so  for- 
tunately placed,  and  along  the  whole 
line  of  civil  society.  It  came  off  some- 
thing in  this  shape  :  the  volunteers  were 
formed  into  squads,  each  about  sixteen 
strong,  and  the  officer  in  charge  took  the 
names  down  on  a  paper,  the  surnames 
only,  and  then  called  them  out  as  they 
came,  without  titles  or  additions  6"f  any 
kind,  thus, — Bowling,  Buckshorn,  John- 


304 


A  Talk  about  the  National  Rifle  Meeting  at  Wimbledon. 


son,  Childers,  Clasper,  &c.  The  first 
might  be  a  peer,  the  second  a  working 
man,  the  third  a  shopkeeper,  the  fourth 
a  yeoman,  the  fifth  a  captain  in  the 
Guards,  and  so  on.  There  they  stood, 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  intent  on  the  same 
object,  to  test  their  skill  in  a  generous 
rivalry ;  and  the  volunteer  uniform 
showed  no  difference.  You  will  see  the 
Times,  in  giving  the  names,  does  the 
same.  It  was  the  old  public  school 
custom  over  again,  and  is  a  sure  sign  of 
healthy  feeling.  Men  stood  upon  their 
merits  alone,  their  personal  merits  in 
the  use  of  the  rifle.  Besides,  the  inter- 
mixture of  classes  did  more ;  it  showed 
us  to  each  other,  and  we  found  the  mind 
of  the  gentleman  -was  common  to  all. 
It  was  "  Fair  play  and  old  England ;" 
each  man  did  his  best,  without  striving 
after  any  small  advantages  ;  we  stood 
upon  honour  with  each  other. 

T.  Do  you  mean  that  you  all  became 
acquainted  at  once  with  each  other  1 

J.  Quite  so  ;  and  it  was  not  long 
"before  there  was  great  clanship  amongst 
us — just  like  the  old  feeling  of  sides  at 
football  and  cricket,  and,  in  spite  of  our 
individual  rivalry,  we  cheered  a  success- 
ful shot  as  reflecting  credit  on  the  squad, 
— "  Well  done,  Johnson,"  "  Well  done, 
Buckshorn,"  when  they  got  centres.  And 
so  high  did  this  run,  that,  at  the  close 
of  the  day,  we  wished  to  challenge  any 
other  of  the  squads ;  and,  had  there  been 
time,  no  doubt  plenty  of  such  matches 
would  have  come  off.  Talking  of  centres, 
I  think  General  Hay  should  alter  the 
nomenclature  at  Hythe.  You  are  per- 
haps aware  that  bull's-eyes  are  confined 
to  distances  up  to  300  yards  only;  after 
that,  there  are  no  bull's-eyes,  properly  so 
called,  but  the  central  part  of  the  target 
is  called  the  centre.  I  observed  the 
north  countrymen,  Yorkshiremen,  and^ 
Swiss,  always  spoke  of  it  as  the  bull's- 
eye  ;  and  certainly  this  name  conveys  to 
the  uninitiated  a  better  idea,  besides 
being  more  agreeable  to  the  marksman. 
The  division  should  be  —  up  to  300 
yards,  bull's-eyes,  centres,  and  outers ; 
and,  after  that  distance,  bull's-eyes  and 
outer^f 

T.  There  is  not  much  in  that,  I  think. 


J.  Perhaps  not ;  but  we  may  as  well 
have  it  correct  at  first,  and  now  is  the 
time  to  rectify  these  little  matters. 

T.  But  now  tell  me  about  the  shoot- 
ing ;  for,  after  all,  that's  the  main  thing. 

J.  It  was  surprising,  and,  to  a  spec- 
tator who  carried  back  his  memory  but 
one  short  year,  must  have  seemed  a 
marvel.  Fancy  the  squad  in  which  I 
was.  Our  third  round  at  500  yards,  but 
two  men  missed  the  target,  and  one  of 
them  shot  from  the  shoulder,  having 
permission  to  do  so,  from  some  disability 
in  the  knee,  which  prevented  his  kneel- 
ing. All  the  others  either  got  outers 
or  bull's-eyes,  as  we  will  now  call  it. 
Why,  a  sheep  could  not  have  lived  for  a 
minute  there,  much  less  a  horse  or  a 
man.  The  average  merit  of  the  squad 
for  five  rounds  was  3.66  ;  and  you  must 
remember  this  was  the  first  year,  with 
but  little  opportunity  for  selection.  I 
came  myself,  not  because  I  was  the  best 
shot  of  my  company,  but  simply  because, 
having  had  no  opportunity  of  testing  the 
capabilities  of  any  one  by  reason  of  our 
butts  not  being  erected,  I  thought,  in 
case  of  failure,  my  shoulders  were  the 
broadest  to  bear  the  responsibility,  and, 
besides,  not  having  had  the  advantage 
of  a  course  at  Hythe,  I  was  willing  to 
run  the  risk  of  some  little  discredit 
against  the  certainty  of  the  advantage  of 
the  practice  ;  so,  without  having  fired  a 
round  of  ball  cartridge,  I  trusted  to  the 
position  drill  and  the  mechanical  truth 
of  the  rifle  ;  and  no  doubt  there  were 
numbers  of  others,  who,  if  not  quite  in 
so  forlorn  a  position  as  my  own,  at  the 
longer  ranges  could  have  had  little  or 
no  practice. 

T.  Was  there  much  question  as  to 
the  rifles  1 

J.  The  contest,  virtually,  was  confined 
to  the  long  Enfields,  the  Whitworths, 
and  the  Westley  Richards.  The  two 
former,  as  you  know,  are  muzzle-loaders ; 
the  latter  breech-loaders.  As  far  as  my 
own  observation  went,  the  long  Enfield, 
up  to  600  yards,  was  equal  to  either  for 
precision  —  indeed  I  should  have  pre- 
ferred mine.  You  will  remember  we 
shot  with  those  that  had  been  sup- 
plied us  by  the  National  Rifle  Associa- 


A  Talk  about  the  National  Rifle  Meeting  at  Wimbledon.  305 


tion ;  and  these  were  more  carefully  ad- 
justed in  their  sights  than  those  issued 
by  Government  to  the  corps.  Besides, 
the  pull  of  the  trigger  was  reduced 
from  some  8  or  9-lb.,  which  is  the  ordi- 
nary pull  of  the  Government  Enfield,  to 
about  4-lb.  ;  indeed,  every  ninth  or 
tenth  rifle  in  our  company  will  bear  its 
own  weight  on  the  trigger  without 
springing  it.  JSTow  this  should  not  be, 
and  it  is  a  pity  that  all  the  rifles  issued 
by  Government  should  not  be  adjusted 
to  a  3-lb.  or  4-lb.  pull.  It  is  a  great  disad- 
vantage, drilling  with  one  and  shooting 
with  another.  Now  no  man  can  shoot 
with  great  accuracy  with  a  9-lb.  pull  at 
a  trigger ;  the  effort  to  get  the  piece  off 
is  sure  to  derange  the  aim.  Nothing 
is  more  nice  than  the  adjustment  of  the 
finger  to  the  trigger ;  and,  out  of  fifteen 
shots,  a  4-lb.  pull,  as  compared  with  a 
9-lb.  pull,  is  worth  three  points,  if  not 
more. 

T.  Did  you  like  your  own  rifle  ?  I 
mean  the  Enfield  you  shot  with. 

J.  Exceedingly — so  much  so  that  I 
have  applied  to  the  Association  to  be 
allowed  to  purchase  it  for  the  Company. 
The  decision  rests  with  the  War-office, 
and  it  would  seem  a  pity  to  return  it 
into  store  to  remain  unused  for  another 
twelvemonths.  The  government  might 
put  an  enhanced  price  on  it — say  91.  or 
51.  ;  but  it  would  be  a  great  advantage 
to  the  first-class  men,  or,  at  least,  the 
marksmen  of  the  Company,  to  be  able 
to  practise  with  it  constantly.  I  doubt 
if  you  could  get  a  better  weapon  for  its 
range — say  of  600  yards.  I  know 
nothing  of  its  virtues  beyond  that  dis- 
tance; but,  if  the  "War-office  insist  on 
these  rifles  being  returned  to  them,  we 
shall  be  in  the  same  predicament  next 
year — that  is,  practising  with  rifles  with 
a  heavy  pull,  and  shooting  for  prizes 
with  rifles  with  a  light  one. 

T.  Did  you  shoot  at  the  long  ranges  ? 

/.  Yes  ;  I  competed  both  for  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge's  and  for  the  Duke 
of  Wellington's  prize,  and  only  got  on 
the  target  at  1000  yards  with  my 
ninth  shot  in  the  second  contest.  This 
was  with  a  Westley  Eichards,  which  I 
had  to  sight  for  myself;  and  it  was 


greatly  guess-work.  I  should  have  pre- 
ferred a  Whitworth ;  but  they  were  all 
engaged  by  the  volunteers  who  came  to 
shoot  for  the  Queen's  prize,  and  there- 
fore I  had  no  opportunity  of  trying 
them.  But,  though  not  successful  my- 
self, I  saw  some  good  practice  with 
the  Westley  Richards  at  these  ranges. 
The  rifle  I  used  struck  me  as  too  light — 
not  eight  pounds  in  weight,  I  think — to 
carry  such  a  flight  with  certainty ;  and 
it  certainly  kicked  more  than  the  Enfield, 
as  my  shoulder  testified  the  next  morn- 
ing. The  breech-loading  principle  is  an 
advantage  in  loading ;  but  it  has  the 
disadvantage  of  the  cartridge  greasing 
the  fingers,  and  thus  preventing  the 
firm  grip  both  of  the  left  and  right 
hands.  This,  unless  carefully  guarded 
against,  by  rubbing  the  fingers  quite 
dry  (which  takes  time)  is  much  against  a 
true  shot.  Indeed,  the  nicety  of  all  the 
points  required  at  these  distances  to 
make  a  successful  shot  is  wonderful.  It 
is  eye,  hand,  nerve,  and  perhaps  the 
"  electricity"  of  the  man  that  all  conies 
into  play  ;  and  the  singular  thing  is,  you 
can  tell,  as  you  pull  the  trigger,  if  you 
are  right.  I  always  felt  certain,  the 
moment  I  fired,  whether  I  had  hit  or 
missed.  It  is  an  indescribable  some- 
thing that  conveys  it  to  you,  of  which 
the  white  or  blue  flag,  some  seconds 
after,  is  only  the  communication  ;  and 
this  I  found  was  common  to  all.  I  saw 
Jacob  Knecht  of  Zurich  fire  the  last 
shot  that  won  the  Duke  of  Cambridge's 
prize  :  he  was  8,  Lieutenant  Lacey 
was  9.  Knecht  pulled,  and  instan- 
taneously exclaimed,  "Ah,  gute,  gute, 
a  bool's  eye,  a  bool's  eye,"  and  made 
almost  extravagant  exhibitions  of  de- 
light. I  stood  by,  I  confess,  incredu- 
lous ;  but,  some  ten  seconds  afterwards, 
the  blue  flag  showed  at  the  butts.  A 
bull's-eye  it  was;  and,  thus  scoring 
two,  Knecht  made  ten,  and  won  the 
prize.  It  was  an. exciting  moment.  Lieu- 
tenant Lacey,  standing  by,  was  second, 
when  he  might  well,  a  moment  before, 
have  felt  almost  certain  of  the  prize. 
Knecht  fired  sitting.  His  position  was 
admirably  steady ;  he  brought  his  rifle  at 
once  to  the  aim,  and  then,  after  a  single 


306  A  Talk  about  the  National  Rifle  Meeting  at  Wimbledon. 


moment's  dwell,  fired.  In  this  lies 
the  rifleman's  dexterity — to  pull  at  the 
instant  his  sight  tells  him  he  is  on.  It 
will  not  always  come  off  right  even  then  ; 
for  the  slightest  failure  of  finger  to  give 
the  impulse  will  defeat  him  ;  hut  to  pull 
when  he  is  not  on — and  this  he  must 
wait  for  and  work  for,  if  it  does  not,  as 
it  often  does  not,  come  at  once — is  just 
sheer  folly,  as  the  shot  is  sure  to  be 
wasted.  The  art  of  shooting  is  one  of 
the  mental  phenomena ;  "  trace  home 
the  lightning  to  the  cloud,"  and  you 
will  find  it  resolves  itself  into  a  brain- 
action,  a  sense.  "  It  strikes  the  electric 
chord  wherewith  we  are  darkly  bound," 
and  it  is  this  that  creates  the  excite- 
ment. Nothing  can  be  more  thrilling 
than  the  feeling  of  the  successful  shot. 
Thence  arises  the  affection  for  the  rifle 
itself.  You  love  it ;  you  talk  to  it.  I 
could  not  help  whispering  to  mine  in 
the  tent,  "If  you'll  be  true  to  me,  I'll 
be  true  to  you ;"  and  out  of  this  little 
social  compact  I  got  a  centre  at  600 
yards.  No  doubt  this  would  be  much 
enhanced  by  longer  familiarity.  By 
continued  practice  you  could  reduce 
distances  to  such  a  certainty  that  every 
20  yards  might  be  lined  off  on  the 
slide.  The  sighting  the  rifle  is  the  first 
grand  secret.  With  that  all  right  the 
rifleman  has  confidence  ;  and  confidence 
is  the  second  grand  secret  in  the  shot 

T.  But  tell  me,  what  did  you  do  when 
you  first  came  on  the  ground  on  the 
Monday  1 

J.  In  truth  there  was  not  much  to 
do.  The  volunteers  fell  in  at  one  o'clock 
and  were  marched  to  the  sides  of  the 
approach  of  the  Eoyal  Pavilion,  under 
the  command  of  a  good-natured  gentle- 
man, who  screeched  "  Shoudr-r-r-r-r-a- 
ar-r-r-r-ms  ! "  at  us ;  which  we  were  in  no 
hurry  to  do,  as  shouldering  arms,  even 
for  a  short  time — is  not  the  best  prepara- 
tion for  accurate  shooting.  Every  tittle 
of  physical  power  shoiild  be  carefully 
husbanded  in  a  match.  I  had  an  en- 
thusiastic young  Sherwood  Forester  near 
me ;  and  I  could  not  help  thinking  of 
Robin  Hood,  and  what  a  contrast  the 
scene  before  me  must  have  presented  to 
an  archeryagathering  in  his  day.  Twelve 


score  on  240  yards  was  an  outside  shot 
then ;  with  the  rifle  it  could  be  multi- 
plied by  4. 

T.  Tell  me  about  the  Common  it- 
self. Of  course  every  Londoner  knows 
Wimbledon  Common  ;  but  what  was  it 
like  on  the  day  of  the  meeting  ] 

J.  Well,  England  is  a  glorious  country. 
She  has  capacities  for  everything  ;  her 
Epsom,  her  Goodwood,  her  Doncasterand 
Newmarket,  are  all  race-courses  made  to 
our  hands  by  nature,  and  requiring  but 
little  of  art  to  make  them  as  perfect  as 
they  are.  Look  at  the  broad  stretches 
of  the  Thames  and  Isis  for  an  eight-oar 
match  ;  the  sunny  spots  by  thousands 
that  are  spread  on  her  green  lap  for 
cricket ;  or  the  glad  waters  of  the 
Solent,  or  the  Channel,  for  a  trial  of 
speed  in  a  fore-and-aft  rigged  yacht. 
They  are  each  and  all  excellent  in  their 
way ;  but  none  surpass  in  their  pecu- 
liar features  the  complete,  the  perfect, 
natural  rifle-range  that  Wimbledon 
Common  presents.  Stretching  across 
the  common  from  left  to  right,  there 
was  ample  room  for  ten  pairs  of  butts, 
twelve  feet  high,  and  twenty-five  feet 
wide  at  the  base  ;  while  between  every 
second  pair  stood  four  .others  of  the 
same  size,  but  farther  back,  for  the 
longer  ranges  ;  so  that  there  was  no 
difficulty  in  accommodating  from  three 
hundred  to  four  hundred  riflemen  at  a 
time,  and,  from  the  level  nature  of  the 
ground,  at  any  range  from  200  yards 
to  1000.  It  looks  as  if  it  was  intended 
by  nature  for  the  national  rifle  practice- 
ground  ;  and,  thanks  to  the  kindness  of 
Lord  Spencer,  no  pains  were  spared  to 
make  itf  worthy  of  the  first  meeting. 
Within  an  easy  distance  of  London,  a 
nearly  worthless  soil,  heather  and  ling 
growing  on  a  great  bog, — a  little  drainage, 
and  the  consent  of  the  owners  and 
neighbours,  is  all  that  is  necessary  to 
secure  it  as  a  first-rate  ground  for  the 
country. 

T.  Yes;  but  that  consent,  I  hear, 
will  be  hard  to  get. 

J.  So  I  hear ;  but,  as  to  the  "owners 
and  commoners,  their  rights  are  purchas- 
able ;  and,  were  I  interested,  I  should 
prefer  the  money-value  to  the  right 


A  Talk  about  the  National  Rifle  Meeting  at  Wimbledon. 


307 


to  feed  geese  and  donkeys — which  Is 
about  all  that  the  spot  seemed  worth. 
With  the  neighbours  it  is,  however, 
different ;  and  I  can  well  understand  that 
the  place,  under  a  constant  repetition  of 
such  an  excitement  as  was  witnessed 
at  the  meeting,  might  be  frightened  out 
of  all  its  propriety.  Servant-girls  had 
lots  of  volunteer  sweethearts — to  say 
nothing  of  the  gipsy  hordes  of  tinkers, 
hawkers,  and  vagabonds  of  all  sorts  that 
are  attracted  to  such  gatherings,  as  a 
matter  of  course.  But  much  of  this  was 
entirely  dependent  on  the  novelty  of  the 
thing ;  and,  were  the  common  once  pur- 
chased by  the  nation,  and  enclosed,  and 
the  different  sites  let  out  to  the  London 
Eifle  Corps,  reserving  the  right  of  one 
or  more  general  meeting,  the  novelty 
would  be  over. 

T.  Still,  for  the  work  of  the  annual 
meeting,  it  would  be  a  sort  of  Epsom 
jubilee ;  would  it  not  ? 

J.  I  hope  not.  I  do  trust  the  tone 
of  our  riflemen  will  be  healthier  and 
more  robust  than  the  tone  of  the  turf — 
from  which  at  the  very  outset  I  would 
draw  the  broadest  line  of  demarcation. 
I  do  not  see  why  the  gipsies  and  vaga- 
bonds should  be  allowed  to  congre- 
gate at  all,  especially  as  the  ground 
will  be  enclosed ;  and,  besides,  I  should 
like  to  cut  away  from  it  everything  like 
betting.  Why  not  assimilate  it  to 
cricket  and  boating  1  We  never  played 
or  rowed  for  money.  If  gambling  be 
once  admitted — legitimatized  I  might 
say — as  it  has  been  on  the  turf,  depend 
on  it,  rifle-practice  will  degenerate.  Do 
let  us  try  and  keep  the  thing  pure  at 
first ;  and,  if  our  children  let  it  down,  the 
fault  will  rest  with  them,  not  with  us. 
It  a  little  goes  against  the  grain  with 
me  that  there  should  be  a  need  of  prizes. 
The  nobler  and  the  manlier  lesson  would 
surely  be  the  generous  rivalry  of  being 
first. 

T.  My  good  fellow,  the  thing  would 
not  work.  You  won't  get  men  to  come 
distances  simply  to  get  a  name  :  and, 
besides,  they  must  look  to  something 
to  pay  expenses. 

J.  Consider  how  few  after  all  can 
attain  the  prizes ;  and  I'm  not  so  sure 


that  the  fame  of-  being  a  crack  rifle- 
shot would  not  with  a  large  number  be 
enough.  Still,  if  there  must  be  prizes, 
let  the  contest  be  for  them  and  them 
alone, — cups  and  medals,  and  such  like. 
Let  us  forego  money  prizes,  and  dis- 
countenance all  bets  and  betting,  and 
sweep  away  all  the  hideous  devilries  of 
ring  and  turf.  The  thing  has  been  in- 
augurated in  the  right  tone.  If  there 
was  a  spice  of  the  devil  in  it  at  all,  it 
lurked  beneath  the  smiles  of  Aunt  Sally. 

T.  Tell  me  about  that  lady ;  was  she 
like  what  she  is  at  Epsom  1 

J.  Something,  but  with  an  improved 
character ;  and  there  was,  no  doubt^ 
sport  in  the  thing.  Any  one,  whoever  he 
was,  by  paying  a  shilling,  was  entitled 
to  a  shot,  and,  if  he  got  a  bull's-eye, 
shared  in  the  pool  at  the  close  of  the 
day  with  the  others  who  were  equally 
fortunate.  This  would  be  innocent 
enough,  if  the  betting  could  be  kept  out 
of  it ;  but  occasionally  you  heard  the 
"  five  to  one,"  or  larger  odds  against  the 
shot,  break  out.  This,  however,  might 
be  corrected  by  a  rule  to  meet  it ;  and, 
while  the  management  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  admirable  staff  of  men,  from  General 
Hay  downwards,  who  did  duty  at  Wim- 
bledon, it  would  be  easy  both  to  impose 
the  rule,  and  to  see  that  it  was  kept. 
•  The  officers  were  educated  gentlemen, 
and  held  their  men  in  first-rate  working 
order ;  hence  the  absence  of  all  accidents, 
and  the  avoidance  of  all  unpleasantness 
in  the  agreeable  week  passed  there.  If 
the  national  meeting  be  made  the 
standard,  you  would  have  the  true  spirit 
given  to  all  the  provincial  meetings 
throughout  the  country.  Depend  on  it, 
if  once  gambling  is  allowed  to  take 
place  at  rifle-meetings,  the  thing  will 
become  a  curse  instead  of  a  blessing. 

T.  Well,  I  agree  with  you,  and  will 
come  some  day  with  the  best  of  mine  to 
shoot  with  the  best  of  yours,  for  honour 
and  glory  alone. 

J.  Agreed ;  and  I  can  show  you  a 
splendid  range — a  thousand  yards — as 
level  as  a  bowling  green,  and  with  a  fine 
lay  of  sheep-walk  beyond  it.  It  is  beau- 
tifully situated  in  the  very  heart  of 
England. 


308 


A  Talk  about  the  National  Rifle  Meeting  at  Wimbledon. 


T.  You  have  told  me  nothing  of  the 
meeting  as  a  demonstration  to  other 
countries.  How,  think  you,  will  it  ap- 
pear to  them  ? 

J.  It  left  on  my  mind  the  deep  conviction 
that  you  will  hear  nothing  more  of  the 
invasion  of  England.  In  this  respect  it 
beat  the  review  hollow.  That  was  a 
grand  thing,  a  nohle  thing  ;|  but  it  was 
soldiering,  and  there  are  others  who  can 
play  at  soldiers  besides  ourselves.  The 
French  can,  the  Austrians  can,  the  Prus- 
sians can  ;  but  they  can't  shoot — I  mean, 
it  does  not  come  so  natural  to  them  as 
it  does  to  us.  .Why,  I  stood  in  a  squad 
of  sixteen  men,  to  shoot  for  the  Whit- 
worth  rifles  ;  perhaps,  with  three  or  four 
exceptions,  not  one  of  those  men  had 
ever  fired  a  rifle  a  short  year  ago ;  and 
yet,  as  I  said  before,  not  a  sheep  could 
have  lived  a  minute  before  them  at 
500  yards.  Why,  any  four  of  them 
would  have  silenced  a  gun  in  a  couple 
or  three  discharges,  by  striking  dead 
every  man  and  horse  attached  to  it.  It 
is  true,  we  had  the  Victorias  and  the 
Inns  of  Court  men  in  the  squad  (and 
right  well  they  shot),  and  generally,  per- 
haps, the  volunteers  who  assembled  at 
Wimbledon,  in  some  sense,  may  be 
looked  upon  as  picked  men ;  but  you 
may  be  sure  it  was  but  a  matter  of 
small  degree,  and  that  in  any  company  • 
or  corps  you  would  find  the  next  fifteen 
or  twenty  nearly,  if  not  quite,  as  good 
as  the  men  that  were  sent.  Next 
year  I  believe  1000  yards  will  be  as 
readily  and  truly  gauged  as  the  500 
were  then.  All  our  men  want  now 
is  the  opportunity  of  practice.  The 
position  drill  is  a  truth,  and  a  little 
actual  shooting  is  all  that  is  now  needed 
to  turn  it  to  account.  The  north  coun- 
trymen did  better  than  the  south  from 
this  very  cause.  With  us  southerners, 
and  particularly  with  the  Londoners,  it 
was  a  very  difficult  thing  to  get  at  a 
range  at  all,  and  much  interest  had  to 
be  used  to  get  even  the  selected  men  a 
shot  before  the  day.  When  once  we 
have  got  ranges — and  it  will  not  now  be 
long  first — the  Saxon  eye,  and  steadiness 
of  hand  and  temper  will  be  sure  to  tell, 
and  you  will  find  the  mountaineers  nei- 


ther from  Scotland  nor  Switzerland  will 
beat  us. 

T.  Talking  of  Switzerland,  how  did 
the  Switzers  do  1 

J.  They  were  first-rate.  They  were 
no  doubt  almost  without  exception  ad- 
mirable shots,  and  could  well  be  entrusted 
with  their  liberties  against  a  whole 
army  of  Zouaves  and  Turcos.  They 
were  intelligent,  well- conditioned  men, 
who  quickly  learnt  to  appreciate  the 
English  rifle ;  and  I  really  believe  the  best 
thing  that  could  have  happened  to  them 
was  the  detention  of  their  own  weapons 
in  the  French  Douanes,  for  it  was  the 
means  of  introducing  them  to  a  better 
weapon.  In  this  way  the  accident  may 
bear  upon  the  fortunes  of  Europe,  should 
the  unequal  game  of  war  be  tried. 

T.  Some  objection  has  been  made,  I 
believe,  to  opening  the  competition  to 
all  comers,  as  teaching  the  foreigner  to 
beat  us  with  our  own  weapons. 

J.  I  heard  of  it ;  but  don't  agree 
with  the  objectors.  I  believe  open  com- 
petition is  the  soul  of  all  excellence  : 
and,  of  all  nations,  the  English  are  sure 
to  profit  by  it.  But,  of  all  people,  the 
Swiss  should  be  admitted  to  share  in  the 
advantage  as  a  matter  of  policy  ;  because, 
in  the  game  of  European  politics,  their 
sympathies  are  sure  to  be  with  England, 
and  thus,  in  giving  them  a  better  weapon, 
we  are  in  fact  assisting  an  ally. 

T.  Were  there  not  some  complaints 
of  the  cartridges  at  the  meeting  1 

I.  Yes,  great  complaints ;  but  I  was 
unable  to  judge  of  them,  because,  as  I 
mentioned  to  you,  I  had-  not  fired  ball 
cartridge  before. 

T.  No  doubt  the  controversy  will 
lead  to  the  best  thing  being  procured  in 
the  end ;  for  there  is  nothing  to  prevent 
celerity  of  loading,  which  is  the  object 
of  the  easy  fit,  being  combined  with 
accuracy  of  shooting,  as  soon  as  the 
right  measures  both  in  powder  and  lead 
are  hit.  Did  you  witness  the  conclusion 
of  the  contest? 

J.  No,  I  did  not.  I  was  obliged  to 
leave  after  the  rifle  given  by  the  Swiss 
was  shot  for.  But  the  practice  seems  to 
have  been  admirable.  Twenty- four  points 
obtained  out  of  thirty  shots — ten  shots 


On  Uninspired  Prophecy, 


309 


at  800,  900,  and  1,000  respectively— won 
the  Queen's  prize  ;  and  the  victor  was  a 
young  man,  not  of  age— =-a  strong  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  the  public  school  corps, 
which  I  should  like  to  see  instituted  at 
once.  It  will  be  long  a  question  be- 
tween the  young  and  the  middle-aged 
men.  If  "  years  steal  fire  from  the  mind, 
and  vigour  from  the  limb,"  in  rifle- 
shooting  at  least  they  will  impart  steadi- 
ness and  judgment.  Still,  the  keenness 
of  sight  and  the  pliancy  of  body  are  with 
the  youth,  and  they  are  wonderful  aids 
in  such  a  contest.  It  is,  however,  a  great 


thing  for  the  middle-aged  men  of  this 
generation  to  find  a  new  pastime  opened 
to  them,  and  one  in  which  they  can 
largely  utilize  the  love  of  sport  and  exer- 
cise that  they  cherished  in  their  youth,  at 
a  time  when  cricket  and  boating  must  be 
perforce  foregone.  The  rifle  is  in  their 
hands  ;  and  they  can  use  it  up  to  a  green 
old  age,  and  improve  year  by  year  in 
the  knowledge  and  practice  of  their 
piece  ;  and,  if  the  boys  beat  them,  they 
will,  as  was  the  case  here,  have  the 
satisfaction  of  being  beaten  by  their 
sons. 


ON  UNINSPIRED   PKOPHECY. 


BY    HERBERT    COLERIDGE. 


UNINSPIRED  Prophecy  !  The  phrase  will 
probably  sound  like  a  contradiction  in 
terms  to  many  readers.  From  our  early 
familiarity  with  the  prophetical  writings 
of  the  Bible,  we  are  led  so  irresistibly 
to  associate  the  power  of  foretelling 
future  events  with  the  presence  of  a 
divine  and  holy  afflatus,  that  we  can 
hardly  bring  ourselves  to  admit  the 
authenticity  of  any  alleged  instances  of 
the  exercise  of  the  same  power,  when 
they  occur  beyond  the  pale  of  the  sacred 
books.  Yet  even  the  Bible  itself,  in 
such  cases  as  that  of  Balaam,  and  of 
the  Egyptian  and  other  magicians  (of 
whose  business  divination  formed  a  con- 
siderable part),  and  in  the  various  direc- 
tions and  warnings  about  false  prophets 
contained  in  the  law,1  evidently  coun- 
tenances a  belief  that  a  real  power  of 
seeing  into  futurity  existed,  not  only  in 
chosen  individuals  of  a  "peculiar  people," 
but  among  the  heathen  also,  and  in  men 
by  no  means  remarkable  for  sanctity. 
And  it  will  be  hardly  necessary  to 
remind  the  reader,  that  in  the  early 
history  of  all  nations,  the  existence  of 
such  a  power  under  one  form  or  another 
is  tacitly  assumed,2  while  in  those  of 
more  advanced  civilization,  such  as  the 

1  Deut.  xiii.  1 — 3.  xvii.  20 — 22. 

2  Cic.  de  Div.  i.  1,  2. 


Greeks  and  Romans,  special  institutions 
for  the  solemn  communication  of  this 
important  species  of  information  were 
organized  and  maintained  as  an  essential 
part  of  the  state  machinery.  At  a  cer- 
tain era,  however,  in  the  life  of  each 
people  this  general  and  unhesitating 
faith  begins  to  waver ;  the  scepticism, 
which  originates  in  the  more  educated 
portion  of  the  community,  slowly  filters 
downward  through  the  several  under- 
lying strata,  and  after  a  while  becomes 
widely  diffused,  although  a  dim  notion 
not  only  of  the  possibility  of  such  know- 
ledge, but  also  of  its  continued  existence 
in  certain  mysteriously  favoured  indivi- 
duals at  any  given  epoch,  is  never  per- 
haps wholly  eradicated. 

It  is  not,  however,  our  intention  on 
the  present  occasion  to  enter  into  any 
discussion  respecting  the  possible  nature 
and  source  of  this  power,  or  to  account 
by  any  theory  of  our  own  for  the  extra- 
ordinary influence  it  has  at  different 
times  exercised  over  mankind.  We 
rather  wish  to  bring  together  some  of 
the  more  striking  instances  of  its  opera- 
tion, which  may  serve  to  call  attention 
to  a  subject  of  considerable  interest  in 
more  points  of  view  than  one.  To  any 
really  philosophical  investigation  of.the 
subject,  a  much  larger  accumulation  of 
instances  than  we  at  present  possess 


310 


On  Uninspired  Prophecy. 


would  be  an  indispensable  requisite ; 
and  those  here  given  are  merely  in- 
tended as  a  first  contribution  towards 
such  a  collection.  It  will  be  as  well, 
however,  to  remind  the  reader,  that  the 
instances  we  are  about  to  bring  forward 
are  those  of  prediction  proper,  that  is  to 
say,  of  a  distinct  foretelling  of  events 
which  do  not  actually  take  place  till 
long  after  the  utterance  of  the  pro- 
phecy. Mere  chance  coincidences,  such 
as  are  occasionally  evolved  from  the 
names  of  individuals  by  some  anagram- 
matic  process,1  or  such  as  are  found  to 
exist  now  and  then  between  the  mean- 
ing of  the  ^name  of  an  individual  and  his 
actual  career  in  life,2  however  striking 
they  may  seem,  must  here  be  passed 
over. 

The  Greek  oracles  naturally  come 
first  for  consideration,  and  among  them 
those  of  Apollo  clearly  have  a  right  to 
pre-eminence.  For  although  Jupiter 
and  other  Gods  did  a  little  prophetic 
business  for  a  select  set  of  clients, 
the  establishment  at  Delphi  practically 
eclipsed  all  the  others,  and  almost  re- 
duced them  to  a  state  of  inactivity. 
Many  were  deterred  from  making  use  of 
the  older  shrines  by  some  uncomfort- 
able or  nerve-shaking  ceremonial,  to 
which  the  inquirer  was  obliged  to  sub- 
mit before  a  response  could  be  elicited, 
or  by  the  filthy  habits  of  the  priests  3 
(as  at  Dodona) :  Apollo  managed  mat- 
ters with  more  practical  wisdom  in  these 
respects,  besides  throwing  open  gratis  to 
the  inspection  of  visitors  that  magnificent 
museum  of  ancient  art,  which  attested 
the  superstition  and  the  gratitude  of 
half  the  ancient  world.  Yet  it  is  singu- 
lar enough,  that  hardly  one  unimpeach- 
able instance  of  a  prediction,  truly  and 
fairly  verified  by  the  event,  can  be 
quoted  out  of  the  multitude  preserved 
to  us  by  ancient  authors.  For  in  the 
first  place  it  must  be  remembered,  that 
many  of  the  responses  of  the  oracle,  we 
might  say  a  majority,  were  mere  moral 
apothegms,  such  as  "know  thyself," 

1  E.  g.  Horatio  Nelson — Honor  est  a  Nilo. 
William  Noy — I  moyl  in  law. 

2  As  Demosthenes,  Aristides,  &c. 

3  II.  xvi.  235. 


"  nothing  in  excess,"  &c.,  or  opinions 
given  as  to  the  course  to  be  adopted  in 
-cases  of  conscience.  Another  large  por- 
tion consisted  of  ambiguous  answers, 
which  could  be  construed  so  as  to  save 
the  credit  of  the  oracle,  whichever  way 
the  event  fell  out ;  mere  quibbles  of 
language,  in  fact,  such  as  that  given  to 
Crcesus  as  to  his  crossing  the  Halys, 4 
and  to  Pyrrhus,  relative  to  his  .chance 
of  success  in  his  campaign  against  Rome;5 
while  not  a  few,  which  seem  more  truly 
predictive  in  character,  are  cases  of  fulfil- 
ment according  to  the  letter,  by  means 
of  some  identity  of  name  between  two 
persons  or  places,  one  of  which  was  well 
known,  the  other  not.  Of  this  last  sort, 
the  well-known  prediction  as  to  the 
death  of  our  Henry  IV.  at  Jerusalem,  in- 
troduced by  Shakspeare  in  the  second 
part  of  his  Henry  IV.  is  a  conspicuous 
example 6  in  modern  times,  and  bears 
an  exact  analogy  to  that  which  deluded 
the  wretched  Cambyses  into  his  terrible 
Ethiopian  expedition,  by  promising  him 
that  his  death-bed  should  be  in  Ecba- 
tana.7  A  predecessor,  too,  of  Pyrrhus 
on  the  Epirot  throne,  Alexander,  was 
unlucky  enough  to  be  the  victim  of  a 
precisely  similar  humbug  on  the  part 
of  the  venerable  oracle  of  Dodona.8  He 
was  told  to  avoid  the  river  Acheron, 
and  as  there  was  a  river  of  some  note 
bearing  that  name  in  his  own  kingdom 
of  Epirus,  he  naturally  supposed  that  he 
might  safely  accept  an  invitation  to  an 
Italian  campaign  on  behalf  of  the  Taren- 
tines,  who  just  then  were  suffering 
annoyance  from  their  Lucanian  and 
Bruttian  neighbours.  He  ran  upon  his 
doom,  however,  as  usual ;  he  found  a 
trumpery  stream  calling  itself  Acheron, 
in  Bruttium,  and  there  sure  enough  he 
was  killed  in  the  most  appropriate 
manner,  by  some  treacherous  Lucanian 
exiles,  while  attempting  to  cross  its 
swollen  waters.  These  would  answer 
our  purpose  well  enough  could  we  be 
certain,  (which  we  cannot,)  that  they 
were  not  invented  after  the  event,  of 


4  Herod,  i.  91. 

5  Act  iv.  Sc.  4. 
8  Justin,  xii.  3. 


s  Cic.  de  Div.  ii.  56. 
7  Herod,  iii.  61. 


On  Uninspired  Prophecy. 


311 


which,  in  most  cases,  the  Delphic  estab- 
lishment would  be  the  first  to  receive 
intelligence.  Probably,  as  the  oracle 
grew  richer  and  richer,  it  kept  in  per- 
manent pay  a  number  of  secret  and  very 
special  correspondents,  and  thus  secured 
the  latest  news  at  the  earliest  possible 
period. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  famous  re- 
sponse given  to  the  Athenian  envoys 
before  the  battle  of  Thermopylae,  that 
the  "  wooden  wall "  had  been  granted 
by  Jove  to  Athene  as  a  last  refuge  for 
the  inhabitants  of  the  doomed  city,  and 
the  distinct  prediction  that  Salamis 
should  be  a  scene  of  slaughter,1  some 
months  before  the  Persian  fleet  was 
actually  destroyed  there,  comes  nearer 
to  the  fulfilment  of  our  conditions  than 
any  other.  In  this  case  we  have  the 
advantage  of  contemporary  testimony 
to  the  fact  of  the  prediction  and  the 
time  of  its  delivery  in  the  person  of 
Herodotus ;  and  although  we  may  not 
quite  share  his  reverent  faith  in  these 
prophetic  utterances,  and  may  suspect 
that  Themistocles  had  as  much  to  do 
with  the  inspiration  of  the  Pythoness  on 
this  occasion  as  Apollo,  still  the  guess 
was  a  bold  one,  and  the  accuracy  of 'its 
fulfilment  must  have  struck  even  those 
in  the  secret.  Neither  the  place  of  the 
battle^  nor  the  victorious  issue,  were  in 
any  sense  certainties.  So  in  the  account 
of  the  plague  which  desolated  Athens 
in  the  second  year  of  the  Peloponnesian 
war,  Thucydides  mentions  an  ancient 
prediction,  one  at  least  in  existence  be- 
fore his  own  time,  which  foretold  the 
approach  of  a  Dorian  war  with  a  pesti- 
lence in  its  train ; 2  and,  notwithstand- 
ing his  sneering  criticism,  it  is  evident 
that  the  correspondence  of  the  event 
with  the  prophecy  was  sufficiently 
noteworthy  to  cause  no  small  stir  in 
people's  minds  at  Athens.  To  another 
recommending  that  a  certain  plot  of 
ground  under  the  Acropolis  had  better 
be  left  untouched  and  unbuilt  upon3 — 
an  injunction  which  had  to  be  disre- 
garded when  the  whole  population  were 

Herod  yii.  141.  «  Thuc.  II.  54. 

3  Thuc.  II.  17. 


driven  to  take  refuge  within  the  walls 
— he  seems  to  attach  somewhat  more 
weight,  and  suggests  an  interpretation 
of  the  oracular  fragment,  plausible 
enough  in  itself,  but  which  robs  it  to 
some  extent  of  its  prophetic  character. 
His  solution  is,  that  it  would  be  most 
assuredly  better  for  Athens  that  the  plot 
of  land  should  remain  open,  because  as 
long  as  it  was  possible  to  keep  it  so,  so 
long  would  it  be  evident  that  the  ex- 
treme limit  of  calamity  and  distress  had 
not  been  reached.  In  other  words,  the 
building  would  not  cause  the  calamity, 
but  would  never  take  place  as  a  fact  tUl 
the  worst  calamity  was  at  hand. 

We  might  go  on  to  cite  other  similar  in- 
stances ;  but,  as  was  said  before,  although 
a  complete  collection  of  all  the  oracular 
responses  recorded  in  the  pages  of  Greek 
writers  would  amount  to  many  hundreds, 
the  number  of  fortunate  fulfilments,  in 
cases  where  collusion  can  be  shown  to 
have  been  impossible,  is  far  less  than  the 
average  of  probabilities  would  lead  one 
to  expect.  De  Quincey,  in  his  excellent 
essay  on  the  Pagan  Oracles,  to  a  certain 
extent  accounts  for  this  by  an  ingenious 
theory  that  the  two  principal  functions 
of  the  establishment  at  Delphi  were  that 
of  an  universal  news-agency  office,  and 
that  of  a  national  bank,  or  safe  depository 
of  money  and  valuables,  which  the  domes- 
tic architecture  of  the  time  exposed  to 
the  mercy  of  the  first  burglar  who  could 
use  a  chisel ;  but  at  the  same  time  he 
certainly  understates  its  activity  and 
vogue  as  a  means  of  obtaining  informa- 
tion as  to  coming  events. 

Let  us  cross  the  Adriatic  and  enter 
the  territory,  of  that  sublime  nation 
whose  history  was  for  so  many  ages  the 
history  of  the  world,  of  which  in  the  ful- 
ness of  time  they  became  the  masters. 
How  different  is  the  impression  we  re- 
ceive from  a  survey  of  their  history  from 
that  derived  from  the  pages  of  Hero- 
dotus, Thucydides,  and  Xenophon.  In 
Greece,  the  component  elements  of  the 
nation  seem  to  be  perpetually  exerting 
repulsive  forces  on  each  other :  no  combi- 
nation is  ever  stable ;  while  Rome, 
through  all  the  long  stages  of  its  rise 
and  decline,  is  ever  one,  and  expands 


312 


On  Uninspired  Prophecy. 


only  by  absorptions  into  a  central  nu- 
cleus rapidly  and  irresistibly  assimilated, 
rather  than  by  mere  appendages  of 
territory  which  never  lose  their  original 
character  of  excrescences,  merely  adher- 
ing to  the  main  body,  not  partaking  as 
true  members  of  its  life  and  energy.  It 
is  this  uniting  tendency  ever  rivetting 
the  attention  on  the  ancient  centre  and 
birthplace  of  the  nation  that  invests 
their  history  with  such  unequalled 
grandeur  ;  and  we  should  d,  priori  almost 
expect  to  find  that  such  a  part  as  it  was 
theirs  to  play  on  the  world's  great  stage 
would  not  be  wholly  devoid  of  elements 
of  mystery,  or  unaccompanied,  at  least  in 
tradition,  with  dark  and  portentous  in- 
dications of  a  mighty  destiny.  Accord- 
ingly we  do  find  at  the  very  outset  an 
augural  prediction  recorded  respecting 
the  duration  of  their  empire,  which  it 
took  twelve  centuries  to  fulfil,  but  which 
those  centuries  did  fulfil  with  an  exacti- 
tude equal  to  that  challenged  by  com- 
mentators for  the  numerical  prophecies  of 
the  book  of  Daniel.  The  firm  belief  in 
the  foundation  of  Rome  about  the  middle 
of  the  eighth  century  before  our  era, 
and  in  the  existence  of  a  contempora- 
neous augury  interpreted  to  predict  a 
continuous  existence  of  twelve  centuries, 
is  a  fact  which  cannot  be  disputed, 
whether  we  look  upon  Romulus  and  his 
twelve  vultures1  as  mythical  or  not; 
and  it  is  equally  beyond  controversy  that 
the  deposition  of  Augustulus,  the  last  of 
the  western  emperors  in  the  middle  of 
the  fifth  century  of  our  era,  coincides 
almost  to  a  year  with  the  expiration  of  - 
the  appointed  time.  Here  the  nature  of 
the  case  at  once  precludes  -all  possibility 
of  collusion ;  and,  what  is  still  more  curi- 
ous, we  are  not  concerned  to  prove  the 
actual  occurrence  of  the  omen  as  a  fact ; 
the  universal  and  undoubting  assump- 
tion of  its  reality  by  every  generation  of 
Romans  renders  the  authenticity  of  the 
story  immaterial.  This  is  probably  the 
most  striking  instance  of  the  fulfilment 
of  prophecy  recorded  in  history,  and  it 
leceives  additional  weight  from  the  con- 
sideration that  no  hypothesis  of  a  double 
fulfilment,  one  literal  and  immediate,  the 
1  Cic.  dc  Divin.  i.  48.  Censorin.  de  d.  N.  c.  17. 


other  more  distant  and  metaphorical  or 
typical,  can  by  any  ingenuity  find  place 
here. 

The  discovery  of  America,  which 
modern  researches  have  shown  to  have 
been  achieved  by  the  Norsemen  as  early 
as  the  tenth  century  of  our  era,2  was 
anticipated  by  a  Latin  poet,  who  pro- 
bably flourished  in  the  first  or  second ; 
although  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
prophecy  is  a  wide  one,  and  fits  its  in- 
terpretation somewhat  loosely.  At  the 
close  of  the  second  act  of  Seneca's 
Medea,  the  chorus  end  their  song  with 
the  lines, — 

"  Venient  annis  saecula  seris, 
"  Quibus  Oceanus  vincula  reruni 
"  Laxet,  et  ingens  pateat  tellus, 
"  Tethysque  novos  detegat  orbes, 
"  Nee  sit  terris  ultima  Thule." 

Thus  translated  by  John  Studley  in 
1585  :— 

"  Time  shall  in  fine  out  breake 
"When  ocean  wave  shall  open   every 

realme, 
"  The  wandering  world  at  will  shall  open 

lye, 

"And  Typhis  will  some  newe  founde 

land  survey ; 
"  Some  travelers  shall  the  countreys  farre 

escrye, 
"  Beyonde  small  Thule,  knowen  furthest 

at  this  day." 

But  an  old  poem  in  our  own  language, 
composed  probably  about  the  middle  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  will  furnish  us 
with  a  far  more  remarkable  instance. 
In  the  tenth  "  Passus,"  or  fytte  of  the 
Vision  of  Piers  Plouhman,  Clergy,  one 
of  the  allegorical  personages,  after  a  long 
exposition  of  the  sad  state  into  which 
religion  had  then  fallen,  gives  warning 
of  the  coming,  though  still  distant, 
retribution,  in  lines  which  are  worth 
quoting  in  their  ancient  garb  : — 

"  Ac  ther  shal  come  a  kyng, 
"  And  confesse  yow  religiouses, 
"  And  bete  you  as  the  Bible  telleth 
"  For  brekynge  of  youre  rule  ; 

2  See   the  Antiqq.  Americanae,  p.  xxix.  et 
sqq.     Copenhagen     1837. 


On  Uninspired  Prophecy. 


313 


"  And  amende  monyals,1 
"  Munkes  and  chanons, 
"  And  puten  to  Mr  penaunce, 
"  Ad  pristinum  statum  ire. 


of 


"And   thanne    shal    the    abbot 

Abyngdone, 

"  And  al  his  issue  for  evere, 
"  Have  a  knok  of  a  kyng, 
"  And  incurable  the  wounde." 

Vision,  vv.  6239-63. 

Two  centuries  elapse,  and  the  forgotten 
prophecy  is  fulfilled  ;  a  king  with  a  de- 
cided propensity  for  "  knocking"  in  all 
its  branches  is  seated  on  the  English 
throne,  and  the  Abbot  of  Abingdon  and 
his  brethren  duly  receive  the  "  incurable 
wounde,"  commonly  called  "the  Sup- 
pression of  the  Monasteries,"  and  dis- 
appear for  ever.  Here,  too,  as  in  the 
Roman  augury,  the  effect  of  the  coinci- 
dence is  much  heightened  by  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  case,  and  the  impossibility 
of  any  trickery  being  employed  to  bring 
about  the  result. 

A  few  cases  of  more  recent  occur- 
rence may  be  cited,  but  they  rarely  rise 
much  above  the  level  of  lucky  hits,  or 
are  expressed  in  language  too  general 
and  vague  to  cause  any  great  surprise 
at  their  fulfilment.     Perhaps  the  best 
specimen  of  the  kind  is  the  well-known 
prophecy  by  Lord  Chesterfield,  of  the 
coming  on  of  the  French  Revolution. 
"Writing  in  April,  1752,  to  his  son,  he 
lys,  "  But  this  I  foresee,  that  before 
the  end  of  this  century,  the  trade  of 
both  king  and  priest  will  not  be  half 
'  so  good  an  one  as  it  has  been.     Du- 
'clos,  in  his  reflections,  has  observed, 
'  and  very  truly,  '  qu'  il  y  a  un  germe 
' '  de  raison  qui  commence  ct  se  developper 
' ' en  France'      A  developpement  that 
'must  prove  fatal  to  regal  and  papal 
'  pretensions."     The  limitation  of  time 
is  here  the  element  in  the  prognostica- 
tion which  arrests  the  attention ;  put- 
ting this  aside,  the  rest  might  have  been 
uttered  by  any  Lyndhurst  of  that  time 
who  could  look  below  the  surface  of 
things,  and  interpret  the  signs  of  the 
times  in  a  philosophic  spirit.     A  some- 

1  Nuns. 
No.  10. — VOL.  n. 


what  similar  vaticination  was  uttered  by 
Coleridge  in  1809,  respecting  the  proba- 
bility of  the  Spaniards  achieving  success 
in  their  resistance  to  the  French  Empe- 
ror, for  which  he  was  set  down  jocosely 
by  Lord  Darnley  as  deranged,  so  hope- 
less did  their  chance  then  seem.  Two 
years,  however,  passed  away,  and  then 
the  philosopher's  turn  came  to  put  the 
question  as  to  relative  sanity  to  his 
Lordship,  who  admitted  his  mistake, 
but  endeavoured  to  turn  the  edge  of  the 
retort  by  calling  it  "  a  bold  and  lucky 
guess."  This,  however,  Coleridge  dis- 
tinctly repudiated,  showing  that  the 
unexpected  result  of  the  contest  was 
nothing  but  a  necessary  consequence  of 
certain  principles  which  he  had  enun- 
ciated, and  which  he  had  deduced  from 
a  profound  consideration  of  antecedent 
history.  In  direct  contrast,  however, 
to  these  dignified  speculators,  comes  the 
immortal  ancestor  of  the  Raphaels,  the 
Zadkiels,  and  the  like  of  the  present 
day — William  Lilly,  whose  career  as 
astrologer,  almanack-maker,  and  seer, 
coincides  with  the  Civil  War,  the  Pro- 
tectorate, and  the  earlier  part  of  Charles 
the  Second's  reign,  and  whose  fame 
rested  partly  on  two  capital  successes, 
but  more  truly  on  his  superior  tactics, 
and  the  sagacity  with  which  he  avoided 
committing  himself  in  cases  where  to 
have  been  right  would  have  perhaps 
excited  little  attention,  while  a  blunder 
would  have  been  fatal.  However,  not 
to  be  unjust  to  the  astrologer,  let  it  be 
recorded,  that  in  his  Anglicus  for  June, 
1645,  he  backed  the  chances  of  Parlia- 
ment by  a  prediction  that,  if  they  fought 
that  month,  the  victory  would  be  theirs  ; 
and  Naseby  followed  on  the  14th,  to 
confirm  the  words  of  the  seer.  Here 
the  event  trod  so  close  on  the  heels  of  the 
prophecy  as  to  detract  somewhat  from 
the  effect ;  but  the  next  case  was  very 
different,  and  was  justly  regarded  by 
him  as  a  piece  of  luck  he  was  not  likely 
to  improve  upon,  and  after  which  he 
might  gracefully  shut  up  shop  and  retire 
into  private  life.  In  a  work  of  his,  pub- 
lished in  1651,  entitled,  "Monarchy 
and  No  Monarchy  in  England,  Grebner's 
prophecy  concerning  Charles  the  Son  of 


314 


On  Uninspired  Prophecy. 


Charles,"  it  appears  that  he  had  indi- 
cated the  3d  of  September,  1666,  as  a 
day  favourable  for  the  expiration  of 
monarchy;  a  lucky  and  highly  anti- 
monarchical  planet  being  then  in  the 
ascendant.  On  the  basis  of  this  pro- 
phecy, and  with  a  view  to  ensure  its 
fulfilment  in  the  most  exact  manner,  a 
plot  was  actually  formed  by  a  number 
of  old  soldiers  and  officers  who  had 
served  in  the  late  rebellion,  for  killing 
the  King,  and  overthrowing  the  Govern- 
ment;  and  the  surprisal  of  the  Tower 
and  the  firing  of  the  City  were  to  form 
prominent  parts  of  the  scheme.  The  plot, 
however,  came  to  light  in  April,  1666, 
and  the  confederates  were  found  guilty 
of  high  treason ;  yet,  notwithstanding 
this  awkward  interference,  the  stars  (or, 
not  to  be  calumnious,  "  the  star ")  got 
the  ill-favoured  design  executed,  at  any 
rate,  cy  pres,  as  the  lawyers  say,  by 
causing  the  fire  of  London  to  break  out 
on  the  2d  September,  1666;  which 
Mr.  Pepys,1  who  records  the  circum- 
stance, not  unreasonably  sets  down  in 
his  diary  as  "very  strange,  methinks." 
Prophecies  of  this  kind,  however,  are 
usually  supposed  to  have  a  considerable 
share  in  bringing  about  their  own  ful- 
filment— a  remark  which  applies  with 
some  force  to  that  last  cited,  and  to  one 
said  to  have  been  recently  current  in 
India,  that  our  rule  there  was  destined 
to  last  a  century,  and  then  to  come  to 
an  end.  Reckoning  from  the  date  of 
the  great  battle  of  Plassey,  which  was 
fought  on  the  23d  June,  1757,  a  cen- 
tury carries  us  on  to  that  fatal  year, 
when  it  seemed  as  though  the  manes  of 
Surajah  Dowlah  were  to  be  avenged,  and 
that  the  work  of  Clive  would  have  to  be 
done  over  again.  There  were,  however, 
sufficient  signs  of  preconcerted  action, 
the  meaning  of  which  became  clear 
enough  after  the  event,  to  render  it 
highly  probable  that  the  outbreak  of 
the  mutiny  was  purposely  timed  so  as 
to  accord  with  the  old  prediction,  which 
was  thus  artfully  made  subservient  to 
its  own  accomplishment. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  but  fair  to 
mention  the  case  reported  by  the  author 
1  Diary,  Dec.  13,  1666. 


of  Eothen,2  to  whom  Lady  Hester  Stan- 
hope, on  the  occasion  of  his  paying  her 
a  visit  at  her  castle  near  Beyrout,  fore- 
told that,  "  on  leaving  her  he  would  go 
"  into  Egypt,  but  that  in  a  little  while 
"  he  would  return  to  Syria."  The 
object  of  this  prophecy  secretly  set 
down  the  last  part  of  it  as  a  "bad 
shot,"  his  plans  having  been  otherwise 
arranged ;  but  destiny,  as  he  says,  was 
too  much  for  him,  and,  owing  to  the 
plague  and  the  necessity  of  avoiding  a 
quarantine  detention,  he  was  forced  to 
retrace  his  steps  across  the  desert,  after 
visiting  the  Pyramids,  and  came  back 
to  the  mountains  of  Lebanon,  just  as 
the  weird  woman  had  foretold.  And, 
if  our  space  permitted,  we  might  add 
several  well-authenticated  instances  of 
that  presentiment  felt  by  some  respect- 
ing the  duration  of  their  lives,  or  the 
particular  day  of  their  decease,  which 
is  said  to  have  possessed  Bentley  and 
kelson  so  strongly,  and  which  was  cer- 
tainly in  each  case  verified  by  the 
event.  There  is  a  sort  of  anticipation 
of  this  in  Homer,  who  frequently  makes 
his  heroes,  when  in  articulo  mortis,  pre- 
dict the  speedy  doom  which  should 
overtake  their  conquerors :  thus  Patro- 
clus  tells  Hector  to  consider  himself 
"  fey,"  to  use  an  old  English  word ;  and 
Hector  in  his  turn  attempts  to  damp 
the  triumph  of  Achilles  by  a  similar 
expedient.  But  it  is  time  to  refrain. 

In  what  precedes  we  have  brought  to- 
gether a  number  of  instances  in  which 
coming  events  have  cast  their  shadows- 
before  them  with  such  distinctness  as  to 
render  possible  the  construction  of  the 
true  figure  from  the  dim  and  evanescent 
outlines  of  the  projection. .  They  are  of 
all  degrees  of  importance,  ranging  from 
the  low  level  of  the  mere  lucky  guess 
up  to  a  point  where  it  is  difficult  to 
avoid  recognising  the  secret  influence  of 
a  mysterious  and  peculiar  agency.  It 
must  surely  be  possible  to  add  largely 
to  the  handful  of  cases  here  presented 
to  the  reader;  and  it  can  hardly  be 
doubted  that  such  a  collection,  duly 
classified  and  sifted,  would  yield  results 
not  without  value  either  to  psychologist 
2  Page  100,  Fifth  Edition. 


Thomas  Hood. 


315 


or  historian.  Whatever  the  scepticism 
of  our  time  may  assert,  such  an  omen 
as  that  of  the  Twelve  Vultures,  and  the 
prediction  involved  in  it,  cannot  be  ex- 
plained away  by  any  of  the  ordinary 
expedients ;  and,  if  a  sufficient  number 
of  parallels  could  be  adduced,  these, 
supported  by  the  admitted  fact  of  the 
possession  of  true  prophetic  powers  by 
idolatrous  and  heathen  nations,  might 
not  improbably  tend  to  the  more  com- 
plete elucidation  of  the  nature  of  those 
mental  states  or  conditions,  the  existence 
and  reality  of  which  must  be  assumed 
in  any  theory  of  prophetic  utterance. 
And  we  are  convinced  that  the  Scrip- 


tural prophecies  would  gain  a  decided 
advantage  by  being  thus  brought  into 
direct  contrast  with  the  elite  of  their 
rivals.  Until  some  such  investigation 
be  made  in  a  reverent  yet  independent 
spirit,  and  until  the  numerous  claims 
that  have  been  advanced  in  different 
ages  to  the  possession  or  on  behalf  of 
the  various  possessors  of  this  power, 
have  been  fairly  appraised  and  weighed, 
so  long  must  we  be  content  to  feel  that 
the  edifice  of  our  faith  wants  a  buttress 
which  it  is  in  our  power  to  erect  for  its 
support,  but  which,  from  a  certain  de- 
ficiency of  moral  courage,  we  are  timidly 
led  to  withhold. 


'THOMAS    HOOD. 


BY  THE   EDITOR. 


HOOD  was  born  in  London  in  1799, 
the  son  of  a  bookseller  in  the  Poultry. 
He  was  educated,  till  about  his  fifteenth 
year,  at  private  and  day-schools  in  or 
near  London.  His  father  died  in  1811, 
leaving  a  widow  and  several  children, 
all  of  whom,  except  Thomas,  were  cut 
off  early  by  consumption.  His  health 
also  was  very  delicate  from  the  first ; 
and,  after  being  for  some  little  time  in  a 
London  merchant's  office,  he  was  sent 
alone,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  for  change  of 
climate,  to  Dundee,  which  was  his 
father's  native  place.  Here  he  found 
himself  in  the  midst  of  a  bevy  of  Scotch 
relations — aunts,  uncles,  cousins,  and 
others — of  whom  he  had  never  heard 
before,  and  whose  ways  and  dialect  were 
as  strange  to  him  as  his  were  to 'them. 
"  It  was  like  coming  among  the  Struld- 
brugs,"  he  says,  alluding  to  the  vener- 
able age  of  some  of  these  newly-dis- 
covered relatives.  He  passed  about  two 
years  in  Dundee, — engaged  in  no  par- 
ticular occupation,  but  recruiting  his 
health  by  walking,  fishing,  boating,  &c. 
It  was  here,  too,  that  he  first  tried  his 
hand  at  literature — contributing  some 
trifles  to  a  newspaper  and  a  magazine  of 
the  town.  Returning  to  London  at  the 
age  of  seventeen,  he  was  apprenticed 
to  his  mother's  brother,  Mr.  Sands,  an 
engraver.  With  him  and  with  another 


engraver,  to  whom  he  was  transferred, 
he  remained  several  years,  with  every 
prospect  that  engraving  was  to  be  his 
profession.  But  an  event  in  which  he 
could  not  have  supposed  beforehand  that 
his  own  fortunes  would  be  in  the  least 
degree  concerned,  suddenly  changed  the 
tenor  of  his  life.  In  the  beginning  of 
1821,  Mr.  John  Scott,  the  Editor  of  the 
"  London  Magazine,"  was  killed  in  a 
duel ;  and,  the  magazine  passing  into 
the  hands  of  new  proprietors,  who  were 
acquainted  with  Hood,  and  had  been 
acquainted  with  his  father,  he  was  en- 
gaged to  assist  the  Editor.  He  was  then 
twenty-two  years  of  age.  For  about 
two  years  he  wrote  little  pieces  for  the 
Magazine;  his  connexion  with  which 
introduced  him  to  many,  if  not  all,  of 
the  brilliant  men  who  were  then  its 
contributors  —  Charles  Lamb,  Allan 
Cunningham,  Hazlitt,  Horace  Smith, 
Talfourd,  Barry  Cornwall,  De  Quincey, 
Gary,  John  Clare,  Hartley  Coleridge,  &c. 
With  Lamb,  in  particular,  he  formed  an 
intimacy  which  lasted  till  Lamb's  death, 
and  which,  as  Lamb  was  twenty-four 
years  his  senior,  must  have  had  consi- 
derable influence  on  his  literary  tastes. 
At  Lamb's  house,  in  addition  to  the  per- 
sons named,  he  met  both  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge. 
In  1824Hood  married  a  Miss  Reynolds. 


316 


Thomas  Hood. 


By  this  time  the  "London Magazine"  had 
again  changed  hands ;  and  Hood,  ceasing 
connexion  with  it,  "but  still  living  in 
London,  began  to  write  more  miscel- 
laneously. In  1825  he  published,  in 
conjunction  with  his  brother-in-law,  a 
little  volume  of  humorous  "  Odes  and 
Addresses  to  Great  People"  In  1826 
there  followed,  under  Hood's  own  name, 
the  first  series  of  "  Whims  and  Oddities" 
consisting  of  a  selection  from  his  pre- 
vious writings,  with  additions ;  and  a 
second  series  appeared  in  1827,  dedi- 
cated to  Sir  Walter  Scott.  In  the 
same  year  appeared  two  volumes  of 
"National  Tales,"  or  short  stories  in 
prose ;  and  a  volume  of  serious  poetry 
entitled  "  The  Plea  of  the  Midsummer 
Fairies,  Hero  and  Leander,  Lycus  tJie 
Centaur,  and  other  Poems"  In  1829 
Hood  edited  a  periodical  called  "  The 
Gem"  and  here  he  published  his 
poem  of  "  Eugene  Aram."  By  so  much 
varied  writing  he  had  become,  in  his 
thirtieth  year,  well  known  in  the  circle 
of  metropolitan  men  of  letters.  His 
health  being  still  precarious,  he  removed 
in  1829  to  a  cottage  at  Winchmore  Hill, 
not  far  from  London ;  and  here  he 
resided  about  three  years,  making  fre- 
quent trips,  for  the  benefit  of  sea-air,  to 
Brighton,  Hastings,  Margate  and  other 
places.  In  1830  he  published  his  first 
Comic  Annual — continued,  as  a  Christ- 
mas publication,  in  successive  years  till 
1837.  The  "Annual,"  with  casual  con- 
tributions to  other  periodicals,  and  a 
little  writing  for  the  stage,  occupied  him 
till  1832,  when  he  removed  from  Winch- 
more  Hill  to  a  quaint  but  inconvenient 
old  house  near  Wanstead  in  Essex. 
Here  he  completed  his  novel  of  Tylney 
Hall,  and  wrote  a  comic  poem  called 
The  Epping  Hunt,  published  with  illus- 
trations by  Cruikshank. 

The  failure  of  a  publishing  firm  hav- 
ing involved  Hood  in  pecuniary  difficul- 
ties, he  resolved  in  1835  to  leave  Eng- 
land and  reside  on  the  Continent.  Going 
over  in  the  March  of  that  year,  he  fixed 
on  Coblenz  on  the  Rhine  as  the  most 
suitable  place  for  his  purpose.  Hither 
his  wife  followed  him  with  their  two 
surviving  children — a  girl  about  five 


years  of  age,  and  an  infant  son.  During 
about  two  years  Coblenz  continued  to 
be  the  head-quarters  of  the  family — 
Hood  working  at  his  "Annuals,"  and 
sending  over  the  copy  by  very  uncertain 
carriage  to  London ;  corresponding  also 
with  friends  in  England — especially  with 
Mr.  Dilke,  and  a  Dr.  Elliot  of  Stratford ; 
amusing  himself  with  fishing  and  with 
the  observation  of  German  character; 
making  one  or  two  acquaintances  with 
English-speaking  Germans,  among  whom 
was  a  friendly  and  intelligent  Prussian 
officer  named  De  Franck  ;  but,  on  the 
whole,  out  of  his  element,  and  harassed 
by  almost  constant  illness,  aggravated 
by  the  discomforts  of  German  house- 
keeping and  the  rough  handling  of 
German  doctors.  Disgusted  at  length 
with  Coblenz,  he  removed,  in  the 
middle  of  1837,  to  Ostend — convenient 
as  being  more  accessible  from  England. 
At  Ostend  he  resided  with  his  family 
for  three  years — varied  by  two  trips  to 
London,  and  by  visits  from  English 
friends.  In  1838,  which  was  the  last  year 
of  the  Comic  Annual,  he  commenced  in 
its  stead  the  monthly  miscellany  known 
as  " Hood's  Own"  consisting  chiefly  of 
selections  from  his  former  writings,  but 
containing  new  pieces  and  illustrations 
by  himself.  From  Ostend  he  also  sent 
over  the  copy  of  his  "  Up  the  Rhine"  a 
satire  on  German  manners  and  English 
travellers,  which  he  had  begun  at  Cob- 
lenz. 

In  1840,  after  five  years  of  expatria- 
tion, he  judged  it  prudent  to  return  to 
England.  The  family  took  a  house  in 
Camberwell ;  and  Hood,  rather  in  worse 
health  than  before,  became  a  contributor 
to  \hzNew  Monthly  Magazine,ihen  edited 
by  Theodore  Hook.  One  of  his  contri- 
butions to  the  Magazine  was  his  poem 
of  "  Miss  Kilmansegg."  On  the  death 
of  Theodore  Hook,  in  1841,  Hood  suc- 
ceeded him  as  Editor  of  the  New 
Monthly.  He  continued  to  edit  it  till 
1843,  contributing  to  its  pages  a  number 
of  sketches  and  poems,  which  he  re- 
published  in  1844,  under  the  title  of 
Whimsicalities.  In  1842  he  had  re- 
moved from  Camberwell  to  St.  John's 
Wood,  in  which  neighbourhood  he  re- 


Thomas  Hood. 


317 


sided  till  his  death — first  in  Elm  Tree 
Eoad,  and  then  in  Finchley  Eoad.  At 
this  time,  what  with  his  writings  in  the 
New  Monthly,  the  growing  reputation 
of  his  former  writings,  and  the  electric 
effect  produced  by  his  "Song  of  the 
Shirt,"  on  its  appearance  separately  in 
Punch  (1843),  Hood's  literary  life  seemed 
to  have  taken  a  new  start ;  and  when, 
after  a  brief  visit  to  Scotland,  he  pro- 
jected a  magazine  of  his  own  under  the 
title  of  "  Hood's  Magazine  and  Comic 
Miscellany,"  the  public  were  ready  to 
welcome  it  and  make  it  a  favourite. 
Among  his  friends  he  now  counted 
many  of  a  younger  generation  than 
those  whom  he  had  known  before  going 
abroad — Mr.  Dickens,  Mr.  Browning, 
Mr.  F.  0.  Ward,  Samuel  Phillips,  and 
others.  But  he  had  not  long  to  live. 
The  new  Magazine,  begun  in  January, 
1844,  had  been  carried  on  as  far  as 
its  fourteenth  number,  when  it  was 
announced  that  the  editor  was  on  his 
death-bed.  For  two  months  longer  he 
wrote  or  dictated  his  last  contributions 
to  it;  and,  on  May  3d,  1845,  he  died 
in  his  house  in  Finchley  Eoad,  at  the 
age  of  forty-six. 

At  no  time  had  Hood's  name  been  so 
familiarly  dear  to  the  public  as  about 
the  tune  of  his  death.  His  "  Bridge  of 
Sighs,"  which  appeared  in  one  of  the 
numbers  of  his  Magazine  in  1844,  was  a 
poem  for  the  people's  heart ;  it,  and  his 
"  Song  of  the  Shirt,"  of  the  previous 
year,  were  being  everywhere  repeated ; 
and,  of  the  letters,  presents,  and  other 
tokens  of  regard  from  unknown  persons, 
sent  to  him  on  his  death-bed,  most  were 
testimonies  to  the  singular  effect  pro- 
duced by  these  two  poems.  "Working 
back,  as  it  were,  from  these  two  poems, 
the  public  have  since  become  acquainted 
with  Hood's  writings  as  a  whole ;  the 
volumes  of  his  selected  poems,  published 
since  his  death  by  Moxon,  have  been 
but  inducements  [to  many  to  look  after 
the  various  earlier  publications  in  which 
these  and  other  pieces  of  his  were  ori- 
ginally scattered ;  and  the  erection  of  a 
monument,  by  public  subscription,  in 
1854,  over  Hood's  grave  in  Kensal 
Green  Cemetery,  was  but  an  evidence 


of  the  unusually  strong  affection  then 
felt,  and  still  felt  for  him,  as  a  man 
peculiar  among  recent  British  authors. 

Hood's  daughter  and  son,  who  were 
left  children  at  his  death,  and  who  have 
since  grown  up  to  cherish  his  memory, 
and  to  add,  by  their  own  deserts,  to  the 
respect  they  inherit  by  their  relation- 
ship to  him,  have  done  but  an  act  of 
duty  in  preparing  and  publishing  these 
two  volumes  of  Memorials.1  They  do 
not  form  what  could  properly  be  called 
a  biography  of  Hood.  A  single  chap- 
ter carries  us  over  the  first  thirty-six 
years  of  his  life,  adding  little  or  nothing 
to  the  information  previously  accessible; 
and  the  remaining  chapters  of  the 
volumes  consist  of  an  account,  year  by 
year,  of  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life — 
the  five  years,  from  1835  to  1840,  which 
he  spent  at  Coblenz  and  Ostend ;  and 
the  five,  from  1840  to  1845,  which  fol- 
lowed his  return  to  England.  This 
account  does  not  take  the  form  of  a 
story  regularly  and  connectedly  told ;  but 
is  made  up  chiefly  of  private  letters  by 
Hood  himself  and  by  his  wife,  now  first 
published,  from  which  the  reader  is  left 
to  gather  the  incidents  for  himself,  and 
to  derive  his  own  impression  of  Hood's 
habits  and  character.  In  what  of  con- 
necting narrative  there  is,  one  notes  a 
considerable  vagueness,  or  thinness  of 
particulars,  and  even  an  indecision  re- 
specting those  that  are  given — owing, 
doubtless,  to  the  fact  that,  while  the 
writers  retain  a  vivid  recollection  of 
their  father  personally,  the  external 
circumstances  of  his  life,  his  literary 
connexions  and  companionships,  the 
whole  by-gone  social  medium  of  London 
in  which  he  moved,  lie  too  far  in  the 
distance  to  be  recovered  by  them  with- 
out as  much  research  as  a  stranger  would 
have  had  to  bestow.  Taken  for  what 
they  profess  to  be,  however  (and  the 
critic,  so  considering  them,  will  probably 
have  no  fault  to  find,  unless  he  is  finical 
enough  to  remark  on  the  very  incorrect 
pointing),  the  volumes  are  an  interesting 

1  Memorials  of  Thomas  Hood ;  collected, 
arranged,  and  edited  by  his  daughter;  with  a 
Preface  and  Notes  by  his  son.  Two  volumes 
Moxon.  1860. 


318 


Thomas  Hood. 


addition  to  our  knowledge  of  Hood,  and 
to  his  literary  remains.  They  are  writ- 
ten in  a  spirit  of  true  affection,  which 
communicates  itself  to  the  reader — 
especially  at  the  end,  where  the  writers 
recollect  so  touchingly  their  dying  fa- 
ther, as  they  saw  him,  emaciated  and  in 
pain,  but  resigned,  and  heard  him  re- 
peating one  night  to  their  mother  the 
plaintive  words  of  the  Scottish  song,  as 
then  his  and  hers : — 

"  I'm  wearin'  awa',  Jean, 

Like  snaw-wreaths  in  thaw,  Jean  ! 

I'm  wearin'  awa' 

To  the  land  o'  the  leal." 

A  tone  of  this  song  runs  through  all 
Hood's  life,  as  it  is  related  in  these 
Memorials.  We  see  him  throughout  as 
a  most  affectionate  husband  and  father, 
struggling  with  ill-health,  and,  while 
labouring  for  those  dearest  to  him,  and 
bearing  up  with  a  buoyancy  which  neither 
pain  nor  adverse  fortune  could  subdue, 
foreseeing  the  day  as  not  distant  when 
"his  wife  should  be  a  widow,  and  his 
children  orphans.  From  the  time  when, 
in  his  celebrated  petition  to  the  House 
of  Commons  on  the  subject  of  literary 
copyright,  he  referred  to  his  own  case, 
and  adduced  as  one  of  his  arguments 
for  the  protection  of  literary  property, 
the  fact  that  he  had  two  children  "  who 
"  looked  up  to  him  as  the  author  not 
"  only  of  the  Comic  Annual  but  also  of 
"  their  being,"  a  habitual  anxiety, 
arising  from  the  uncertainty  of  his  own 
life,  seems  to  have  shadowed  Hood's 
mind,  and  mingled,  though  not  always 
in  an  obvious  manner,  with  his  conver- 
sation and  writings.  The  Memorials 
bring  out  this — may  be  best  described, 
indeed,  as  records  of  the  last  ten  years 
of  the  life  of  a  literary  invalid.  Not 
that,  in  addition  to  this  melancholy  fact 
of  Hood's  constant  struggle  with  pain 
and  disease,  we  have  not  much  informa- 
tion respecting  him  in  these  pages,  of  a 
livelier,  more  curious,  and  more  general 
kind  of  interest.  We  learn,  for  exam- 
ple, that  Hood  was  one  of  those  poets — 
a  rather  numerous  list  it  would  seem — 
in  whom  (as  if  to  force  attention  to  a 
distinction  between  the  musical  sense 
and  the  faculty  of  melodious  verse)  the 


ear  for  music  has  been  all  but  abnor- 
mally deficient.  We  hear  of  his  fondness 
for  practical  jokes,  and  have  amusing 
instances  of  such,  played  off  by  him 
upon  his  wife  and  others ;  we  have 
sketches,  by  his  own  pen,  of  foreign 
scenes  and  manners,  full  of  wit  and 
word-play,  and  of  comical  accounts  of 
his  differences  with  German  landladies, 
and  his  fishing  excursions  on  the  Mo- 
selle ;  we  have  also,  in  the  form  of 
woodcuts,  a  few  additional  specimens  of 
the  oddities  he  used  to  dash  off  with  his 
pencil  to  amuse  his  readers  or  his  chil- 
dren. Altogether  a  very  distinct  idea 
of  Hood  is  to  be  obtained  from  the 
volumes ;  though  .an  impression  of  the 
scantiness  of  the  incidents  which  com- 
posed his  life — of  the  small  hold  which 
he  had  of  the  world  of  men  or  things 
beyond  the  circle  of  his  own  family — 
will  still  remain. 

This  scantiness  of  incident  in  Hood's 
life,  this  looseness  and  slightness  of  con- 
nexion with  the  contemporary  world  of 
men  and  things,  is,  we  believe,  not  with- 
out its  significance  in  relation  to  the 
nature  of  Hood's  genius  and  writings. 
Of  literary  men  as  a  class,  indeed,  it  is 
not  expected  that  their  lives  shall  pre- 
sent that  amount  of  interconnexion  with 
the  net  events  of  their  time,  the  de- 
finite and  visible  course  of  its  social 
history,  which  is  inevitable  in  the  lives 
of  men  of  action.  But  among  literary 
men  themselves  there  may  be  character- 
istic differences  in  this  respect.  Some 
there  may  be  who,  by  the  nature  of  their 
mental  activity  as  men  of  speculation, 
resume  and  represent  in  their  own 
thoughts  much  of  the  essence  of  what 
is  going  on  around  them.  Others  there 
may  be  who,  though  they  do  not  employ 
their  minds  on  what  is  passing  around 
them,  but  on  some  theme  or  object  in- 
dependently selected  (as  Gibbon,  for  ex- 
ample, in  his  History),  do  yet — in  virtue 
of  the  magnitude  of  that  theme  or  object, 
the  amount  of  exertion  which  it  requires 
ere  it  can  be  compassed,  and  the  con- 
tinuousness  of  that  exertion — lead  lives 
which  have  a  certain  massiveness  in. 
themselves,  and  are  even  distinguishable 
as  part  of  the  historic  substance  of  thei 


Thomas  Hood, 


319 


time.  Others  again  there  are  who, 
in  virtue  merely  of  an  extreme  socia- 
bility, bringing  them  in  contact  with  all 
kinds  and  classes  of  their  contemporaries, 
and  with  all  contemporary  interests, 
become  remembrancers  of  more  than 
themselves  after  they  are  dead,  and  allow 
facts  from  a  wide  surface  to  be  drawn 
almost  necessarily  into  the  current  of 
their  biography.  On  the  whole,  perhaps, 
of  all  kinds  of  literary  genius,  it  is  the 
genius  of  the  imaginative  writer  that 
may  be  rooted  most  lightly  in  the 
facts  of  his  time,  and  may  exhibit  bio- 
graphically  the  least  identification  with 
them — save,  as  we  have  said,  of  that 
kind  which  arises,  when  the  very  mag- 
nitude of  the  imaginative  efforts,  and 
the  continuousness  of  the  exertion  which 
they  involve,  convert  themselves  into 
substance  of  history.  But  Hood,  as 
a  writer  of  wit  and  imagination,  does 
not  present  this  peculiarity  of  having 
exerted  himself  continuously  on  any 
great  work.  A  very  slight  amount  of 
contact,  indeed,  with  the  men  or  events 
of  his  time,  a  very  moderate  sociability, 
or  even  almost  a  solitariness  of  temper 
and  habit,  would  be  quite  consistent 
with  the  nature  of  his  literary  remains. 
And  such  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
fact.  The  most  pertinacious  zealot  for 
the  resolution  of  biography  into  history 
would  hardly  make  anything  feasible  of 
such  a  notion  as  "  Hood  and  his  Times," 
with  whatever  ingenuity  he  might  select 
for  his  purpose  this  or  that  portion  of 
the  social  history  of  Britain,  or  even  of 
London,  during  the  twenty  years  pre- 
ceding 1845.  The  "times  "  are  of  course 
there ;  but  Hood's  relation  to  them  is 
that  of  a  man  of  peculiar  constitution, 
who  sees  them  flitting  by,  has  pensive, 
or  humorous,  or  even  wild  and  haggard 
thoughts  about  them,  and  makes  the 
expression  of  such  thoughts  his  busi- 
ness, but,  on  the  whole,  is  so  little  incor- 
porated with  them,  that,  had  he  not 
existed,  the  "  times  "  would  have  been 
the  same,  and  only  his  by-standing 
thoughts  would  have  been  lost.  A  pen- 
sive, keenly-organized  man,  filled  with 
Jaques's  peculiar  and  compound  melan- 
choly of  "a  most  humorous  sadness," 


shifted  about  from  place  to  place,  ob- 
serving oddities  and  physiognomies 
wherever  he  went,  and  adding  to  his 
fancies  by  reading,  but  personally  not 
much  bound  to  society,  and  having  few 
strong  acquaintanceships  beyond  the 
circle  of  his  own  family,  where  he  would 
chat  and  frolic  affectionately  with  his 
children  during  the  day,  and  sit  up  by 
himself  to  write  for  the  press  late  through 
the  night, — such,  notwithstanding  his 
habit  of  penning  long  letters,  seems 
Hood  to  have  been.  No  detraction  this 
from  the  interest  we  must  feel  in  his 
writings,  but  rather  a  reason  for  a  more 
peculiar  curiosity ! 

A  certain  small  proportion  of  Hood's 
writings,  though  not  the  best  known  or 
the  most  original,  consists  of  perfectly 
serious  poems  of  the  fancy,  after  a  man- 
ner caught  from  Coleridge,  "Wordsworth, 
Keats,  Lamb,  and  the  minor  and  sen- 
suous poems  of  Shakespeare.  Most  of 
these  were  written  before  his  thirtieth 
year,  while  it  seems  still  to  have  been 
his  aim  to  be  known  to  the  public  not 
chiefly  or  exclusively  as  a  humourist. 
His  "  Plea  of  the  Midsummer  Fairies " 
is  perhaps  his  most  interesting  and  sus- 
tained production  of  this  kind,  and  is  a 
really  pleasant  poem  of  the  fancy,  con= 
structed  on  an  ingenious  story  how 
Titania,  Puck,  and  all  the  innocent  elves 
and  sprites  of  the  poetic  Faery-land,  are 
threatened  with  annihilation  by  Old 
Time  or  Saturn, — how  they  plead  in 
vain  before  the  ruthless  ravager,  and  are 
spared  only  by  the  happy  appearance  of 
the  shade  of  Shakespeare,  who  cham- 
pions the  Faery-nation,  daunts  Time,  and 
drives  him  to  flight.  The  whole  poem 
has  a  certain  true  and  easy  poetic  charm, 
and  there  are  passages  of  very  fine  and 
happy  expression  in  it ;  but  it  does  not 
rise  higher  than  the  second  class  of 
compositions  belonging  to  the  school  of 
verse  begun  by  Coleridge  and  Words- 
worth, and  continued  by  Keats.  In 
other  poems  of  the  same  serious  or  fan- 
ciful kind,  as  in  the  "  Ode  to  Autumn," 
and  the  "  Ode  to  the  Moon,"  we  have 
the  very  cadence  and  manner  of  Keats 
present  to  a  degree  which  suggests  actual 
imitation,  together  with  a  marked  affec- 


320 


Thomas  Hood. 


tion  for  special  words  of  the  Keatsian 
vocabulary,  such  as  "  argent,"  "  bloom," 
and  "bloomy."  For  Hood's  poem  of 
"  Hero  and  Leander,"  the  model  is  un- 
disguisedly  Shakespeare's  "  Venus  and 
Adonis ;"  but,  with  all  the  disadvantage 
which  this  comparison  involves,  the 
reader  will  find  much  to  admire  in 
Hood's  version  of  the  classic  legend. 
Here  are  some  lines  describing  the  dis- 
tant appearance  of  the  face  of  the  water- 
witch  Scylla  to  Leander,  luring  him  to 
his  death,  as  he  is  buffeting  with  the 
waves  : — 

"  Her  aspect's  like  a  moon  divinely  fair, 
But  makes  the  midnight  darker  that  it  lies  on; 
Tis  so  beclouded  with  her  coal-black  hair 
That  densely  skirts  her  luminous  horizon, 
Making  her  doubly  fair,  thus  darkly  set, 
As  marble  lies  advantaged  upon  jet." 

If  Hood  does  not  rank  in  the  first  class 
among  recent  English  poets,  after  Words- 
worth and  Keats,  in  virtue  of  these  poems 
of  metrical  narrative  and  sensuous  fancy, 
he  attains  a  greater  height  and  strikes 
with  a  stronger  emphasis  in  another 
class  of  serious  poems — those  which  con- 
sist in  the  vivid  imagination  and  abrupt 
lyric  representation  of  ghastly  situations 
in  physical  nature  and  in  human  life. 
His  "  Dream  of  Eugene  Aram,"  his 
"Haunted  House,"  his  "Eorge,"  and 
his  "  Last  Man,"  are  well-known  ex- 
amples. There  was,  indeed,  in  Hood's 
genius  a  certain  fascination  for  the 
ghastly — a  certain  familiarity  of  the 
fancy  with  ideas  and  objects  usually 
kept  out  of  mind  as  too  horrible  and 
disagreeable.  Toying  with  his  pencil, 
he  would  sketch  skulls,  or  coffins,  or 
grinning  skeletons  in  antic  mimicry  of 
the  attitudes  of  life.  One  of  the  most 
painful  of  the  illustrations  which  accom- 
pany these  Memorials  is  a  sketch  of 
himself  lying  in  his  shroud  as  a  corpse, 
which  he  made  while  in  bed  during  his 
last  illness.  Something  of  this  fascina- 
tion for  the  ghastly,  this  tendency  to 
imagine  horrible  objects  and  situations, 
runs  through  Hood's  comic  writings, 
sometimes  appearing  distinctly,  but  in 
other  places  only  obliging  humour  and 
frolic  by  a  kind  of  reaction.  "  The 
hyena,"  he  says  himself,  "  is  notoriously 


a  frequenter  of  graves,  a  prowler  amongst 
tombs ;  he  is  also  the  only  beast  that 
laughs,  at  least  above  his  breath."  Omit- 
ting the  moral  dislike  implied  in  the 
image  chosen,  Hood  meant  its  intellec- 
tual import  to  be  taken.  From  thoughts 
of  death  and  graveclothes,  of  murders, 
of  suicides,  of  gibbets  on  solitary  moors, 
of  suggestions  of  the  fiend  in  gloomy 
rooms  to  men  on  the  verge  of  madness 
— from  a  dark  circumference  of  such 
thoughts,  conceived  with  an  almost  reck- 
less literality,  we  see  the  Humourist 
rebounding  into  the  thick  and  bustle 
of  ordinary  social  life,  rioting  in  its  in- 
finite provocations  to  mirth,  raising 
smiles  and  laughter  wherever  he  goes, 
and  turning  speech  into  a  crackle  of  jests. 
How  extraordinary  the  rebound  in 
Hood's  case  !  Though  a  not  insignifi- 
cant proportion  of  his  writings  consists 
of  such  productions  of  the  quiet  poetic 
fancy  and  such  representations  of  the 
ghastly  as  have  been  described,  by  far 
the  larger  proportion  consists  of  his 
contributions,  during  five-and-twenty 
years,  to  the  fugitive  British  literature 
of  wit  and  humour.  Vast  as  are  now 
the  dimensions  of  that  literature  among 
us — organised,  sharpened,  and  adjusted 
as  it  has  been  by  the  long  reign  of  King 
Punch — Hood's  place  in  its  history  is 
not  likely  soon  to  be  forgotten.  From 
his  first  connexion  with  the  London 
press  in  1821,  it  was  his  habit  to 
throw  off  those  "grotesques,  and  ara- 
besques, and  droll  picturesques,"  to  use 
his  own  words,  "  which  his  good  genius 
(a  Pantagruelian  familiar)  charitably 
conjured  up  to  divert  him  from  more 
sombre  realities."  Even  then  his  hu- 
mour was  of  a  flavour  different  from 
that  of  ,Hook's  humour,  or  of  the  hu- 
mour of  any  contemporary  wit ;  in  later 
years,  his  Comic  Annual  was  a  kind  of 
anticipation  of  Punch ;  and  to  the  last, 
in  the  New  Monthly  and  in  Hood's 
Magazine,  it  was  in  "grotesques,  ara- 
besques, and  droll  picturesques,"  that 
he  was  most  prolific.  If  all  his  pro- 
ductions of  this  kind  were  collected,  no 
one  knows  how  many  hundreds  they 
would  number.  They  are  generally 
brief  j  but  they  vary  in  brevity,  from 


Thomas  Hood. 


321 


the  single-lined  pun  or  jest,  or  the  witty 
stanza  or  couplet,  to  the  extended  prose- 
sketch,  or  such  a  metrical  extravagance 
as  "  Miss  Kilmansegg."  And  then  the 
variety  of  form  and  matter !  —  pun 
and  word-play  throughout ;  here  satire 
with  definite  purpose,  there  a  mere 
whirl  of  humorous  nonsense ;  some- 
times a  little  essay ;  sometimes  a  sketch 
of  character,  or  of  a  comic  incident  in 
a  stage-coach  or  in  the  streets ;  some- 
times a  tale  in  a  chapter  or  two  ;  some- 
times an  imaginary  correspondence.  In 
Hood's  Own,  published  by  himself  in 
1838-9,  and  in  the  volume  of  his  se- 
lected Poems  of  Wit  and  Humour,  pub- 
lished after  his  death,  we  have  perhaps 
his  best  things  in  this  kind  collected; 
and  certainly  there  is  more  in  the  two 
volumes  together  than  the  most  in- 
satiable appetite  for  a  (rnwnage  dinner 
(Hood's  own,  not  mine !)  will  be  able 
to  stand,  if  the  reading  is  continuous. 
Page  after  page  it  is  pun,  flash,  quip, 
subtlety,  oddity,  mad  fantasy  of  fun,  till 
the  feeling  is  that  of  fatigue  with  the 
very  excess — save  where  (and  this  is 
one  of  the  minor  uses  of  verse)  the 
pleasure  of  metre  and  rhyme  prolongs 
the  power  of  reading.  And  then,  0  if 
one  had  but  the  memory  to  retain  a 
moderate  percentage  of  the  good  things 
of  which  one  has  had  such  a  surfeit! 
How,  by  merely  retailing  them,  one  could 
win  peals  of  laughter  from  end  to  end  of 
a  dinner-table,  and  hoodwink,  people  into 
the  belief  that  one  was  a  wit  oneself 
Alas !  the  human  memory  is  not  con- 
structed to  retain  more  than  five  jokes 
simultaneously  of  the  greatest  humourist 
that  ever  lived.  One  is  the  common 
number ;  three  is  unusual ;  and  five  is 
the  extreme  limit.  Test  the  matter  by 
trial  among  your  friends.  Get  any  com- 
pany who  have  known  Theodore  Hook, 
or  Sydney  Smith,  or  Douglas  Jerrold, — 
men  who  said  new  good  things  every 
day  for  thirty  years, — to  club  their  re- 
collections of  these  good  things  to- 
gether ;  and  the  result  will  be  that, 
though  the  joint  efforts  of  the  oblivious 
blockheads,  raking  their  memories  for 
«,  whole  hour  together,  may  recover 
{duplicates  deducted)  a  dozen  distinct 


witticisms,  he  will  be  the  cock  of  the 
company  who  has  furnished  five.  We 
hear  but  of  one  man  who,  at  a  single 
sitting,  could  dictate  from  memory  a 
longish  collection  of  jests  and  apo- 
phthegms ;  but  they  were  from  different 
sources,  and  he  was  the  author  of  the 
"  Novum  Organum."  Moral  to  all  Bos- 
wells  of  celebrated  wits  now  living :  Book 
each  day's  jests  punctually  every  night. 
Posterity  will  thank  you;  and,  if  they 
don't,  never  mind. 

Hood's  good  things  having  in  very 
large  measure  been  booked  by  himself, 
we  have  not  far  to  search  for  our  speci- 
mens. Reader,  what  would  you  call 
the  earliest  impressions  for  good  or  evil 
produced  on  the  mind  of  an  infant 
by  family-circumstances  before  its  book- 
education  begins  1  Hood  calls  them 
"  impressions  before  the  letters."  What 
does  a  schoolboy  enjoy  when  he  goes 
home  for  the  holidays?  "No  satis  to 
the  jams."  What  deafness'  could  ex- 
ceed that  of  the  old  woman  in  one  of 
Hood's  poems  who  was  "  as  deaf  as  dog's 
ears  to  Enfield's  Speaker,"  deaf  not  only 
to  nouns  and  verbs,  but  "  even  to  the 
definite  article  "  ?  And,  if  you  wanted 
to  sell  her  a  hearing-trumpet,  how  could 
you  recommend  it  better  than  by  telling 
her  of  another  old  woman  who  was  fully 
as  deaf  as  herself,  if  you  could  add — 

"  Well,  I  sold  her  a  horn,  and,  the  very  next 

day, 
She  heard  from  her  husband  in  Botany  Bay." 

Did  you  ever  hear  of  the  Irish  school- 
master's coat  1 — 

"  'Twas  such  a  jerkin  short 
As  Spenser  had  ere  he  composed  his  tales." 

What  is  Hood's  simile  for  autumn? 
"The  book  of  nature  getting  short  of 
leaves."  Have  you  ever  read  Hood's 
baUad  of  "Faithless  Sally  Brown," 
once  sung  in  all  the  theatres  and  by  the 
boys  in  the  streets  ?  Sally's  sweetheart 
having  been  pressed  as  a  sailor,  her  grief 
was  irrepressible. 

"  Alas  !  '  they've  taken  my  beau,  Ben, 

To  sail  with  old  Benbow  ;' 
And  her  woe  began  to  run  afresh, 
As  if  she  said,  Gee  woe  !" 

But  Sally  proved  fickle,  and  Ben,  re- 


322 


Thomas  Hood. 


turning  after  tAvo  years,  finds  her  mar- 
ried to  another.  The  poor  fellow  is 
inconsolable,  and  apostrophizes  her — 

"  Oh,  Sally  Brown,  oh,  Sally  Brown, 

How  could  you  serve  me  so  ? 
I've  met  with  many  a  breeze  before, 
But  never  such  a  blow  !  "t 

Then,  reading  on  his  'bacco  box, 

He  heaved  a  heavy  sigh, 
And  then  began  to  eye  his  pipe, 

And  then  to  pipe  his  eye. 

And  then  he  tried  to  sing  '  All's  Well,' 
But  could  not,  though  he  tried ; 

His  head  was  turned,  and  so  he  chew'd 
His  pigtail  till  he  died. 

His  death,  which  happened  in  his  berth, 

At  forty-odd  befel : 
They  went  and  told  the  sexton,  and 

The  sexton  toll'd  the  bell." 

In  the  tender  mood  in  which  this  leaves 
the  reader,  the  following  may  shock  : — 

"  'Tis  horrible  to  die, 
And  come  down  with  our  little  all  of  dust." 

Here  is  a  reference  to  the  Vestal  fire  : — 

"  Like  that  old  fire  that,  quite  beyond  a  doubt, 
Was  always  in — for  none  have  found  it  out." 

And  this  is  pretty  : — 

"  All  the  little  birds  had  laid  their  heads 
Under  their    wings — sleeping    in  feather- 
beds." 

Here  are  a  few  together^: — 
"  The  hackney-poets  overcharge  their  fair." 

"  There's  something  in  a  horse 
That  I  can  always  honour,  but  never  could 
endorse." 

"Four    sorry  steeds  shall    follow  in    each 

coach — 
Steeds  that  confess  the  luxury  of  Wo." 

"  To  muse  on  death  at  Ponder's  End." 

"A  man  that's  fond  precociously  of  stirring 
Must  be  a  spoon." 

"Utopia  is  a  pleasant  place; 

But  how  shall  I  get  there  ? 
'  Straight  down  the  crooked  Lane, 

And  all  round  the  Square.' " 

Hood's  wit  seems  often  to  hare  taken 
a  military  direction.  Here  is  an  army 
on  march — 

"  So  many  marching  men 
That  soon,  might  be  March-dust." 


And  here,  a  detachment  of  volunteers — 

"  The  pioneers  seem  very  loth 
To  axe  their  way  to  glory." 

And  who  has  not  heard  of  Ben 
Battle  ? 

"  Ben  Battle  was  a  soldier  bold, 
And  used  to  war's  alarms  ; 
But  a  cannon-ball  took  off  his  legs ; 
So  he  laid  down  his  arms. 

Now,  as  they  bore  him  from  the  field, 

Said  he,  '  Let  others  shoot, 
For  here  I  leave  my  second  leg, 

And  the  Forty-Second  Foot.' " 

On  Ben's  return  home,  his  sweetheart 
jilts  him,  in  consequence  of  his  mutila- 
tion; saying  she  did  love  him  before  he 
went  away,  but  now  he  stands  on  a  dif- 
ferent footing — 

"  Oh,  Nelly  Gray  !  Oh,  Nelly  Gray ! 

For  all  your  jeering  speeches, 
At  duty's  call,  I  left  my  legs 
In  Badajos's  breaches!" 

But,  to  get  back  to  prose,  is  there  not 
something  touching  in  the  dying  words 
of  the  old  schoolmaster,  "  I  am  sinking 
fast ;  I  am  going  from  the  terrestrial 
globe  to  the  celestial"  1  And  is  not 
this  good  advice,  "Never  fancy,  every 
time  you  cough,  that  you  are  going  to 
coughy-pot "  1  And  what  a  breadth  of 
surface  in  the  idea  of  the  "London  bill- 
sticker,  who  had  volunteered  into  the 
Chinese  expedition,  to  get  a  sight,  as  he 
said,  of  the  great  Chinese  wall !  "  As  a 
reason  against  cruelty  to  animals,  Hood 
lays  stress  on  the  fact  that  "  bullocks 
don't  wear  oxide  of  iron  ;"  and  to  excite 
our  sympathy  even  with  the  cold  and 
remote  Esquimaux,  he  bids  us  think  of 
the  children  in  that  region,  "born  to 
blubber."  Here  are  a  few  scraps  from 
his  Commonplace  Book : — 

"  Some  men  pretend  to  penetration,  who  have 

not  even  halfjpenny-tra.tion." 
"  A  Quaker  loves  the  ocean  for  its  broad  brim. 
"  A  parish-clerk's  Amen-ity  of  disposition. 
"  If  three  barleycorns  go  to  an  inch,  how 

many  corns  go  to   a  foot  ?     Bunyan 

says,  thirty-six." 

"  Who  have  the  tenderest  feet  ?   Cornish  men. 
"  Who  make  surest  of  going  to  Heaven  ?  Des- 

centers." 

The  following  is  a  selection  from  a 
long  list  of  sham-titles  for  books,  given 


Thomas  Hood. 


323 


to  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  to  be  set  on 
a  Library  Door  at  Chatsworth  : — 

u  Ye  Devill  on  Two  Styx  (Black  Letter)  2  vols. 
"  On  Cutting  off  Heirs  with  a  Shilling.    By 

Barber  Beaumont. 
"  Percy  Vere.     In  40  volumes. 
"  On  the  Affinity  of  the  Death  Watch  and 

Sheep  Tick. 

"  Malthus's  Attack  of  Infantry. 
"  Macadam's  Views  in  Rhodes. 
"  Manfredi.     Translated  by  Defoe. 
"  Earl  Grey  on  Early  Rising. 
"  The  Life  of  Zimmermann.     By  Himself. 
"  On  Trial  by  Jury,  with  remarkable  Packing 

Cases. 
"  Koscuisko  on  the  right  of  the  Poles  to  stick 

up  for  themselves. 
"On  Sore  Throat  and  the  Migration  of  the 

Swallow. 

"  Johnson's  Contradictionary. 
"  Cursory  Remarks  on  Swearing. 
"  The  Scottish  Boccaccio.    By  D.  Cameron." 

In  default  of  longer  extracts,  the  reader 
is  bound  to  remember  that  the  humour 
of  Hood  is  to  be  seen  in  a  more  diffused 
form  than  such  verbal  samples  as  we 
have  given  would  serve  to  suggest — in 
poems  and  sketches,  where  the  mere  wit 
and  word-play  are  but  seasoning  to  a 
wider  and  more  continuous  interest 
arising  from  lively  incident  and  the 
dramatic  representation  of  character. 
All  in  all,  his  "Miss  Kilmansegg"  is 
perhaps  his  best  humorous  poem  of  any 
considerable  length ;  and  among  his 
prose-sketches  the  most  amusing  are 
perhaps  those  which  take  the  form  of 
letters  passing  between  cooks,  maid- 
-  servants,  and  other  illiterate  persons, 
and  giving  their  impressions  of  public 
and  private  matters  in  their  own  style 
and  spelling. 

Well,  but  what  is  it  all  worth?  In 
truth,  "/  don't  know;  nor  you  don't 
know;  nor  none  of  us  don't  know;" 
but  this  we  all  feel — that  it  is  worth 
something.  The  day  surely  is  past  in 
which  it  was  thought  necessary  to  apolo- 
gise for  humour ;  and,  despite  a  few  obsti- 
nate dissenters,  the  peculiarly  affectionate 
spirit  with  which  our  recent  philosophy 
has  been  disposed  to  regard  humour  in 
general,  is  now  gladly  extended,  by  all 
consistent  persons,  even  to  that  long- 
vilified  form  of  humour  which  consists 
in  word-play  and  pun.  As  to  the  use  of 


that  or  of  any  other  kind  of  humour — 
this  is  not  the  only  case  in  which  it 
would  be  well  once  for  all  to  adopt  the 
principle,   that  the   justification   of    a 
thing  is  to  be  sought,  a  priori,  in  the 
fact  that  it  proceeds  from  obedience  to 
an  innate  function,   as  well  as,  a  pos- 
teriori, in  an  attempted  appreciation  of 
its  calculable  effects.    But,  if  an  answer 
to  the  question,  "  Cui  bono  ?"  is  still  de- 
manded, one  may  point  out  that,  just  as 
in  reading  a  great  poem  or  other  serious 
work  of  imagination,  two  kinds  of  bene- 
fit are  distinguishable — the  benefit,  on 
the  one  hand,  of  the  actual  matter  of 
thought,  the   images,  the   expressions, 
delivered  into  the   mind  from  it,  and 
either  remaining  there  to.  be  recovered 
by  the  memory  when  wanted,  or  play- 
ing   more    occultly    into    the    under- 
processes  of  the  mind  that  lie  beneath 
conscious  memory ;  and  the  benefit,  on 
the  other  hand,  of  the  momentary  stir, 
or  wrench,  or  enthusiastic  rouse,  given 
to  the  mind  in  the  act  of  reading — so, 
with  a  difference,  is  it  with  humorous 
writing  too.     First,  there  is  the  actual 
intellectual  efficiency  afterwards  of  the 
good    things    communicated — whether 
they  be  bits  of  shrewd  sense,  or  maxims, 
or  touching   combinations  of  ideas,  or 
permanent    fancies    of    mirth  for  the 
mental  eye;  and,  secondly,  there  is  the 
twitch  given  to  the  mind,  along  with 
every  good  thing,  in  the  act  of  receiving 
it,   and   the   total   shampooing   or   ex- 
hilaration resulting  from  their  sum.    But 
the  reader  will  probably  like  to  work 
out  the  rest  of  the  psychology  of  the 
subject  for  himself. 

To  redeem  Hood,  however,  from  the 
consequences  of  any  adverse  decision 
that  might  be  come  to  on  this  ground 
by  the  narrower  utilitarians  of  literature, 
there  remains  yet  a  select  class  of  his 
writings,  characterised  by  the  presence 
of  moral  and  speculative  purpose,  to  an 
extent  that  ought  to  satisfy  the  strictest 
advocate  for  the  consecration  of  genius 
to  philanthropic  aims  and  the  service  of 
struggling  opinion.  Like  other  men, 
Hood  had  his  "fixed  ideas"  in  life — 
permanent  thoughts  and  convictions,  in 
behalf  of  which  he  could  become  pugna- 


324 


The  Youth  of  England  to  Garibaldi1  s  Legion. 


cious  or  even  savage,  or  under  the  ex- 
citement of  which  every  show  of  humour 
would  fall  off  from  him,  and  he  would 
appear  as  a  man  purely  sorrowful  and 
serious.  The  sentiment  of  Anti-Phari- 
saism may  he  regarded  as  traditional  in 
all  men  of  popular  literary  genius  ;  and 
hack  from  our  own  days  to  those  of 
Burns  and  still  farther,  British  Litera- 
ture has  abounded  with  expressions  of 
it,  each  more  or  less  powerful  in  its 
time,  hut  not  superseding  the  necessity 
of  another,  and  still  another,  in  the 
times  following.  Almost  last  in  the 
long  list  of  these  poets  of  Anti-Phari- 
saism comes  the  name  of  Hood.  His 
writings  are  full  of  this  sentiment,  and 
especially  of  protests  against  over-rigid 
Sahhatarianism.  On  no  subject  did  he 
so  systematically  and  resolutely  exert 
his  powers  of  sarcasm  and  wit ;  and 
perhaps  the  English  language  does  not 
contain  any  single  poem  from  which 
the  opponents  of  extreme  Sabbatarian- 
ism  and  of  what  is  called  religious 
formality  in  general  can  borrow  more 
pungent  quotations,  or  which  is  really 
in  its  way  a  more  eloquent  assertion  of 
personal  intellectual  freedom,  than  the 
Ode  to  Rae  Wilson,  Esquire.  The  follow- 
ing passage  is  very  popular: — 

"  The  Saints  ! — the  Pharisees,  whose  beadle 

stands 

Beside  a  stern  coercive  kirk, 
A  piece  of  human  mason-work, 
Calling  all  sermons  contrabands 
In  that  great  Temple  that's  not  made  with 
hands ! 


"  Thrice    blessed,  rather,  is    the  man  with 

whom 

The  gracious  prodigality  of  nature, 
The  balm,  the  bliss,  the  beauty,  and  the 

bloom, 

The  bounteous  providence  in  every  feature, 
Recall  the  good  Creator  to  his  creature, 
Making  all  earth  a  fane,  all  heaven  its  dome ! 
To  his  tuned  spirit  the  wild  heather-bells 

Ring  Sabbath  knells ; 
The  jubilate  of  the  soaring  lark 

Is  chaunt  of  clerk ; 
For  choir,  the  thrush  and  the  gregarious 

linnet  ; 

The  sod's  a  cushion  for  his  pious  want ; 
And,  consecrated  by  the  heaven  within  it, 
The  sky-blue  pool,  a  font. 
Each  cloud-capp'd  mountain  is  a  holy  altar ; 

An  organ  breathes  in  every  grove  ; 

And  the  full  heart's  a  Psalter, 
Rich  in  deep  hymns  of  gratitude  and  love ! " 


Fortunately  for  Hood's  reputation, 
even  with  those  whom  he  here  attacks, 
he  has  left  other  pieces,  the  sentiment  of 
which  cannot  be  discussed  controversi- 
ally, but  belongs  to  the  universal  heart. 
"  He  sang  the  Song  of  the  Shirt "  was 
the  epitaph  which  Hood  chose  for 
himself;  but,  though  we  might  par- 
don the  taste  that  would  consent  to 
such  a  selection,  because  Hood  himself 
made  it,  we  should  be  sure  of  the 
general  verdict  that  the  finest  thing 
that  Hood  ever  wrote  was  his  "  Bridge 
of  Sighs."  Who  can  cross  London 
Bridge  at  night,  or  can  read  his  news- 
paper for  many  days  successively,  without 
recalling  some  snatch  of  that  famous 
lyric? 


THE  YOUTH   OF  ENGLAND   TO   GAKIBALDI'S   LEGIOK1 


BY  SYDNEY  DOBELL. 


O  YE  who  by  the  gaping  earth 

Where,  faint  with  resurrection,  lay 

An  empire  struggling  into  birth, 

Her   storm-strown  beauty  cold  with 
clay, 


1  Those  1,067  Cacciatori,  who,  after  conquer- 
ing in  the  Lombard  campaign,  set  out,  unas- 
sisted, and  "looking  upon  themselves  as  already 
•dead"  (vide  Times),  to  complete,  in  face  of  a 
fleet  and  three  armies,  the  work  of  Italian 
emancipation. 


The  free  winds  round  her  flowery  head, 
Her  feet  still  rooted  with  the  dead, 

Leaned  on  the  unconquered  arms  that 

clave 

Her  tomb  like  Judgment,  and  fore- 
knew 

The  life  for  which  you  rent  the  grave, 
Would  rise  to  breathe,  beam,  beat  for 

you, 

In  every  pulse  of  passionate  mood, 
A  people's  glorious  gratitude, — 


The  Youth  of  England  to  Garibaldi  s  Legion. 


325 


But  heard,  far  off,  the  mobled  woe 
Of  some  new  plaintiff  for  the  light ; 

And  leave  your  dear  reward,  and  go 
In  haste,  yet  once  again  to  smite 

The  hills,  and,  like  a  flood,  unlock 

Another  nation  from  the  rock  ; 

Oh  ye  who,  sure  of  nought  but  God 
And  death,  go  forth  to  turn  the  page 

Of  life,  and  in  your  heart's  best  blood 
Date  anew  the  chaptered  age ; 

Ye  o'er  whom,  as  the  abyss 

O'er  Curtius,  sundered  worlds  shall  kiss, 

Do  ye  dream  what  ye  have  done  1 
What  ye  are  and  shall  be  1    Nay, 

Comets  rushing  to  the  sun, 

And  dyeing  the  tremendous  way 

With  glory,  look  not  back,  nor  know 

How  they  blind  the  earth  below. 

From  wave  to  wave  our  race  rolls  on, 
In  seas  that  rise,  and  fall,  and  rise  ; 

Our  tide  of  Man  beneath  the  moon 
Sets  from  the  verge  to  yonder  skies ; 

Throb 'after  throb  the  ancient  might 

In  such  a  thousand  hills  renews  the 
earliest  height. 

'Tis  something,  o'er  that  moving  vast, 
To  look  across  the  centuries 

Which  heave  the  purple  of  a  past 
That  was,  and  is  not,  and  yet  is, 

And  in  that  awful  light  to  see 

The  crest  of  far  Thermopylae, 

And,  as  a  fisher  draws  his  fly 

Ripple  by  ripple,  from  shore  to  shore, 
To  draw  our  floating  gaze,  and  try 

The  more  by  less,  the  less  by  more, 
And  find  a  peer  to  that  sublime 
Old  height  in  the  last  surge  of  time. 

'Tis  something  :  yet  great  Clio's  reed, 
Greek  with  the  sap  of  Castaly, 
In  her  most  glorious  word  midway 

Begins  to  weep  and  bleed  ; 

And  Clio,  lest  she  burn  the  line 

Hides  her  blushing  face  divine, 

While  that  maternal  muse,  so  white 
And  lean  with  trying  to  forget, 

Moves  her  mute  lips,  and,  at  the  sight, 
As  if  all  suns  that  ever  set 

Slanted  on  a  mortal  ear 

What  man  can  feel  but  cannot  hear, 


We  know,  and  know  not  how  we  know, 
That  when  heroic  Greece  uprist, 

Sicilia  broke  a  daughter's  vow, 
And  failed  the  inexorable  tryst, — 

We  know  that  when  those  Spartans  drew 

Their  swords — too  many  and  too  few ! — 

A  presage  blanched  the  Olympian  hill 
To  moonlight :   the    old    Thunderer 
nods; 

But  all  the  sullen  air  is  chill 

With  rising  Fates  and  younger  gods. 

Jove  saw  his  peril  and  spake  :  one  blind 

Pale  coward  touched  them  with  mankind. 

What,  then,  on  that  Sicanian  ground 
Which  soured  the  blood  of  Greece  to 
shame, 

To  make  the  voice  of  praise  resound 
A  triumph  that,  if  Grecian  fame 

Blew  it  on  her  clarion  old, 

Had  warmed  the  silver  trump  to  gold  ! 

What,  then,  brothers  !  to  brim  o'er 
The  measure   Greece  could  scarcely 

brim, 
And,  calling  Victory  from  the  dim 

Of  that  remote  Thessalian  shore, 

Make  his  naked  limbs  repeat 

What  in  the  harness  of  defeat 

He  did  of  old ;  and,  at  the  head 
Of  modern  men,  renewing  thus 

Thermopylae,  with  Xerxes  fled 
And  every  Greek  Leonidas, 

Untitle  the  proud  Past  and  crown 

The  heroic  ages  in  our  own  ! 

Oh  ye,  whom  they  who  cry  "  how  long ' 

See,  and — as  nestlings  in  the  nest 

Sink  silent — sink  into  their  rest ; 

Oh  ye,  in  whom  the  Eight  andWrong 

That  this  old  world  of  Day  and  Night 

Crops  upon  its  black  and  white, 

Shall  strike,  and,  La  the  last  extremes 
Of  final  best  and  worst,  complete 
The  circuit  of  your  light  and  heat ; 

Oh  ye  who  walk  upon  our  dreams, 

And  live,  unknowing  how  or  why 

The  vision  and  the  prophecy, 

In  every  tabernacled  tent — 

Eat  shew-bread  from  the  altar,  and 

wot 
Not  of  it — drink  a  sacrament 

At  every  draught  and  know  it  not — 


326 


The  Youth  of  England  to  Garibaldi's  Legion. 


Breathe  a  nobler  year  -whose  least 
Worst  day  is  as  the  fast  and  feast 

Of  men — and,  with  such  steps  as  chime 
To  nothing  lower  than  the  ears 
Can    hear  to   whom   the    marching 
spheres 

Beat  the  universal  time 

Thro'  our  Life's  perplexity, 

March  the  land  and  sail  the  sea, 

O'er  those  fields  where  Hate  hath  led 
So  oft  the  hosts  of  Crime  and  Pain — 
March  to  break  the  captive's  chain, 

To  heal  the  sick,  to  raise  the  dead, 

And,  where  the  last  deadliest  rout 

Of  furies  cavern,  to  cast  out 

Those  Daemons, — ay,  to  meet  the  fell 
Foul  belch  of  swarming  Satan  hot 
From  ^tna,  and  down  Etna's  throat 

Drench  that  vomit  back  to  hell — 

In  the  east  your  star  doth  burn; 

The  tide  of  Fate  is  on  the  turn ; 

The  thrown  powers  that  mar  or  make 
Man's  good  lie  shed  upon  the  sands, 

Or  on  the  wave  about  to  break 

Are  flotsam  that  nor  swims  nor  stands ; 

Fjarth  is  cold  and  pale,  a-swoon 

With  fear ;  to  the  watch-tower  of  noon 

The  sun  climbs  sick  and  sorrowful, 
Or,  like  clouded  Csesar,  doth  fold 
His  falling  greatness  to  behold 
Some  crescent  evil  near  the  full 
Hell  flickers ;  and  the  sudden  reel 
Of  fortune,  stopping  in  mid- wheel 

Till  the  shifted  current  blows, 

Clacks  the  knocking  balls  of  chance ; 
And  the  metred  world's  advance 

Pauses  at  the  rhythmic  close  ; 

One  stave  is  ended,  and  the  next 

Chords  its  discords  on  the  vext 

And  tuning  Time  :  this  is  the  hour 
When  weak  Nature's  need  should  be 
The  Hero's  opportunity, 
And  heart  and  hand   are   Eight  and 

Power, 

And  he  who  will  not  serve  may  reign,' 
And  who  dares  well  dares  nought  in 
vain. 


Behind  you  History  stands  a-gape ; 
On  either  side  the  incarnadine 
Hot  nations  in  whom  war's  wild  wine 
Burns  like  vintage  thro'  the  grape, 
See  you,  ruddy  with  the  morn 
Of  Freedom,  see  you,  and  for  scorn 

As  on  that  old  day  of  wrath 

The  hosts  drew  off  in  hope  and  doubt, 
And  the  shepherd-boy  stept  out 

To  sling  Judsea  upon  Gath, 

Furl  in  two,  and,  still  as  stone, 

Like  a  red  sea  let  you  on. 

On  !  ay  tho'  at  war's  alarms 

That  sea  should  flood  into  a  foe  ! 
On  !  the  horns  of  Jericho 

Blow  when  Virtue  blows  to  arms. 

Numberless  or  numbered — on  ! 

Men  are  millions,  God  is  one. 

On  !  who  waits  for  favouring  gales  ? 

What  hap  can  ground  your  Argosy  ? 
A  nation's  blessings  fill  your  sails, 

And  tho'  her  wrongs  scorched  ocean  dry, 
Yet  ah  !  her  blood  and  tears  could  roll 
Another  sea  from  pole  to  pole. 

On  !  day  round  ye,  summer  bloom 
Beneath,  in  your  young  veins  the  bliss 
Of  youth  !  Who  asks  more  1  Ask  but 
this, 

— And  ask  as  One  will  ask  at  Doom — 

If  lead  be  true,  if  steel  be  keen  ? 

If  hearts  be  pure,  if  hands  be  clean  ? 

On  !  night  round  ye,  the  worst  roak 
Of  Fortune  poisoning  all  youth's  bliss  ; 

Each  grass  a  sword,  each  Delphic  oak 
An  omen  !   Who  dreads  ?   Dread  but 
this, — 

Blunted  steel  and  lead  unsure, 

Hands  unclean  and  hearts  impure  ! 

Full  of  love  to  God  and  man 
As  girt  Martha's  wageless  toil ; 
Gracious  as  the  wine  and  oil 

Of  the  good  Samaritan ; 

Healing  to  our  wrongs  and  us 

As  Abraham's  breast  to  Lazarus ; 

Piteous  as  the  cheek  that  gave 
Its  patience  to  the  smiter,  still 
Rendering  nought  but  good  for  ill, 
Tho'  the  greatest  good  ye  have 
Be  iron,  and  your  love  and  ruth 
Speak  but  from  the  cannon's  mouth — 


The  Youth  of  England  to  Garibaldis  Legion. 


327 


On  !  you  servants  of  the  Lord, 

In  the  right  of  servitude 

Reap  the  life  He  sowed,  and  blood 
His  frenzied  people  with  the  sword, 
And  the  blessing  shall  be  yours, 
That  falls  upon  the  peacemakers  ! 

Ay,  tho'  trump  and  clarion  blare, 
Tho'  your  charging  legions  rock 
Earth's  bulwarks,  tho'  the  slaughtered 

air 

Be  carrion,  and  the  encountered  shock 
Of  your  clashing  battles  jar 
The  rung  heav'ns,  this  is  Peace,  not 
War! 

With  that  two-edged  sword  that  cleaves 

Crowned  insolence  to  awe, 
And  whose  backward  lightning  leave 

Licence  stricken  into  law, 
Fill,  till  slaves  and  tyrants  cease, 
The  sacred  panurgy  of  peace  ! 

Peace,  as  outraged  peace  can  rise 

When   her    eye    that    watched   and 
prayed 

Sees  upon  the  favouring  skies 
The  great  sign,  so  long  delayed, 

And  from  hoofed  and  trampled  sod 

She  leaps  transfigured  to  a  god, 

Meets  amid  her  smoking  land 
The  chariot  of  careering  war, 
Locks  the  whirlwind  of  his  car, 
Wrests  the  thunder  from  his  hand, 
And,  with  his  own  bolt  down-hurl'd, 
Brains  the  monster  from  the  world  ! 

Hark  !  he  comes  !     His  nostrils  cast 
Like  chaif  before  him  flocks  and  men. 
Oh  proud,  proud  day,  in  yonder  glen 
Look  on  your  heroes  !     Look  your  last, 
Your  last:  and  draw  in  with  the  pas- 
sionate eye 

Of  love's  last  look  the  sights  that  paint 
eternity. 

He  comes — a  tempest  hides  their  place ! 
Tis  morn.    The  long  day  wanes.    The 

loud 
Storm  lulls.     Some  march  out  of  the 

cloud, 

The  princes  of  their  age  and  race ; 
And  some  the  mother  earth  that  bore 
Such  sons  hath  loved  too  well  to  let  them 
leave  her  more. 


But  oh,  when  joy-bells  ring 
For  the  living  that  return, 
And  the  fires  of  victory  burn, 

And  the  dancing  kingdoms  sing, 

And  beauty  takes  the  brave 

To  the  breast  he  bled  to  save, 

Will  no  faithful  mourner  weep 
Where  the  battle-grass  is  gory, 

And  deep  the  soldier's  sleep 
In  his  martial  cloak  of  glory, 

Sleeps  the  dear  dead  buried  low? 

Shall  they  be  forgotten  ?     Lo, 

On  beyond  that  vale  of  fire 

This  babe  must  travel  ere  the  child 
Of  yonder  tall  and  bearded  sire 

His  father's  image  hath  fulfilled, 
He  shall  see  in  that  far  day 
A  race  of  maidens  pale  and  grey. 

Theirs  shall  be  nor  cross  nor  hood, 
Common  rite  nor  convent  roof, 
Bead  nor  bell  shall  put  to  proof 

A  sister  of  that  sisterhood ; 

But  by  noonday  or  by  night 

In  her  eyes  there  shall  be  light 

And  as  a  temple  organ,  set 

To  its  best  stop  by  hands  long  gone, 
Gives  new  ears  the  olden  tone 

And  speaks  the  buried  master  yet, 

Her  lightest  accents  have  the  key 

Of  ancient  love  and  victory. 

And,  as  some  hind,  whom  his  o'erthrown 
And  dying  king  o'er  hill  and  flood 

Sends  laden  with  the  fallen  crown, 
Breathes  the  great  trust  into  his  blood 

Till  all  his  conscious  forehead  wears 

The  splendid  secret  that  he  bears, 

For  ever,  everywhere  the  same, 

Thro'  every  changing  time  and  scene, 

In  widow's  weeds  and  lowly  name 
She  stands  a  bride,  she  moves  a  queen ; 

The  flowering  land  her  footstep  knows ; 

The  people  bless  her  as  she  goes, 

Whether  upon  your  sacred  days 

She  peers  the  mightiest  and  the  best, 

Or  whether,  by  the  common  ways, 
The   babe  leans   from  the   peasant's 
breast, 

While  humble  eyelids  proudly  fill, 

And  momentary  Sabbaths  still 


328 


The  Youth  of  England  to  Garibaldi's  Legion. 


The  hand  that  spins,  the  foot  that  delves, 
And  all  our  sorrow  and  delight 

Behold  the  seraph  of  themselves 

In  that  pure  face  where  woe  grown 
bright 

Seems  rapture  chastened  to  the  mild 

And  equal  light  of  smiles  unsmiled. 

And  if  perchance  some  wandering  king, 
Enamoured  of  her  virgin  reign, 

Should  sue  the  hand  whose  only  ring 
Is  the  last  link  of  that  first  chain, 

Forged  hy  no  departed  hours,  and  seen 

But  in  the  daylight  that  hath  been, 

She  pauses  ere  her  heart  can  speak, 
And,  from  below  the  source  of  tears, 

The  girlhood  to  her  faded  cheek 
Goes  slowly  up  thro'  twenty  years, 

And,  like  the  shadow  in  her  eyes, 

Slowly  the  living  Past  replies, 

In  tones  of  such  serene  eclipse 

As  if  the  voices  of  Death  and  Life 

Came  married  by  her  mortal  lips 

To   more  than  Life  or  Death — "A 
wife 

Thou  wooest ;  on  yonder  field  he  died 

Who  lives  in  all  the  world  beside." 

Oh,  ye  who,  in  the  favouring  smile 
Of  Heaven,  at  one  great  stroke  shall 
win 

The  gleaming  guerdons  that  beguile 
Glory's  grey-haired  Paladin 

Thro'  all  his  threescore  jousts  and  ten, 

— Love  of  women,  and  praise  of  men, 

The   spurs,   the  bays,   the   palm,   the 
crown, — 

Who,  from  your  mountain-peak  among 
Mountains,  thenceforth  may  look  along 

The  shining  tops  of  deeds  undone, 
And  take  them  thro'  the  level  air 
As  angels  walk  from  star  to  star, 


We  from  our  isle — the  ripest  spot 
Of  the  round  green  globe — where  all 
The  rays  of  God  most  kindly  fall, 

And  warm  us  to  that  temperate  lot 

Of  seasoned  change  that  slowly  brings 

Fruition  to  the  orb  of  things, 

We  from  this  calm  in  chaos,  where 

Matter  running  into  plan 

And  Eeason  solid  in  a  man 
Mediate  the  earth  and  air, 
See  ye  winging  yon  far  gloom, 
Oh,  ministering  spirits  !  as  some 

Blest  soul  above  that,  all  too  late, 
From  his  subaltern  seat  in  heaven 

Looks  round  and  measures  fate  with  fate, 
And    thro'    the    clouds    below    him 
driven 

Beholds  from  that  calm  world  of  bliss 

The  toil  and  agony  of  this, 

And,  warming  with  the  scene  rehearst, 
Bemoans  the  realms  where  all  is  won, 

And  sees  the  last  that  shall  be  first, 
And  spurns  his  secondary  throne, 

And  envies  from  his  changeless  sphere 

The  life  that  strives  and  conquers  here. 

But  ere  toward  fields  so  old  and  new 
We  leap  from  joys  that  shine  in  vain, 

And  rain  our  passion  down  the  blue 
Serene — once  more — once  more — to 
drain 

Life's  dreadful  ecstasy,  and  sell 

Our  birthright  for  that  oxymel 

Whose  stab  and  unction  still  keep  quick 
The  wound  for  ever  lost  and  found, 

Lo,  o'erhead,  a  cherubic 

And  legendary  lyre,  that  round 

The  eddying  spaces  turns  a  dream 

Of  ancient  war  !     And  at  the  theme 

Harps  to  answering  harps,  on  high, 
Call,  recall,  that  but  a  strait 
Of  storm  divides  our  happy  state 
From  that  pale  sleepless  Mystery 
Who  pines  to  sit  upon  the  throne 
He  served  ere  falling  to  his  own. 


MACMILLAN'S    MAGAZINE. 


SEPTEMBER,  1860. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  EUEOPE  FORETOLD   IN  HISTORY. 


BY   T.    E.    CLIFFE   LESLIE. 


THE  events  of  the  last  year  and  a  half, 
and  the  character  of  the  agitation  over 
many  parts  of  the  continent,  must  have 
banished  from  the  most  conservative  and 
peaceable  minds  in  this  country  all  con- 
fidence in  the  stability  of  the  present 
political  and  territorial  divisions  of 
Europe.  Whatever  there  may  be  in 
the  numerous  omens  of  departure  from 
the  status  quo  to  alarm  or  to  interest 
Englishmen,  there  is  at  least  no  occasion 
for  surprise  at  the  prospect.  Europe  is 
not  now  for  the  first  time  occupied  about 
the  removal  of  ancient  landmarks.  Its 
history  is  a  chronicle  of  continual  repar- 
titions of  its  territory.  Experience 
therefore  would  warrant  no  other  expec- 
tation than  that  of  further  rearrange- 
ments, but  it  may  not  be  so  obvious  that 
experience  can  help  us  to  foresee  the 
consummation  towards  which  all  such 
changes  converge. 

It  is  the  object  of  this  essay  to  show 
that  all  the  alterations  of  the  political 
map,  since  the  dissolution  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  have  proceeded  upon  a  uniform 
principle  and  in  one  direction  ;  and  that, 
from  a  comparison  of  accomplished  facts 
with  the  tendency  of  existing  move- 
ments, we  may  gather  instruction  of  a 
practical  kind  respecting  our  prospects 
and  duties,  considered  as  both  English- 
men and  Europeans, — or  as  citizens  not 
only  of  the  British  Empire,  but  of  the 
great  commonwealth  of  civilized  states. 

For  the  most  part,  nations  are  not 
more  slow  to  anticipate  the  revolutions 

ISTo.  11. — VOL.  n. 


of  time,  than  they  are  quick  to  forget 
the  order  of  things  which  those  revolu- 
tions supersede.  Thus  French  historians 
of  all  systems,  and  politicians  of  all 
parties,  are  accustomed  to  assume  that 
their  nation  and  government  have  some 
ancient,  natural,  and  immutable  title  to 
their  present,  and  even  more  extensive 
boundaries  ;l  although,  in  truth,  France 
hiis  very  lately  reached  her  existing 
limits — by  nine  hundred  years  of  war 
and  usurpation — and  has  no  other  right 
to  them  than  the  power  to  hold  what 
she  has  seized,  the  gradual  acquiescence 
of  many  vanquished  peoples,  and  the 
final  assent  of  the  rest  of  Europe. 

Whatever  unity  Gaul  possessed  as  a 
province  of  the  empire  of  the  Caesars — as 
a  single  fraction  of  that  vast  imperial 
unit — was  a  matter  of  Roman  admini- 
stration entirely ;  there  was  nothing 
national,  much  less  modern  or  French 

1  This  idea  is  more  deeply  rooted  in  the 
Freuch  mind  than  is  commonly  believed  in 
England,  and  would  be  dangerous  to  the  peace 
of  Europe  even  if  there  were  no  Bonapartists 
living. 

"  La  nature  ne  voulut  que  le  maintien  de 
nos  limites  naturelles.  L'idde  de  les  reprendre 
ne  se  perdra  jamais  :  elle  est  profondement 
nationale  et  profondement  historique." — 
Thierry,  Rgcits  des  Temps  M£rov.  i.  194. 

"  C'est  seulement  au  traite"  de  Verdun,  en 
843,  que  la  France  a  recule"  du  Rhin  et  des 
Alpes.  Elle  n'a  cesse  de  reclamer  son  antique 
heritage." — Duruy,  Hist,  de  France,  i.  2. 

"  Jusqu'ou  allait  la  Gaule,  disait  Richelieu, 
jusque  la  doit  aller  la  France." — Id.  ii.  224. 
Compare  Thiers,  "Hist,  du  Consulat  et  de 
1'Empire,"  vol.  xvii.  p.  124,  and  passim. 

Z 


330 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


in  it.  Nay,  during  the  integrity  of  the 
province,  as  such,  those  bands  of  German 
warriors  (through  whom,  by  a  singular 
fortune,  the  Frank  name  came  by  de- 
grees to  be  imposed  upon  several  distinct 
nationalities  and  independent  states)  had 
not  crossed  the  Somme,  and  they  never 
finally  occupied  or  governed  more  than 
a  small  portion  of  the  land  between  the 
Ehine,  the  Alps,  and  the  Pyrenees.  The 
army  of  Clovis  had  but  a  momentary 
and  partial  success  south  of  the  Loire, 
and  made  no  conquest  of  Brittany. 
Charlemagne  had  no  better  title  to  the 
sovereignty  of  the  various  nations  then 
in  Gaul  than  to  the  rest  of  his  evanes- 
cent empire,  which  was  but  an  incident 
of  the  German  invasions,  and  scarcely 
belongs  to  the  history  and  settlement  of 
modern  Europe. 

By  the  treaty  of  Verdun  in  843,  the 
Meuse  and  the  Ehone  became  the 
boundaries  of  Charles  the  Bald's  no- 
minal kingdom  of  France  or  Gaul.  But 
so  broken  is  the  succession  between 
ancient  or  Roman  Gaul,  this  Carlovingian 
France,  and  the  modern  country  of  that 
name,  that,  towards  the  end  of  the  tenth 
century,  while  the  genuine  Romans  and 
primitive  Celts  were  slaves,  the  Bretons, 
Normans,  Burgundians,  Visigoths,  and 
Gascons  maintained  against  the  Franks 
their  separate  territories,  their  distinct 
nationality,  names,  and  political  inde- 
pendence. About  this  time  it  was  that 
the  duke  of  a  small  district  north  of  the 
Loire,  insulated  by  natural  boundaries, 
a  ad  long  afterwards  called  the  Isle  of 
France,  assumed,  with  the  consent  of 
some  of  the  chieftains  of  northern  Gaul, 
the  title  of  King  ;  thereby  effacing  the 
last  vestige  of  the  Carlovingian  sove- 
reignty, while  laying  the  foundation  of 
thse  modern  realm  of  France.  For  more 
than  two  centuries  after  Hugh  Capet  was 
crowned,  the  people  south  of  the  Loire 
were  distinguished  by  the  general  name 
of  Romans  from  the  people  above  that 
river,  who  were  called  (though  not  in- 
variably or  without  dispute)  Franks  or 
French.  During  this  period  the  only 
monarch  who  reigned  by  legitimate  right 
on  both  sides  of  this  natural  boundary 
of  France  was  the  King  of  England. 


Until  the  crusade  of  Simon  de  Montfort, 
followed  by  the  annexation  to  the  crown 
of  France  of  Languedoc  and  Provence, 
"the  French  of  the  North  had  vainly 
"  endeavoured  to  extend  their  rule  over 
"  the  Gallo-Roman  or  Gothic  popu- 
"  lation  of  the  south.  The  language 
"  divided  and  defined  the  two  yet  un- 
"  mingled  races.  Throughout  the  war 
"  the  Crusaders  are  described  as  the 
"  Franks,  as  a  foreign  nation  invading  a 
"  separate  territory."1  The  annexation 
of  Belgium  or  Switzerland  at  this  day 
would  not  be  a  more  cruel  violation  of 
national  rights  and  feelings  than  that 
which  is  thus  described  by  a  French 
historian  : — "  Thus  were  annexed  to  the 
"  kingdom  of  France  the  provinces  of 
"  ancient  Gaul  situated  right  and  left  of 
"  the  Rhone,  except  Guienne  and  the 
"  valleys  at  the  foot  of  the  Pyrenees. 
"  The  most  disastrous  period  in  the 
'  history  of  the  people  of  southern 
'  France  is  that  at  which  they  became 
'  French  ;  when  the  king,  whom  their 
'  ancestors  used  to  call  the  King  of 
Paris,  began  to  term  them  his  subjects 
of  the  langue  d'oc,  in  contra-distinction 
to  the  French  of  the  Outre  Loire,  who 
spoke  the  langue  cFoui.  Hatred  of 
the  French  name  was  the  national 
"  passion  of  the  new  subjects  of  the 
"  King  of  France  ;  and,  even  after  more 
"  than  two  hundred  years  had  elapsed, 
"  to  fall  under  his  immediate  govern- 
"  ment,  by  the  extinction  of  the  counts 
"  of  Anjou,  appeared  to  the  people  of 
"  Provence  a  new  national  calamity." 2 

Guienne  likewise,  it  is  well  known, 
formed  no  part  of  the  original  dominions 
of  the  Capetian  dynasty,  and  was  not 
annexed  until  some  time  after  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  English  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  whose  departure  was  long 
lamented  by  many  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  duchy. 

When,  finally,  the  last  English  town 
had  been  captured,  in  1558,  Francis  II. 
was  crowned  King  of  France  from  Calais 
to  the  Pyrenees,  by  no  better  title  than 
that  which  had  led  to  the  coronation  of 
Henry  VI.'  of  England  upon  the  same 

1  Milman's  Latin  Christianity,  iv.  204.] 

2  Thierry's  Norman  Conquest. 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History, 


331 


throne,  that  is  to  say,  the  fortune  of 
war. 

In  another  sense  the  war  with  Eng- 
land may  be  said  to  have  created  the 
French  monarchy  and  nation;  for,  as 
every  French  historian  confesses,  it  was 
in  the  course  of  that  long  struggle  that 
the  different  races  began  to  forget  the 
natural,  or  primitive  and  uncivilized 
divisions  of  locality  and  descent,  and  by 
making  common  cause  against  a  com- 
mon enemy,  to  regard  each  other  as 
fellow  countrymen.  Yet  even  at  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
the  territory  of  France  was  far  short  of 
its  present  boundaries ;  the  policy  of 
Eichelieu,  the  merciless  encroachments 
of  Louis  XIV,  and  after  his  death  a 
century  and  a  half  of  war  and  annexa- 
tion followed,  before  Alsace,  la  Franche 
Comte,  Eoussillon,  Lorraine,  Nice,  and 
Savoy,  could  be  included  under  a  single 
government,  or  inhabited  by  a  united 
nation.1 

Thus  the  history  of  France,  and  of 
the  consolidation  of  the  different  races, 
languages,  laws,  and  governments  which 
once  nourished  between  the  Mediter- 
ranean, the  Alps,  and  the  Atlantic,  is 
identical  in  its  main  features  with  that 
of  the  growth  of  the  empire  of  all  the 
Eussias  out  of  the  dukedom  of  Mos- 
cow. It  is  one  series  of  conquests, 
annexations,  and  usurpations  ;  one  con- 
tinuous repudiation  of  geographical  or 
fixed  natural  limits ;  one  unsparing 
denial  of  claims  to  national  indepen- 
dence and  unity  founded  on  race,  history, 
language,  institutions,  and  locality.  The 
genuine  traditions  of  French  policy  no 
more  recognise  the  Ehine,  the  Alps,  and 
the  Pyrenees  as  the  natural  boundaries 
of  France,  than  the  Oise,  the  Marne, 
and  the  Cevennes,  the  Ehone',  the  Loire, 
and  the  Garonne,  or  the  Vosges  and  the 
Saone,  which  have  been  successively 
crossed.  The  Elbe  and  the  Carpathians, 
the  Ebro  and  the  Mediterranean,2  are 

1 "  La  revolution  et  les  guerres  de  la  revolu- 
tion ont  plus  fait  pour  1'unite  de  la  France  que 
n'auraient  fait  dix  siecles." — Revue  des  Deux 
Mondfs,  1  Juillet,  1860.  Nice  and  Savoy  can- 
not, even  now,  be  regarded  as  irrevocably  an- 
nexed to  France. 

s  The  Mediterranean  has  already  been  not 


beyond.  So  long  as  earth  and  water 
remain  for  her  heralds  to  demand,  France 
will  not  want  popular  doctrines,  "which 
"  may  reach  forth  just  occasions  (as  may 
"  be  pretended)  of  war." 3  The  conscience 
of  the  nation  is  in  this  respect  more 
easily  satisfied  than  even  that  of  the 
ancient  Eomans,  who,  as  Lord  Bacon 
notices  in  his  remarks  on  the  advantage 
to  an  empire  of  habits  and  ideas  sug- 
gestive of  military  enterprise,  "  though 
"  they  esteemed  the  extending  of  the 
"  limits  of  their  empire  to  be  great  honour 
"to  their  generals  when  it  was  accom- 
"  plished,  yet  never  rested  upon  that 
"alone  to  begin  a  war."4  Indeed,  the 
Eomans  modestly  held  their  public  fes- 
tival in  honour  of  the  god  of  boundaries, 
"  on  the  sixth  milestone  towards  Lau- 
"  rentum,  because  this  was  originally  the 
"  extent  of  the  Eoman  territory  in  that 
"  direction."5  Upon  the  same  principle 
the  French  should  celebrate  their  Ter- 
minalia,  not  at  Utrecht,  Coblentz,  or 
Genoa,  but  near  the  fourth  milestone  on 
the  road  from  Paris  to  St.  Denis,  along 
which  Louis  VI.  so  often  rode,  lance  in 
hand,  to  the  abbey  of  which  he  was  a 
vassal,  at  the  end  of  his  royal  domains ; 
and  along  which  Louis  XIV.  may  have 
passed  on  his  way  to  invade  the  United 
Provinces  in  1672.6 

indistinctly  spoken  of  as  a  French  lake  by 
natural  position. 

3  Bacon.    Essay  XXIX.    Of  the  True  Great- 
ness of  Kingdoms.  •  ' 

4  Idem. 

5  Smith's  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities. 

«  In  1671  Sir  W.  Temple  predicted  this  war 
in  terms  which  an  English  Statesman  might 
use  almost  without  variation  in  1860  : — "  In 
regard  there  are  several  conquests  remaining 
upon  record  (though  all  of  them  the  mere 
result  of  our  own  divisions  and  invitations), — 
when  trade  is  grown  the  design  of  all  nations 
in  Europe  ;  when,  instead  of  a  king  of  France 
surrounded  and  bearded  by  dukes  of  Brittany 
and  Burgundy,  as  well  as  our  own  possessions 
of  Normandy  and  Guienne,  we  now  behold  in 
France  the  greatest  forces  that  perhaps  have 
ever  been  known  under  the  command  of  any 
Christian  Prince,  it  may  import  us  in  this 
calm  we  enjoy  to  hearken  to  the  storms  that 
are  now  rising  abroad,  and  by  the  best  per- 
spectives that  we  have,  to  discover  from  what 
coast  they  break.  ...  If  there  were  any 
certain  height  where  the  flights  of  power  and 
ambition  use  to  end,  we  might  imagine  that 

z  2 


332 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


But  although  the  greatness  of  France 
has  been  accomplished  by  an  unswerv- 
ing policy  of  aggression,  as  threatening 
now  as  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIV,  it 
would  be  a  blind  study  of  history  to 
overlook  the  immense  acquisitions  to 
the  domains  of  civilization  from  the 
substitution  of  one  powerful  monarchy 
for  many  independent  and  hostile  states. 
The  successors  of  Hugh  Capet  might 
hold  the  language  of  the  Eoman  con- 
queror to  the  subjugated  Gauls  :  "Kegna 
"  bellaque  per  Gallias  semper  fuere  donee 
"  in  nostrum  jus  concederetis." l  It 
should  console  us  even  for  the  surviving 
jealousy  of  the  English  name/that  so 
many  other  rancorous  national  antipa- 
thies are  buried  for  ever ;  and  that  a  nu- 
merous and  illustrious  people  now  dwell 
together  as  brethren  in  unity,  and,  -how- 
ever high  and  martial  their  spirit^  will 
draw  the  sword  against  each  other  as 
aliens  no  more.  Nay,  even  this  is  some 
compensation  for  past  aggression,  that 
Europe  has  now  the  warning  of  so 
many  centuries  that  France  will,  sooner 
or  later,  bear  down  the  opposition  of  all 
unequal  and  divided  force,  acknowledg- 
ing no  frontiers  short  of  the  most  con- 
venient positions  to  support  the  exten- 
sion of  her  territory;  and  that,  between 
it  and  Russia,  only  brave,  united,  and 
powerful  nations  can  permanently  pre- 
serve their  independence.  It  is  still 
more  pertinent  to  our  argument  to 
observe  that  the  history  of  France, 
as  of  every  other  great  modern  state, 

the  interest  of  France  were  but  to  conserve 
its  present  greatness,  so  feared  by  its  neigh- 
bours, and  so  glorious  in  the  world ;  but,  be- 
sides that  the  motions  and  desires  of  human 
minds  are  endless,  it  may  be  necessary  for 
France  to  have  some  war  or  other  in  pursuit 
abroad  which  may  amuse  the  nation,  and  keep 
them  from  reflecting  on  their  condition  at 
home,  hard  and  uneasy  to  all  but  such  as  are 
in  pay  from  the  Court.  .  .  .  Besides  the 
personal  dispositions  of  the  king,  active  and 
aspiring,  and  many  circumstances  in  the 
Government,  the  continual  increase  of  their 
forces  in  time  of  peace,  and  their  fresh  inva- 
sion of  Lorraine,  are  enough  to  persuade  most 
men  that  the  design  of  the  crown  is  a  war, 
whenever  they  can  open  it  with  a  prospect  of 
succeeding  to  purpose." — Surrey  of  the  Con- 
stitutions, rfr.  in  1671. 

1  Tacit.  Hist.  lib.  iv.  cap.  73. 


establishes  one  central  truth,  that  po- 
litical unity,  and  the  consequent  supre- 
macy of  law  over  all  quarrel,  can  alone 
supersede  the  jurisdiction  of  force,2  and 
that  all  Europe  has  been  steadily  ex- 
tending the  areas  of  fellow-citizenship 
and  patriotism,  and  steadily  enclosing 
international  feud  and  the  war  of  inde- 
pendent sovereigns  and  societies  within 
legal  barriers,  ever  since  the  anarchy 
and  independence  (as  it  is  called)  of 
savage  life  took  shelter  under  the 
feudal  system. 

In  that  primitive  settlement  and  or- 
ganization, in  fixed  localities  and  homes, 
of  wandering  barbarians,  we  discover 
the  germ  and  archetype  of  the  state 
and  the  nucleus  of  the  modern  nation, 
that  is  to  say,  of  a  society  which  has 
fused  ancient  differences  of  descent  and 
blood,  and  is  united  by  a  larger  and 
nobler  tie  than  that  of  the  family  or 
tribe.  Conquerors  and  conquered,  com- 
panions in  arms,  often  of  different 
origins,  settled  upon  the  same  spot, 
formed  one  defensive  compact,  fixed 
and  fortified  their  site,  choosing  where 
it  was  possible  such  frontiers  as  had 
natural  advantages  for  defence  and  war, 
and  which,  in  this  sense,  nature  indi- 
cated and  ordained.  Every  bill  and 
stream  afforded  at  once  a  landmark  and 
a  natural  fortification.  Within  these 
narrow  and  precarious  boundaries  indus- 
try and  society  might  take  root  at  last ; 
for,  although  there  was  war — incessant 
war — without,  there  was  peace  within. 
There  was  war  without,  not  (as  M.  Guizot 
observes)  because  of  the  brutality  of 
feudal  manners,  but  on  account  of  the 
absence  of  any  central  authority  to  make 
binding  general  rules,  enforce  their 
observance,  and  settle  disputed  rights. 
There  is  not  always  in  war  anything 
necessarily  and  essentially  barbarous. 
It  is  often  the  only  final  process  by 
which  independent  powers  can  conclude 
angry  differences  about  subjects  to  which 
they  attach  vital  importance.  It  does 
not  of  necessity  arise  from  wilful  or 
conscious  injustice  on  either  side ;  when 

2 In  societate  an4.  lex,  mt  vis  valet.     Eicon, 
De  Fon'.ibus  Juris,  Aphjrismus  I. 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


333 


it  does,  it  implies  spirited  resistance  to 
injustice  on  the  other  side,  which  civi- 
lized men  are  the  most  apt  to  make. 
The  feudal  wars  were  in  this  respect 
quite  analogous  to  those  of  modern 
states,  which,  by  reason  of  their  inde- 
pendence, have  often  no  means  of  legis- 
lating conclusively  for  Europe  and  other 
parts  of  the  world  except  by  arms,  or 
"armed  opinions." 

But  interdependence  and  peace,  not 
independence  and  war,  are  the  ultimate 
destiny  of  mankind.  And  thus  we  find 
throughout  the  middle  ages  a  perpetual 
consolidation  of  petty  sovereignties  and 
republics,  produced  by  that  tendency  of 
human  society  to  unity,  which,  beginning 
with  the  composition  of  innumerable 
fiefs  in  the  ninth  century,  has  issued  in 
a  few  great  states  and  nations  in  the 
nineteenth.  The  poor  freeman  ex- 
changed his  liberty  for  the  protection 
of  the  neighbouring  lord;  the  lord 
became  the  vassal  of  the  greater  count 
or  duke,  compelled  in  his  turn  to 
acknowledge  the  supremacy  of  some 
more  powerful  suzerain ;  until  monarchy 
rose  upon  the  ruins  of  their  common 
independence ; '  and  although  it  rose  for 
the  most  part  cruelly,  oppressively,  and 
treacherously,  men  hailed  its  appearance 
because  they  could  fly  from  petty  tyrants 
to  the  throne,  and  only  an  army  capable 
of  invading  a  great  state  could  annoy  a 
poor  man's  dwelling. 

The  decline  of  feudalism  not  only 
proves  the  essentially  transitory  charac- 
ter of  political  divisions  and  boundaries, 
and  the  constant  tendency  of  those 
forces,  which  impel  the  movements  of 
European  society,  to  sweep  larger  circles 
of  civil  union,  but  also  throws  a  light 

1  "  The  tendency  to  centralization,  towards 
the  formation  of  a  power  superior  to  local 
powers,  was  rapid.  Long  before  general 
royalty — French  royalty — appeared,  upon  all 
parts  of  the  territory  there  were  formed  under 
the  names  of  duchy,  comity,  viscownty,  &c., 
many  petty  royalties  invested  with  central 
government,  and  under  the  rule  of  which  the 
rights  of  the  possessors  of  fiefs,  that  is  to 
say,  local  sovereignties,  gradually  disappeared. 
Such  were  the  natural  and  necessary  results  of 
the  vices  of  the  feudal  system,  and  especially 
of  the  excessive  predominance  of  individual  in- 
dependence."— GUIZOT,  Civilization  in  France. 


on  the  chief  cause  of  the  essentially 
military  structure  of  modern  civilization. 
Petty  independent  states  make  war  be- 
cause of  their  independence,  and  petty 
wars  because  their  powers  are  petty. 
Great  states,  too,  make  war  because  of 
their  independence,  and  their  wars  are 
great  in  proportion  to  their  own  magni- 
tude. And  withal,  "  they  live,"  as 
Hobbes  has  said,  "  in  the  conditions  of 
"  perpetual  war,  with  their  frontiers 
"  armed,  and  cannon  planted  against 
"  their  neighbours  round  about."  When 
Eichelieu  destroyed  the  fortifications  of 
the  feudal  engineers,  Vauban  fortified 
the  frontiers  of  the  kingdom.  Powerful 
countries  have  powerful  adversaries,  but 
they  close  in  a  common  patriotism  a 
thousand  local  enmities. 

We  have  seen  that  this  was  so  in 
France  ;  so  it  was  in  Spain.  "  For 
"  several  hundred  years  after  the  Sara- 
"  cenic  invasion  at  the  beginning  of  the 
"  eighth  century,  Spain  was  broken  up 
"  into  a  number  of  small  but  independent 
"  states,  divided  in  their  interests,  and 
'•  often  in  deadly  hostility  with  one 
"  another.  It  was  inhabited  by  races 
''  the  most  dissimilar  in  their  origin, 

'  religion,  and   government By 

'  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
'  the  number  of  states  into  which 
'  the  country  had  been  divided,  was 
'  reduced  to  four,  Castile,  Arragon, 
"  Navarre,  and  the  Moorish  kingdom  of 
"  Granada.  At  the  close  of  that  century 
"  these  various  races  were  blended  into 
"  one  great  nation  under  one  common 
"  rule.  The  war  of  Granada  subjected 
"  all  the  sections  of  the  country  to  one 
"  common  action,  under  the  influence  of 
"  common  motives  of  the  most  exciting 
"  kind ;  while  it  brought  them  in  con- 
"  flict  with  a  race,  the  extreme  repug- 
"  nance  of  whose  institutions  and  cha- 
"  racter  to  their  own  served  greatly  to 
"  nourish  the  sentiment  of  nationality. 
"  In  this  way  the  spark  of  patriotism 
'  was  kindled  throughout  the  whole 
'  nation,  and  the  most  distant  provinces 
'  of  the  Peninsula  were  knit  together 
'  by  a  bond  of  union  which  has  remained 
*  indissoluble.  The  petty  states  which 
'  had  before  swarmed  over  the  country, 


334 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


'  neutralising   each   other's  operations, 

'  and  preventing  any  effective  movement 

'  abroad,   were  now  amalgamated  into 

'  one  whole.     Sectional  jealousies  and 

'  antipathies,  indeed,  were  too  sturdily 

'  rooted  to  be  wholly  extinguished,  but 

1  they   gradually  subsided    under    the 

'  influence  of  a  common   government, 

'  and  commnnity  of  interests.     A  more 

'  enlarged  sentiment  was  infused  into 

'  the  people,  who,  in  their  foreign  rela- 

"  tions  at  least,  assumed  the  attitude 

"  of    one    great    nation.      The    names 

"  of    Castifian    and   Arragonese    were 

"  merged  in  the  comprehensive  one  of 

"  Spaniard."  * 

In  like  manner  the  comprehensive 
name  of  Englishman  denotes  a  fusion  of 
races  which  once  hated  each  other  with 
a  hatred  passing  that  of  the  Breton  or 
Provengal  for  the  Frenchman  ;  and  the 
United  Kingdom  has  grown  great  by  the 
fall  of  as  many  independent  princes  as 
now  divide  and  harass  Germany.  The 
Saxon  heptarchy,  itself  originally  far 
more  subdivided,  was  first  compressed 
into  an  English  monarchy;  Wales, 
Ireland,  and  Scotland  were  then  included. 
And  this  consolidated  insular  state  be- 
came the  nucleus  of  a  maritime  empire, 
whose  outposts  in  Europe  are  Heligoland, 
Gibraltar,2  Malta,  and  those  floating  for- 
tifications demanded  by  commerce  at  an 
epoch  when  art  has  effaced  the  boundaries 
of  nature,  and  placed  in  immediate  juxta- 
position all  the  conflicting  traditions  and 
interests  of  the  old  and  new  worlds ; 
when  in  fact  civilization  itself  is  militant, 
as  well  as  conscious  that  it  must  perish, 

1  Prescott's  Life   and  Times  of  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella. 

2  The  title  of  Great  Britain  to  Gibraltar  is 
infinitely  better  than  that  under  which  France 
garrisons    Strasburg.       Strasburg    was    trea- 
cherously seized,  as  well  as  several  other  towns, 
by  Louis  XIV.  in  time  of  peace,  without  the 
least  pretence  of  justifiable  hostilities.     Gib- 
raltar was  taken  by  the  British  in  lawful  war, 
and  its  ownership  is  confirmed  to  them  not 
only  by  the  Treaty   of  Utrecht,   but  by  a 
possession  of  nearly  the  same  length  as  that 
during  which  it  was  previously  held  by  the 
Spaniards,  after  having  captured  it  from  the 
Moors.    The  Spaniards,  a  very  modern  nation, 
have  not  a  better  right  to  their  dominion  over 
the  greater  part  of  the  peninsula. 


if  ever  it  meets  with  superior  force  on 
the  side  of  barbarism.  The  British 
isles,  in  Virgil's  days  "  divided  from 
the  whole  world,"  are,  in  our  days, 
closely  united  to  a  larger  world  than 
the  Roman  poet  knew. 

For  three  centuries  the  breadth  of  the 
Rhine  sufficed  to  protect  the  Roman 
province  of  Gaul  from  invasion  by  the 
Franks,  and  was  accordingly  regarded  as 
the  natural  boundary  of  the  Empire  in 
that  direction.  Now  the  English  Chan- 
nel is  not  a  sufficient  boundary,  and  we 
are  side  by  side  with  those  same  Franks, 
who  have  fought  their  way  from  the 
Rhine  to  the  Atlantic,  seizing  as  they 
came  some  considerable  Gallo-Roman 
possessions  of  the  English  Crown. 

Our  insular  history  ceased  when  our 
American  and  Asiatic  history  began ;  and 
we  are  called  on  to  defend  our  trade 
and  citizens  not  only  by  the  British 
shores,  but  along  the  St.  Lawrence,  the 
Red  Sea,  and  the  Indian  Ocean.  These 
are  become  the  natural  boundaries  of  our 
Empire.  But  the  boundaries  of  empires 
are  inconstant  things ;  the  earth  acknow- 
ledges the  permanent  dominion  only  of 
powerful  and  united  nations.  The  laws 
of  nature  have  decreed  that  the  strong 
must  increase  and  the  feeble  decrease, 
and  have  set  a  bounty  on  the  firm  con- 
junction of  numerous  patriotic  hearts. 

Where  now  are  the  boundaries  of 
Poland,  whose  internal  divisions  scat- 
tered a  dominion  which,  stretching  from 
the  Baltic  to  the  Euxine,  and  from  the 
Danube  to  the  Dnieper,  threatened  to 
defeat  the  destinies  of  Brandenburg  and 
Moscow  ? 

Russian  patriots  and  statesmen  have 
reason  to  rejoice  that  the  cruel  yoke  of 
the  Tartars  rescued  their  country  from 
being  lost  in  Poland,  by  creating  a  na- 
tional unity  paramount  over  the  local 
differences  of  many  petty  principalities.2 
That  mighty  empire — which  has  crossed 
the  Urals  and  broken  down  the  middle 
wall  of  partition  between  Europe  and 
Asia ;  which  has  conquered  the  most 
stubborn  barriers  of  race  and  distance ; 
swallowed  up  Finland,  Poland,  Siberia, 

2  La  Verite  sur  la  Russie,  par  le  Prince 
Dolgoroukow. 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


335 


Circassia,  and  great  part  of  Tartary,  and 
which  now  threatens  at  once  China  and 
Turkey — first  emerged  from  the  union  of 
many  feeble  independent  tribes,  which  a 
thousand  years  ago  were  spread  over  the 
plains  of  the  Volga,  and  from  the  gradual 
subjection  to  a  common  government  of 
numerous  chiefs,  once  the  equals  of  the 
dukes  of  Moscow. 

In  the  history  of  the  Netherlands  our 
theory  finds  another  melancholy  confir- 
mation. Had  the  Germans  and  Celts  of 
Holland  and  Belgium  been  capable  of 
spontaneous  combination,  or  been  con- 
solidated by  a  line  of  politic  princes, 
they  would  not  at  this  moment  be  re- 
garded as  a  sort  of  natural  prey  by  that 
mixture  of  German  and  Celt,  the  French- 
man. A  division  of  races,  begun  by 
nature,  but  which  nature  forbids  to  last, 
has  made  Belgium  the  battle-field  of 
Europe,  and  exposed  Holland  to  the 
peril  of  ultimate  submersion  beneath  a 
mightier  and  more  indefatigable  power 
than  the  ocean.  Yet  there  might  have 
been  reared  on  the  opposite  shore  of  the 
North  Sea  a  polity  as  grand  as  that  which 
in  these  islands  has  arisen  from  the 
union  of  elements  more  opposed  than 
any  that  have  divided  the  Netherlands 
into  two  small  and  precarious  kingdoms. 
In  his  "  History  of  the  Dutch  Republic," 
Mr.  Motley  has  well  observed — 

"  Had  so  many  valuable  and  con- 
"  trasted  characteristics  been  early  fused 
"  into  a  whole,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
"  show  a  race  more  richly  endowed  by 
"  nature  for  dominion  and  progress  than 
"  the  Belgo-Gennanic  people.  The  pro- 
"  minent  characteristics,  by  which  the 
"  two  great  races  of  the  land  were  dis- 
"  tinguished,  time  has  rather  hardened 
"  than  effaced.  In  their  contrast  and 
"  separation  lies  the  key  to  much  of 
"  their  history.  Had  Providence  per- 
"  mitted  a  fusion  of  the  two  races,  it  is 
"  possible,  from  their  position,  and  from 
"  the  geographical  and  historical  link 
"  which  they  would  have  afforded  to  the 
"  dominant  tribes  of  people,  that  a  world- 
"  empire  might  have  been  the  result, 
"  different  in  many  respects  from  any 
"  which  has  yet  arisen." 

King  Leopold  said  lately  to  his  people, 


"  Let  us  never  forget  the  motto  which 
"  our  country  has  chosen  for  its  own, 
"  '  It  is  union  that  constitutes  strength ; ' " 
and  well  would  it  have  been  if  their 
proper  fellow-countrymen,  the  Dutch, 
could  have  adopted  and  acted  on  such  a 
motto  long  ago.  But  the  tide  in  the 
affairs  of  men  must  be  taken  at  the 
flood.  The  narrow  sympathies  and 
selfish  arrogance  of  the  Dutch  have 
bound  them  to  their  native  shallows. 

Yet  some  gleam  of  hope  is  reflected 
northwards  on  Belgium  and  Holland 
from  the  prospects  of  two  other  countries 
by  the  side  of  France.  It  seems  to  be 
the  destiny  of  the  French  to  promote  the 
unity  of  nations  both  when  they  fail  and 
when  they  prosper  in  their  designs  on 
neighbouring  states ;  in  one  case  by 
identifying  with  a  marvellous  faculty 
the  feelings  and  interests  of  their  new 
compatriots  with  their  own,  and  in  the 
other  by  compelling  the  communities, 
whose  independence  they  threaten,  to 
close  their  differences  in  the  presence  of 
a  common  danger.  Austria,  too,  seems 
doomed  to  forward  those  amalgamations 
of  mankind  which  are  most  opposed  to 
her  cherished  policy.  Thus,  although 
the  divisions  of  Germany  and  the  feuds 
of  Italy  are  as  ancient  as  the  breach 
between  Holland  and  Belgium,  their 
termination  in  a  broad  and  generous 
patriotism  is  at  hand ;  adding  fresh 
proof  that  it  will  not  be  the  fate  of 
Europe  to  be  for  ever  subdivided  by 
barbarian  origin  or  situation,  and  that 
old  maps  and  canons  of  descent  do  not 
fix  irrevocably  the  terms  of  nationality. 
Prussia,  the  hope  of  Germany,  has  no 
frontiers  in  nature  ;  and  her  capital  is 
built  on  a  river  which  once  rem  between 
natural  enemies — between  pitiless  Dutch- 
men and  obstinate  Wends.1  And  Pied- 
mont has  crept  from  a  transalpine 
seignory  into  an  Italian  kingdom. 

There  never  was  a  great  state  or  nation 
which  did  not  combine  in  one  country 
and  people  a  diversity  of  territories  and 
races.  Affinities  of  blood  may  produce 
congenial  manners  in  contiguous  com- 
munities, may  touch  the  imagination, 

i  Carlyle's  History  of  Frederick  the  Great. 


336 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


and  arouse  the  sympathies  of  the  human 
heart,  and  so  facilitate  the  formation  of 
larger  and  more  coherent  unions  than 
our  ancestors  in  Europe  were  ahle  to 
contrive.  Latin,  Teutonic,  Slavonic,  or 
Scandinavian  genealogies  may  help  to 
conjoin,  but  they  cannot  keep  for  ever 
apart  the  people  of  Christendom.  They 
have  failed  to  put  asunder  the  Frank, 
the  Roman,  the  Goth,  and  the  Breton  in 
France,  and  the  Dane,  the  Saxon,  the  Nor- 
man, and  the  Celt  in  the  British  islands. 
The  truth  at  the  bottom  of  current 
theories  of  "the  nationalities"  is  simply, 
that  there  is  a  tendency  of  the  people  of 
the  continent  to  assemble  in  great  solid 
masses  round  a  hidden  centre.  The 
dissolution  of  imperfect  political  forma- 
tions is  but  the  antecedent  of  recompo- 
sition  into  more  consistent  unities.  Thus 
Normandy,  Brittany,  Anjou,  and  Guienne 
parted  from  England  (with  which  close 
association  was  then  impossible)  to  com- 
bine inseparably  with  a  nearer  neigh- 
bour. 

Through  all  the  repartitions  which 
Europe  has  undergone  since  the  fall  of 
the  empire  of  the  Romans  (which  fell 
because  it  was  unable  to  unite  the  men 
of  the  north  with  the  men  of  the  south), 
the  operation  of  one  centripetal  law  is 
visible  in  a  perpetual  "effort  towards  the 
establishment  of  wider  and  firmer  bases 
of  civil  society,  and  the  composition  of 
fewer  and  greater  states  and  nations. 
Everywhere  we  now  find  names  which 
are  the  genuine  historical  vestiges  of  the 
earlier  groupings  of  mankind  under 
petty  independent  or  unconnected 
governments.  Many  English  counties 
once  were  separate  kingdoms.  The 
eighty-six  departments  of  France  are,  as 
it  were,  the  hatchments  of  so  many  de- 
parted feudal  sovereignties.  Germany, 
which  once  counted  its  princes  and  re- 
publics by  hundreds,  now  counts  them 
by  tens,  and  may  soon  count  them  by 
twos.  And,  in  Italy,  the  same  genera- 
tion, which  has  tolerated  ten  nominally 
independent  states,  seems  no  longer 
able  to  tolerate  more  than  one.  Nation- 
ality has  so  widened  its  borders  that 
what  once  was  patriotism  and  fidelity, 
is  now  disloyalty  and  treason ;  what  was 


the  language  of  a  separate  people  is 
faintly  heard  in  a  provincial  accent; 
and  that  which  was  the  general  law  of  a 
kingdom  is  with  difficulty  detected  by 
an  antiquary  iathe  usages  of  a  few  quaint 
and  secluded  peasants.  Europe  has 
already  almost  concentrated  itself  into  a 
heptarchy  or  octarchy,  or  into  fewer 
independent  states  than  there  were  a 
few  years  ago  in  Italy  alone.  But  if, 
in  place  of — for  example  say — seven 
hundred  states,  there  be  only  seven,  it 
follows  that  only  the  difference  of  seven 
instead  of  seven  hundred  nations  or 
governments  can  lead  to  war,  and  that 
all  smaller  feuds  are  brought  under  the 
cognisance  of  an  impartial  judge. 

Let  us  not,  however,  mistake  the  con- 
sequence. The  substitution  of  civil 
union  for  the  hostilities  incident  to  a 
state  of  natural  isolation,  has  neither 
extinguished  warfare,  nor  has  it  been 
for  the  most  part  peacefully  accom- 
plished. Sword  in  hand  the  sovereigns 
of  Europe  have  extended  their  domi- 
nions, and  cut  off  the  belligerent  right 
of  independence  from  their  conquered 
neighbours.  And  when  the  supremacy 
of  law  has  thus  been  established  over 
wider  areas,  ousting  therein  the  juris- 
diction of  force  and  the  original  trial  by 
battle,  .the  magnitude  of  external  war 
bears  proportion  to  the  dimensions  of 
the  aggrandized  states.  Hitherto  civili- 
zation has  led,  not  so  much  to  the  ex- 
tinction of  hostilities,  as  to  their  disap- 
pearance on  a  small  scale,  and  resumption 
on  a  vast  one.  When  the  battles  of  the 
Saxon  heptarchy  were  finished,  England 
began  her  battles  with  Wales,  Ireland, 
and  Scotland,  followed  by  her  greater 
struggle  with  France.  Now  a  duel  be- 
tween two  great  states  calls  all  the 
others  into  the  field.  And  it  may  be 
that  Asia  will  one  day  rise  in  arms 
against  the  intrusion  of  western  civili- 
zation, and  that  a  war  of  hemispheres 
may  precede  the  submission  by  mankind 
of  all  their  differences  to  legal  arbitra- 
tion. 

In  societate  civili  aut  lex  aut  vis  valet, 
The  existence  of  law  in  civilized  society 
is  based  upon  experience  that  the  na- 
tural state  of  independent  human  beings 


The  Future  of  Europe  foretold  in  History. 


337 


is  mistrust,  violence,  and  warfare  ;  that 
they  covet  the  same  objects,  are  not,  nor 
can  be  just  to  each  other  in  their  com- 
petition ;  and  that  they  are  prone  to 
employ  the  tyranny  of  force  to  obtain 
submission  to  their  partial  wills.  It  is 
singular  that  the  very  politicians  who 
deride  the  necessity  of  precautions 
against  foreign  aggression,  are  peculiarly 
apprehensive  of  an  abuse  of  the  power 
of  the  sword  by  their  own  govern- 
ment. They  admit  readily  that  life  and 
property  require  protection  against  the 
licence  of  their  countrymen  ;  they  ap- 
pear doubtful  of  the  sufficiency  of  the 
rigid  checks  with  which  the  British 
constitution  surrounds  the  prerogative 
of  their  own  sovereign ;  and  yet  they 
affirm  that  we  have  nothing  to  appre- 
hend in  the  most  defenceless  condition 
from  foreign  armies  and  potentates,  over 
whose  movements  we  have  no  control 
of  law.  They  think  their  fellow-citizens 
partial,  prejudiced,  and  liable  to  be 
swayed  by  passions  and  caprice ;  some- 
times even  dishonest,  and  often  over- 
bearing. They  are  urgent  against  allow- 
ing those  in  high  places  at  home  to  en- 
force their  own  pretensions ;  yet  they  ask 
us  to  trust  implicitly  to  the  fairness  and 
goodwill  of  people  who  have,  compara- 
tively, few  interests  and  associations  in 
common  with  us,  and  some  ancient 
grudges  against  us.  If  the  chief  of 
another  state  is  capable  of  shedding  the 
blood  of  his  own  subjects  for  his  per- 
sonal aggrandizement— if  he  taxes,  con- 
fiscates, banishes,  and  imprisons  at  his 
arbitrary  pleasure  in  his  native  territory 
— if  he  suffers  no  voice  to  be  raised 
against  his  despotic  will  among  those 
who  have  given  him  all  his  greatness, 
is  it  possible  that  our  wealth,  our  liber- 
ties, our  defiant  press  should  never 
tempt  aggression  ?  If  it  be  his  manifest 
policy  that  all  the  splendid  genius  of 
his  nation  should  be  concealed,  and  only 
one  head  figure  above  the  crowd  in  the 
eyes  of  Europe,  can  he  look  without 
jealousy  at  the  celebrity  and  power  of 
numerous  foreigners  who  thwart  his 
projects,  and  wound  his  ambition  1  It 
is  not  supposed  that  we  ourselves  are 
just  in  all  our  international  dealings ; 


that  we  have  done  no  wrong  in  Europe, 
America,  or  Asia ;  that  we  have  never 
invaded  a  weaker  power,  and  that  the 
most  defenceless  people  are  safe  from 
our  dictation ;  and  yet  we  are  told  that 
so  far  as  other  nations  are  concerned,  the 
age  of  conquest  and  warfare  is  gone  by. 
Are  Yenice,  Constantinople,  Alexandria, 
Jerusalem,  and  Pekin,  not  prizes  which 
civilized  states  are  eager  to  grasp,  and 
for  which  they  are  likely  to  contend  ? 
"What  would  men  have?"  says  Lord 
Bacon.  "  Do  they  think  that  those  they 
"  employ  and  deal  with  are  saints  ?  Do 
"  they  not  think  they  will  have  their  own 
"  ends,  and  be  truer  to  themselves  than 
"  to  them  ?  "  *  The  course  which  civiliza- 
tion has  pursued  is,  in  truth,  so  far 
from  having  divested  society  of  a  mili- 
tary garb,  that  it  has  animated  the  most 
forward  communities  with  an  ambition 
of  aggrandizement,  such  as  the  ancient 
Romans  scarcely  knew ;  that  passions 
and  principles,  new  in  the  world's  his- 
tory, are  in  tumultuous  conflict  in  the 
bofom  of  nations ;  that  the  boasted 
annihilation  of  distance  has  brought  the 
armies  of  Europe  so  close,  that  it  is  but 
a  word,  and  then  a  blow ;  and  that  we 
can  only  hope  to  avoid  war  by  casting 
the  sharpest  sword  into  the  scale  of 
peace. 

Is  this  condition,  then,  the  perpetual 
destiny  of  Europe?  Shall  the  sword 
devour  for  ever?  History,  rightly  un- 
derstood, seems  to  answer,  not.  Eor 
why  should  the  progress  of  human  con- 
federation, and  of  the  rule  of  law,  cease 
so  soon  as  seven  or  eight  states  shall 
have  been  compounded  of  more  than  as 
many  hundred  ?  There  is  not,  as  we  have 
some  reason  to  know,  anything  sacred 
or  eternal  in  the  numerical  proportions 
of  a  heptarchy  or  an  octarchy, — nor  any- 
thing to  arrest  the  action  of  those  natural 
forces  which  have  extended  civic  union 
already  from  the  hamlet  to  the  vast 
Empire.  Qvcru  TTO\ITIKOV  £wov  avOpwiros. 
By  his  whole  nature,  by  his  worst  and 
most  selfish  passions  as  well  as  by  his 
best  affections,  by  his  weakness  as  well 
as  by  his  strength,  man  is  driven  into 

4  Essay  on  Suspicion. 


338 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


political  association  with  his  fellows. 
Hunger,  ambition,  avarice,  and  fear,  as 
well  as  public  spirit^  generosity,  and 
genius,  have  been  the  architects  of  civi- 
lized society;  and  war,  alike  by  its 
conquests,  its  enthusiasms,  and  its 
terrors,  has  been  the  greatest  peace- 
maker among  mankind.  There  is,  then, 
in  the  aggravated  perils  of  Europe,  no 
ground  for  alarm  about  its  final  des- 
tinies. Law  is  not  the  child  of  natural 
justice  in  men.  It  is  compulsory  jus- 
tice. Violence,  inequity,  quarrel,  and 
the  general  danger  are  its  parents ; 
as  pain  and  disease  have  called  into 
existence  the  physician's  art.  The 
more  frequent  the  occasions  of  inter- 
national dispute,  and  the  more  awful 
their  consequence,  the  more  speedily 
does  legal  arbitration  naturally,  neces- 
sarily arise.  Already  we  may  discern  in 
the  womb  of  time  an  infant  European 
senate,  and  the  rudiments  of  European 
law.  And  as  the  plot  thickens,  as 
nations  come  closer  together  in  order  of 
battle,  as  they  confederate  for  conquest 
and  defence,  European  unity  gains 
ground.  The  fear  of  France  unites 
Germany  ;  the  hatred  of  Austria  con- 
solidates Italy  ;  and  the  question  of  the 
East,  even  if  it  must  be  answered  by  the 
sword,  promotes  the  final  settlement  of 
the  great  question  of  the  West — the 
frame  of  the  future  polity  of  Europe. 

Already  is  Europe  more  obviously  and 
essentially  one  country,  one  state,  than 
France  was  a  few  hundred  years  ago, 
and  more  is  done  for  the  growth  of 
nations  in  a  generation  now  than  in  a 


century  then.  "  The  inhabitants  of 
'  Provence,"  says  M.  Guizot,  "  of  Lan- 
'  guedoc,  Aquitaine,  Normandy,  Maine, 
'  &c.,  had,  it  is  true,  special  names,  laws, 
'  destinies  of  their  own  ;  they  were, 
'  under  the  various  appellations  of 
'  Angevins,  Manceaux,  Normands,  Pro- 
'  virHjaux,  &c.,  so  many  nations,  so 
'  many  states,  distinct  from  each  other, 
'  often  at  war  with  each  other.  Yet 
'  above  all  these  various  territories, 
'  above  all  these  petty  nations,  there 
'  hovered  a  sole  and  single  name,  a 
'  general  idea,  the  idea  of  a  nation  called 
'  the  French,  of  a  common  country 
'  called  France."  It  may  in  like  manner 
be  said  of  Great  Britain,  France,  Ger- 
many, Italy,  Russia,  &c.,  that  above  all 
these  various  territories,  above  all  these 
nations,  distinct  from  each  other,  often 
at  war  with  each  other,  there  hovers  a 
sole  and  single  name,  a  general  idea,  the 
idea  of  a  nation  called  the  Europeans,  of 
a  common  country  called  Europe. 

The  people  of  that  great  country  are 
even  now  unconsciously  debating  about 
its  future  institutions.  And  it  is  for 
us,  above  all  Europeans,  to  provide 
that  Europe  shall  finally  be  something 
nobler  than  a  great  shop,  something  less 
miserable  than  a  great  prison.  Nor  is 
there  anything  more  certain  than  that  the 
citizens  of  the  future  Europe  will  owe  the 
measure  of  liberty  they  may  enjoy,  and 
the  degree  of  public  spirit  and  generosity 
with  which  they  may  be  endowed,  mainly 
to  the  exertions  and  example  of  the 
citizens  of  Great  Britain  in  the  present 
generation. 


THE   LIFE  AND   POETEY  OF  SHELLEY. 


BY    THE    EDITOR. 


CELEBRATED  for  many  a  transaction 
belonging  to  the  history  of  Italy,  the 
fifty  miles  of  Italian  coast  which  lie 
between  Leghorn  in  Tuscany  and 
Spezia  in  the  Sardinian  states  possess 
also,  in  virtue  of  certain  events  of  which 
they  were  the  scene  in  the  summer  of 
1822,  a  peculiar  interest  in  connexion 
with  British  poetry.  t  Byron  and  Shelley 


were  then  both  living  there.  Volun- 
tary exiles,  for  similar  reasons,  from 
their  native  land,  and  already  person- 
ally known  to  each  other,  they  had 
been  residing  separately  for  several  years 
in  different  parts  of  Italy;  during  the 
few  immediately  preceding  months  they 
had  been  living  in  the  same  town  of 
Pisa,  seeing  each  other  daily,  and 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


339 


becoming  better  acquainted  with  each 
other ;  and  now  again  they  had  just 
parted — Byron  to  take  up  his  summer- 
quarters  at  Leghorn,  and  Shelley  his  at 
a  lonely  spot  near  Lerici,  in  the  Gulf  of 
Spezia.  The  two  poets  were  thus,  for 
the  time,  separated  by  the  whole  dis- 
tance of  the  fifty  intervening  miles.  A. 
circumstance  which  made  their  separa- 
tion rather  unfortunate  at  the  moment 
was  that  a  third  English  poet — Mr. 
Leigh  Hunt — was  then  on  his  way  to 
Italy  to  join  them.  "While  Byron  and 
Shelley  were  still  together  at  Pisa,  it  had 
been  arranged  that  Mr.  Hunt  should 
come  out  to  them,  and  that  the  three 
should  start  a  political  and  literary 
periodical  which  Byron  had  projected, 
and  which,  published  at  Pisa,  should 
electrify  Europe.  Now  that  Byron  and 
Shelley  had  separated,  the  arrangement 
had  to  be  modified.  Mr.  Hunt  was  to 
join  Lord  Byron  at  Leghorn ;  they  two 
were  to  be  the  active  partners  in  the 
periodical ;  and  Shelley  was  but  to  visit 
them  now  and  then,  and  help  them  as 
much  as  he  could  from  his  retreat  at 
Lerici.  Nor  did  the  fifty  miles  of  dis- 
tance matter  very  much.  Both  Byron 
and  Shelley  were  passionately  fond  of 
the  sea ;  and  yachting  in  that  lovely  bit 
of  the  Mediterranean  was  one  of  the 
pleasures  that  made  them  prefer  Italy 
to  England.  Byron  had  just  bought  a 
beautiful  craft,  built  like  a  man-of-war 
brig,  to  lie  in  Leghorn  harbour,  and  be 
ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  carry  him 
and  his  friends  Roberts  and  Trelawny 
wherever  they  chose  ;  and  Shelley,  ac- 
cording to  his  more  modest  tastes  and 
means,  had  procured  a  small  open  plea- 
sure-boat, to  lie  on  the  beach  under  the 
hill  which  rose  behind  his  solitary  house, 
and  to  carry  himself,  Mrs.  Shelley,  and 
any  friend  that  might  chance  to  visit 
them,  along  the  Bay  of  Spezia,  or  even 
farther  southward,  at  a  stretch,  as  far  as 
Leghorn.  With  such  means  of  commu- 
nication, there  was  little  fear  but  that 
Byron,  Hunt,  and  Shelley  would  be 
often  together !  Byron's  dangerous- 
looking  craft,  the  Bolivar,  showing  her 
brazen  teeth  through  her  miniature 
port-holes,  would  often  be  cruising 


northwards  in  the  direction  of  Spezia, 
and  Shelley's  white-sailed  boat  would  be 
seen  coyly  tacking  to  meet  her  ;  and,  in 
the  course  of  a  month  or  two,  the 
Italian  preventive-men  along  iihe  shore 
would  know  both  well  as  the  vessels  of 
the  English  poet-lord  and  his  mysterious 
fellow-countryman  !  Alas  !  and,  to  this 
day,  if  we  consider  only  what  was 
historically  possible,  these  two  vessels 
or  their  successors  might  still  have 
been  cruising  familiarly,  each  with  its 
owner  aboard,  on  the  same  tract  of  sea ! 
Leigh  Hunt,  the  oldest  of  the  three 
poets,  was  alive  among  us  but  a  few 
months  ago,  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
five  ;  had  Byron  lived,  he  would  now 
have  been  seventy-two  ;  Shelley,  had  he 
lived,  would  have  been  sixty-eight.  In 
the  summer  of  which  we  speak  Leigh 
Hunt  was  in  his  thirty-ninth  year,  Byron 
in  his  thirty-fifth,  Shelley  in  his 
thirtieth. 

Looking  at  Shelley,  as  we  can  fancy 
him  standing  on  the  beach  at  Lerici, 
w"iat  do  we  see?  A  man  still  young, 
rather  tall,  but  bent  a  little  at  the 
shoulders  from  weakness — with  a  very 
small  head,  and  hair  naturally  dark- 
brown  and  curling,  but  now  prematurely 
tinged  with  grey ;  the  face  also  singu- 
larly small,  with  a  pale  or  pinkish- 
pale  complexion,  large  spiritual-looking 
eyes,  very  delicate  features,  and  an  ex- 
pression altogether  graceful,  etherial,  and 
feminine.  Could  we  hear  him  speak,  the 
impression  would  be  completed  by  his 
voice.  This  is  described  as  having 
been  very  high  and  shrill,  so  that  some 
one  who  heard  it  unexpectedly  in  a 
mixed  company,  compared  it  to  the 
scream  of  a  peacock.  On  the  whole, 
seen  or  heard  even  for  the  first  time,  he 
was  a  man  to  excite  a  feeling  of  interest, 
and  a  curiosity  as  to  his  previous 
history. 

Born  the  heir  to  an  English  baron- 
etcy, and  to  more  than  the  usual  wealth 
and  consideration  attending  that  rank, 
Shelley's  whole  Me  had  been  a  war 
against  custom.  At  Eton  the  sensitive 
boy,  almost  girlish  in  his  look  and 
demeanour,  had  nerved  himself,  with 
meek  obstinacy,  though  with  secret 


340 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


tears,  against  every  part  of  the  estab- 
lished system — not  only  against  the 
tyranny  of  his  fellows,  but  also  against 
the  teaching  of  the  masters.  It  had 
been  the  same  when  he  went  to  Oxford. 
He  was  then  a  Greek  'scholar,  a  writer 
of  verses,  an  insatiable  student  of  the 
metaphysics  of  Berkeley  and  Hume,  an 
incessant  reasoner  with  any  one  that 
would  reason  with  him  on  points  of 
philosophy  or  politics,  and  in  every  such 
argument  an  avowed  Revolutionist,  and 
at  least  a  hypothetical  Atheist.  In  the 
rooms  of  his  college,  or  along  the  streets, 
his  shrill  voice  might  be  heard  attacking 
Christianity,  Religion,  the  very  idea  of  a 
God.  He  was  frantically  earnest  on  this 
subject,  as  if,  by  compelling  discussion 
of  it^  he  was  digging  at  the  root  of  all 
evil.  At  length,  tired  of  merely  talking 
with  his  acquaintances,  he  sent  a  printed 
statement  of  his  opinions  to  the  Univer- 
sity authorities,  challenging  them  to 
an  argument  with  him  as  to  the  neces- 
sity or  utility  of  any  religious  belief. 
The  act  was  utterly  ghastly,  and  the 
reply  of  the  authorities  was  his  instant 
expulsion  from  the  University.  His 
family  were  shocked,  and  could  not  tell 
what  to  make  of  such  a  youth ;  and,  at 
the  age  of  seventeen,  he  removed  to 
London  to  live  as  his  own  master. 
There  he  printed  and  privately  distri- 
buted a  number  of  copies  of  his  Queen 
Mob,  expanding  and  illustrating  the 
poetical  Atheism  of  the  text  in  appended 
prose  notes.  He  introduced  himself  by 
letter  to  men  and  women  of  genius,  trying 
to  enlist  them  in  the  great  war  which 
he  had  begun,  and  into  which  he  thought 
the  whole  intellectual  world  must  follow, 
against  Statecraft  and  Priestcraft.  He 
read  with  avidity  Godwin's  "Political 
Justice" — in  the  doctrines  of  which 
book  he  found  a  new  social  gospel ;  and 
he  resolved  from  that  hour  to  square 
all  his  actions  by  what  he  considered 
strict  justice,  without  reference  to  the 
opinions  of  others.  At  this  time  he  had, 
by  arrangement  with  his  family,  about 
200£.  a  year;  which  income  he  was 
able  to  increase,  by  borrowing  on  his 
expectations,  or  in  other  ways.  His 
own  manner  of  living  was  extremely 


temperate  ;  indeed,  for  several  years  he 
was  a  vegetarian  in  diet  and  drank  only 
water.  He  had  thus  money  to  spend 
on  objects  that  moved  his  charity.  He 
was  continually  in  quest  of  such  objects. 
Every  social  anomaly,  almost  every 
social  inequality,  affected  him  intensely.  ' 
If  he  saw  a  shivering  beggar  in  the 
street  asking  alms  beside  a  carriage,  his 
longing  was  nothing  less  than  to  add 
the  beggar  and  the  carriage  together  on 
the  spot  and  divide  the  sum  by  two. 
The  sole  use  of  his  own  money  seemed 
to  him  to  be  to  mitigate,  as  far  as  he 
could,  these  social  inequalities.  He  did 
the  most  extraordinary  and  the  most 
generous  things.  To  give  away  twenty 
or  thirty  pounds  where  he  fancied  it 
would  relieve  distress,  was  nothing  to 
him.  He  involved  himself  in  debt  and 
serious  inconvenience  by  repetitions  of 
such  acts  of  benevolence.  Nor  was  it 
only  with  money  that  he  was  generous. 
His  society,  his  sympathy,  beyond  the 
range  of  the  intellectual  occupations  in 
which  he  delighted,  were  given,  by  pre- 
ference, to  the  outcast  and  the  wretched. 
It  was  in  the  same  spirit  of  contempt 
for  usage  that,  when,  in  his  twentieth 
year,  his  affections  were  engaged,  he 
married  the  object  of  them — the  daugh- 
ter of  a  retired  tradesman.  After  three 
years  of  married  life,  spent  in  different 
places,  and  latterly  not  happily,  he  and 
his  wife  had  separated  by  mutual  con- 
sent, she  returning  with  her  two  children 
to  her  father's  house.  Shelley  then 
formed  the  new  connexion  which  ended 
in  his  second  marriage,  and  went  abroad 
to  traveL  On  his  return  he  resided  for 
eighteen  months  in  London — his  fortune 
increased  about  this  time,  by  his  grand- 
father's death,  to  1000Z.  a  year;  which 
continued  to  be  his  income  as  long  as  he 
lived.  This  was  the  time  too  of  his 
becoming  acquainted  with  Leigh  Hunt, 
and,  through  him,  with  Keats.  One  of 
his  first  acts  on  becoming  acquainted 
with  Leigh  Hunt  was  to  offer  him  100£. ; 
and  Mr.  Hunt  himself  has  recorded  that 
this  was  but  the  .beginning  of  a 
series  of  kindnesses  ..-almost  unprece- 
dented in  the  annals  of  friendship. 
On  one  occasion  of  exigency  he  gave 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


341 


Hunt  1400Z.  It  was  while  Shelley  was 
residing  in  London  in  1815  that  Alastor, 
or  tlie  Spirit  of  Solitude  was  composed. 
Early  in  1816,  he  and  his  companion 
again  went  abroad.  They  resided  for 
about  a  year  and  a  half  in  Switzerland 
and  in  Italy.  It  was  in  Switzerland  that 
they  had  first  become  acquainted  with 
Lord  Byron,  who  was  then  living  there. 
On  their  return  to  England  they  went  to 
Bath,  and  here  it  was  .that  Shelley  re- 
ceived the  terrible  news  of  the  suicide  of 
his  wife.  To  the  horror  of  the  event  itself 
was  added  the  public  scandal  which 
followed  when  the  relatives  of  the  un- 
happy woman  instituted  a  suit  in 
Chancery  to  prevent  Shelley  from  taking 
back  his  children.  They  grounded  their 
suit  on  the  fact  that  Shelley  was  an 
avowed  Atheist.  On  this  as  in  itself  a 
sufficiently  legal  plea,  Lord  Chancellor 
Eldon  gave  judgment  in  their  favour.  As 
far  as  the  newspapers  could  carry  the 
report  of  the  trial,  the  name  and  the 
antecedents  of  "the  Atheist  Shelley" 
had  thus  been  blazoned  over  Britain. 
When  the  judgment  was  given,  Shelley 
was  residing  with  his  second  wife — • 
Mary  Woolstoncraft  Godwin — at  Great 
Marlow  in  Buckinghamshire.  Here 
he  had  organised  a  regular  system  of 
charity.  He  had  pensioners  among  the 
agricultural  labourers  and  the  poor  silk- 
weavers  all  round ;  he  even  studied 
medicine,  and  walked  the  hospitals  in 
London,  that  he  might  be  of  use  to  the 
sick.  But  neither  in  Great  Marlow,  nor 
anywhere  else  in  England,  could  the 
philanthropy  of  a  man  who  bore  the 
brand  of  Atheist  be  trusted  or  toler- 
ated. His  very  pensioners  shrank 
from  him,  and  took  his  money  sus- 
piciously. Strongly  sensitive  to  such 
distrust,  and  fearing  also  future  inter- 
ferences of  the  Law  of  England  with 
his  liberty,  he  had  resolved,  if  even 
at  the  sacrifice  of  all  his  rights  of  in- 
heritance to  the  family  property,  to  leave 
England  for  ever.  In  the  spring  of  1818 
he  had  carried  out  the  resolution  by 
going  to  Italy.  Before  leaving  England, 
he  had  written  his  "  Revolt  of  Islam  " 
and  many  other  pieces  of  verse  and 
prose  which  now  appear  in  his  collected 


works  ;  but  the  four  years  that  had 
elapsed  since  his  arrival  in  Italy  had 
been  the  period  of  what  are  now 
esteemed  his  finest  productions.  During 
these  four  years — residing  at  Venice,  at 
Eome,  at  Naples,  at  Florence,  and 
finally,  as  we  have  seen,  at  Pisa — he 
had  written  his  "Prometheus  Unbound," 
his  "  Cenci,"  his  "  Hellas,"  his  "  Julian 
and  Maddalo,"  his  "  Epipsychidion," 
his  "Witch  of  Atlas,"  his  "Ode  to 
Naples,"  and  his  "Adonais,"  besides 
his  translations  in  prose  and  verse  from 
Plato,  Calderon,  the  Homeric  poets  and 
Goethe.  During  the  same  period,  also, 
he  had  begun  to  take  a  more  direct 
interest  than  before  in  the  current  poli- 
tics of  Britain  and  of  Europe,  working 
down  his  general  doctrines  respecting 
man  and  society  into  strong  Radical 
lyrics  and  satires  on  the  Liverpool  and 
Castlereagh  administration,  calculated  to 
do  rough  service  at  home  ;  and  throwing 
much  of  his  energy  simultaneously  into 
what  we  now  call  the  cause  of  the  op- 
prvssed  nationalities.  He  had,  indeed, 
a  passion  for  being  practical,  and  had 
recently  spent  a  great  deal  of  money  on 
an  attempt,  which  did  not  succeed,  to 
establish  a  steamboat  between  Leghorn 
and  Marseilles. 

Such,  from  his  birth,  had  been  the 
twenty-nine  years  of  wandering,  of  wild 
clamour  and  agony,  of  fitful  ecstacy  of 
mind  and  heart,  that  had  brought  the 
poet,  a  kind  of  intellectual  outcast,  to 
his  Salvator-Rosa  solitude  under  the 
pine -hills  of  Spezia,  sloping  to  the  sea. 
Part  of  all  this  past  life  of  error  and 
suffering  (for  time  is  merciful)  had, 
doubtless,  been  left  behind,  melted  and 
softened  in  the  thin  air  of  recollection ; 
but  part  remained  incorporate  in  the 
very  being  of  the  sufferer,  not  to  be 
dissolved  away  even  by  the  Italian  sun, 
or  soothed  by  the  softness  of  the  bluest 
heaven. 

What  proportion  of  the  past  had 
faded,  and  what  remained,  it  might 
be  difficult  to  say.  Among  the  things 
that  had  faded,  one  might  say  with  some 
certainty,  was  the  early  crudity  of  his 
exulting  Atheism.  Even  at  first,  had 
not  Shelley  himself  assumed  the  name 


342 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


of  Atheist,  and  employed  it  as  a  ghastly 
signature,  and  shrieked  it  wherever  he 
went,  and  seemed  sometimes  to  riot  in 
the  very  horror  it  produced,  it  may  be 
doubted  whether,  from  any  study  of  his 
poems,  the  name  would  ever  have  been 
attached  to  him.  He  would  have  been 
named,  much  more  probably,  a  Pantheist, 
a  Platonist,  or  the  like.  A  recognition 
of  the  supernatural,  of  at  least  a  spirit 
of  intellectual  beauty  as  pervading  all 
visible  things,  of  human  life  as  but  an 
evanescent  incarnation  and  short  local 
battle  of  principles  that  have  their 
origin  behind  time  and  beyond  the 
stars,  seems  the  one  characteristic  of 
Shelley's  poetry  from  the  first,  which  if 
we  do  not  attend  to,  it  has  no  logical 
coherence.  In  all  our  literature  it  would 
be  difficult  to  find  a  soul  that  was  less 
the  soul  of  a  Secularist.  Only  remember, 
in  contrast  with  him,  Bunyan's  typical 
Atheist  in  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress." 
Christian  and  Hopeful  are  there  toiling 
along  on  their  road  across  a  great  plain, 
when  they  perceive  afar  off  one  coming 
softly  and  all  alone  meeting  them,  with 
his  back  towards  that  part  of  the  horizon 
behind  which  was  the  Zion  to  which 
they  were  bound.  This  is  "  Atheist," 
who,  when  he  comes  up  to  them,  an- 
nounces to  them,  with  a  leering  posi- 
tiveness,  that  it  is  all  a  mistake — that 
there  is  no  God  and  no  Zion,  and  that 
they  may  as  well  go  back  with  him,  and 
snap  their  thumbs  at  being  rid  once  for 
all  of  that  troublesome  delusion.  Not 
so,  certainly,  at  any  time  with  Shelley  ! 
If  he  denies  Zion  and  Christianity,  and 
assails  Christian  and  Hopeful  for  be- 
lieving in  them,  it  is  as  one  walking, 
with  mad  eagerness,  while  he  does  so, 
in  the  same  direction  with  them,  scan- 
ning as  intently  the  distant  sky,  and 
blaspheming  sideways  in  their  ears  what 
he  does  not  see,  not  because  his  eyes 
have  ceased  one  moment  to  look  for  it, 
but  out  of  a  wild  sorrow  that  it  is  not 
to  be  seen.  A  gleam,  and  one  fancies 
he  would  falter  in  the  middle  of  his 
talk,  he  would  start  and  shade  his  eyes 
to  gaze,  he  would  fall  to  the  ground 
weeping !  Now,  although  there  is  no 
evidence  that  the  gleam  ever  came, 


though  he  still  in  his  later  years,  as  in 
his  earlier,  kept  talking  sideways  at 
Christian  and  Hopeful  in  language  which 
made  them  shudder,  yet  not  only  did  he 
not  cease  to  hurry  on  with  them,  but  the 
very  language  of  his  sarcasm  underwent 
a  modification.  Mr.  Browning  has  stated 
it  as  his  belief  that,  had  Shelley  lived, 
he  would  have  ranged  himself  finally 
with  the  Christians.  T  do  not  feel  that 
we  are  entitled  to  say  so  much  as  this  ; 
for  his  latest  letters  show,  I  think,  that 
much  of  what  had  been  accounted,  in 
this  respect,  the  darkest  peculiarity  of 
his  life,  still  remained  with  him. 

Of  what  else  remained,  that  which 
was  perhaps  most  obvious  to  those 
about  him  was  the  shattered  state  of 
his  nerves.  Always  of  weak  health, 
nothing  but  his  temperate  habits  could 
have  kept  him  alive  so  long ;  and  now 
he  was  often  racked  by  a  pulmonary 
pain,  which  seemed  to  augur  that,  in 
any  case,  he  had  not  many  years  to  live. 
But,  beyond  this,  the  morbid  nervous 
excitement  induced  by  such  a  life  as  his 
had  been  had  begun  to  manifest  itself 
in  that  abnormal  action  of  the  senses 
which  makes  men  subject  to  visions, 
apparitions,  and  the  terrors  of  waking 
dream.  Various  instances  of  such 
hallucinations,  or  nervous  paroxysms, 
are  recorded  by  his  biographers.  Thus, 
while  he  was  staying  at  Great  Marlow, 
he  alarmed  his  friends  and  the  neigh- 
bourhood by  a  story  of  a  fight  he  had 
had  with  a  burglar  who  had  tried  to 
murder  him  in  the  night ;  for  which 
story,  it  is  believed  by  some,  there  was 
no  foundation  in  fact.  So  also,  as  some 
believe,  with  the  story  which  he  told  of 
an  Englishman  coming  up  to  him  at  the 
Post-office  at  Pisa,  when  he  was  in- 
quiring for  his  letters,  and  knocking 
him  down  with  an  oath,  as  "that  Atheist 
Shelley."  But  the  most  extraordinary 
instance  is  that  recorded  in  the  diary  of 
Captain  Williams  as  having  happened 
at  Lerici  itself,  during  the  very  days  of 
his  last  residence  there.  "Monday, 
"  May  6th,"  writes  Captain  Williams, 
"  after  tea,  walking  with  Shelley  on  the 
"terrace,  and  observing  the  effect  of 
"  moonshine  on  the  waters,  he  com- 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


343 


' plained  of  being  unusually  nervous; 
'  and,  stopping  short,  he  grasped  me 
'violently  by  the  arm,  and  stared 
'  stedfastly  on  the  white  surf  that  broke 
'  upon  the  beach  under  our  feet.  Ob- 
'  serving  him  sensibly  affected,  I  de- 
'  manded  of  him  if  he  were  in  pain. 
'But  he  only  answered  by  saying, 
' '  There  it  is  again — there  ! '  He  re- 
'  covered  after  some  time,  and  declared 
'  that  he  saw,  as  plainly  as  he  then  saw 
'me,  a  naked  child  rise  from  the  sea 
'  and  clap  its  hands  as  in  joy,  smiling 
'  at  him."  This  was  on  the  6th  of  May, 
1822.  Two  months  afterwards  the 
omen  was  fulfilled. 

Towards  the  end  of  June  the  news 
came  that  Leigh  Hunt  had  arrived  in 
Genoa,  and  was  on  his  way  to  Leghorn. 
Shelley  and  Williams,  who  had  been 
busy  with  their  new  boat,  resolved  to 
set  out  in  her  to  welcome  Hunt.  The 
weather  had  been  overpoweringly  hot, 
and  the  sea  swollen  and  lowering ;  but 
on  the  1st  of  July,  a  fine  breeze  sprang 
up,  and  they  weighed  for  Leghorn. 
They  performed  the  voyage  in  seven 
hours  and  a  half ;  anchored  that  night 
in  Leghorn  harbour  beside  the  JBolivar, 
aboard  of  which  they  slept ;  and  next 
day,  and  for  five  days  more,  there  were 
greetings  of  Hunt  and  his  family,  jour- 
neys with  them  and  Byron  to  Pisa  and 
other  places,  and  much  talk  about  the 
prospects  of  the  new  periodical.  Un- 
luckily, on  account  of  some  fray  in 
Byron's  house,  which  had  brought  an 
Italian  servant  of  his  within  the  grip  of 
the  Tuscan  police,  his  Lordship  had 
taken  a  sudden  determination  to  leave 
Tuscany ;  and  Shelley's  chief  care  was 
to  get  such  arrangements  made  as  would 
prevent  Hunt  from  being  inconvenienced 
by  this  change  of  plan.  He  did  all  he 
could  to  secure  this  ;  and  on  the  8th  of 
July,  taking  leave  of  Hunt,  Byron,  and 
others,  he  and  Williams  set  out  on  their 
return  to  Lerici.  An  English  sailor  lad, 
named  Charles  Vivian,  accompanied 
them  in  the  boat.  There  were  some 
fears  for  the  weather,  which  for  some 
days  had  been  calm  and  sultry,  but  was 
now  changed  ;  but  Shelley  could  not  be 
persuaded  to  remain.  The  boat  had  not 


gone  many  miles,  when  one  of  the  terri- 
ble squalls  that  occur  in  that  part  of  the 
Mediterranean  came  on,  and  the  friends 
left  at  Leghorn  became  anxious.  Cap- 
tain Roberts,  who  had  been  watching 
the  boat  on  her  homeward  track  with  a 
glass,  from  Leghorn  lighthouse,  saw  her 
last,  when  the  storm  came  on,  off  Via 
Eeggio,  at  some  distance  from  the  shore, 
hugging  the  wind  with  a  press  of  can- 
vas. The  storm  then  spread  rapidly 
like  a  dark  mist,  and  blotted  out  that 
part  of  the  horizon,  enveloping  the  dis- 
tant little  boat  and  several  larger  vessels 
that  were  also  out.  When  the  storm 
passed  onwards  from  that  quarter,  Cap- 
tain Roberts  looked  again,  and  saw  every 
vessel  except  the  little  one,  which  had 
vanished.  Within  that  storm  had  been 
the  apparition  of  the  naked  babe  !  For 
days  and  days  there  was  great  anxiety 
among  the  friends  on  shore.  At  length 
the  sea  itself  told  all  that  ever  was  to  be 
known  of  the  mystery,  by  washing  ashore 
the  three  bodies — that  of  Shelley,  that 
of  Williams,  and  that  of  the  boy  Vivian 
— on  different  parts  of  the  coast.  The 
body  of  Shelley  was  burnt  on  a  pyre  of 
wood  heaped  with  wine,  salt,  frankin- 
cence,  and  perfumes,  near  the  spot  where 
it  had  been  cast  ashore — Byron,  Hunt, 
Trelawny  and  others  assisting  at  the 
ceremony.  His  collected  ashes  were 
conveyed  to  Rome  and  there  buried. 

Whatever  rank  one  may  be  disposed 
to  assign,  all  in  all,  to  Shelley  among 
English  Poets,  no  reader  can  deny  that 
his  genius  was  of  the  poetical  order — 
that  he  possessed  in  a  singular  degree 
the  faculty  of  ideality,  of  pure  intellec- 
tual imagination.  His  larger  poems  are 
well  and  even  carefully  conceived  as 
wholes,  according  to  the  peculiar  kind 
or  constructive  art  of  which  they  are 
specimens.  The  language  is  logically 
precise,  easy,  graceful,  and  luxuriant; 
the  versification  is  natural,  various,  and 
musical ;  and  there  are  individual  pas- 
sages of  acute  and  even  comprehensive 
philosophical  meaning,  of  powerful  and 
delicate  description,  of  weirdly  and  ex- 
quisite phantasy,  and  of  tender  and  con- 
centrated feeling.  In  his  descriptions 


344 

and  visual  fancies  one  notices,  among 
other  things,  a  wonderfully  fine  sense  of 
colour.  Thus  Asia,  in  the  "  Prometheus 
Unbound,"  expecting,  in  a  vale  of  the 
Indian  Caucasus,  the  arrival  of  her  sister 
Oceanid,  Panthea  : — 

"  This  is  the  season,  this  the  day,  the  hour ; 
At  sunrise  thou  shouldst  come,  sweet  sister 

mine. 

Too  long  denied,  too  long  delaying,  come  ! 
The  point  of  one  white  star  is  quivering  still, 
Deep  in  the  orange  light  of  widening  morn 
Beyond  the  purple  mountains.     Through  a 

chasm 

Of  wind-divided  mist  the  darker  lake 
Reflects  it ;  now  it  wanes  :  it  gleams  again 
As  the  waves  fade,   and  as  the  burning 

threads 

Of  woven  cloud  unravel  in  the  thin  air : 
'Tis  lost ;  and  through  yon  peaks  of  cloud- 
like  snow 

The  roseate  sunlight  quivers:  hear  I  not 
The  JSolian  music  of  her  sea-green  plumes 
Winnowing  the  crimson  dawn  ?" 

Perhaps  one  of  the  finest  continuous 
passages  in  all  the  larger  poems,  is  the 
concluding  portion  of  the  same  drama, 
where,  partly  in  choruses  of  unseen 
spirits,  and  partly  in  dialogue  between 
Prometheus  and  the  Oceanids  in  a  forest 
near  his  cave,  the  glorious  state  of  the 
emancipated  world  of  the  Promethean 
era,  when  Jove  is  dethroned,  and  Love 
and  Justice  reign,  is  set  forth  in  mystic 
allegory.  The  following  speech  of 
Panthea  may  serve  as  a  specimen  of 
the  part  that  is  in  dialogue.  The  new 
or  Promethean  earth  is  figured  by  the 
vision  of  a  vast  solid  sphere,  as  of  crys- 
tal, filled  with  multitudinous  shapes  and 
colours,  yet  all  miraculously  inter-tran- 
spicuous, which  is  seen  rushing,  as  in  a 
whirlwind  of  harmony,  through  an  open- 
ing of  the  forest ;  grinding,  as  it  wheels, 
a  brook  that  flows  beneath  into  an  azure 
mist  of  light,  and  whirling  grass,  trees, 
and  flowers  into  a  kneaded  mass  of  aerial 
emerald.  Within  this  strange  orb  the 
Spirit  of  the  Earth  is  seen  asleep,  like  a 
wearied  child,  pillowed  on  its  alabaster 
arms,  which  are  laid  over  its  folded 
wings.  Its  lips  are  seen  moving  as  in 
a  smiling  dream  ;  and  from  a  star  upon 
its  forehead  there  shoot  swords  and 
beams  of  fire,  which  whirl  as  the  orb 
whirls,  and  transpierce  its  otherwise 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


opaque  bulk  with  radiant  lightnings. 
In  the  light  of  these  incessant  shafts 
all  the  secrets  of  the  earth's  interior, 
from  the  circumference  to  the  core,  are 
revealed  in  continuous  translucence  : — 

"  Infinite  mines  of  adamant  and  gold, 
Valueless  glories,  unimagined  gems, 
And  caverns  on  crystalline  columns  poised, 
With  vegetable  silver  overspread ; 
Wells  of  unfathomed  fire,  and  water-springs 
Whence  the  great  sea,  even  as  a  child,  is  fed, 
Whose    vapours    clothe    earth's     monarch 

mountain-tops 
With  kingly  ermine-snow.    The  beams  flash 

on 

And  make  appear  the  melancholy  ruins 
Of  cancelled  cycles — anchors,  beaks  of  ships, 
Planks  turned  to  marble,  quivers,   helms, 

and  spears, 

And  gorgon-headed  targes,  and  the  wheels 
Of  scythed  chariots,  and  the  emblazonry 
Of  trophies,  standards,  and  armorial  beasts — 
Round  which  death  laughed ;    sepulchred 

emblems 

Of  dead  destruction,  ruin  within  ruin  ! 
The  wrecks  beside  of  many  a  city  vast 
Whose  population  which  the  earth  grew  over 
Was  mortal,  but  not  human  ;  see,  they  lie, 
Their  monstrous  works  and  uncouth  skele- 
tons, 
Their  statues,  homes  and  fanes — prodigious 

shapes 

Huddled  in  grey  annihilation,  split, 
Jammed  in  the  hard  black  deep ;  and  over 

these, 

The  anatomies  of  unknown  winged  things, 
And  fishes  which  were  isles  of  living  scale, 
And  serpents,  bony  chains,  twisted  around 
The  iron  crags,  or  within  heaps  of  dust 
To  which  the  tortuous  strength  of  their  last 

pangs 

Had  crushed  the  iron  crags ;  and  over  these 
The  jagged  alligator,  and  the  might 
Of  earth-convulsing  behemoth,  which  once 
Were    monarch-beasts,    and   on  the  slimy 

shores 

And  weed-overgrown  continents  of  earth 
Increased  and  multiplied  like  summer-worms 
On  an  abandoned  corpse,  till  the  blue  globe 
Wrapt  deluge  round  it  like  a  cloak,  and  they 
Yelled,  gasped,  and  were  abolished ;  or  some 

God 
Whose  throne  was  in  a  comet  passed  and 

cried 
'  Be  not,'  and,  like  my  words,  they  were  no 

more." 

Passages  in  a  different  vein  might  be 
quoted — as  these  lines  of  apophthegm  in 
the  «  Cenci  :"— 

"  In  the  great  war  between  the  young  and  old 
I,  who  have  white  hairs  and  a  tottering 

body, 
Will  keep  at  least  blameless  neutrality." 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


345 


or  this  fine  image  : — 

"  Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-coloured  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  eternity." 

In  some  of  the  rougher  political  poems 
—  as  in  the  burlesque  of  "  CEdipus 
Tyrannus,"  and  in  "Peter  Bell  the  Third" 
— there  is  even  a  kind  of  fierce  popular 
wit,  appealing  to  the  coarsest  under- 
standing, and  intended  to  do  so.  Nor 
is  it  necessary  to  refer  to  those  shorter 
lyrical  pieces,  "The  Sensitive  Plant," 
"The  Cloud,"  the  "Ode  to  the  Sky- 
lark," &c.,  which  are  known  even  to 
those  who  know  nothing  else  of  Shelley, 
and  read  again  and  again  for  their 
melody — 

"  Sweet  as  a  singing  rain  of  silver  dew." 

In  others  of  these  lyrical  pieces  what 
intensity  of  pathos !  Who  that  has 
ever  heard  Beatrice's  wild  song  in  the 
"  Cenci"  sung  as  it  should  be,  can  for- 
get its  plaintive  horror  1 — 

"  False  friend,  wilt  thou  smile  or  weep 
When  my  life  is  laid  asleep  ? 
Little  cares  for  a  smile  or  a  tear 
The  clay-cold  corpse  upon  the  bier. 

Farewell !     Heigh  ho  ! 

What  is  this  whispers  low  ? 
There's  a  snake  in  thy  smile,  my  dear ; 
And  bitter  poison  within  thy  tear." 

After  all,  however,  less  than  almost 
any  other  poet,  is  Shelley  to  be  ade- 
quately represented  in  detached  passages. 
His  poetiy  is  like  an  intellectual  ether, 
that  must  be  breathed  and  lived  in  for 
some  time  together  ere  its  influence  can 
be  appreciated.  To  minds  of  sufficient 
culture,  who  have  in  this  way  become 
acquainted  with  Shelley's  poetry,  (and 
only  minds  of  considerable  culture  are 
likely  ever  to  read  much  of  it,)  it  has 
always  presented  itself  as  something  very 
peculiar  in  quality — totally  different,  for 
example,  from  the  poetry  of  Milton,  or 
of  Wordsworth,  or  of  Byron,  or  of  any 
other  preceding  poet.  To  this,  at  least, 
Shelley's  poetry  can  lay  claim — that, 
whether  great  or  not,  whether  useful  or 
hurtful  in  its  influence,  it  is  very  pe- 
culiar. 

Retaining  for  the  nonce  a  distinction, 
somewhat  pedantic  in  form,  and  greatly 

No.  11. — VOL.  n. 


laughed  at  of  late  by  the  lovers  of  plain 
English,  but  which  need  not  be  given  up, 
for  all  that,  till  the  lovers  of  plain  Eng- 
lish have  provided  an  exact  equivalent, 
(which  they  don't  seem  in  any  hurry  to 
do,)  one  cannot  do  better  than  repeat 
the  observation,  often  made  already,  that 
Shelley  belongs  to  the  order  of  the  so- 
called  "subjective"  poets,  as  differing 
from  those  called  the  "objective."     The 
terms  do  express  a  real  meaning.    There 
are  some  poets — as,  for  example,  Chau- 
cer,  Shakespeare,    and    Scott — whose 
poetry  consists,  in  the  main,  of  com- 
binations,   more   or    less   complex,    of 
scenery,  incident,    and   character,  each 
fashioned  by  a  kind  of  wondrous  craft 
out  of  materials  furnished  to  the  ima- 
gination by  sense,  memory,  reading,  and 
reflection ;  and  each,  as  soon   as  it  is 
fashioned,  detached  altogether,  or  nearly 
so,  from  the  personality  of  the  writer, 
and  sent  to  float  away  as  a  separate  crea- 
tion down  the  stream  of  time.     In  the 
case  of  these  so-called  "  objective"  poets, 
it  is  a  problem  of  the  highest  difficulty 
to  ascertain  their  personal  character  from 
their  works.    Out  of  one  set  of  materials 
Shakespeare  fashions  a  "  Hamlet ;"  then 
he  sets  about  a  "  Macbeth ;"  then  he 
betakes  himself  to  a  "Henry  the  Fourth," 
or  a  "  Midsummer  Night's  Dream ;"  but 
whether  Shakespeare  himself  is  most  in 
one  or  in  another  of  these  creations,  is 
a  matter  not  to  be  lightly  determined  on 
mere  internal  evidence.     We  see  those 
creations    separately    and    successively 
issuing  from  Shakespeare's  mind,  and 
we  know  that  they  were  fashioned  there 
by  a  subtle  craft  operating  upon  mate- 
rials that  had  been  brought  into  that 
mind  from  the  surrounding  world  ;  but 
what  kind  of  chamber  that  mind  was — 
of  what  glooms,  griefs,  or  distractions  it 
may  have  been  the  scene  while  the  labour 
of  creation  was  going  on  in  it — the  works 
themselves  do  not  accurately  inform  us. 
For  fifty  years  the  world  is  amazed  and 
delighted  with  gorgeous  phantasies  of 
colour,  representing,  as  they  were  never 
represented    before    in    painting,    the 
phases  of  universal  nature ;  and,  when 
these   phantasies   are    traced    to    their 
source,   they   are    found    to    be    from 

A  A 


346 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


the  hand  of  a  taciturn  and  slovenly 
old  man,  named  Turner,  shambling 
about  in  his  slippers  in  a  dusty  cob- 
webby house  in  London,  and  reputed 
by  those  who  know  no  better  to  be  very 
gruff  and  very  avaricious,  and  to  have 
apparently  no  other  usual  human  taste 
than  a  fondness  for  port  wine.  Of 
course,  even  in  such  cases,  independent 
knowledge  of  the  man  may  enable  us  to 
discern  him  in  his  works.  There  are, 
moreover,  for  critics  profound  enough  in 
their  investigations,  subtle  laws  connect- 
ing the  imagination  with  the  personality 
and  the  life.  But  any  such  ultimate 
connexion  discovered  or  discoverable  be- 
tween the  personal  character  of  the 
"  objective  "  poet  and  the  nature  of  his 
creations,  is  a  far  different  thing  from 
the  obvious  relation  subsisting  between 
the  character  of  the  "subjective"  poet 
and  his  phantasies.  Here  we  are  never 
at  a  loss.  The  poetry  of  the  "subjec- 
tive "  poet  is  nothing  else  than  an 
effluence  from  his  personality  through 
the  medium  of  his  imagination.  He  has 
certain  fixed  ideas,  certain  permanent 
moods  of  mind,  certain  notions  as  to 
what  ought  to  be  and  what  ought  not 
to  be;  and  these  ideas,  moods,  or  no- 
tions, he  works  forth  into  all  that  he 
fancies.  He  preaches  while  he  sings ; 
what  he  imagines  is  a  revelation  of 
what  he  wishes.  He  does  not  live  in  a 
house  of  stone  (to  use  a  figure  which 
I  think  is  Mr.  Browning's),  commu- 
nicating only  by  certain  chinks  and 
embrasures  with  the  world  without,  and 
in  which  the  possessor,  while  command- 
ing a  prospect  all  round,  may  keep  him- 
self and  his  own  movements  concealed. 
He  lives  in  a  house  of  glass,  expressing 
his  feelings  as  to  what  he  sees  in  ges- 
tures visible  to  all  about  him,  and 
employing  the  poetic  art  only  as  a  means 
of  flashing  his  own  image  and  its  suc- 
cessive gesticulations  to  a  greater  and 
greater  distance.  Here  too  the  means 
of  the  poetic  art  correspond  with  the 
intention.  The  "  subjective  "  poet,  the 
poet  of  fixed  ideas  —  dealing,  as  his 
tendency  is,  not  with  things  as  they  are 
in  their  infinite  real  complexity,  but 
with  the  supposed  principles  of  things, 


the  springs  or  seeds  of  being, — such  a 
poet  may  frame  his  pictures  out  of  the 
stuff  of  real  life,  if  he  chooses,  just  as 
the  "objective"  poet  does;  but  even 
then,  owing  to  the  invariable  meaning 
which  he  infuses  into  them,  they  will 
be  in  one  strain,  and  more  or  less  repe- 
titions of  each  other.  In  Byron's 
poetry,  for  example,  under  very  various 
forms,  we  have  still  a  reproduction 
of  the  Byronic  type  of  character.  On 
the  whole,  however,  it  will  be  the  ten- 
dency of  the  "  subjective "  poet  of  the 
most  determined  type  not  to  take  his 
scenery  and  circumstance  from  the  real 
or  historical  world  at  all — not  to  hamper 
himself  with  the  actual  relations  of 
time,  place,  and  historical  probability — 
but,  as  he  concerns  himself  morally  with 
Man  in  his  primal  elements,  so  to  deal 
also  with  material  nature  as  simplified 
into  its  masses  and  generalizations.  In 
other  words,  he  will  lay  his  scene  any- 
where in  vague  time  or  space ;  he  will 
make  his  persons  gigantic,  mythical, 
and  featureless,  and  will  unfetter  the 
mode  of  their  actions  from  the  ordinary 
terrestrial  laws ;  and  the  objects  amid 
which  they  move  he  will  depict  as 
visual  allegories.  Hence  that  well- 
known  deficiency  of  human  interest 
which  often  prevents  poetry  of  this 
kind  from  being  widely  popular.  Most 
men  like  to  have  their  footing  on  a 
solid  flooring  of  fact  and  of  history,  and 
do  not  take  nearly  so  much  pleasure  in 
a  world  of  a  few  elemental  ingredients 
and  relations,  fashioned  to  illustrate  the 
action  of  a  few  supposed  springs  of 
being,  as  they  do  in  representations  of 
the  living  and  moving  complexity  of  our 
own  well- wrinkled  planet. 

The  distinction  we  have  been  ex- 
pounding is,  of  course,  not  absolute.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  name  a  poet  belong- 
ing so  purely  to  one  of  the  orders  as  to 
have  nothing  in  him  of  the  other.  On 
the  whole,  however,  Shelley  is  eminently 
a  "subjective"  poet.  In  his  "Cenci," 
his  "Julian  and  Maddalo,"  and  one  or 
two  other  poems,  he  does  make  it  his 
aim  to  represent  historical  occurrences, 
and  scenes  and  feelings  as  they  are 
found  in  actual  life.  But,  in  the  main, 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


347 


he  was  a  poet  of  fixed  ideas — a  poet 
dealing  incessantly  with  the  seeds  and 
springs  of  being,  and  illustrating  his 
notions  of  these  in  imaginations  of  an 
arbitrary  and  mythological  character. 
His  Poetry  is,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  air- 
hung  Mythology,  shadowing  forth  the 
essential  principles  of  a  creed  which 
might  be  called  Shelleyism.  What  this 
creed  was  we  have  already  partly  seen 
in  our  sketch  of  his  life  ;  but  a  word  or 
two  more  may  be  added. 

At  one  tune  Shelley -had,  as  he  tells 
us  himself,  been  a  Materialist  in  philo- 
sophy. That  is  to  say,  he  regarded  the 
universe  as  consisting  of  an  original 
basis  or  consolidation  of  matter  of  the 
kind  called  Inorganic,  upon  which  there 
had  been  reared,  or  out  of  which  there 
had  somehow  grown,  a  quantity  of 
other  and  more  highly  developed  mat- 
ter of  the  kind  called  Organic,  ascending 
in  a  hierarchy  of  forms,  with  man  at  the 
apex.  According  to  this  philosophy, 
in  thinking  of  the  universe,  one  is 
bound  to  think  of  matter  and  of  nothing 
else — matter  lying  dead  and  obdurate, 
or  matter  pervaded  by  electricities, 
nerve-forces,  and  what  not,  so  as  to  be 
locomotive,  sensitive,  active,  and  reflec- 
tive. But  this  philosophy  Shelley  had 
soon  and  very  decidedly  abandoned ; 
and,  instead  of  it,  he  had  taken  up 
what  is  called  the  system  of  Idealism. 
According  to  this  philosophy — which 
he  had  got  at  through  Hume  and 
Berkeley,  and  partly  through  Plato, — 
not  Matter,  but  Thought,  is  the  funda- 
mental reality  of  the  universe.  Every- 
thing is  thought ;  nothing  exists  but  in 
and  through  thought.  What  we  call 
external  objects,  what  we  call  matter 
itself,  is  but  thought  of  a  certain 
quantity  and  variety,  distinguished  from 
thought  recognised  as  such  by  certain 
accidents  of  force,  frequency,  and  the 
like.  Thoughts  in  certain  successions, 
and  in  certain  degrees  of  intensity, — 
that  is  all  we  know  anything  of.  The 
universe  is  but  a  certain  coagulation,  so 
to  speak,  or  huge  bubble-mountain  of 
thoughts — the  harder  and  more  coagu- 
lated parts  of  the  mass,  crushed  by  the 
gravity  of  the  others,  constituting  what 


we  call  matter,  and  forming  a  perma- 
nent basis  for  all ;  and  the  rest  ascend- 
ing in  successive  stages  of  tenuity  till 
they  end  in  the  ether  of  once-imagined 
whimsies.  But,  this  being  the  case,  it 
follows  that  the  universe  may  be  con- 
tinually added  to  and  disturbed  in  its 
fabric.  Thoughts  being  things,  and  the 
mind  having  the  power  of  pouring  forth 
a  constant  succession  of  new  thoughts, 
these  really  rush  into  the  fabric  of  the 
past  accumulation,  and,  in  adjusting 
themselves  and  finding  their  places, 
disturb  its  porosity,  and  keep  it  con- 
tinually agitated.  Above  all,  the  poet, 
whose  very  business  it  is  to  send  forth 
new  imaginations  of  a  great  and  im- 
pressive character,  is  thus  always  agitat- 
ing, disturbing,  and  remodelling  crea- 
tion. This  is  a  doctrine  which  Shelley 
is  perpetually  repeating  in  his  prose- 
writings.  "Imagination,"  he  says,  "or 
"  mind  employed  prophetically  in  imag- 
"  ing  forth  its  objects,  is  the  faculty  of 
"  human  nature  on  which  every  grada- 
"  tion  of  its  progress — nay,  every,  the 
"  minutest,  change — depends."  Accord- 
ing to  Shelley,  all  the  thoughts  of  all 
minds  are  adding  to  and  altering  the 
universe  ;  but  it  is  the  business  of  the 
poet,  by  certain  splendid  precalculated 
imaginations,  either  softly  to  disinte- 
grate the  mass  of  previously  accumu- 
lated existence,  so  that  it  shall  fall  into 
new  arrangements,  or  sometimes  to  con- 
vulse, crack,  and  rend  this  mass  by  the 
blast  of  a  wholesome  explosion  through 
what  was  previously  a  chaos.  The  Poet 
would  thus  be  pre-eminently  the  Ee- 
former. 

So  far  we  have  but  the  theoretical 
side  of  Shelley's  system.  The  difficulty 
is  to  see  how,  when  he  had  risen 
theoretically  to  the  extreme  of  his  Ideal- 
ism, he  turned  in  mid-air,  and  came  back 
on  the  world  in  a  scheme  of  practical 
reason.  Admit  the  universe  to  be  a 
coagulation  of  old  thoughts,  modifiable 
by  new  ones,  what  kinds  of  new 
thoughts  will  make  the  right  and  desir- 
able modification  ?  What  is  the  prin- 
ciple, Avhat  the  rule,  what  the  right  and 
wrong,  in  thought  1  The  poet,  as  the 
reformer-in-chief  for  the  human  race, 
A  A2 


348 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


has  to  employ  himself  in  splendid  pre- 
calculated  imaginations,  which,  rushing 
forth  from  him,  shall  softly  arrange 
things  in  new  harmonies,  or  violently 
split°their  way  with  revolutionary  force ! 
Well,  wherein  consists  the  splendour  to 
be  desired  in  these  imaginations,  and  on 
what  principles  are  they  to  be  precalcu- 
lated1?  Here,  as  is  often  the  case  with 
philosophers,  there  is  a  gap  in  wlrich  we 
cannot  see  the  links  connecting  Shelley's 
theoretical  or  ascending  with  his  prac- 
tical or  descending  reason.  But  he  has 
a  practical  system,  and  a  very  definite 
one.  Unlike  Hume,  he  ascends  to  the 
extreme  of  Idealism,  not  to  end  in 
indifference  or  scepticism,  but  to  de- 
scend again  all  the  more  vehemently 
upon  the  world  of  man  and  life,  armed 
with  a  faith.  He  speaks,  indeed,  of 
Deity,  and  other  such  ideas,  as  being 
only  "  the  modes  in  which  thoughts  are 
"  combined  ;"  but  it  is  evident,  what- 
ever he  calls  them,  that  it  is  only  the 
presence  or  the  absence  of  certain  ideas 
of  this  class  that  constitutes,  in  his  view, 
the  difference  between  the  right  and  the 
wrong,  between  the  splendid  and  the 
mean,  in  thought.  Thoughts  combined  so 
are  eternally  noble  and  good ;  thoughts 
combined  otherwise  are  eternally  ignoble 
and  bad — no  man  ever  cherished  a  be- 
lief of  this  kind  more  passionately  than 
Shelley.  !No  man,  therefore,  had  more 
of  the  essence  of  an  absolute  ethical 
faith,  of  a  faith  not  fabricated  out  of 
experience,  but  structurally  derived 
from  an  authority  in  the  invisible. 
Theoretically  an  idealist,  he  was  morally 
a  fanatic.  "  I  have  confidence  in  my 
"  moral  sense  alone,  for  that  is  a  kind 
"  of  originality,"  is  one  of  his  own  signi- 
ficant sayings.  His  whole  life  is  an 
illustration.  His  brief  existence  in  the 
world  was  one  continued  shriek  about 
love  and  justice.  He  had  "  a  passion," 
he  says,  "  for  reforming  the  world."  Nor 
was  it  a  superficial  reform  that  he  con- 
templated. From  first  to  last,  as  he 
thought,  human  society  had  been  an 
aggregate  of  wrong  and  corruption. 
Kings,  priests,  and  governments  had 
filled  the  earth  with  misery.  Bound  by 
sophisms  and  slavish  fears,  men  and 


women  were  living  defrauded  of  their 
natural  rights,  and  out  of  their  natural 
relations. 

"  Kings,  priests,  and  statesmen  blast  the  human 

flower 

Even  in  its  tender  bud ;  their  influence  darts, 
Like  subtle  poison,  through  the  bloodless 

veins 
Of  desolate  society." 

But  this  state  of  things  is  not  to  last 
for  ever  !  There  Avill  one  day  be  a  reign 
of  truth  and  love,  of  justice  and  social 
equality ! 

"  Spirit  of  nature  !  thou 
Life  of  interminable  multitudes, 
Soul  of  those  mighty  spheres 
Whose  changeless  paths  through  Heaven's 

deep  silence  lie, 
Soul  of  that  smallest  being 

The  dwelling  of  whose  life 
Is  one  faint  April  sun-gleam — 

Man,  like  these  passive  things, 
Thy  will  unconsciously  fulfilleth : 
Like  theirs,  his  age  of  endless  peace, 
Which  Time  is  fast  maturing, 
Will  swiftly,  surely,  come  ; 
And  the  unbounded  frame  which  thou  per- 

vadest 

Will  be  without  a  flaw 
Marring  its  perfect  symmetry." 

This  is  Shelley's  fixed  faith,  the  bur- 
then of  all  his  poetry.  It  was  his  own 
aim  as  a  poet  to  send  forth  sounds  that 
might  shake  the  reign  of  "Anarch 
Custom,"  and  hasten  the  blessed  era  in 
whose  coming  he  believed.  Nor  was  it 
only  on  the  great  scale  that  he  desired 
to  be  a  prophet  of  love  and  justice.  He 
was  to  carry  out  his  principle  to  its 
minutest  applications,  promoting  every 
movement  for  the  mitigation  of  social 
or  individual  suffering,  and  so  constitu- 
ting himself,  as  well  in  literature  as  in 
action,  what  nature,  in  framing  him  so 
delicately,  had  fitted  him  to  be — 

"  A  nerve  o'er  which  might  creep 
The  else  unfelt  oppressions  of  this  earth." 

And  here  we  recur  to  a  question  already 
opened.  Whatever  Shelley's  formal 
affirmations  respecting  the  doctrines  of 
Deity  and  Immortality  might  be,  it  is 
clear  that  the  fanatical  intensity  of  his 
ethical  creed  implied  a  habit  of  viewing 
the  world  from  a  point  out  of  itself,  and 
by  the  rule  of  ideas  not  belonging  to  it. 


Life  and  Poetry  of  Shelley. 


349 


Had  his  principle  been  "to  apprehend 
"  no  farther  than  this  world,"  why  such 
spasm,  why  such  wailing,  such  rage 
against  universal  wrong,  such  frantic 
longing  to  refashion  human  nature  from 
its  very  roots  ?  On  such  a  principle,  it 
is  true,  a  man  might  be  so  far  a  reformer. 
He  might  seek  to  correct  the  earth  by 
itself,  the  part  by  the  knowledge  of  the 
whole,  social  evils  in  Asia  by  the  expe- 
rience of  Europe.  But  for  a  man  to 
start  up  and  proclaim  the  whole  past 
movement  of  humanity  to  have  been 
wrong,  and  to  propose  to  arrest  it,  and 
shift  its  very  wheels,  is  a  different 
matter.  This  was  Shelley's  proposition. 
He  did  not  propose  only  that  the  world 
should  be  corrected  by  itself,  the  part 
by  the  whole,  but  that  it  should  be  cor- 
rected by  a  rule  eternal  and  immutable, 
which  he  sometimes  called  love  or  jus- 
tice, and  sometimes  the  spirit  of  uni- 
versal nature.  There  was  a  Heart 
beating  somewhere,  to  whose  pulsations 
the  earth  as  a  whole  was  rebel,  but 
which  would  yet  subdue  the  earth  to 
unison  with  it ;  and,  meanwhile,  the 
agents  of  good  and  the  harbingers  of 
the  final  harmony  were  to  be  those 
imaginationl  of  man  that,  by  relating 
themselves  to  this  Heart,  were  to  be  pre- 
maturely in  unison  with  it,  and  at  war 
with  the  earth  and  its  customs.  No- 
thing short  of  this  belief,  however  he 
phrased  it,  was  the  principle  of  Shelley's 
practical  philosophy.  Seeing  that  it  was 
so,  might  not  we  say  that,  like  his  own 
Prometheus,  he  had  tipped  his  reed  with 
stolen  fire1? 

Argument  and  metaphysics  apart, 
there  is,  at  least,  no  way  in  which  the 
fancy  may  more  easily  apprehend  the 
peculiarity  of  Shelley's  genius  than  by 
thinking  of  him  as  one  who  surveyed 
the  world  not  from  a  point  within  it 
or  on  it,  but  from  a  point  in  distant 
space  ;  or,  better  still,  perhaps,  as  not  a 
native  of  the  earth  at  all,  but  some 
fluttering  spirit  of  a  lighter  sphere,  that 
had  dropped  on  it  by  chance,  unable  to 
be  in  happy  relation  to  it  as  a  whole, 
though  keenly  sensitive  to  some  of  its 
beauties.  Were  our  science  of  pedigree 
yet  worth  anything,  it  might  save  us 


the  necessity  of  any  such  figure.  Re- 
membering that  the  year  of  Shelley's 
birth  was  that  of  the  utmost  agony  of 
the  French  Revolution,  when  convul- 
sion was  shaking  all  things  established, 
and  new  social  principles  were  every- 
where abroad,  we  might  then  have  a 
glimmering  of  how  it  happened  that 
the  genius  of  the  time  took  a  whim  to 
appear  even  in  Sussex,  and  bespeak  as 
one  of  its  incarnations  the  child  of  a 
commonplace  English  baronet,  who 
never  bargained  for  such  an  honour. 
But,  unable  to  make  anything  to  the 
purpose  of  such  a  scientific  fancy,  we 
may  resort  to  the  other.  Shelley's 
personal  friends  used  to  resort  to  it. 
"I  used  to  tell  him,"  says  Leigh  Hunt, 
"that  he  had  come  from  the  planet 
"  Mercury."  One  may  vary  the  form  of 
the  fancy ;  and,  though  the  small  pale 
planet  Mercury,  the  sickly  darling  of  the 
sun,  seems  such  an  orb  as  Shelley  might 
have  come  from,  had  he  come  from  any, 
it  might  be  fitter  to  fancy  that  he  had 
come  from  none,  but,  till  he  touched 
our  earth,  had  been  winging  about  in 
unsubstantial  ether.  When  Milton's 
rebel  host  left  the  celestial  realms,  angels 
flocking  on  angels  and  the  great  Arch- 
angel leading,  might  we  not  suppose 
that  some  small  seraph,  who  had  joined 
the  rebellion,  lagged  behind  the  rest  in 
his  flight,  became  detached  from  them 
by  regret  or  weakness,  and,  unable  to 
overtake  them,  was  left  to  flutter 
disconsolate  and  alone  amid  the  starry 
spaces  ?  Excluded  from  Heaven,  but  not 
borne  down  with  the  rest  into  Pandemo- 
nium, if  this  creature  did  at  last 
come  near  our  orb  in  his  wanderings, 
might  it  not  become  his  refuge ;  and 
then,  might  we  not  suppose  that,  though 
retaining  the  principle  of  rebellion — so 
that,  when  the  Highest  was  named,  he 
would  shriek  against  the  name — yet  his 
recollections  of  his  original  would  be 
purer,  and  his  nature  less  impaired  than 
if,  instead  of  transparent  space,  popu- 
lous Pandemonium  had  been  his  inter- 
mediate home  ? 

Whatever  form  we  give  to  the  fancy, 
the  characteristics  of  Shelley's  poetry 
are  such  as  to  accord  with  it.  Intense 


350 


The  Revelation. 


as  is  his  ethical  spirit,  his  desire  to  act 
upon  man  and  society,  his  imagination 
cannot  work  with  things  as  he  finds 
them,  with  the  actual  stuff  of  historical 
life.  His  mode  of  thinking  is  not  ac- 
cording to  the  terrestrial  conditions  of 
time,  place,  cause  and  effect,  variety  of 
race,  climate,  and  costume.  His  persons 
are  shapes,  winged  forms,  modernized 
versions  of  Grecian  mythology,  or  mor- 
tals highly  allegorized  ;  and  their  move- 
ments are  vague,  swift,  and  independent 
of  ordinary  physical  laws.  In  the 
"Kevolt  of  Islam,"  for  example,  the 
story  is  that  of  two  lovers  who  career 
through  the  plains  and  cities  of  an  ima- 
ginary kingdom  on  a  Tartar  horse,  or 
skim  over  leagues  of  ocean  in  a  boat 
whose  .prow  is  of  moonstone.  But  for 
the  "Cenci,"  and  one  or  two  other 
pieces,  one  would  say  that  Shelley  had 
scarcely  any  aptitude  for  the  historical 
Even  in  his  sensuous  imagery  the  same 
arbitrariness  is  apparent.  His  land- 
scapes, like  his  persons,  are  a  sort  of 
allegories.  His  true  poetical  element, 
where  alone  he  takes  things  as  he  finds 
them,  is  the  atmosphere.  Shelley  is  pre- 
eminently the  poet  of  what  may  be  called 
meteorological  circumstance.  He  is  at 
home  among  winds,  mists,  rains,  snows, 
clouds  gorgeously  coloured,  glories  of 
sunrise,  nights  of  moonshine,  lightnings, 
streamers,  and  falling  stars ;  and  what 
of  vegetation  and  geology  he  brings  in, 
is  but  as  so  much  that  might  be  seen  by 
an  aerial  creature  in  its  ascents  and 
descents.  His  poetry  is  full  of  direct 
and  all  but  conscious  suggestions  of  this. 
Need  we  cite,  as  one,  his  "  Ode  to  the 


Skylark,"  that  "  scorner  of  the  ground," 
whose  skill  he  covets  for  the  poet  ? 
Then  there  is  his  lyric  of  the  "  Cloud : " — 

"  I  bring  fresh  showers  for  the  thirsting  flowers, 

For  the  seas  and  the  streams ; 
I  bear  light  shade  for  the  leaves  when  laid 

In  their  noon-day  dreams  ; 
From  my  wings  are  shaken  the  dews  that 
waken 

The  sweet  birds  every  one, 
When  rocked  to  rest  on  their  mother's  breast 

As  the  dances  about  the  sun ; 
I  wield  the  flail  of  the  lashing  hail, 

And  whiten  the  green  plains  under, 
And  then  again  I  dissolve  in  rain, 

And  laugh  as  I  pass  in  thunder." 

Again  in  his  "  Invocation  to  the  "West 
Wind,"  in  which,  expressly  imploring 
it  to  be  his  spirit,  he  dedicates  himself, 
as  it  were,  to  the  meteorological  for 
ever  : — 

"  0  wild  West  Wind,  thou  breath  of  Autumn's 

being, 
Thou  from  whose  unseen  presence  the  leaves 

dead 
Are  driven,  like  ghosts  from  an  enchanter 

fleeing, 

***** 
Make  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is  ! 
What  if  my  leaves  are  falling  like  its  own  ? 
The  tumult  of  thy  mighty  harmonies 

Will  take  from  both  a  deep  avtumnal  tone, 
Sweet  though  in  sadness,  fie  thou,  spirit 

fierce, 
My  spirit !     Be  thou  me,  impetuous  me  ! 

Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  universe, 
Like  withered  leaves,  to  quicken  a  new  birth ; 
And,  by  the  incantation  of  this  verse, 

Scatter,  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth 
Ashes  and  sparks,  my  words  among  mankind ! 
Be  through  my  lips  to  unawakened  earth 

The  trumpet  of  a  prophecy !     0  wind, 

If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind  ? 


THE  KEVELATION. 

'  This  is  the  mystery 
Of  this  wonderful  history, 
And  the  way  to  find  it  out." 


SOUTHEY. 


HE  was  wont  to  creep  and  stumble,  with  a  slow,  uncertain  pace, 
And  a  supplicating  doubt  o'er  all  his  hard  unbending  face ; 
And  our  mirth  would  make  him  scornful,  and  our  pity  made  him  wince, 
"When  the  fitful  moody  dream  was  on,  perverting  the  good  sense. 


The  Revelation.  351 

He  was  sharp  too  with  his  reasons,  and  his  deep,  inveterate  sneer 
Mocked  the  highest  and  divinest  without  reverence  or  fear ; 
And  our  pious  saws  and  customs,  he  would  laugh  at  them,  and  call 
The  old  lace  that  did  embroider  the  hypocrisy  of  alL 

For  the  world  seemed  out  of  joint  to  him,  and  rotten  to  the  core, 
With  Gods  and  creeds  once  credited,  but  credible  no  more  ; 
And  duties  high,  heroic,  that  once  were  bravely  done  ; 
JBut  for  action,  we  had  babbling  only  now  beneath  the  sun. 

And  there  was  nothing  sacred  in  the  universe  to  him— 

No  lights  of  awe  and  wonder — no  temple  fitly  dim; 

Ever  scornfully  he  reasoned,  ever  battled  with  his  lot, 

And  he  rent,  not  understanding,  the  fine  sanctities  of  thought. 

But  the  blind  old  man  is  altered  to  a  cheerful  hopefulness, 
And  now  serenest  thought  and  joy  are  mantling  in  his  face  ; 
At  one  with  his  own  spirit,  at  one  with  all  his  kind, 
At  one  with  God's  great  universe — he  sees  though  he  is  blind. 

And  it's  all  that  sweet  child's  doing ;  see  them  at  the  lattice  there, 
How  his  fingers  steal  amid  the  long  brown  clusters  of  her  hair  ; 
And  she  looks  up  with  her  thoughtful  eyes  of  lustrous  loving  blue, 
And  tells  him  of 'the  rosebuds  that  are  peeping  into  view. 

They  say  he  found  her  one  night,  humming  o'er  a  quiet  tune, 
As  he  walked  in  mournful  sadness  beneath  the  tranquil  moon, 
Yet  sporting  in  his  sorrow,  mourning  with  a  scornful  mirth, 
Like  a  blind  old  Samson  grappling  with  the  pillars  of  the  earth. 

And  she  came  upon  him  gently,  as  an  angel  from  the  Lord, 

And  she  led  him  with  a  loving  hand,  and  with  a  pious  word  ; 

And  she  fringed  the  dark  clouds  of  his  soul  with  lights  of  heaven's  own  grace, 

And  she  breathed  into  his  life  a  breath  of  tranquil  hopefulness. 

And  he's  no  more  sharp  with  reasons ;  thought  sits  calmly  on  his  brow, 
And  the  dew  upon  his  thoughts  is  not  changed  to  hoar-frost  now ; 
And  he  plays  such  rare  sweet  music  with  a  natural  pathos  low ; 
There  is  no  sorrow  in  it,  yet  'twill  make  your  tears  to  flow. 

For  he's  full  of  all  bird-singing,  and  the  cheery  ring  of  bells, 
The  rain  that  drizzles  on  the  leaves,  the  dripping  sound  of  wells, 
And  the  bearded  barley's  rustling,  and  the  sound  of  winds  and  brooks, 
That  in  the  quiet  midnight  floats  about  the  woodland  nooks, 

And  the  old  ocean-murmurs,  and  all  the  hum  of  bees, 

And  varied  modulations  of  the  many-sounding  trees. 

These  tune  his  heart  to  melodies,  that  lighten  all  its  load; 

Yet  their  gladness  hath  a  sadness,  though  it  speak  to  him  of  God. 

And  he  knows  all  shapes  of  flowers  :  the  heath,  the  fox-glove  with  its  bells, 
The  palmy  fern's  green  elegance,  fanned  in  soft  woodland  smells; 
The  milkwort  on  the  mossy  turf  his  nice-touch  fingers  trace, 
And  the  eye-bright,  though  he  sees  it  not,  he  finds  it  in  its  place. 


352  The  Revelation* 

And  it's  all  that  sweet  child's  doing  :  as  they  saunter  by  the  brook, ; 
If  they  be  not  singing  by  the  way,  she  reads  the  blessed  book ; 
Eeads  the  story  of  the  sorrow  of  the  man  that  loved  us  all, 
Till  the  eyes  that  cannot  see  her  let  the  tears  in  gladness  fall. 

0,  a  blessed  work  is  thine,  fair  child  ;  and  even  so  we  find, 

When  we,  bedridden  with  sick  thoughts,  are  wandering  in  our  mind 

From  the  simple  truth  of  nature,  how  blissful  is  the  calm, 

When  Faith  holds  up  the  aching  head,  and  presses  with  her  palm. 

That's  the  key-note  of  existence  ;  the  right  tone  is  caught  at  length ; 
Cometh  Faith  upon  the  soul,  and  we  go  on  in  love  and  strength  ; 
We  go  on,  with  surest  footstep,  by  the  dizziest  brinks  of  thought, 
And  in  its  deep  abysses  see  the  God  whom  we  had  sought. 

We  were  sometime  dark  and  dreary  ;  we  were  sometime  wroth  and  proud ; 
Warring  with  our  fate  defiant ;  scornful  of  the  vacant  crowd ; 
Thoughtful  of  the  seeming  discords,  and  the  impotence  of  will ; 
And  questioning  the  Universe  for  meanings  hard  and  ill. 

Cometh  Faith  upon  the  spirit,  and  the  spirit  is  serene, 
Seeing  beauty  in  the  duty,  and  God  where  these  are  seen, — 
God  in  every  path  of  duty,  beaming  gracious  from  above, 
And  clothing  every  sorrow  with  the  garment  of  His  love. 

And  the  dark  cloud  is  uplifted,  and  the  mists  of  doubt  grow  thin, 
Leaving  drops  of  dew  behind  them,  as  the  light  comes  breaking  in  ; 
And  the  surges  of  the  passion  into  quiet  slumbers  fall, 
And  the  discords  do  but  hint  a  grander  harmony  through  all 

For  around  the  man  of  sorrows  all  the  sorrows  of  our  lot 

Find  their  law  and  light  in  Him,  whose  life  is  our  divinest  thought  ; 

And  the  Infinite,  the  Dreaded,  draws  nigh  to  thee  and  me 

In  that  sacrament  of  sorrow — we  are  blind  and  yet  we  see. 

For  if  the  way  of  man  here  is  a  way  of  grief  and  loss, 

Even  so  the  way  of  Godhead  was  upon  the  bitter  cross, — 

Upon  the  bitter  cross,  and  along  a  tearful  story, 

Till  the  wreath  of  thorns  became  the  crown  of  heaven's  imperial  glory. 

So  the  sorrow  and  the  sacrifice,  whereat  we  do  repine, 

Are  but  symbols  of  the  kinship  'twixt  the  human  and  divine — 

But  the  law  of  highest  being  and  of  highest  honour  given  ; 

For  the  wreath  of  cruel  thorns  is  now  the  empire  crown  of  heaven. 

Eest  thee  on  that  faith  divine,  and  all  the  history  of  man 
Bound  its  thread  will  crystallize  in  order  of  a  glorious  plan  ; 
For  the  grief  is  still  divinest,  and  our  strains  of  deepest  gladness 
Show  their  kindred  by  their  trembling  ever  on  the  verge  of  sadness. 

Eest  thee  on  that  holy  faith,  and  all  the  misty  mountain  tops, 

Where  thy  thoughts  were  cold  and  cloudy,  shall  beam  forth  with  radiant  hopes 

And  the  harmony  of  all  things,  never  uttered  into  ears, 

Shall  be  felt  in  deep  heart-heavings,  like  the  music  of  the  spheres. 


Tlie  Revelation.  353 

"Tis  the  shallow  stream  that  babbles — 'tis  in  shallows  of  the  sea 
Where  its  ineffectual  labours  for  a  mighty  utterance  be  ; 
All  the  spoken  truth  is  ripple, — surge  upon  the  shore  of  Death ; 
There  is  but  a  silent  swell  amid  the  depths  of  love  and  faith. 

• 

But  be  still,  and  hear  the  Godhead  how  His  solemn  footsteps  fall 
In  the  story  of  the  sorrow  of  the  Man  who  loved  us  all ; 
Be  still,  and  let  Him  lead  thee  along  the  brink  of  awe, 
Where  the  mystery  of  sorrow  solves  the  mystery  of  Law. 

And  the  mournfulness  and  scornfulness  will  haply  melt  away, 

They  were  frost-work  on  your  windows,  and  they  dimm'd  the  light  of  day ; 

And  you  took  their  phantom  pictures  for  the  scenery  of  earth, 

And  never  saw  in  truth  the  world  that  made  your  mournful  mirth. 

Only  let  the  Heaven-child,  Jesus,  lead  thee  meekly  on  the  path 
Through  thy  sorrows,  strewn  with  blossoms,  like  a  kindly  after-math, 
And  for  reasons  sharp  and  bitter  quiet  thoughts  will  rise  in  thee, 
As  when  light,  instead  of  lightning,  gleams  upon  the  earth  and  sea. 

And  the  world  will  murmur  sweetly  many  songs  into  thine  ear, 
From  the  harvest  and  the  vintage,  as  their  gladness  crowns  the  year ; 
From  the  laughter  of  the  children,  glancing  lightsome  as  life's  foam  ; 
From  the  sabbath  of  the  weary,  and  the  sanctities  of  home ; 

Yea,  the  sickness  and  the  sorrows,  and  the  mourner's  bitter  grief, 
Will  have  strains  of  holy  meaning,  notes  of  infinite  relief, 
Whispering  of  the  love  and  wisdom  that  are  in  a  Father's  rod  ; 
And  their  sadness  will  have  gladness  speaking  thus  to  thee  of  God. 

And  if  He  give  thee  waters  of  sorrow  to  thy  fate, 

He  will  give  them  songs  to  murmur,  though  but  half  articulate, 

Like  the  brooks  that  murmur  pensive,  and  you  know  not  what  they  say, 

But  the  grass  and  flowers  are  brightest  where  they  sing  along  their  way. 

Thus  in  thoughtful  contemplation  of  the  full-orbed  life  divine, 
Shall  the  fragmentary  reason  find  the  Law  that  doth  combine 
All  the  seeming  antinomies  of  the  infinite  decree 
That  has  linked  the  highest  being  with  the  highest  misery. 

Ye  that  dwell  among  your  reasons,  what  is  that  ye  call  a  God 
But  the  lengthening  shadow  of  yourselves  that  falls  upon  your  road? 
The  shadow  of  a  Self  supreme,  that  orders  all  our  fate, 
Sitting  bland  in  His  complaisance  'mid  the  ruins  desolate  ! 

0  your  subtle  logic-bridges,  spanning  over  the  abyss 
From  the  finite  with  its  sadness  to  the  Infinite  of  bliss  ! 
You  would  find  out  God  by  logic,  lying  far  from  us,  serene, 
In  a  weighty  proposition,  with  a  hundred  links  between  ! 

And  you  send  your  thoughts  on  every  side  in  search  of  Him  forsooth  ! 
Speeding  over  the  broad  Universe  to  find  the  only  truth 
That  lies  at  your  hand  for  ever.     Get  thee  eye-salve,  man,  and  pray  : 
God  is  walking  in  the  garden,  and  it  is  the  noon  of  day. 


354  The  Revelation. 

Roll  up  these  grave-clothes,  lay  them  in  a  corner  of  the  tomb ; 
He  is  risen  from  dead  arguments ;  what  seek  ye  in  their  gloom  ?  ' 
Leave  the  linen  robes  and  spices — foolish  hearts  are  thine  and  mine 
How  could  love  and  faith  be  called  upon  to  bury  the  divine  ? 

0  not  thus  the  way  of  Faith,  not  thus  the  way  of  holy  Love, 
Where  the  Christ  of  human  story  and  the  Christ  of  heaven  above 
Blends  the  duty  and  the  beauty — blends  the  human  and  divine, 
By  the  crown  of  His  many  sorrows  ever  glorifying  thine. 

Tell  me  no  more  of  your  reasons  ;  do  not  call  me  to  embark 
On  a  voyage  to  the  tropics  with  an  iceberg  for  an  ark, 
Swaying  grandly  o'er  the  billows,  shining  brightly  in  the  sun, 
But  to  melt  away  beneath  me  ere  the  voyage  be  half  done. 

1  heed  not  of  your  logic  ;  I  am  well  convinced  of  God  : 

;Tis  the  purpose  He  is  working,  and  the  path  that  He  has  trod 

Through  the  mystery  of  misery — the  labyrinth  of  sin, 

That  clouds  the  world  around,  and  overcasts  the  soul  within : 

'Tis  the  story  of  the  ages,  like  the  witches'  midnight  revel, 
Wild,  grotesque,  and  very  tragic — worship  surely  of  the  devil ; 
'Tis  the  struggle  of  the  human,  with  its  impotence  and  ill, 
Reeling  blindly  through  the  dark,  and  working  out  a  mightier  will. 

And  you've  not  discovered  God — and  I  care  not  though  you  did ; 
That  is  not  the  ancient  secret  from  the  generations  hid  ; 
'Tis  the  purpose,  and  the  moral,  and  the  harmony  of  life, 
That  we  ravel  in  unravelling  till  exhausted  with  the  strife. 

And  my  heart  was  all  despairing,  and  my  soul  was  dark  and  dreary, 
And  the  night  was  coming  fast  on  me — a  lonesome  night  and  eerie — 
As  bit  by  bit  the  wreck  went  down,  and  all  I  clung  to  most, 
Turned  to  straws  and  drifting  bubbles,  and  was  in  the  darkness  lost. 

And  my  heart  grew  more  despairing,  and  my  soul  more  dark  and  dreary, 
Till  I  saw  the  Godhead  bending,  faint  and  meek,  and  very  weary ; 
Not  in  blessedness  supernal,  sitting  easy  on  a  throne, 
Dealing  sorrows  unto  others,  with  no  sorrow  of  his  own. 

And  I  read  in  His  great  sorrows  the  significance  of  mine, — 
Even  the  Law  of  highest  Being,  proving  kin  with  the  divine, 
Love  travailing  in  pain  with  a  birth  of  nobleness, 
And  dying  into  Life  with  sure  development  of  bliss. 

Then  the  discords  lost  their  terror,  and  the  harmonies  began 
To  be  heard  in  sweetest  snatches,  where  a  peaceful  spirit  ran 
Through  strangest  variations  of  the  universal  pain, 
With  the  still  recurring  cadence  of  the  Cross  for  its  refrain — 

Snatches  of  the  concord,  never  fully  uttered  unto  man, 
Yet  discovering  in  their  pathos,  the  dim  outline  of  the  plan, 
Whereby  the  pain  and  sorrow,  and  the  evil  might  be  wrought 
Into  the  rarest  beauty,  and  highest  unisons  of  thought. 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


355 


Heed  not,  then,  the  many  reasons — the  cross  lights  and  the  broken, 
That  are  glimmering  all  around  thee  with  half-meanings  but  half-spoken ; 
Turn  thee  to  the  man  of  sorrows — ECCE  HOMO  ! — look  on  God  ; 
He  will  ease  thee  of  thy  sorrows,  opening  blossoms  in  the  rod. 

All  the  creeds  are  but  an  effort  feebly  to  interpret  Him, 
Like  the  sunlight — through  a  prison  that  breaks  into  a  chamber  dim  ; 
Hie  thee  forth  into  the  daylight ;  wherefore  darken  thus  thy  room, 
And  then  moan  that  there  is  only  light  enough  to  show  the  gloom  ? 

ECCE  HOMO  !  all  ye  nations,  tribes,  and  peoples  of  the  earth  ; 
Leave  the  priests  their  poor  devices,  and  the  scribes  their  barren  dearth ; 
Here  is  flesh  and  blood  and  feeling — thou  shalt  eat  of  Him  and  live, 
And  walk  with  Him  in  glory  whom  the  Heavens  did  once  receive. 

And  your  path  shall  be  a  path  of  light,  your  tears  a  morning  shower, 
All  the  germs  of  nature  opening,  fragrant,  underneath  the  power 
Of  the  quiet  light  that  claspeth  all  the  world  in  its  embrace, 
And  makes  it  beam  and  prattle  up  into  the  Father's  face. 

ORWELL. 


TOM  BKOWN  AT  OXFORD. 

BY   THE   AUTHOR   OP    "TOM   BROWN' S   SCHOOL-BATS." 


CHAPTEE  XXVI. 

THE   LONG  WALK   IN   CHRISTCHURCH 
MEABOWS. 

Do  well  unto  thyself  and  men  will 
speak  good  of  thee,  is  a  maxim  as  old 
as  King  David's  time,  and  just  as  true 
now  as  it  was  then.  Hardy  had  found 
it  so  since  the  publication  of  the  class 
list.  Within  a  few  days  of  that  event, 
it  was  known  that  his  was  a  very  good 
first.  His  College  Tutor  had  made  his 
own  inquiries,  and  repeated  on  several 
occasions  in  a  confidential  way  the  state- 
ment that,  "with  the  exception  of  a 
"  want  of  polish  in  his  Latin  and  Greek 
"  verses,  which  we  seldom  get,  except  in 
"  the  most  finished  public  school  men — 
"  Etonians  in  particular — there  has  been 
"no  better  examination  in  the  schools 
"  for  several  years."  The  worthy  tutor 
went  on  to  take  glory  to  the  college,  and 
in  a  lower  degree  to  himself.  He  called 
attention,  in  more  than  one  common 
room,  to  the  fact  that  Hardy  had  never 
had  any  private  tuition,  but  had  attained 
his  intellectual  development  solely  in  the 


curriculum  provided  by  St.  Ambrose's 
College  for  the  training  of  the  youth 
intrusted  to  her.  "  He  himself,  indeed," 
he  would  add,  "  had  always  taken  much 
'  interest  in  Hardy,  and  had,  perhaps, 
'  done  more  for  him  than  would  be  pos- 
'sible  in  every  case,  but  only  with 
'  direct  reference  to,  and  in  supplement 
'  of  the  college  course." 

The  Principal  had  taken  marked  and 
somewhat  pompous  notice  of  him",  and 
had  graciously  intimated  his  wish,  or, 
perhaps  I  should  say,  his  will,  (for  he 
would  have  been  much  astonished  to  be 
told  that  a  wish  of  his  could  count  for 
less  than  a  royal  mandate  to  any  man 
who  had  been  one  of  his  servitors,)  that 
Hardy  should  stand  for  a  fellowship, 
which  had  lately  fallen  vacant.  A  few 
weeks  before,  this  excessive  affability 
and  condescension  of  the  great  man 
would  have  wounded  Hardy ;  but,  some- 
how, the  sudden  rush  of  sunshine  and 
prosperity,  though  it  had  not  thrown 
him  off  his  balance,  or  changed  his  esti- 
mate of  men  and  things,  had  pulled  a 
sort  of  comfortable  sheath  over  his  sen- 


356 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


sitiveness,  and  given  him  a  second  skin, 
as  it  were,  from  which  the  Principal's 
shafts  bounded  off  innocuous,  instead  of 
piercing  and  rankling.  At  first,  the 
idea  of  standing  for  a  fellowship  at  St. 
Ambrose's  was  not  pleasant  to  him.  He 
felt  inclined  to  open  up  entirely  new 
ground  for  himself,  and  stand  at  some 
other  college,  where  he  had  neither  ac- 
quaintance nor  association.  But  on  second 
thoughts,  he  resolved  to  stick  to  his  old 
college,  moved  thereto  partly  by  the 
lamentations  of  Tom,  when  he  heard  of 
his  friend's  meditated  emigration,  but 
chiefly  by  the  unwillingness  to  quit  a 
hard  post  for  an  easier  one,  which  besets 
natures  like  his  to  their  own  discomfort, 
but,  may  one  hope,  to  the  signal  benefit 
of  the  world  at  large.  Such  men  may  see 
clearly  enough  all  the  advantages  of  a 
move  of  this  kind — may  quite  appreciate 
the  ease  which  it  would  bring  them — 
may  be  impatient  with  themselves  for 
not  making  it  at  once — but,  when  it 
comes  to  the  actual  leaving  the  old  post, 
even  though  it  may  be  a  march  out  with 
all  the  honours  of  war,  drums  beating 
and  colours  flying,  as  it  would  have  been 
in  Hardy's  case,  somehow  or  another, 
nine  times  out  of  ten,  they  throw  up  the 
chance  at  the  last  moment,  if  not  earlier ; 
pick  up  their  old  arms — growling  per- 
haps at  the  price  they  are  paying  to 
keep  their  own  self-respect — and  shoulder 
back  into  the  press  to  face  their  old 
work,  muttering,  "  We  are  asses ;  we 
"  don't  know  what's  good  for  us ;  but 
"we  must  see  this  job  through  some- 
"  how,  come  what  may." 

So  Hardy  stayed  on  at  St.  Ambrose, 
waiting  for  the  fellowship  examination, 
and  certainly,  I  am  free  to  confess,  not 
a  little  enjoying  the  change  in  his  posi- 
tion and  affairs. 

He  had  given  up  his  low  dark  back 
rooms  to  the  new  servitor,  his  successor, 
to  whom  he  had  presented  all  the 
ricketty  furniture,  except  his  two  Wind- 
sor chairs  and  Oxford  reading  table. 
The  intrinsic  value  of  the  gift  was  not 
great  certainly,  but  was  of  importance 
to  the  poor  raw  boy,  who  was  taking  his 
place ;  and  it  was  made  with  the  deli- 
cacy of  one  who  knew  the  situation. 


Hardy's  good  offices  did  not  stop  here. 
Having  tried  the  bed  himself  for  up- 
wards of  three  long  years,  he  knew  all 
the  hard  places,  and  was  resolved  while 
he  stayed  up  that  they  should  never 
chafe  another  occupant  as  they  had  him. 
So  he  set  himself  to  provide  stuffing,  and 
took  the  lad  about  with  him,  and  cast  a 
skirt  of  his  newly  acquired  mantle  of 
respectability  over  him,  and  put  him  in 
the  way  of  making  himself  as  comfort- 
able as  circumstances  would  allow ; 
never  disguising  from  him  all  the  while 
that  the  bed  was  not  to  be  a  bed  of 
roses.  In  which  pursuit,  though  not  yet 
a  fellow,  perhaps  he  was  qualifying  him- 
self better  for  a  a  fellowship  than  he 
could  have  done  by  any  amount  of 
cramming  for  polish  in  his  versification. 
Not  that  the  electors  of  St.  Ambrose 
would  be  likely  to  hear  of  or  appreciate 
this  kind  of  training.  Polished  versifi- 
cation would  no  doubt  have  told  more  in 
that  quarter.  But  we  who  are  behind 
the  scenes  may  disagree  with  them,  and 
hold  that  he  who  is  thus  acting  out,  and 
learning  to  understand  the  meaning  of 
the  word  "fellowship,"  is  the  man  for 
our  votes. 

So  Hardy  had  left  his  rooms  and 
gone  out  of  College,  into  lodgings  near 
at  hand.  The  sword,  epaulettes,  and 
picture  of  his  father's  old  ship — his 
tutelary  divinities,  as  Tom  called  them — 
occupied  their  accustomed  place  in  his  new 
rooms,  except  that  there  was  a  looking 
glass  over  the  mantle-piece  here,  by  the 
side  of  which  the  sword  hung,  instead  of 
in  the  centre,  as  it  had  done  while  he 
had  no  such  luxury.  His  Windsor 
chairs  occupied  each  side  of  the  pleasant 
window  of  his  sitting  room,  and  already 
the  taste  for  luxuries  with  which  he  had 
so  often  accused  himself  to  Tom  began 
to  peep  out  in  the  shape  of  one  or  two 
fine  engravings.  Altogether  Fortune  was 
smiling  on  Hardy,  and  he  was  making 
the  most  of  her,  like  a  wise  man,  having 
brought  her  round  by  proving  that  he 
could  get  on  without  her,  and  was  not 
going  out  'of  his  way  to  gain  her  smiles. 
Several  men  came  at  once,  even  before 
he  had  taken  his  B.A.  degree,  to  read 
with  him,  and  others  applied  to  know 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


357 


whether  he  would  take  a  reading  party 
in  the  long  vacation.  In  short  all  things 
went  well  with  Hardy,  and  the  Oxford 
world  recognized  the  fact,  and  trades- 
men and  college  servants  became  obse- 
quious, and  began  to  bow  before  him, 
and  recognize  him  as  one  of  their  lords 
and  masters. 

It  was  to  Hardy's  lodgings  that  Tom 
repaired  straightway,  when  he  left  his 
cousin  by  blood,  and  cousin  by  courtesy, 
at  the  end  of  the  last  chapter.  For, 
running  over  in  his  mind  all  his  acquain- 
tance, he  at  once  fixed  upon  Hardy  as 
the  man  to  accompany  him  in  escort- 
ting  the  ladies  to  the  Long  "Walk. 
Besides  being  his  own  most  intimate 
friend,  Hardy  was  the  man  whom  he 
would  prefer  to  all  others  to  intro- 
duce to  ladies  now.  "A  month  ago 
it  might  have  been  different,"  Tom 
thought;  "he  was  such  an  old  guy  in 
his  dress.  But  he  has  smartened  up, 
and  wears  as  good  a  coat  as  I  do,  and 
looks  well  enough  for  any  body,  though 
he  never  will  be  much  of  a  dresser. 
Then  he  will  be  in  a  Bachelor's  gown  too, 
which  will  look  respectable." 

"  Here  you  are ;  that's  all  right ;  I'm  so 
glad  you're  in,"  he  said  as  he  entered  the 
room.  "  Now  I  want  you  to  come  to  the 
Long  Walk  with  me  to-night." 

"  Very  well — will  you  call  for  me  1" 

"Yes,  and  mind  you  come  in  your 
best  get-up,  old  fellow :  we  shall  have 
two  of  the  prettiest  girls  who  are  up, 
with  us." 

"  You  won't  want  me  then ;  they  will 
have  plenty  of  escort." 

"  Not  a  bit  of  it.  They  are  deserted 
by  their  natural  guardian,  my  old  uncle, 
who  has  gone  out  to  dinner.  Oh,  it's 
all  right ;  they  are  my  cousins,  more 
like  sisters,  and  my  uncle  knows  we  are 
going.  In  fact  it  was  he  who  settled  that 
I  should  take  them." 

"Yes,  but  you  see  I  don't  know 
them.' 

"That  doesn't  matter.  I  can't  take 
them  both  myself — I  must  have  some- 
body with  me,  and  I'm  so  glad  to  get 
the  chance  of  introducing  you  to  some 
of  my  people.  You'll  know  them  all, 
I  hope,  before  long. ' 


"Of  course  I  should  like  it  very 
much,  if  you  are  sure  it's  all  right." 

Tom  was  as  perfectly  sure  as  usual, 
and  so  the  matter  was  arranged.  Hardy 
was  very  much  pleased  and  gratified  at 
this  proof  of  his  friend's  confidence ;  and 
I  am  not  going  to  say  that  he  did  not 
shave  again,  and  pay  most  unwonted 
attention  to  his  toilet  before  the  hour 
fixed  for  Tom's  return.  The  fame  of 
Brown's  lionesses  had  spread  through 
St.  Ambrose's  already,  and  Hardy  had 
heard  of  them  as  well  as  other  men. 
There  was  something  so  unusual  to  him 
in  being  selected  on  such  an  occasion, 
when  the  smartest  men  in  the  college 
were  wishing  and  plotting  for  that 
which  came  to  him  unasked,  that  he 
may  be  pardoned  for  feeling  something 
a  little  bike  vanity,  while  he  adjusted 
the  coat  which  Tom  had  recently  thought 
of  with  such  complacency,  and  looked 
in  the  glass  to  see  that  his  gown  hung 
gracefully.  The  effect  on  the  whole 
was  so  good,  that  Tom  was  above  mea- 
sure astonished  when  he  came  back,  and 
could  not  help  indulging  in  some  gentle 
chaff  as  they  walked  towards  the  High- 
street  arm  in  arm. 

The  young  ladies  were  quite  rested, 
and  sitting  dressed  and  ready  for  their 
walk  when  Tom  and  Hardy  were  an- 
nounced, and  entered  the  room.  Miss 
Winter  rose  up,  surprised  and  a  little 
embarrassed  at  the  introduction  of  a  total 
stranger  in  her  father's  absence.  But 
she  put  a  good  face  on  the  matter,  as 
became  a  well-bred  young  woman, 
though  she  secretly  resolved  to  lecture 
Tom  in  private,  as  he  introduced  "My 
great  friend,  Mr.  Hardy,  of  our  college. 
My  cousins."  Mary  dropped  a  pretty 
little  demure  courtesy,  lifting  her  eyes 
for  one  moment  for  a  glance  at  Tom, 
which  said  as  plain  as  look  could  speak, 
"  Well,  I  must  say  you  are  making  the 
most  of  your  new-found  relationship." 
He  was  a  little  put  out  for  a  moment, 
but  then  recovered  himsalf,  and  said 
apologetically, 

"Mr.  Hardy  is  a  bach3lor,  Katie — 
I  mean  a  Bachelor  of  Arts,  and  he 
knows  all  the  people  by  sight  up 
here.  We  couldn't  have  gone  to  the 


358 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


walk  without    some   one  to   show  us 
the  lions." 

"  Indeed,  I'm  afraid  you  give  me  too 
much  credit,"  said  Hardy.  "I  know 
most  of  our  dons  by  sight  certainly,  but 
scarcely  any  of  the  visitors." 

The  awkwardness  of  Tom's  attempted 
explanation  set  everything  wrong  again. 

Then  came  one  of  those  awkward 
pauses  which  will  occur  so  very  pro- 
vokingly  at  the  most  inopportune  times. 
Miss  Winter  was  seized  with  one  of  the 
uncontrollable  fits  of  shyness,  her 
bondage  to  which  she  had  so  lately 
been  grieving  over  to  Mary ;  and  in 
self-defence,  and  without  meaning  in  the 
least  to  do  so,  drew  herself  up,  and 
looked  as  proud  as  you  please.  Hardy, 
whose  sensitiveness,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
as  keen  as  a  woman's,  felt  in  a  moment 
the  awkwardness  of  the  situation,  and 
became  as  shy  as  Miss  Winter  her- 
self. If  the  floor  would  have  suddenly 
opened,  and  let  him  through  into  the 
dark  shop,  he  would  have  been  thankful ; 
but,  as  it  would  not,  there  he  stood, 
meditating  a  sudden  retreat  from  the 
room,  and  a  tremendous  onslaught  on 
Tom,  as  soon  as  he  could  catch  him 
alone,  for  getting  him  into  such  a  scrape. 
Tom  was  provoked  with  them  all,  for 
not  at  once  feeling  at  ease  with  one 
another,  and  stood  twirling  his  cap  by 
the  tassel,  and  looking  fiercely  at  it,  re- 
solved not  to  break  the  silence.  He 
had  been  at  all  the  trouble  of  bringing 
about  this  charming  situation,  and  now 
nobody  seemed  to  like  it,  or  to  know 
what  to  say  or  do.  They  might  get 
themselves  out  of  it  as  they  could,  for 
anything  he  cared  ;  he  was  not  going  to 
bother  himself  any  more. 

Mary  looked  in  the  glass,  to  see  that 
her  bonnet  was  quite  right,  and  then 
from  one  to  another  of  her  companions, 
in  a  little  wonder  at  their  unaccountable 
behaviour,  and  a  little  pique  that  two 
young  men  should  be  standing  there  like 
unpleasant  images,  and  not  availing 
themselves  of  the  privilege  of  trying,  at 
least,  to  make  themselves  agreeable  to 
her.  Luckily,  however,  for  the  party, 
the  humorous  side  of  the  tableau 
struck  her  with  great  force,  so  that  when 


Tom  lifted  his  misanthropic  eyes  for  a 
moment,  and  caught  hers,  they  were  so 
full  of  fun  that  he  had  nothing  to  do 
but  to  allow  himself,  not  without  a 
struggle,  to  break  first  into  a  smile,  and 
then  into  a  laugh.  This  brought  all 
eyes  to  bear  on  him,  and  the  ice,  being 
once  broken,  dissolved  as  quickly  as  it 
had  gathered. 

"I  really  can't  see  what  there  is 
to  laugh  at,  Tom,"  said  Miss  Winter, 
smiling  herself,  nevertheless,  and  blush- 
ing a  little,  as  she  worked  or  pretended 
to  work  at  buttoning  one  of  her  gloves. 

"  Can't  you,  Katie  ?  WeU  then,  isn't 
it  very  ridiculous,  and  enough  to  make 
one  laugh,  that  we  four  should  be  stand- 
ing here  in  a  sort  of  Quaker's  meeting, 
when  we  ought  to  be  half-way  to  the 
Long  Walk  by  this  time  ?  " 

"  Oh,  do  let  us  start,"  said  Mary ;  "  I 
know  we  shall  be  missing  all  the  best  of 
the  sight." 

"  Come  along,  then,"  said  Tom,  lead- 
ing the  way  down  stairs,  and  Hardy  and 
the  ladies  followed,  and  they  descended 
into  the  High  Street,  walking  all 
abreast,  the  two  ladies  together,  with 
a  gentleman  on  either  Hank.  This  for- 
mation answered  well  enough  in  High 
Street,  the  broad  pavement  of  that 
celebrated  thoroughfare  being  favourable 
to  an  advance  in  line.  But  when  they 
had  wheeled  into  Oriel  Lane  the  narrow 
pavement  at  once  threw  the  line  into 
confusion,  and  after  one  or  two  fruitless 
attempts  to  take  up  the  dressing  they 
settled  down  into  the  more  natural  for- 
mation of  close  column  of  couples,  the 
leading  couple  consisting  of  Mary  and 
Tom,  and  the  remaining  couple  of  Miss 
Winter  and  Hardy.  It  was  a  lovely 
midsummer  evening,  and  Oxford  was 
looking  her  best  under  the  genial  cloud- 
less sky,  so  that,  what  with  the  usual 
congratulations  on  the  weather,  and  ex- 
planatory remarks  on  the  buildings  as 
they  passed  along,  Hardy  managed  to 
keep  up  a  conversation  with  his  com- 
panion without  much  difficulty.  Miss 
Winter  was  pleased  with  his  quiet  defe- 
rential manner,  and  soon  lost  her  feeling 
of  shyness,  and,  before  Hardy  had  come 
to  the  end  of  such  remarks  as  it  occurred 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


359 


to  him  to  make,  she  was  taking  her  fair 
share  in  the  talk.  In  describing  their 
day's  doings  she  spoke  with  enthusiasm 
of  the  beauty  of  Magdalen  Chapel,  and 
betrayed  a  little  knowledge  of  traceries 
and  mouldings,  which  gave  an  opening 
to  her  companion  to  travel  out  of  the 
weather  and  the  names  of  colleges. 
Church  architecture  was  just  one  of 
the  subjects  which  was  sure  at  that  time 
to  take  more  or  less  hold  on  every  man 
at  Oxford  whose  mind  was  open  to 
the  influences  of  the  place.  Hardy  had 
read  the  usual  text-books,  and^  kept  his 
eyes  open  as  he  walked  about  the  town 
and  neighbourhood.  To  Miss  Winter 
he  seemed  so  learned  on  the  subject,  that 
she  began  to  doubt  his  tendencies,  and 
was  glad  'to  be  reassured  by  some  re- 
marks which  fell  from  him  as  to  the 
University  sermon  which  she  had  heard. 
She  was  glad  to  find  that  her  cousin's 
most  intimate  friend  was  not  likely 
to  lead  him  into  the  errors  of  Trac- 
tarianism. 

Meantime  the  leading  couple  were 
getting  on  satisfactorily  in  their  own 
way. 

"  Isn't  it  good  of  uncle  Eobert  1  he 
says  that  he  shall  feel  quite  comfortable 
as  long  as  you  and  Katie  are  with  me. 
In  fact,  I  feel  quite  responsible  already, 
like  an  old  dragon  in  a  story-book 
watching  a  treasure." 

"Yes,  but  what  does  Katie  say  to 
being  made  a  treasure  of  1  She  has  to 
think  a  good  deal  for  herself ;  and  I  am 
afraid  you  are  not  quite  certain  of  being 
our  sole  knight  and  guardian  because 
uncle  Eobert  wants  to  get  rid  of  us. 
Poor  old  uncle !" 

"  But  you  wouldn't  object,  then1?" 

"  Oh  dear,  no — at  least,  not  unless 
you  take  to  looking  as  cross  as  you 
did  just  now  in  our  lodgings.  Of  course, 
I'm  all  for  dragons  who  are  mad  about 
dancing,  and  never  think  of  leaving  a 
ball-room  till  the  band  packs  up  and 
the  old  man  shuffles  in  to  put  out  the 
lights." 

"  Then  I  shall  be  a  model  dragon," 
said  Tom.  Twenty-four  hours  earlier  he 
had  declared  that  nothing  should  in- 
duce him  to  go  to  the  balls;  but  his 


views  on  the  subject  had  been  greatly 
modified,  and  he  had  been  worrying  all 
his  acquaintance,  not  unsuccessfully,  for 
the  necessary  tickets,  ever  since  his 
talk  with  his  cousins  on  the  preceding 
evening. 

The  scene  became  more  and  more  gay 
and  lively  as  they  passed  out  of  Christ- 
church  towards  the  Long  Walk.  The 
town  turned  out  to  take  its  share  in  the 
show;  and  citizens  of  all  ranks,  the 
poorer  ones  accompanied  by  children  of 
all  ages,  trooped  along  cheek  by  jowl 
with  members  of  the  University  of  all 
degrees  and  their  visitors,  somewhat 
indeed  to  the  disgust  of  certain  of  these 
latter,  many  of  whom  declared  that  the 
whole  thing  was  spoilt  by  the  miscel- 
laneousness  of  the  crowd,  and  that 
"those  sort  of  people"  ought  not  to 
be  allowed  to  come  to  the  Long  Walk 
on  Show  Sunday.  However,  "those 
sort  of  people"  abounded  nevertheless, 
and  seemed  to  enjoy  very  much,  in 
sober  fashion,  the  solemn  march  up  and 
down  beneath  the  grand  avenue  of 
elms,  in  the  midst  of  their  betters. 

The  University  was  there  in  strength, 
from  the  Vice-Chancellor  downwards. 
Somehow  or  another,  though  it  might 
seem  an  unreasonable  thing  at  first 
sight  for  grave  and  reverend  persons  to 
do,  yet  most  of  the  gravest  of  them 
found  some  reason  for  taking  a  turn  in 
the  Long  Walk.  As  for  the  under- 
graduates, they  turned  out  almost  to  a 
man,  and  none  of  them  more  certainly 
than  the  young  gentlemen,  elaborately 
dressed,  who  had  sneered  at  the  whole 
ceremony  as  snobbish  an  hour  or  two 
before. 

As  for  our  hero,  he  sailed  into  the 
meadows  thoroughly  satisfied  for  the 
moment  with  himself  and  his  convoy. 
He  had  every  reason  to  be  so,  for  though 
there  were  many  gayer  and  more  fashion- 
ably dressed  ladies  present  than  his 
cousin,  and  cousin  by  courtesy,  there 
were  none  there  whose  faces,  figures 
and  dresses  carried  more  unmistakeably 
the  marks  of  that  thorough  quiet  high 
breeding,  that  refinement  which  is  no 
mere  surface  polish,  and  that  fearless 
unconsciousness  which  looks  out  from 


360 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


pure  hearts,  which  are  still,  thank  God, 
to  be  found  in  so  many  homes  of  the 
English  gentry. 

The  Long  Walk  was  filling  rapidly,  and 
at  every  half-dozen  paces  Tom  was 
greeted  by  some  of  his  friends  or  ac- 
quaintance, and  exchanged  a  word  or 
two  with  them.  But  he  allowed  them 
one  after  another  to  pass  by  without 
effecting  any  introduction. 

"  You  seem  to  have  a  great  many  ac- 
quaintances," said  his  companion,  upon 
whom  none  of  these  salutations  were 
lost. 

"  Yes,  of  course  ;  one  gets  to  know  a 
great  many  men  up  here." 

"  It  must  be  very  pleasant.  Eut  does 
it  not  interfere  a  great  deal  with  your 
reading  ?  " 

"  No )  because  one  meets  them  at 
lectures,  and  in  Hall  and  Chapel.  Be- 
sides," he  added  in  a  sudden  fit  of 
honesty,  "it  is  my  first  year.  One 
doesn't  read  much  in  one's  first  year. 
It  is  a  much  harder  thing  than  people 
think  to  take  to  reading,  except  just 
before  an  examination." 

"  But  your  great  friend  who  is  walk- 
ing with  Katie — what  did  you  say  his 
name  is  ? " 
"  Hardy." 

"Well,  he  is  a  great  scholar,  didn't 
you  say  ? " 

"  Yes,  he  has  just  taken  a  first  class. 
He  is  the  best  man  of  his  year." 

"  How  proud  you  must  be  of  him  !  I 
suppose  now  he  is  a  great  reader  1 " 

"  Yes,  he  is  great  at  everything.  He 
is  nearly  the  best  oar  in  our  boat.  By 
the  way,  you  will  come  to  the  procession 
of  boats  to-morrow  night  ?  We  are  the 
head  boat  on  the  river." 

"  Oh,  I  hope  so.  Is  it  a  pretty  sight  1 
Let  us  ask  Katie  about  it." 

"  It  is  the  finest  sight  in  the  world," 
said  Tom,  who  had  never  seen  it ; 
"  twenty-four  eight  oars,  with  their  flags 
flying,  and  all  the  crews  in  uniform. 
You  see  the  barges  over  there,  moored 
along  the  side  of  the  river.  You  will 
sit  on  one  of  them  as  we  pass." 

"  Yes,  I  tnink  I  do,"  said  Mary,  look- 
ing across  the  meadow  in  the  direction 
in  which  he  pointed ;  "  you  mean  those 


great  gilded  things.    But  I  don't  see  the 
river." 

"  Shall  we  walk  round  there  ?  It 
won't  take  us  ten  minutes." 

"But  we  must  not  leave  the  walk 
and  all  the  people.  It  is  so  amusing 
here." 

"  Then  you  will  wear  our  colours  at 
the  procession  to-morrow  ?  " 

"Yes,  if  Katie  doesn't  mind.  At 
least  if  they  are  pretty.  What  are  your 
colours  ? " 

"Blue  and  white.  I  will  get  you 
some  ribbons  to-morrow  morning." 

"  Very  well,  and  I  will  make  them  up 
into  rosettes." 

"  Why,  do  you  know  them  1 "  asked 
Tom,  as  she  bowed  to  two  gentlemen  in 
masters'  caps  and  gowns,  whom  they  met 
in  the  crowd. 

"  Yes ;  at  least  we  met  them  last 
night." 

"  But  do  you  know  who  they  are  1 " 
"  Oh  yes  ;  they  were  introduced  to  us, 
and  I  talked  a  great  deal  to  them.  And 
Katie  scolded  me  for  it  when  we  got 
home.  No  ;  I  won't  say  scolded  me, 
but  looked  very  grave  over  it." 

"  They  are  two  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Tractarians." 

"Yes.  That  was  the  fun  of  it. 
Katie  was  so  pleased  and  interested  with 
them  at  first ;  much  more  than  I  was. 
But  when  she  found  out  who  they  were 
she  fairly  ran  away,  and  I  stayed  and 
talked  on.  I  don't  think  they  said  any- 
thing very  dangerous.  Perhaps  one  of 
them  wrote  No.  90.  Do  you  know?" 

"I  dare  say.  But  I  don't  know 
much  about  it.  However,  they  must 
have  a  bad  time  of  it,  I  should  think, 
up  here  with  the  old  dons." 

"  But  don't  you  think  one  likes  people 
who  are  persecuted  ?  I  declare  I  would 
listen  to  them  for  an  hour,  though  I 
didn't  understand  a  word,  just  to  show 
them  that  I  wasn't  afraid  of  them,  and 
sympathised  with  them.  How  can  peo- 
ple be  so  ill-natured?  I'm  sure  they 
only  write  what  they  believe,  and  think 
will  do  good." 

"  That's  just  what  most  of  us  feel," 
said  Tom  ;  "  we  hate  to  see  them  put 
down  because  they  don't  agree  with  the 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


361 


swells  up  here.  You'll  see  how  they 
will  be  cheered  in  the  theatre." 

"Then  they  are  not  unpopular  and 
persecuted  after  all  ? " 

"  Oh  yes,  by  the  dons.  And  that's 
why  we  all  like  them.  From  fellow- 
feeling  you  see,  because  the  dons  bully 
them  and  us  equally." 

"  But  I  thought  they  were  dons  too  ? " 

"  Well,  so  they  are,  but  not  regular 
dons,  you  know,  like  the  Proctors,  and 
Deans,  and  that  sort." 

His  companion  did  not  understand 
this  delicate  distinction,  but  was  too 
much  interested  in  watching  the  crowd 
to  inquire  further. 

Presently  they  met  two  of  the  heads 
of  houses  walking  with  several  stran- 
gers. Every  one  was  noticing  them 
as  they  passed,  and  of  course  Tom  was 
questioned  as  to  who  they  were.  Not 
being  prepared  with  an  answer  he  ap- 
pealed to  Hardy,  who  was  just  behind 
them  talking  to  Miss  Winter.  They 
were  some  of  the  celebrities  on  whom 
honorary  degrees  were  to  be  conferred, 
Hardy  said ;  a  famous  American  author, 
a  foreign  ambassador,  a  well-known 
Indian  soldier,  and  others.  Then  came 
some  more  M.A.'s, ..one  of  whom  this 
time  bowed  to  Miss  Winter. 

"Who  was  that,  Katie?" 

"  One  of  the  gentlemen  we  met  last 
night.  I  did  not  catch  his  name,  but 
he  was  very  agreeable." 

"  Oh,  I  remember.  You  were  talking 
to  him  for  a  long  time  after  you  ran 
away  from  me.  I  was  very  curious  to 
know  what  you  were  saying,  you  seemed 
so  interested." 

"  Well,  you  seem  to  have  made  the 
most  of  your  time  last  night,"  said  Tom ; 
"  I  should  have  thought,  Katie,  you 
would  hardly  have  approved  of  him 
either." 

"  But  who  is  he  ? " 

"  Why,  the  most  dangerous  man  in 
Oxford.  What  do  they  call  him — a 
Germanizer  and  a  rationalist,  is'nt  it, 
Hardy?" 

"  Yes,  I  believe  so,"  said  Hardy. 

"  Oh,  think  of  that !  There,  Katie  ; 
you  had  much  better  have  stayed  by 
me  after  all.  A  Germanizer,  didn't  you 

No.  11. — VOL.  n. 


say  ?  What  a  hard  word.  It  must  be 
much  worse  than  Tractarian.  Isn't  it 
now  ? " 

"  Mary  dear,  pray  take  care  ;  every 
body  will  hear  you,"  said  Miss  Winter. 

"  I  wish  I  thought  that  every  body 
would  listen  to  me,"  replied  Miss  Mary. 
"  But  I  really  will  be  very  quiet,  Katie, 
— only  I  must  know  which  is  the  worst, 
my  Tractarians  or  your  Germanizer?" 

"  Oh,  the  Germanizer  of  course,"  said 
Tom. 

"But  why?"  said  Hardy,  who  could 
do  no  less  than  break  a  lance  for  his 
companion.  Moreover  he  happened  to 
have  strong  convictions  on  these  sub- 
jects. 

"Why?  Because  one  knows  the 
worst  of  where  the  Tractarians  are  going. 
They  may  go  to  Borne  and  there's  an 
end  of  it.  But  the  Germanizers  are 
going  into  the  abysses,  or  no  one  knows 
where." 

"  There,  Katie,  you  hear,  I  hope,"  in- 
terrupted Miss  Mary,  coming  to  her 
companion's  rescue  before  Hardy  could 
bring  his  artillery  to  bear,  "  but  what  a 
terrible  place  Oxford  must  be.  I  declare 
it  seems  quite  full  of  people  whom  it 
is  unsafe  to  talk  with." 

"  I  wish  it  were,  if  they  were  all  like 
Miss  Winter's  friend,"  said  Hardy.  And 
then  the  crowd  thickened,  and  they 
dropped  behind  again.  Tom  was  getting 
to  think  more  of  his  companion  and  less 
of  himself  every  minute,  when  he  was 
suddenly  confronted  in  the  walk  by 
Benjamin,  the  Jew  money-lender,  smok- 
ing a  cigar  and  dressed  in  a  gaudy 
figured  satin  waistcoat  and  water  fall 
of  the  same  material,  and  resplendent 
with  jewellery.  He  had  business  to 
attend  to  in  Oxford  at  this  time  of  the 
year.  Nothing  escaped  the  eyes  of 
Tom's  companion. 

"Who  was  that?"  she  said  ;  "what  a 
dreadful  looking  man !  Surely  he  bowed 
as  if  he  knew  you  ?" 

"  I  dare  say.  He  is  impudent  enough 
for  anything,"  said  Tom. 

"But  who  is  he?" 

"  Oh,  a  rascally  fellow  who  sells  bad 
cigars  and  worse  wine." 

Tom's  equanimity  was  much  shaken 

B  B 


362 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


by  the  apparition  of  the  Jew.  The 
remembrance  of  the  bill  scene  at  the 
public  house  in  the  Corn-market,  and 
the  unsatisfactory  prospect  in  that  mat- 
ter, with  Blake  plucked  and  Drysdale 
no  longer  a  member  of  the  University 
.and  utterly  careless  as  to  his  liabilities, 
came  acioss  him,  and  made  him  silent 
and  absent. 

He  answered  at  hazard  to  his  com- 
panion's remarks  for  the  next  minute  or 
two,  until,  after  some  particularly  inap- 
propriate reply,  she  turned  her  head  and 
looked  at  him  for  a  moment  with  steady 
wide  open  eyes,  which  brought  him  to 
himself,  or  rather  drove  him  into  him- 
self, in  no  time. 

"  I  really  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said ; 
"  I  was  very  rude,  I  fear.  It  is  so 
strange  to  me  to  be  walking  here  with 
ladies.  What  were  you  saying  ? " 

"Nothing  of  any  consequence  —  I 
really  forget.  But  is  it  a  very  strange 
thing  for  you  to  walk  with  ladies 
herel" 

"  Strange  !  I  should  think  it  was  ! 
I  have  never  seen  a  lady  that  I  knew 
up  here,  till  you  came." 

. "  Indeed  !  but  there  must  be  plenty 
of  ladies  living  in  Oxford  ? " 

"  I  don't  believe  there  are.  At  least, 
we  never  see  them." 
.  I "  Then  you  ought  to  be  on  your  best 
behaviour  when  we  do  come.  I  shall 
expect  you  now  to  listen  to  everything 
I  say,  and  to  answer  my  silliest  ques- 
tions." 

"  Oh,  you  ought  not  to  be  so  hard 
on  us." 

"  You  mean  that  you  are  not  used  to 
answering  silly  questions?  How  wise 
you  must  all  grow,  living  up  here  toge- 
ther." 

"  Perhaps.  But  the  wisdom  doesn't 
come  down  to  the  first-year  men ;  and 
so—" 

"  Well,  why  do  you  stop  ?" 

"  Because  I  was  going  to  say  some- 
thing you  might  not  like." 

"  Then  I  insist  on  hearing  it.  Now, 
I  shall  not  let  you  off  You  were  say- 
ing that  wisdom  does  not  come  so  low 
as  first-year  men  ;  and  so — whatl" 

"  And  so — and  so,  they  are  not  wise." 


"Yes,  of  course;  but  that  was  not 
what  you  were  going  to  say  ;  and  so — " 

"  And  so  they  are  generally  agreeable, 
for  wise  people  are  always  dull ;  and 
so — ladies  ought  to  avoid  the  dons." 

"  And  not  avoid  first-year  men  1 " 

"Exactly  so," 

"  Because  they  are  foolish,  and  there- 
fore fit  company  for  ladies.  Now, 
really—" 

"No,  no;  because  .they  are  foolish, 
and,  therefore,  they  ought  to  be  made 
wise  ;  and  ladies  are  wiser  than  dons." 

"And  therefore,  duller,  for  all  wise 
people,  you  said,  were  dull." 

"  Not  all  wise  people  ;  only  people 
who  are  wise  by  cramming, — as  dons ; 
but  ladies  are  wise  by  inspiration." 

"  And  first-year  men,  are  they  foolish 
by  inspiration  and  agreeable  by  cram- 
ming, or  agreeable  by  inspiration  and 
foolish  by  cramming  1" 

"They  are  agreeable  by  inspiration 
in  the  society  of  ladies." 

"  Then  they  can  never  be  agreeable, 
for  you  say  they  never  see  ladies." 

"Not  with  the  bodily  eye,  but  with 
the  eye  of  fancy." 

"Then  their  agreeableness  must  be 
all  fancy." 

"But  it  is  better  to  be  agreeable  in 
fancy  than  dull  in  reality." 

"  That  depends  upon  whose  fancy  it 
is.  To  be  agreeable  in  your  own  fancy 
is  compatible  with  being  as  dull  in 
reality  as — " 

"  How  you  play  with  words  ;  I  see 
you  won't  leave  me  a  shred  either  of 
fancy  or  agreeableness  to  stand  on." 

"Then  I  shall  do  you  good  service. 
I  shall  destroy  your  illusions  ;  you  can- 
not stand  on  illusions." 

"But  remember  what  my  illusions 
were, — fancy  and  agreeableness." 

"But  your  agreeableness  stood  on 
fancy,  and  your  fancy  on  nothing.  You 
had  better  settle  down  at  once  on  the 
solid  basis  of  dulness,  like  the  dons." 

"  Then  I  am  to  found  myself  on  fact, 
and  try  to  be  dull  1  What  a  conclusion  ! 
But  perhaps  dulness  is  no  more  a  fact 
than  fancy ; — what  is  dulness  1" 

"  Oh,  I  do  not  undertake  to  define  ; 
you  are  the  best  judge." 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


363 


"  How  severe  you  are  !  Now,  see,  how 
generous  I  am.  D  illness  in  society  is 
the  absence  of  ladies." 

"  Alas,  poor  Oxford  !  Who  is  that  in 
the  velvet  sleeves  1  Why  do  you  touch 
your  cap  ?" 

"That  is  the  proctor.  He  is  our 
Cerberus ;  'he.  has  to  keep  all  under- 
graduates in  good  order." 

"  What  a  task !  He  ought  to  have 
three  heads." 

"He  has  only  one  head,  but  it  is  a 
very  long  one.  And  he  has  a  tail  like  any 
Basha,  composed  of  pro-proctors,  mar- 
shals, and  bull-dogs.,  and  I  don't  know 
what  all.  But  to  go  back  to  what  we 
were  saying — "  . 

"  No,  don't  let  us  go  back.  I'm  tired 
of  it ;  besides,  you  were  just  beginning 
about  dulriess.  How  can  you  expect  me 
to  listen  now  f 

"  Oh,  but  do  listen,  just  for  two 
minutes.  Will  you  be  serious?  I  do 
want  to  know  .what  you  really  think 
when  you  hear  the  case/' 

"  Well,  I  will  try,— for  two  minutes, 
mind." 

Upon  gaining  which  permission  Tom 
went  off  into  an  interesting  discourse  on 
the  unnaturalness  of  men's  lives  at  Ox- 
ford, which  it  is  by  no  means  necessary 
to  inflict  011  my  readers.  As  he  was 
waxing  eloquent  and  sentimental,  he 
chanced  to  look  from  his  companion's 
face  for  a  moment  in  search  of  a  simile, 
when  his  eyes  alighted  on  that  virtuous 
member  of  society,  Dick,  the  factotum 
of  the  Choughs,  who  was  taking  his 
turn  hi  the  long  walk  with  his  betters. 
Dick's  face  was  twisted  into  an  uncom- 
fortable grin  \  his  eyes  were  fixed  on 
Tom  and  his  companion ;  and  he  made  a 
sort  of  half  motion  towards  touching  his 
hat,  but  couldn't  quite  carry  it  through, 
and  so  passed  by. 

"  Ah  !  ain't  he  a  going  of  it  again," 
he  muttered  to  himself ;  "  jest  like  'em 
all." 

Tom  didn't  hear  the  words,  but  the 
look  had  been  quite  enough  for  him, 
and  he  broke  off  short  in  his  speech, 
and  turned  his  head  away,  and,  after 
two  or  three  flounderings  which  Mary 
seemed  not  to  notice,  stopped  short, 


and  let  Miss  Winter  and  Hardy  join 
them. 

"It's  getting  dark,"  he  said,  as  they 
came  up  ;  "the  walk  is  thinning;  ought 
we  not  to  be  going  ?  .  Eemember,  I  am 
in  charge." 

"  Yes,  I  think  it  is  time." 

At  this  moment  the  .  great  Christ 
Church  beU, — Tom,  by  name, — began 
to  toll. 

"Surely  that  can't  he  Tom?"  Miss 
Winter  said,  who  had  heard  the  one 
hundred  and  one  strokes  on  former 
occasions. 

"  Indeed  it  is,  though." 

"  But  how  very  light  it  is." 

"  It  is  almost  the  longest  day  in  the 
year,  and  there  hasn't  been  a  cloud  all 
day." 

They  started  .to  walk  home  all 
together,  and  Tom  gradually  recovered 
himself,  but  left  the  labouring  oar  to 
Hardy,  who  did  his  work  very  well, 
and  persuaded  the  ladies  to  go  on  and 
see  the  Ratcliffe  by  moonlight — the  only 
time  to  see  it,  as  he  said,  because  of  the 
shadows — and  just  to  look  in  at  the  old 
quadrangle  of  St.  Ambrose. 

It  was  almost  ten  o'clock  when  they 
stopped  at  the  lodgings  hi  High  Street 
While  they  were  waiting  for  the  door  to 
be  opened,  Hardy  said — 

"  I  really  must  apologize,  Miss  Winter, 
to  you,  for  my  intrusion  .to-night.  I 
hope  your  father  will  allow  me  to  call 
on  him." 

"  Oh  yes  !  pray  do ;  he  will  be  so 
glad  to  see  any  friend  of  my  cousin's." 

"  And  if  I  can  be  of  any  use  to  him ; 
or  to  yoiij  or  your  sister  " — 

"My  sister!  Oh,  you  mean  Mary? 
She  is  not  my  sister." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon.  But  I  hope 
you  will  let  me  know  if  .there  is  any- 
thing I  can  do  for  you." 

"  Indeed  we  will.  Now,  Mary,  papa 
will  be  worrying  about  us."  And  so 
the  young  ladies  said  their  adieus,  and 
disappeared. 

"Surely  you  told  me  they  were 
sisters,"  said  Hardy,  as  the  two  walked 
away  towards  College. 

"  No,  did  I  ]     I  don't  remember." 

"  But  they  are  your  cousins  ?  " 

B  B  2 


364 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


"  Yes  ;  at  least  Katie  is.  Don't  you 
like  her  1 " 

"Of  course;  one  can't  help  liking 
her.  But  she  says  you  have  not  met 
for  two  years  or  more." 

"No  more  we  have." 

"  Then  I  suppose  you  have  seen  more 
of  her  companion  lately  ? " 

"Well,  if  you  must  know,  I  never 
saw  her  before  yesterday." 
'  "You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you 
took  me  in  there  to-night  when  you  had 
never  seen  one  of  the  young  ladies 
before,  and  the  other  not  for  two  years  ! 
"Well,  upon  my  word,  Brown — " 

"Now  don't  blow  me  up,  old  fellow, 
to-night — please  don't.  There,  I  give 
in.  Don't  hit  a  fellow  when  he's  down. 
I'm  so  low."  Tom  spoke  in  such  a 
deprecating  tone,  that  Hardy's  wrath 
passed  away. 

"Why,  what's  the  matter?  "  he  said. 
"  You  seemed  to  be  full  of  talk.  I  was 
envying  your  fluency,  I  know,  often." 

"  Talk  ;  yes,  so  I  was.  But  didn't  you 
see  Dick  in  the  walk  1  You  have  never 
heard  anything  more  ? " 

"  No  ;  but  no  news  is  good  news." 

"  Heigho  !  I'm  awfully  down.  I  want 
to  talk  to  you.  Let  me  come  up." 

"Come  along  then."  And  so  they 
disappeared  into  Hardy's  lodgings. 

The  two  young  ladies,  meanwhile, 
soothed  old  Mr.  Winter,  who  had  eaten 
and  drunk  more  than  was  good  for  him, 
and  was  naturally  put  out  thereby. 
They  soon  managed  to  persuade  him  to 
retire,  and  then  followed  themselves — 
first  to  Mary's  room,  where  that  young 
lady  burst  out  at  once,  "  What  a  charm- 
ing place  it  is  !  Oh  !  didn't  you  enjoy 
your  evening,  Katie  1 " 

"  Yes  ;  but  I  felt  a  little  awkward 
without  any  chaperone.  You  seemed 
to  get  on  very  well  with  my  cousin. 
You  scarcely  spoke  to  us  in  the  Long 
Walk  till  just  before  we  came  away. 
What  were  you  talking  about  1 " 

Mary  burst  into  a  gay  laugh.  "  All 
sorts  of  nonsense,"  she  said.  "  I  don't 
think  I  ever  talked  so  much  nonsense  in 
my  life.  I  hope  he  isn't  shocked.  I 
don't  think  he  is.  But  I  said  any- 
thing that  came  into  my  head.  I 


couldn't  help  it.  You  don't  think  it 
wrong  ? " 

"Wrong,  dear?  No,  I'm  sure  you 
could  say  nothing  wrong." 

"  I'm  not  so  sure  of  that.  But,  Katie 
dear,  I  know  there  is  something  on  his 
mind." 

"  Why  do  you  think  so  ?  " 

"  Oh  !  because  he  stopped  short  twice, 
and  became  quite  absent,  and  seemed 
not  to  hear  anything  I  said." 

"  How  odd  !  I  never  knew  him  do 
so.  Did  you  see  any  reason  for  it  ?  " 

"  No  ;  unless  it  was  two  men  we 
passed  in  the  crowd.  One  was  a  vulgar 
looking  wretch,  who  was  smoking — a 
fat  black  thing,  with  such  a  thick  nose, 
covered  with  jewellery — " 

"  Not  his  nose,  dear  1" 

"  No,  but  his  dress ;  and  the  other 
was  a  homely,  dried  up  little  man,  like  one 
of  your  Englebourn  troubles.  I'm  sure 
there  is  some  mystery  about  them,  and 
I  shall  find  it  out.  But  how  did  you 
like  his  friend,  Katie  1 " 

"  Very  much  indeed.  I  was  rather 
uncomfortable  at  walking  so  long  with  a 
stranger.  But  he  was  very  pleasant,  and 
is  so  fond  of  Tom.  I  am  sure  he  is  a  very 
good  friend  for  him." 

"  He  looks  a  good  man ;  but  how 
ugly  !  " 

"  Do  you  think  so  ?  We  shall  have 
a  hard  day  to-morrow.  Good  night, 
dear." 

"Good  night,  Katie.  But  I  don't 
feel  a  bit  sleepy."  And  so  the  cousins 
kissed  one  another,  and  Miss  Winter 
went  to  her  own  room. 

CHAPTEE  XXVII. 

LECTUKING   A   LIONESS. 

THE  evening  of  Show  Sunday  may  serve 
as  a  fair  sample  of  what  this  eventful 
Commemoration  was  to  our  hero.  The 
constant  intercourse  with  ladies — with 
such  ladies  as  Miss  Winter  and  Mary — 
young,  good-looking,  well-spoken,  and 
creditable  in  all  ways,  was  very  delight- 
ful, and  the  more  fascinating,  from  the 
sudden  change  which  their  presence 
wrought  in  the  ordinary  mode  of  life 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


of  the  place.  They  would  have  been 
charming  in  any  room,  but  were  quite 
irresistible  in  his  den,  which  no  female 
presence,  except  that  of  his  blowsy  old 
bed-maker,  had  lightened  since  he  had 
been  in  possession.  All  the  associations  of 
the  freshman's  rooms  were  raised  at  once. 
When  he  came  in  at  night  now,  he 
could  look  sentimentally  at  his  arm-chair 
(christened  "The  Captain,"  after  Captain 
Hardy),  on  which  Katie  had  sat  to  make 
breakfast ;  or  at  the  brass  peg  on  the  door, 
on  which  Mary  had  hung  her  bonnet  and 
shawl,  after  displacing  his  gown.  His  very 
teacups  and  saucers,  which  were  already 
a  miscellaneous  set  of  several  different 
patterns,  had  made  a  move  almost  into 
his  affections ;  at  least,  the  two — one 
brown,  one  blue  —  which  the  young 
ladies  had  used.  A  human  interest 
belonged  to  them  now,  and  they  were 
no  longer  mere  crockery.  He  thought 
of  buying  two  very  pretty  China  ones, 
the  most  expensive  he  could  find  in 
Oxford,  and  getting  them  to  use  these 
for  the  first  time,  but  rejected  the  idea. 
The  fine  new  ones,  he  felt,  would  never 
be  the  same  to  him.  They  had  come 
in  and  used  his  own  rubbish  ;  that  was 
the  great  charm.  If  he  had  been  going 
to  give  them  cups,  no  material  would 
have  been  beautiful  enough  ;  but  for  his 
own  use  after  them,  the  commoner  the 
better.  The  material  was  nothing,  the 
association  everything.  It  is  marvel- 
lous the  amount  of  healthy  sentiment  of 
which  a  naturally  soft-hearted  under- 
graduate is  capable  by  the  end  of  the 
summer  term.  But  sentiment  is  not  all 
one-sided.  The  delights  which  spring 
from  sudden  intimacy  with  the  fairest 
and  best  part  of  the  creation,  are  as  far 
above  those  of  the  ordinary  unmitigated, 
undergraduate  life,  as  the  British  citizen 
of  1860  is  above  the  rudimentary  per- 
sonage in  prehistoric  times  from  whom 
he  has  been  gradually  improved,  up  to 
his  present  state  of  enlightenment  and 
perfection.  But  each  state  has  also  its 
own  troubles  as  well  as  its  pleasures ; 
and,  though  the  former  are  a  price  which 
no  decent  fellow  would  boggle  at  for  a 
moment,  it  is  useless  to  pretend  that 
paying  them  is  pleasant. 


Now,  at  Commemoration,  as  else- 
where, where  men  do  congregate,  if  your 
lady- visitors  are  not  pretty  or  agreeable 
enough  to  make  your  friends  and  ac- 
quaintance eager  to  know  them,  and  to  , 
cater  for  their  enjoyment,  and  try  in  all 
ways  to  win  their  favour  and  cut  you 
out,  you  have  the  satisfaction  at  any 
rate  of  keeping  them  to  yourself,  though 
you  lose  the  pleasures  which  arise  from 
being  sought  after,  and  made  much  of 
for  their  sakes,  and  feeling  raised  above 
the  ruck  of  your  neighbours.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  they  are  all  this,  you 
might  as  well  try  to  keep  the  sunshine 
and  air  to  yourself.  Universal  human 
nature  rises  up  against  you ;  and,  besides, 
they  will  not  stand  it  themselves.  And, 
indeed,  why  should  they  1  Women,  to 
be  very  attractive  to  all  sorts  of  different 
people,  must  have  great  readiness  of 
sympathy.  Many  have  it  naturally,  and 
many  work  hard  in  acquiring  a  good  imi- 
tation of  it.  In  the  first  case  it  is  against 
the  nature  of  such  persons  to  be  mono- 
polized for  more  than  a  very  short  time ; 
in  the  second,  all  their  trouble  would  be 
thrown  away  if  they  allowed  themselves- 
to  be  monopolized.  Once  in  their  lives, 
indeed,  they  will  be,  and  ought  to  be, 
and  that  monopoly  lasts,  or  should  last, 
for  ever ;  but  instead  of  destroying  in 
them  that  which  was  their  great  charm, 
it  only  deepens  and  widens  it,  and  the- 
sympathy  which  was  before  fitful,  and, 
perhaps,  wayward,  flows  on  in  a  calm 
and  healthy  stream,  blessing  and  cheer- 
ing all  who  come  within  reach  of  its 
exhilarating  and  life-giving  waters. 

But  man  of  all  ages  is  a  selfish  animal, 
and  unreasonable  in  his  selfishness.  It 
takes  every  one  of  us  in  turn  many  a 
shrewd  fall  in  our  wrestlings  with  the 
world  to  convince  us  that  we  are  not  to 
have  everything  our  own  way.  We  are 
conscious  in  our  inmost  souls  that  man 
is  the  rightful  lord  of  creation ;  and, 
starting  from  this  eternal  principle,  and 
ignoring,  each  man-child  of  us  in  turn, 
the  qualifying  truth  that  it  is  to  man  in 
genera],  including  woman,  and  not  to 
Thomas  Brown  in  particular,  that  the 
earth  has  been  given,  we  set  about 
asserting  our  kingships  each  in  his  own 


366 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


way,  and  proclaiming  ourselves  kings 
from  our  own  little  ant-hills  of  thrones. 
And  then  come  the  stragglings  and  the 
downfallings,  and  some  of  us  learn  our 
lesson  and  some  learn  it  not.  But  what 
lesson  ?  That  we  have  been  dreaming 
in,  the  golden  hours  when  the  vision  of 
a  kingdom  rose  before  us  1  That  there 
is  in  short  no  kingdom  at  all,  or  that,  if 
there  be,  we  are  no  heirs  of  it  1 

•No — I  take  it  that,  while  we  make 
nothing  better  than  that  out  of  our  lesson, 
we  shall  have  to  go  on  spelling  at  it  and 
stumbling  over  it,  through  all  the  days 
of  our  life,  till  we  make  our  last  stumble, 
and  take  our  final  header  out  of  this 
riddle  of  a  world,  which  we  once  dreamed 
we  were  to  rule  over,  exclaiming  "vanitas 
vanitatum"  to  the  end.  But  man's 
spirit  will  never  be  satisfied  without  a 
kingdom,  and  was  never  intended  to  be 
satisfied  so  ;  and  a  wiser  than  Solomon 
tells  us  day  by  day  that  our  kingdom  is 
about  us  here,  and  that  we  may  rise  up 
and  pass  in  when  we  will  at  the  shining 
gates  which  He  holds  open,  for  that  it 
is  His,  and  we  are  joint  heirs  of  it  with 
Him. 

On  the  whole,  however,  making  allow- 
ances for  all  drawbacks,  those  Comme- 
moration days  were  the  pleasantest  days 
Tom  had  ever  known  at  Oxford.  He 
was  with  his  uncle  and  cousins  early 
and  late,  devising  all  sorts  of  pleasant 
entertainments  and  excursions  for  them, 
introducing  all  the  pleasantest  men  of 
his  acquaintance,  and  taxing  all  the  re- 
sources of  the  College,  which  at  such 
times  were  available  for  undergraduates 
as  well  as  their  betters,  to  minister  to 
their  comfort  and  enjoyment.  And  he 
was  well  repaid.  There  was  something 
perfectly  new  to  the  ladies,  and  very 
piquant  in  the  life  and  habits  of  the 
place.  They  found  it  very  diverting  to 
l>e  receiving  in  Tom's  rooms,  presiding 
over  his  breakfasts  and  luncheons,  alter- 
ing the  position  of  his  furniture,  and 
making  the  place  look  as  pretty  as  cir- 
cumstances would  allow.  Then  there 
was  pleasant  occupation  for  every  spare 
hour,  and  the  fetes  and  amusements 
were  all  unlike  everything  but  them- 
selves. Of  course  the  ladies  at  once 


became  enthusiastic  St.  Ambrosians,  and 
managed  in  spite  of  all  distractions  to 
find  time  for  making  up  rosettes  and 
bows  of  blue  and  white,  in  which  to 
appear  at  the  procession  of  the  boats, 
which  was  the  great  event  of  the  Monday. 
Fortunately  Mr.  Winter  had  been  a  good 
oar  in  his  day,  and  had  pulled  in  one 
of  the  first  four-oars  in  which  the  Uni- 
versity races  had  commenced  some  thirty- 
five  years  before ;  and  Tom,  who  had  set 
his  mind  on  managing  his  uncle,  worked 
him  up  almost  into  enthusiasm  and  for- 
getfulness  of  his  maladies,  so  that  he 
raised  no  objection  to  a  five  o'clock 
dinner,  and  an  adjournment  to  the  river 
almost  immediately  afterwards.  Jervis, 
who  was  all-powerful  on  the  river,  at 
Tom's  instigation  got  an  arm-chair  for 
him  in  the  best  part  of  the  University 
barge,  while  the  ladies,  after  walking 
along  the  bank  with  Tom  and  others  of 
the  crew,  and  being  instructed  in  the 
colours  of  the  different  boats,  and  the 
meaning  of  the  ceremony,  took  their 
places  in  the  front  row  on  the  top  of  the 
barge,  beneath  the  awning  and  the  flags, 
and  looked  down  with  hundreds  of  other 
fair  strangers  on  the  seene,  which  cer- 
tainly merited  all  that  Tom  had  said  of. 
it  on  faith. 

The  barges  above  and  below  the  Uni- 
versity barge,  which  occupied  the  post 
of  honour,  were  also  covered  with  ladies, 
and  Christchurch  meadow  swarmed  with 
gay  dresses  and  caps  and  gowns..  On  the 
opposite  side  the  bank  was  lined  with  a 
crowd  in  holiday  clothes,  and  the  punts 
plied  across  without  intermission  loaded 
with  people,  till  the  groups  stretched 
away  down  the  towing  path  in  an  almost 
continuous  line  to  the  starting  place. 
Then  one  after  another  the  racing-boats, 
all  painted  and  polished  up  for  the  occa- 
sion, with  the  College  flags  drooping;  at 
their  sterns,  put  out  and  passed  down 
to  their  stations,  and  the  bands  played, 
and  the  sun  shone  his  best.  And  then 
after  a  short  pause  of  expectation  the 
distant  bank  became  all  alive,  and  the 
groups  all  turned  one  way,  and  came  up 
the  towing  path  again,  and  the  foremost 
boat  with  the  blue  and  white  .flag  shot 
through  the  Gut  and  came  up  the  reach, 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


367 


followed  by  another,  and  another,  and 
another,  till  they  were  tired  of  counting, ' 
and  the  leading  boat  was  already  close  to 
them  before  the  last  had  come  within 
sight.  And  the  bands  played  up  all  to- 
gether, and  the  crowd  on  both  sides 
cheered  as  the  St.  Ambrose  boat  spurted 
from  the  Cherwell,  and  took  the  place 
of  honour  at  the  winning-post,  opposite 
the  University  barge,  and  close  under 
where  they  were  sitting. 

"Oh,  look,  Katie  dear;  here  they 
are.  There's  Tom,  and  Mr.  Hardy,  and 
Mr.  Jervis;"  and  Mary  waved  her  hand- 
kerchief and  clapped  her  hands,  and 
was  in  an  ecstasy  of  enthusiasm,  in 
which  her  cousin  was  no  whit  behind 
her.  The  gallant  crew  of  St.  Ambrose 
were  by  no  means  unconscious  of,  and 
fully  appreciated,  the  compliment. 

Then  the  boats  passed  up  one  by  one ; 
and,  as  each  came  opposite  to  the  St. 
Ambrose  boat,  the  crews  tossed  their 
oars  and  cheered,  and  the  St.  Ambrose 
crew  tossed  their  oars  and  cheered  in 
return ;  and  the  whole  ceremony  went 
off  in  triumph,  notwithstanding  the 
casualty  which  occurred  to  one  of  the 
torpids.  The  torpids  being  filled  with 
the  refuse  of  the  rowing-men — generally 
awkward  or  very  young  oarsmen — find 
some  difficulty  in  the  act  of  tossing  ;  no 
very  safe  operation  for  an  unsteady 
crew.  Accordingly,  the  torpid  in  ques- 
tion, having  sustained  her  crew  gallantly 
till  the  saluting  point,  and  allowed  them 
to  get  their  oars  fairly  into  the  air, 
proceeded  gravely  to  turn  over  on  her 
side,  and  shoot  them  out  into  the 
stream. 

A  thrill  ran  along  the  top  of  the 
barges,  and  a  little  scream  or  two  might 
have  been  heard  even  through  the  notes 
of  Annie  Laurie,  which  were  filling  the 
air  at  the  moment ;  but  the  band  played 
on,  and  the  crew  swam  ashore,  and  two 
of  the  punt-men  laid  hold  of  the  boat 
and  collected  the  oars,  and  nobody 
seemed  to  think  anything  of  it. 

Katie  drew  a  long  breath. 

"Are  they  all  out,  dear?"  she  said; 
"  can  you  see  1  I  can  only  count  eight." 

"  Oh,  I  was  too  frightened  to  look. 
Let  me  see  ;  yes,  there  are  nine  ;  there's 


one  by  himself,  the  little  man  pulling' 
the  weeds  off  his  trousers." 

And  so  they  regained  their  equanimity, 
and  soon  after  left  the  barge,  and  were 
escorted  to  the  Hall  of  St.  Ambrose  by 
the  crew,  who  gave  an  entertainment 
there  to  celebrate  the  occasion ;  which 
Mr.  Winter  was  induced  to  attend  and 
pleased  to  approve,  and  which  lasted 
till"  it  was  time  to  dress  for  the  ball,  for 
which  a  proper  chaperone  had  been  pro- 
videntially found.  And  so  they  passed 
the  days  and  nights  of  Commemoration. 

But  it  is  not  within  the  scope  of  this 
work  to  chronicle  all  their  doings— how, 
notwithstanding-  balls  at  night,  they 
were  up  to  chapel  in  the  morning,  and 
attended  flower- shows  at  Worcester  and 
musical  promenades  in  New  College', 
and  managed  to  get  down  the  river  for 
a  pic-nic  at  Nuneham,  besides  seeing 
everything  that  was  worth  seeing  in  all 
the  colleges.  How  it  was  done,  no  man 
can  tell;  but  done  it  was,  and  they 
seemed  only  the  better  for  it  all.  They 
were  waiting  at  the  gates  of  the  theatre 
amongst  the  first,  tickets  in  hand,  and 
witnessed  the  whole  scene,  wondering 
no  little  at  the  strange  mixture  of  So- 
lemnity and  licence,  the  rush  and  crowd- 
ing of  the  undergraduates  into  their 
gallery,  and  their  free  and  easy  way  of 
taking  the  whole  proceedings  under  their 
patronage,  watching  every  movement  in 
the  amphitheatre  and  on  the  floor,  and 
shouting  approval  or  disapproval  of  the 
heads  of  their  republic  of  learning,  or  of 
the  most  illustrious  visitors,  or  cheering 
with  equal  vigour  the  ladies,  Her  Ma- 
jesty's ministers,  or  the  prize  poems. 
It  is  a  strange  scene  certainly,  and  has 
probably  puzzled  many  persons  besides 
young  ladies.  One  can  well  fancy  the 
astonishment  of  the  learned  foreigner, 
for  instance,  when  he  sees  the  head  of 
the  University,  which  he  has  reverenced 
at  a  distance  from  his  youth  up,  rise  in 
his  robes  in  solemn  convocation  to  exer- 
cise one  of  the  highest  of  university  func- 
tions, and  hears  his  sonorous  Latin 
periods  interrupted  by  "  three  cheers  for 
the  ladies  in  pink  bonnets ; "  or,  when 
some  man  is  introduced  for  an  honorary 
degree,  whose  name  may  be  known 


368 


Tom  Sroion  at  Oxford. 


throughout  the  civilized  world,  and  the 
Vice-Chancellor,  turning  to  his  com- 
peers, inquires,  "  Placetne  vobis,  domini 
doctores,  placetne  vobis,  magistri,"  and 
he  hears  the  voices  of  doctors  and  mas- 
ters drowned  in  contradictory  shouts 
from  the  young  Demos  in  the  gallery, 
"Whoishe?"  "Non placet!"  "Placet!" 
"  Why  does  he  carry  an  umbrella?"  It 
is  thoroughly  English,  and  that  is  just 
all  that  need,  or  indeed  can,  be  said  for 
it  all ;  but  not  one  in  a  hundred  of  us 
would  alter  it  if  we  could,  beyond  sup- 
pressing some  of  the  personalities  which 
of  late  years  have  gone  somewhat  too  far. 

After  the  theatre  there  was  a  sump- 
tuous lunch  in  All  Souls',  and  then  a 
fete  in  St.  John's  Gardens.  Now,  at 
the  aforesaid  luncheon,  Tom's  feelings 
had  been  severely  tried;  in  fact,  the 
little  troubles  which,  as  has  been  before 
hinted,  are  incident  to  persons,  espe- 
cially young  men  in  his  fortunate  predi- 
cament, came  to  a  head.  He  was  sepa- 
rated from  his  cousins  a  little  way. 
Being  a  guest,  and  not  an  important 
one  in  the  eyes  of  the  All  Souls'  fellows, 
he  had  to  find  his  level ;  which  was  very 
much  below  that  allotted  to  his  uncle 
and  cousins.  In  short,  he  felt  that  they 
were  taking  him  about,  instead  of  he 
them — which  change  of  position  was  in 
itself  trying;  and  Mary's  conduct 
fanned  his  slumbering  discontent  into 
a  flame.  There  she  was,  sitting  between 
a  fellow  of  All  Souls',  who  was  a  col- 
lector of  pictures  and  an  authority  in 
fine  art  matters,  and  the  Indian  officer 
who  had  been  so  recently  promoted  to 
the  degree  of  D.C.L.  in  the  theatre. 
There  she  sat,  so  absorbed  in  their  con- 
versation that  she  did  not  even  hear  a 
remark  which  he  was  pleased  to  address 
to  her. 

Whereupon  he  began  to  brood  on  his 
wrongs,  and  to  take  umbrage  at  the 
catholicity  of  her  enjoyment  and  enthu- 
siasm. So  long  as  he  had  been  the 
medium  through  which  she  was  brought 
in  contact  with  others,  he  had  been  well 
enough  content  that  they  should  amuse 
and  interest  her  ;  but  it  was  a  very  dif- 
ferent thing  now. 

So  he  watched  her   jealously,   and 


raked  up  former  conversations,  and 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  his 
duty  to  remonstrate  with  her.  He  had 
remarked,  too,  that  she  never  could  talk 
with  him  now  without  breaking  away 
after  a  short  time  into  badinage.  Her 
badinage  certainly  was  very  charming 
and  pleasant,  and  kept  him  on  the 
stretch ;  but  why  should  she  not  let 
bim  be  serious  and  sentimental  when 
he  pleased  ]  She  did  not  break  out  in 
this  manner  with  other  people.  So  he 
really  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  speak  to 
her  on  the  subject — not  in  the  least  for 
his  ovm  sake,  but  for  hers. 

Accordingly,  when  the  party  broke 
up,  and  they  started  for  the  fete  at 
St.  John's,  he  resolved  to  carry  out  his 
intentions.  At  first  he  could  not  get  an 
opportunity  while  they  were  walking 
about  on  the  beautiful  lawn  of\  the  great 
garden,  seeing  and  being  seen,  and  list- 
ening to  music,  and  looking  at  choice 
flowers.  But  soon  a  chance  offered.  She 
stayed  behind  the  rest  without  noticing 
it,  to  examine  some  specially  beautiful 
plant,  and  he  was  by  her  side  in  a 
moment,  and  proposed  to  show  her  the 
smaller  garden,  which  lies  beyond,  to 
which  she  innocently  consented ;  and 
they  were  soon  out  of  the  crowd,  and 
in  comparative  solitude. 

She  remarked  that  he  was  somewhat 
silent  and  grave,  but  thought  nothing  of 
it,  and  chatted  on  as  usual,  remarking 
upon  the  pleasant  company  she  had 
been  in  at  luncheon. 

This  opened  the  way  for  Tom's  lec- 
ture. 

"  How  easily  you  seem  to  get  in- 
terested with  new  people  ! "  he  began. 

"Do  I?"  she  said.  "Well,  don't 
you  think  it  very  natural  1 " 

"  Wouldn't  it  be  a  blessing  if  people 
would  always  say  just  what  they  think 
and  mean,  though  ? " 

"  Yes,  and  a  great  many  do,"  she  re- 
plied, looking  at  him  in  some  wonder, 
and  not  quite  pleased  with  the  turn 
things  were  taking. 

"Any  ladies,  do  you  think?  You 
know  we  haven't  many  opportunities  of 
observing." 

"  Yes,  I  think  quite  as  many  ladies 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


369 


as  men.  More,  indeed,  as  far  as  my 
small  experience  goes." 

"  You  really  maintain  deliberately 
that  you  have  met  people — men  and 
women — who  can  talk  to  you  or  any 
one  else  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  quite 
honestly,  and  say  nothing  at  all  which 
they  don't  mean — nothing  for  the  sake 
of  flattery,  or  effect,  for  instance  ?  " 

"  Oh  dear  me,  yes,  often." 

"Who,  for  example?" 

"  Our  cousin  Katie.  Why  are  you  so 
suspicious  and  misanthropical  ?  There 
is  your  friend  Mr.  Hardy,  again ;  what 
do  you  say  to  him  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  think  you  may  have  hit 
on  an  exception.  But  I  maintain  the 
rule." 

"You  look  as  if  I  ought  to  object. 
But  I  shan't.  It  is  no  business  of 
mine  if  you  choose  to  believe  any  such 
disagreeable  thing  about  your  felloAV- 
creatures." 

"  I  don't  believe  anything  worse  about 
them  than  I  do  about  myself.  I  know 
that  I  can't  do  it." 

"  Well,  I  am  very  sorry  for  you." 

"  But  I  don't  think  I  am  any  worse 
than  my  neighbours." 

"  I  don't  suppose  you  do.  Who  are 
your  neighbours  ? "  . 

"  Shall  I  include  you  in  the  num- 
ber?" 

"  Oh,  by  all  means,  if  you  like." 

"  But  I  may  not  mean  that  you  are 
like  the  rest.  The  man  who  fell  among 
thieves,  you  know,  had  one  good  neigh- 
bour." 

"  Now,  cousin  Tom,"  she  said,  look- 
ing up  with  sparkling  eyes,  "  I  can't 
return  the  compliment.  You  meant  to 
make  me  feel  that  I  was  like  the  rest — 
at  least  like  what  you  say  they  are.  You 
know  you  did.  And  now  you  are  just 
tiirning  round,  and  trying  to  slip  out  of 
it  by  saying  what  you  don't  mean." 

"  Well,  cousin  Mary,  perhaps  I  was. 
At  any  rate,  I  was  a  great  fool  for  my 
pains.  I  might  have  known  by  this 
time  that  you  would  catch  me  out  fast 
enough." 

"  Perhaps  you  might.  I  didn't  chal- 
lenge you  to  set  up  your  Palace  of 
Truth.  But,  if  we  are  to  live  in  it, 


you  are  not  to  say  all  the  disagreeable 
things  and  hear  none  of  them." 

"  I  hope  not,  if  they  must  be  dis- 
agreeable. But  why  should  they  be? 
I  can't  see  why  you  and  I,  for  instance, 
should  not  say  exactly  what  we  are 
thinking  to  one  another  without  being  . 
disagreeable." 

"  Well,  I  don't  think  you  made  a 
happy  beginning  just  now." 

"  But  I  am  sure  we  should  all  like 
one  another  the  better  for  speaking  the 
truth." 

"  Yes  ;  but  I  don't  admit  that  I 
haven't  been  speaking  the  truth." 

"You  won't  understand  me.  Have 
I  said  that  you  don't  speak  the  truth?" 

"  Yes,  you  said  just  now  that  I  don't 
say  what  I  think  and  mean.  Well, 
perhaps  you  didn't  exactly  say  that,  but 
that  is  what  you  meant." 

"  You  are  very  angry,  cousin  Mary. 
Let  us  wait  till " — 

"No,  no.  It  was  you  who  began, 
and  I  will  not  let  you  off  now." 

"  Very  well,  then.  I  did  mean  some- 
thing of  the  sort.  It  is  better  to  tell 
you  than  to  keep  it  to  myself." 

"  Yes,  and  now  tell  me  your  reasons," 
said  Mary,  looking  down  and  biting  her 
lip.  Tom  was  ready  to  bite  his  tongue 
off,  but  there  was  nothing  now  but  to 
go  through  with  it. 

"  You  make  everybody  that  comes 
near  you  think  that  you  are  deeply  in- 
terested in  them  and  their  doings.  Poor 
Grey  believes  that  you  are  as  mad  as  he 
is  about  rituals  and  rubrics.  And  the 
boating  men  declare  that  you  would 
sooner  see  a  race  than  go  to  the  best  ball 
in  the  world.  And  you  listened  to  the 
Dean's  stale  old  stories  about  the 
schools,  and  went  into  raptures  in  the 
Bodleian  about  pictures  and  art  with 
that  fellow  of  Allsouls'.  Even  our  old 
butler  and  the  cook" — 

Here  Mary,  despite  her  vexation,  after 
a  severe  struggle  to  control  it,  burst  into 
a  laugh,  which  made  Tom  pause. 

"  Now  you  can't  say  that  I  am  not 
really  fond  of  jellies,"  she  said. 

"  And  you  can't  say  that  I  have  said 
anything  so  very  disagreeable." 

"  Oh,  but  you  have,  though." 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


"  At  any  rate  I  have  made  you  laugh." 

"  But  you  didn't  mean  to  do  it.  Now, 
go  on."- 

"  I  have  nothing  more  to  say.  You 
see  my  meaning,  or  you  never  will." 

"  If  you  have  nothing  more  to  say  you 
should  not  have  said  so  much,"  said 
Mary.  "  You  wouldn't  have  me  rude  to 
all  the  people  I  meet,  and  I  can't  help  it 
if  the  cook  thinks  I  am  a  glutton." 
.  VBut  you  could  help  letting  Grey 
think  that  you  should  like  to  go  and  see 
his  night  schools." 

"  But  I  should  like  to  see  them  of  all 
things." 

"  And  I  suppose  you  would  like  to 
go  through  the  manuscripts  in  the 
Bodleian  with  the  Dean.  I  heard  you 
talking  to  him  as  if  it  was  the  dearest 
wish  of  your  heart,  and  making  a  half 
engagement  to  go  with  him  this  after- 
noon, when  you  know  that  you  are  tired 
to  death  of  him  and  so  full  of  other 
engagements  that  you  don't  know  where 
to  turn." 

Mary  began  to  bite  her  lips  again. 
She  felt  half  inclined  to  cry,  and  half 
inclined  to  get  up  and  box  his  ears. 
However  she  did  neither,  but  looked  up 
after  a  moment  or  two,  and  said — 

"  Well,  have  you  any  more  unkind 
things  to  say?" 

"Unkind,  Mary?" 

-•"  Yes,  they  are  unkind.  How  can  I 
enjoy  anything  now  when  I  shall  know 
you  are  watching  me,  and  thinking  all 
sorts  of  harm  of  everything  I  say  and 
do.  However  it  doesn't  much  matter, 
for  we  go  to-morrow  morning." 

•  "  But  you  will  give  me  credit  at  least 
for  meaning  you  well?" 

"  I  think  you  are  very  jealous  and 
suspicious." 

"  You  don't  know  how  you  pain  me 
when  you  say  that." 

"  But. I  must  say  what  I  think." 

Mary  set  her  little  mouth,  and  looked 
down,  and  began  tapping  her  boot  with 
her  parasol.  There  was  an  awkward 
silence  while  Tom  considered  within 
himself  whether  she  was  not  right,  and 
whether  after  all  his  own  jealousy  had 
not  been  tHe  cause  of  the  lecture  he 
had  been  delivering  much  more  than 


any  unselfish  wish  for  Mary's  improve- 
ment. 

"It  is  your  turn  now,"  he  said 
presently,  leaning  forward  with  his 
elbows  on  his  knees,  and  looking  hard 
at  the  gravel.  "  I  may  have  been 
foolishly  jealous,  and  I  thank  you  for 
telling  me  so.  But  you  can  tell  me  a 
great  deal  more  if  you  will,  quite  as 
good  for  me  to  hear." 

"No,  I  have  nothing  to  say.  I  dare- 
say you  are  open  and  true,  and  have 
nothing  to  hide  or  disguise,  not  even 
about  either  of  the  men  we  met  in  the 
Long  Walk  on  Sunday." 

He  winced  at  this  random  shaft  as  if 
he  had  been  stung,  and  she  saw  that  it 
had  gone  home,  and  repented  the  next 
moment.  The  silence  became  more  and 
more  embarrassing.  By  good  luck,  how- 
ever, their  party  suddenly  appeared 
strolling  towards  them  from  the  large 
garden. 

"There's  Uncle  Eobert  and  Katie, 
and  all  of  them.  Let  us  join  them." 

She  rose  up  and  he  with  her,  and  as 
they  walked  towards  the  rest  he  said 
quickly  in  a  low  voice,  "  Will  you  for- 
give me  if  I  have  pained  you  ?  I  was 
very  selfish,  and  am  very  sorry." 

"  Oh  yes,  we  were  both  very  foolish. 
But  we  won't  do  it  again." 

"  Here  you  are  at  last.  We  have  been 
looking  for  you- everywhere,"  said  Miss 
Winter,  as  they  came  up. 

"I'm  sure  I  don't  know  how  we 
missed  you.  We  came  straight  from 
the  music  tent  to  this  seat,  and  have 
not  moved.  We  knew  you  must  come 
by  sooner  or  later." 

"  But  it  is  quite  out  of  the  way.  It 
was  quite  by  chance  that  we  came  round 
here." 

"Isn't  Uncle  Eobert  tired,  Katie?" 
said  Tom;  "he  doesn't  look  well  this 
afternoon." 

Katie  instantly  turned  to  her  father, 
and  Mr.  Winter  declared  himself  to  be 
much  fatigued.  So  they  wished  their 
hospitable  entertainers  good-bye,  and 
Tom  hurried  off  and  got  a  wheel  chair 
for  his  uncle,  and  walked  by  his  side  to 
their  lodgings.  The  young  ladies  walked 
near  the  chair  also,  accompanied  by  one 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


371 


or  two  of  their  acquaintance;  in  fact, 
they  could  not  move  without  an  escort. 
But  Tom  never  once  turned  his  head 
for  a  glance  at  what  was  going  on,  and 
talked  steadily  on  to  his  uncle,  that  he 
might  not  catch  a  stray  word  of  what 
the  rest  were  saying.  Despite  of  all 
which  self-denial,  however,  he  was  quite 
aware  somehow  when  he  made  his  bow 
at  the  door  that  Mary  had  been  very 
silent  all  the  way  home. 

Mr.  Winter  retired  to  his  room  to  lie 
down,  and  his  daughter  and  niece  re- 
mained in  the  sitting  room.  Mary  sat 
down  and  untied  her  bonnet,  but  did 
not  burst  into  her  usual  flood  of  com- 
ments on  the  events  of  the  day.  Miss 
Winter  looked  at  her  and  said — 

"You  look  tired,  dear,  and  over-ex- 
cited." 

"  Oh  yes,  so  I  am.  I've  had  such  a 
quarrel  with  Tom." 

"A  quarrel — you're  not  serious  1 " 

"  Indeed  I  am,  though.  I  quite  hated 
him  for  five  minutes  at  least." 

"  But  what  did  he  do  ? " 

"  Why  he  taunted  me  with  being  too 
civil  to  everybody,  and  it  made  me  so 
angry.  He  said  I  pretended  to  take  an 
interest  in  ever  so  many  things,  just  to 
please  people,  when  I  didn't  really  care 
about  them.  And  it  isn't  true  now, 
Katie  ;  is  it  ? " 

"No,  dear.  He  never  could  have 
said  that.  You  must  have,  misunder- 
stood him." 

"There,  I  knew  you  would  say  so. 
And  if  it  were  true,  I'm  sure  it  isn't 
wrong.  When  people  talk  to  you,  it  is 
so  easy  to  seem  pleased  and  interested 
in  what  they  are  saying — and  then  they 
like  you,  and  it  is  so  pleasant  to  be 
liked.  £Tow,  Katie,  do  you  ever  snap 
people's  noses  off,  or  tell  them  you  think 
them  very  foolish,,  and  that  you  don't 
care,  and  that  what  they  are  saying  is  all 
of  no  consequence  1 " 

"  I,  dear  1  I  couldn't  do  it  to  save  my 
life!" 

"  Oh,  I  was  sure  you  couldn't.  And 
he  may  say  what  he  will,  but  I'm  quite 
sure  he  would  not  have  been  pleased  if 
we  had  not  made  ourselves  pleasant  to 
his  friends." 


"That's  quite  true.  He  has  told  me 
himself  half  a  dozen  times  how  delighted 
he  was  to  see  you  so  popular." 

"And  you  too,  Katie  1 " 

"Oh  yes.  He  is  very  well  pleased 
with  me.  But  it  is  you  who  have  turned 
all  the  heads  in  the  college,  Mary.  You 
are  Queen  of  St.  Ambrose  beyond  a 
doubt  just  now." 

"No,  no,  Katie;  not  more  than  you 
at  any  rate." 

"  I  say  yes,  yes,  Mary.  You  will  al- 
ways be  ten  times  as  popular  as  I ;  some 
people  have  the  gift  of  it ;  I  wish  I 
had.  But  why  do  you  look  so  grave 
again  ? " 

"  Why,  Katie,  don't  you  see  you  are 
just  saying  over  again,  only  in  a  dif- 
ferent way,  what  your  provoking  cousin 
— I  shall  call  him  Mr.  Brown,  I  think, 
in  future — was  telling  me  for  my  good 
in  St.  John's  Gardens.  You  saw  how 
long  we  were  away  from  you :  well,  he 
was  lecturing  me  all  the  time,  only 
think  ;  and  now  you  are  going  to  tell  it 
me  all  over  again.  But  go  on,  dear ;  I 
shan't  mind  anything  from  you." 

She  put  her  arm  round  her  cousin's 
waist,  and  looked  up  playfully  into  her 
face.  Miss  Winter  saw  at  once  that  no 
great  harm,  perhaps  some  good,  had  been 
done  in  the  passage  of  arms  between  her 
relatives. 

"You  made  it  all  up,"  she  said,  smil- 
ing, "  before  we  found  you." 

"  Only  just,  though.  He  begged  my 
pardon  just  at  last,  almost  in  a  whisper, 
when  you  were  quite  close  to  us." 

"And  you  granted  it?" 

"Yes,  of  course  ;  but  I  don't  know 
that  I  shall  not  recall  it." 

"  I  was  sure  you  would  be  falling  out 
before  long,  you  got  on  so  fast.  But  he 
isn't  quite  so  easy  to  turn  round  your 
finger  as  you  thought,  Mary." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know  that,"  said  Mary, 
laughingly  ;  "  you  saw  how  humble  he 
looked  at  last,  and  what  good  order  he 
was  in." 

"Well,  dear,  it's  time  to  think  whether 
we  shall  go  out  again." 

"  Let  me  see ;  there's  the  last  ball. 
What  do  you  say  1 " 

"Why,  I'm  afraid  poor  papa  is  too 


372 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


tired  to  take  us,  and  I  don't  know  with 
whom  we  could  go.  We  ought  to  begin 
packing,  too,  I  think. 

"Very  well  Let  us  have  tea  quietly 
at  home." 

"  I  will  write  a  note  to  Tom  to  tell  him. 
He  has  done  his  best  for  us,  poor  fellow, 
and  we  ought  to  consider  him  a  little." 

"  Oh  yes,  and  ask  him  and  his  friend 
Mr.  Hardy  to  tea,  as  it  is  the  last  night." 

"  If  you  wish  it  I  should  be  very  glad  ; 
they  will  amuse  papa." 


"  Certainly,  and  then  he  will  see  that 
I  bear  him  no  malice.  And  now  I  will 
go  and  just  do  my  hair." 

"  Very  well  ;  and  we  will  pack  after 
they  leave.  How  strange  home  will 
seem  after  all  this  gaiety." 

"  Yes  ;  we  seem  to  have  been  here  a 
month." 

"  I  do  hope  we  shall  find  all  quiet  at 
Englebourn.  I  am  always  afraid  of  some 
trouble  there." 

To  be  continued. 

'  '<^r. 


KYLOE-JOCK  AND   THE  WEIED   OF  WANTON-WALLS. 

A  LEGEND  :  IN  SIX  CHAPTERS. 
BY  GEORGE  CUPPLES,  AUTHOR  OF  "THE  GREEN  HAND,"   "  HINCHBRIDGE  HAUNTED,"  &C. 


CHAPTER  I. 

OF   THOSE   WHOM    IT    CONCERNED,  AND  OF 
THE    FIRST    LEADINGS    THERETO. 

WITH  the  ending  of  the  harvest-work 
came  also,  for  the  boy,  Hugh  Rowland, 
an  end  to  his  attempts  to  forget  his  over- 
arduous  destiny  of  learning,  and  be  care- 
lessly happy  in  his  measured  holiday. 
The  harvest  had  now  brought  everything 
close  in  to  home  that  had  outlasted  sum- 
mer, to  give  his  solitary  boyish  wander- 
ings any  pleasure.  Bare  now  was  every 
rural  hollow  and  slope ;  every  leafy  covert 
or  marshy  secret  of  strange  creatures, 
and  hidden  fruits,  and  unknown  flowers, 
was  now  barer  than  the  pastoral  uplands 
seemed  by  contrast  with  them. 

To  early  boyhood,  indeed,  those  pas- 
toral uplands  had  hitherto  been  like  a 
dreamy  sign  of  all  things  that  oppressed 
or  wearied.  With  faint  paths  that 
wound  into  the  distant  glimpse  of  roads, 
crossed  by  many  a  sombre  fir-belt  or 
moory  ridge,  the  horizon  of  Kirkhill  was 
secluded  from  others  of  that  Scottish  bor- 
der region ;  except  one  notch-like  cleft 
far  eastward  between  the  hills.  Thither 
the  boy  could  look  freely  each  morning 
when  he  rose,  now  that  his  nursery  time 
was  past ;  and  from  his  own  new  bed- 
room window  he  might  see  the  distant 


shining  of  some  ancient  castle,  which 
was  invisible  save  by  the  early  sun ; 
nay,  if  the  air  were  clear,  there  was 
privately  revealed  to  him  an  azure  peak 
or  two  of  mountains  toward  the  south, 
that  must  be,  as  he  guessed  in  secret, 
the  very  same  which  were  told  of  in 
story — bounding  a  renowned  and  richer 
land,  with  all  its  endless  wonders,  from 
their  own  narrow  region,  so  poor  and 
wistful,  so  eager  yet  so  barren.  He  had 
escaped,  above  all,  from  the  thrall  of 
Nurse  Kirsty.  That  gaunt  and  stalwart 
virgin  was  still,  indeed,  invested  with  a 
might  behind  him,  partaking  of  the 
Sybilline  or  Gorgonic ;  for  she  had 
swayed  over  him  from  of  old  that  name- 
less tyranny  within  which  were  still 
firmly  grasped  the  two  younger  subjects 
of  her  charge, — the  little  sister  and  tiny 
brother,  sprightly  Hannah  and  gravely- 
prattling  Joey.  Too  long  had  Kirsty 
been  settled  in  the  household  of  Kirk- 
hill  Manse  to  be  easily  set  aside  or  dis- 
credited :  her  domestic  part  was  very 
necessary  to  the  maternal  tenderness  in 
Mrs.  Rowland ;  nay,  in  the  Reverend 
Mr.  Rowland's  eyes,  the  tradition  of 
Nurse  Kirsty's  inward  piety  still  pre- 
vailed, outweighing  far  the  wild  words, 
if  not  the  swell  of  bitter  thoughts,  with 
which  Hugh  had  left  her  dominion. 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


373 


For  her  power  had  been  signally 
shown  on  that  memorable  occasion 
when  the  mother  had  entered  amidst 
the  rebellious  scene  caused  -by  Hugh's 
scorn  at  those  nursery  lessons,  which 
sufficed  for  little  Hannah,  and  were  quite 
august  as  yet  for  little  Joey.  Mrs.  Row- 
land had  said,  with  a  vexed  accent,  that 
it  was  indeed  time  the  boy  should  go  to 
school  Then  had  Hugh  affected  to 
gloom  and  frown  ;  though  really  rejoic- 
ing ;  for  the  mere  name  of  any  school, 
to  which  he  could  go,  was  well  known 
to  be  a  distant  and  glorious  one,  con- 
sidering the  rustic  solitude  of  Kirkhill. 
But  his  inward  triumph  was  very  brief. 
At  the  open  sound  of  their  altercation, 
there  had  unclosed  awfully,  below  stairs, 
the  quiet  door  of  the  study-room. ;  and, 
step  by  step  deliberately  ascending,  Mr. 
Eowland  had  appeared.  Before  his  grave 
front  and  lofty  presence,  the  scene  had 
fallen  into  the  wonted  order  of  such 
things  when  he  directly  beheld  them. 
He  had  not  seen  the  large  head-dress  of 
Kirsty  nutter  with  anger,  like  the  crest 
of  a  Medea,  while  she  muttered  syllables 
that  were  prophetic  of  evil  to  the  boyish 
destinies ;  but  saw  only  her  attitude 
of  uprising  deference,  with  obsequious 
hands  that  smoothed  her  apron  down, 
ere  they  were  uplifted  patiently,  to  tes- 
tify against  juvenile  accusations,  and 
show  wonder  at  the  mother's  partial 
excuses.  A  boy's  huge  indignation  had 
writhed  through  the  form  of  Hugh 
Eowland,  agitating  his  speech,  burning 
in  his  face,  convulsing  him  to  the  point 
of  abusive  epithets,  gestures,  and  tears ; 
wherewith  he  would  have  poured  out 
the  whole  accumulated  consciousness  of 
Nurse  Kirsty's  crimes,  and  have  exposed 
her  and  pointed  her  out  for  ever  to  dis- 
grace ;  but  that  the  method  of  this  vast 
disclosure  had  failed  him  at  the  pinch. 
Then  had  his  father  pronounced  his 
stern  reproof,  and  straightway  removed 
him  along  with  his  own  solemn  depar- " 
ture ;  thenceforward  to  be  wholly  under 
his  own  immediate  charge,  view,  and 
superintendence,  in  those  assiduous 
studies  which  were  to  prepare  the  boy 
for  some  other  sphere.  Whereat,  clearly 
perceiving  in  his  mind  for  the  first  time 


a  dire  secret,  he  resolved  to  bury  it, 
nevertheless,  in  his  own  youthful  breast. 
For  it  had  been  on  the  sudden  made 
manifest  to  him  that  injustice  was  seated 
in  every  one  around  him,  even  that  the 
very  fondest  persons  were  insecure,  and 
the  wisest  were  tyrannical ;  the  whole 
household  and  the  time  being  out  of  joint 
to  his  disadvantage. 

His  father,  who  before  had  partly 
taught  him  what  he  required  to  learn 
for  the  expected  school,  now  altogether 
became  his  tutor.  It  was  in  truth  an 
arduous  elevation  to  which  the  boy  had 
been  emancipated — to  have  the  direct 
benefit  turned  upon  himself  alone,  all 
the  week  long  in  the  silent  ministerial 
library,  of  that  robust  and  solid  intel- 
lect which  there  prepared  its  own  graver 
lessons  for  the  whole  Sabbath  assem- 
blage at  Kirkhill.  His  father  devoted 
a  resolute  purpose  to  this  minor  duty, 
and  sought  due  intervals  for  its  per- 
formance, with  a  regularity  which  no 
slight  occasion  broke.  Sometimes  it  was 
only  by  taking  Hugh  out  along  with 
him,  on  his  walks  of  pastoral  visitation, 
that  their  growing  studies  in  Latin  were 
carried  on  without  stoppage.  As  this 
expedient  was  oftener  resorted  to,  side 
by  side,  book  in  hand,  traversing  the 
thinly -peopled  district  farther  each  time, 
it  entailed  a  prospect  of  erudition  whose 
future  vastness  the  boy  did  not  at  all 
relish.  But  there  was  a  certain  comfort 
in  the  change  from  in-door  tasks.  Then 
for  the  first  time  did  he  feel  the  delight 
of  passing  beyond  the  small  home- 
bounds.  New  out-door  sights  arose 
before  him.  Now  it  was  the  merrily- 
racing  Ether-burn,  that  wound  its  stony 
current  from  the  great  farmstead,  past  the 
village  of  huge  cornstacks  and  the  vast 
hayricks,  before  the  humble  wheel- 
wright's shed  and  the  winking,  clang- 
ing smithy,  under  the  simple  kail-yards 
of  the  hinds'  cottages — a  feudal  hamlet, 
where  the  gathered  fruits  of  the  soil  and 
the  stalls  of  beasts  overshadowed  the 
human  signs.  Now,  it  was  the  desolate 
traces  of  former  peasant  dwellings  and 
yeoman  farms,  upon  the  lonely  width  of 
field  which  they  had  once  peopled  closer, 
and  fenced  with  cheerier  divisions.  Out 


374 


Kyloe-Jocli  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


of  doors  his  father's  leisure  was  ampler, 
so  alsd  more  patient ;  and,  as  they 
walked,  it  was  not  forbidden  to  see  these 
things-  Nay,  at  moments,  it  seemed 
wellnigh  forgotten  that  he  was  a  boy. 
•Even  the  verge  of  a  dread  confidence 
seemed  then  at  hand,  into  which  his 
fether  would  have  taken  him  forth- 
with— but  looked  on  him  and  remem- 
bered, -so  that  they  both  shrank  into 
themselves  again,  with  Latin  words  and 
English  meanings  safe  between;  of  which 
Hugh  was  then  truly  glad.  He  could 
not  tell  whether  it  was  possible  to  sus- 
tain such  communion  for  a  moment,  so 
immense  and  incomprehensible  appeared 
the  opening  favour. 

Often,  in  these  walks  with  his  father, 
did  Hugh  silently  wonder  whether  at 
last  he  should  actually  see  that  strange 
place,  Wanton-  Walls,  known  to  be  within 
the  bounds  of  Kirkhill  parish,  but  fami- 
liar to  him  yet  only  as  a  name  of  mys- 
terious fascination.  Sometimes  in  their 
longer  expeditions  they  must  have  been 
in  sight  of  it,  on  the  upper  farm-land  of 
the  hills ;  yet  he  never  dared  to  ask  which 
it  was  of  the  distant  places  in  view.  A 
farm  near  a  ruined  tower  he  knew  it  to 
be.  But  there  were  several  such  in 
that  far-stretched  parish  of  the  old  wild 
Border-Country.  At  length,  indeed,  their 
course  was  actually  to  one  upland  farm- 
stead,- where  a  roofless  stronghold  of 
forgotten  moss-troopers  hung  shattered 
over  a  brook.  Not  far  away  was  the 
usual  row  of  thatch  that  covered  the 
hinds  ,and  bondagers  of  the  place.  These 
Mr.  Rowland  visited,  as  he  had  designed ; 
and,  when  the  visit  was  over,  Hugh  turned 
to  move  homeward  again.  But  his  father 
took  the  path  leading  by  the  farmer's 
house,  where  he  paid  his  visit  also,  a 
little  way  further  from  the  tower ;  and 
left  Hugh  wondering  silently  outside. 
For  Hugh  himself  had  rather  preferred 
to  view  the  tower,  and  think  if  it  could 
be  indeed  that  very  Wanton- Walls,  so  ' 
deeply  curious  in  its  interest  to  him. 
Then,  while  he  yet  looked,  his  father 
returned  to  him,  smiling,  from  the  far- 
mer's hospitable  conveyance,  and  the 
boy's  surprise  involuntarily  broke  out 
aloud,  "  Was  it  not  Wanton- Walls  ? " 


Indeed,  it  could  not  be — since,  in  the 
farmer's  beaming  visage  and  bald  head, 
he  had  beheld  those  of  a  well-known 
elder,  weekly  seen  at  church  in  his  right 
place. 

A  strange  aspect  did  Mr.  Rowland 
bend  on  his  boy  for  an  instant,  at  that 
betrayal  of  circuitous  inquisitiveness. 
"Was  there,  then,"  he  asked,  in  turn, 
— while  he  bent  a  severe  regard  upon 
his  companion — "any  special  cause  to 
be  curious  about  Wanton- Walls,  or  any 
particular  mark  to  know  it  by  ]  For 
one,  too,  who  had  not  heard  the  subject 
mentioned  with  his  parents'  knowledge, 
still  less  with  their  approval  ?" 

Here  might  it  have  been  possible  for 
Hugh  to  have  avenged  himself  on  Nurse 
Kirsty,  despite  her  pious  air.  She  alone 
had  known,  and  told  him,  that  the  minis- 
ter never  visited  at  the  rich  farm-house  of 
Wanton- Walls,  though  he  did  not  neglect 
its  humble  hinds ;  and  that  Mr.  Murray, 
the  farmer  there,  was  no  venerable  cha- 
racter, no  hospitable  parishioner  :  though 
as  to  the  ground  of  quarrel,  if  she 
indeed  knew  its  true  occasion,  she  had 
confined  her  story  to  mystic  looks  and 
wise  shakings  of  the  head.  Nevertheless 
it  would  have  been  too  much  for  the 
boy  thus  to  drag  down  the  pillars  for 
their  joint  ruin,  his  own  and  Kirsty's. 
He  hid  the  truth,  while  his  eye  sank 
and  his  cheek  burned ;  his  reply  steadily 
deceiving  the  superior  glance,  that  tried 
him  less  in  suspicion,  perhaps,  than  in 
dissatisfaction  at  the  want  of  filial  trust. 
Mr.  Rowland  turned  away  reassured  in 
his  own  singlemindedness,  and  if  there 
was  any  sternly- wistful  light  in  his  firm 
eye,  as  he  gazed  far  forward  over  the 
solitary  hills,  it  was  not  then  known. 

Again,  one  day  of  latest  autumn,  they 
took  their  path  in  quite  another  direc- 
tion over  the  hills,  still  holding  peripa- 
tetic school,  on  the  way  to  fulfil  some 
ordinary  charge  of  the  clerical  office, 
ecclesiastical  or  pastoral.  A  spectacle  to 
ploughing  rustics,  they  passed  up  toge- 
ther to  the  curious  niche  that  glimmered 
in  the  sombre  wall  of  high-hung  fir- 
wood,  so  long  a  mystery  in  the  distance, 
out  of  which  dropped  from  time  to  time 
all  sorts  of  transient  and  separate  figures 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


375 


upon  the  lonely  cart-road  leading  from  it. 
They  found  it  now  no  cavern  of  robbers, 
indeed,  nor  back-postern  of  a  dark  for- 
tress, nor  mine  below  a  strange  city  of 
spired  and  pinnacled  and  fretted  gloom  ; 
but  only  the  entrance  that  let  them  in 
through  the  plantation,  itself  mysterious, 
towards  a  clearer  road,  like  the  highway 

.  of  the  world.  They  were  passing  amidst 
the  ever-clothed  barrier  of  serried  pines, 
shaggy  and  sharply-tipped  and  bronze- 

-  coloured,  along  whose  skirt  the  fires  of 
gipsies  had  twinkled,  down  from  which 
the  fox.  had  come,  and  where  the  black 
kyloes,  wandering  through,  had  at  times 
clustered  their  huge  white  horns,  before 
they  fled  back  again  at  some  mightier 
terror  than  they  themselves  aroused. 
There  the  chill  air  now  struck  less 
shrewdly  than  elsewhere-^-sifted  into 
stillness  behind,  through  the  bearded 
caves  that  now  seemed  magically  ever- 
green, hung  with  fruits  of  all  seasons, 
from  purple  buds  to  a  ripeness  like  the 
carved  peg-top  or  the  foreign  shell  of 
the  sea-urchin.  Within  was  a  pillared 
shade,  stretching  endless  to  either  hand, 
where  birds  were  still  happy  above,  and 
where,  below,  over  the  countless  fallen 
.cones,  among  unfathomable  softness  of 
the  down-dropt  spines,  amphibious 
creatures  vanished  to  remote  silence 
through  the  stalks  and  sprays  of  the 
wan  grasses,  that  shot  high  toward  pen- 
dent tendrils  of  whitest  moss,  while 
uncouth  funguses  bloomed  round  like 
flowers.  Much  better  to  behold  all  this 
than  to  listen  to  Nurse  Kirsty's  vain 
attempts  to  wile  or  frighten  by  fables 
not  half  so  wonderful — even  although 
his  father  did  not  stop  their  task 
for  it,  except  to  open  a  cattle-gate,  or 
let  him  mount  the  rude  stile  upon  their 
way.  Mr.  Rowland  had  still  in  his 
hand  the  same  familiar  list  of  voca- 
bles, nouns  substantive  and  adjective, 
relating  to  the  commonest  objects  around, 
or  often  met  with,  which  Hugh  had  been 
learning,  for  months  before.  The  early 
colloquies  of  Corderius,  sustained  by 
boys  of  tranquil  Latin  mind  and  Latin 
habits,  had  for  a  time  betrayed  him  into 
abstruser  knowledge  ;  and  that  day  was 
but  one  of  steady  revisal,  securing  the 


previous  ground,  repairing  the  decayed 
steps^as  was  that  clear-minded  teacher's 
wont,  before  he  rose  to  the  stage  of 
some  new  enterprise.  Hence  the  very 
keenness  of  the  upper  atmosphere  had 
exhilaration  in  its  breath  for  both  ;  as, 
.without  a  disturbing  censure,  they 
reached  the  shepherd's  cottage,  where 
other  matters  came  in  view ;  coming 
round  also,  on  their -homeward  circuit, 
by  the  hedger  and  ditcher's,  whose 
child  Avas  ill.  -  Above  them,  as  they 
turned  from  thence,  bulged  far  and 
wide  the  upper  hilly  region ;  fenceless, 
grey,  and  mottled  with  dark  furze,  that 
swelled  over  in  unknown  wastes— whe- 
ther to  a  wilderness  beyond  endurance, 
or  to  yet  unconceived  prospects  of  the 
great,  peopled  world,  whose  chiefest  road 
had  seemed  of  late  to  tend  that  way. 
Yea,  this  same'  road  was  now  palpably 
discovered  to  wind  round  the  fir-plan- 
tation ;  to  be  a  puzzle  no  longer,  but 
to  go  on,  a  rutted  cart-road  still ;  and 
there  only  leave,  the  eye  behind  it, 
because  it  narrowed  in  long  perspective, 
steadily  regardless  of  those  upland  soli- 
tudes. To  complete  the  disenchantment, 
there,  on  his  slow  homeward  circuit 
before  them,  was  their  own  man  An- 
drew on  the  cart,  with  the  old  grey 
mare,  Beauty,  sleepily  nodding  on  the 
coals  and  market  things  he  had  fetched 
so  far-H— having  risen  ere.  daybreak,  as 
usual,  to  go  to  his  boasted  Abbey-town 
of  Milsom,  that  source  of  marvel ;  which, 
for  all. he  ever  told  at  the  kitchen  fire, 
might  have  been  a  thousand  miles  away. 
Once  for  all  detected  at  broad  noon  so 
stupidly  returning,  Andrew  would  not 
be  able  to  make  such  a  mystery  of  his 
journeys  to  Milsom  after  this.  Hugh, 
crossing  down  the  wood  again  with  his 
father,  would  be  home  before  him  ;  and, 
by  the  time  Andrew  should  issue  from 
the  stable,  ready  to  shake  his  head 
wisely,  with  all  his  other  dignities  in 
mind,  of  bellman,  bethral,  sexton,  and 
church-officer,  officer  to  the  kirk-session 
also — in  one  word,  the  Minister's  Man 
— would  not  Hugh  in  private  be  able 
to  nod  wisely  to  Andrew  in  turn"? 

Speedily,  therefore,  they  would  have 
retraced  their  way  through  the  fir-planta- 


376 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


tions,  losing  sight  of  road  or  hills,  but 
for  Hugh's  father,  who  had  not  noticed 
Andrew.  It  was  the  upper  pasture  that 
drew  notice  from  Mr.  Rowland  as  they 
crossed  its  edge  again.  This  time  he 
seemed  to  look  on  the  scene  with  an 
amount  of  interest  which  he  had  not 
shown  before,  whether  at  the  wild  cry 
of  the  peewit  flitting  round,  or  the 
savage  aspects  of  those  wandering  cattle 
— those  long-horned  kyloes  from  some 
mountain  land  of  the  fabled  north, 
soot-black,  or  dun,  or  livid — which  at 
this  season  made  irruption  there.  Raising 
their  shaggy  fronts,  these  creatures  still 
glared,  as  before,  without  fear  at  the 
intruders ;  they  even  trooped  upward 
undaunted  from  the  sheep-track  and  the 
farm-land,  at  the  bidding  of  some  higher 
power.  The  sight  of  them  still  stirred  in 
Hugh  a  thrill  of  the  boyish  tremor  felt 
at  passing  them  the  first  time.  This 
dread  would  have  been  even  yet  a 
panic  flight,  if  the  return  had  been  alone ; 
if  it  had  been  free  from  the  same  unques- 
tionable paternal  control,  close  at  hand. 
And  this  time  there  rose  a  further  need 
of  the  authoritative  influence,  for  there 
were  other  objects  in  view  than  the 
Tcyloes.  Shaggier  than  the  kyloes  them- 
selves, an  uncouth  grizzled  dog  ran 
silently  below,  and  warned  the  savage 
cattle  as  they  trooped ;  above,  there  stood 
to  view  the  kyloe-herd  in  his  own 
person,  uncouther,  shaggier  than  them 
all,  in  his  flying  shepherd-mawd,  with 
his  bare  head,  and  in  his  hand  his 
red-knobbed  bonnet  waving  backward, 
as  he  looked  and  whooped  to  some  other 
place  to  which  his  whole  attention 
seemed  to  be  directed.  Still  he  came 
leaping  down  with  his  eye  eager  upon 
the  distance,  without  sight  of  Mr.  Row- 
land, without  apparent  heed  to  his 
own  retreating  droves  of  kyloes.  At 
the  sudden  sight  of  Mr.  Rowland, 
indeed,  he  stopped  like  one  transfixed, 
and  hung  his  head,  and  gaped,  yet  made 
rude  efforts  at  respect :  while  Mr.  Row- 
land spoke  to  him,  stooping  to  him  gra- 
ciously, and  using  softened  tones  and 
kind  relaxings  of  his  mien  and  glance, 
which  struck  Hugh  as  something 
strange.  Was  such  softness  in  his 


father's  manner  reserved  for  stran- 
gers ?  Not  even  at  church  had  Hugh 
seen  this  stranger  before,  that  he  re- 
membered of — more  like  a  great,  large 
boy  than  man  or  lad ;  of  speech  so 
oddly  broad,  in  the  forbidden  native 
tongue,  that  it  made  one  tremble  to  be 
thought  to  understand  it,  and  even 
Latin  seemed  scarce  so  different  from 
the  proper  language  required  before  the 
minister.  Nor  did  he  seem  to  have  the 
power  of  hiding,  if  he  tried,  some  side- 
long looks  and  leers  of  satisfaction,  whe- 
ther meant  for  the  grave  Speaker  before 
him,  or  for  the  youthful  hearer's  solemn 
eye  beyond.  Yet  was  the  kyloe-herd  asked 
about  his  health,  and  when  the  kyloe 
season  would  end,  that  he  might  go  to 
school  again,  and  come  again  to  the 
church  on  Sabbaths :  after  which  a  penny 
was  given  him,  and  his  shoulder  also 
was  patted  kindly,  ere  they  departed  on 
their  way  !  And  he  had  been  familiarly 
called  "  John  :"  appearing  still  to  leave 
matter  for  silent  thought  in  the  mind 
of  Mr.  Rowland !  Still,  as  Hugh  noted, 
his  father  had  not  asked  of  this  John 
at  all,  why  he  had  whooped  and  waved 
to  some  distant  place,  or  gazed  towards 
it  so  eagerly ;  even  as  now,  again,  when 
released  from  his  brief  interview  with 
Mr.  Rowland,  he  ran  up  and  jumped  on 
tiptoe,  to  see  and  listen,  straining  eye 
and  ear  in  the  same  direction,  and  heed- 
less of  his  up  ward- tending  kyloes. 

All  was  yet  apparently  still  through 
the  keen  autumn  air  above,  and  in  the 
recesses  of  the  firwood  near  them,  when 
Mr.  Rowland  broke  his  reverie  to  re- 
mount the  stile,  resuming  the  Latin 
lesson  ere  they  re-entered.  The  shadow 
on  his  brow  had  not  been  preceptorial 
this  time,  at  all  events.  In  truth,  their 
mutual  progress  had  all  day  been  un- 
usually successful  Without  openly 
commending,  he  said  that,  if  such  pro- 
gress lasted,  and  Hugh  were  diligent, 
in  a  week  or  two  they  might  begin  Cor- 
nelius Nepos.  He  was  so  speaking  still — 
so  taking  it  for  granted  that  the  prospect 
was  a  luxury  for  both — when  a  .sound 
came  clearly  to  the  ears  of  both,  that  had 
once  or  twice  been  more  faintly  audible 
to  the  one  of  them ;  as  if  stirring  the  dis- 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


377 


tance  but  in  fancy,  or  only  made  at  hand 
by  some  late  wild-bee  as  it  boomed  up- 
ward, or  some  last  survivor  of  the  trum- 
peting gnats  that  might  linger  in  the 
fragrant  closeness  of  the  fir-boughs.  It 
was  really,  however,  the  huntsman's  well- 
known  horn,  not  seldom  heard  toward 
winter  along  the  uplands  of  Kirkhill, 
when  the  fox  was  sought  from  Meller- 
stain,  or  driven  to  the  Gordon  moors. 
And  in  a  minute  after,  far  uphill,  the 
fox  himself  shot  out  across  a  slope : 
while  the  cry  of  hounds  was  broken  to 
querulous  discord  close  by,  in  the  deep 
plantation.  But  suddenly  it  streamed 
out  with  a  fierce  music  over  the  nearest 
dyke,  as  they  broke  away  in  hot  chase 
with  one  moment's  piebald  flash  upon 
the  moor  into  the  clouds,  many  a  scarlet- 
coated  rider  bursting  forth  to  join  their 
course,  and  whoop  and  hollo  and  gesture 
blending,  as  they  vanished  through  the 
wind.  Then  for  an  instant  had  the  boy's 
eye  sparkled,  all  his  veins  tingling  to 
run  after  and  see  farther,  like  that  kyloe- 
herd.  Close  beside  him,  however,  was 
that  other  eye — his  father's — which 
had  already  uttered  meanings  under- 
stood too  well.  For,  by  its  standard, 
no  wrong  to  any  inarticulate  creature 
was  venial ;  and  once,  when  an  earth- 
worm had  been  wantonly  cut  through 
with  a  toy  spade,  before  his  study- 
window,  he  had  chanced  to  observe 
it,  and,  raising  the  window  awfully, 
had  called  the  offender  thither  in  the 
act,  that  one  of  the  guilty  fingers  might 
there  be  cut,  to  feel  and  understand  its 
sin — a  penalty  only  relaxed  on  solemn 
promise  of  kindness  for  the  future  to 
everything  alive,  because  the  same  Power 
had  made  and  was  supporting  both  them 
and  the  culprit.  Now  he  spoke,  though 
but  a  word  or  two,  of  the  inhumanity  in 
men,  of  the  terror  and  pain  in  beasts ; 
and  would  doubtless  have  left  the  sub- 
ject willingly  for  their  previous  business, 
had  not  the  very  next  occurrence  kept 
it  obvious  before  him.  From  the  other 
side  of  the  wood  came  hastening  up  two 
riders  of  the  troop  ;  from  the  foremost  of 
whom,  ere  the  trees  disclosed  them,  there 
broke  a  loud  imprecation  while  they 
looked  about  in  their  uncertainty.  Then, 
JSTo.  11. — VOL.  ri. 


seeing  Mr.  Rowland  all  at  once,  the 
speaker  reined  back  his  horse  upon  its 
haunches;  his  hand  was  lifted  toward 
his  hunting-cap,  and  he  muttered  a  con- 
fused greeting — his  health- flushed  visage 
colouring  higher  yet,  and  taking  a  sullen 
aspect,  like  some  chidden  boy,  ere  with 
an  awkward  laugh  he  collected  himself, 
praised  the  weather,  and  asked,  as  his 
companion  only  wiped  his  moist  brows, 
what  way  the  hounds  had  gone.  Mean- 
time, with  a  surprise  equal  to  his,  and 
flushing  deeper  than  he,  Mr.  Rowland 
had  drawn  himself  erect  to  all  the 
dignity  of  his  stature ;  then,  at  that 
question,  looking  strangely  on  the  ques- 
tioner, with  an  effort  at  stern  self-control 
that  no  visible  circumstances  demanded, 
he  might  have  been  thought  to  tremble 
and  grow  pale. 

"It  would  not  become  me  or  my 
business,  Mr.  Murray,"  he  said,  "  to 
direct  you  in  such  matters.  But  it  may 
be,"  he  added,  as  from  a  sudden  after- 
thought, his  voice  hoarse — at  the  same 
time  turning  away — "it  is  indeed  pro- 
bable, sir,  that  the  cattle-herd  yonder 
could  inform  you.  Yes,  I  recommend 
you  to  him.  See  !  Good  day."  And, 
pointing  backward,  he  strode  on,  almost 
rudely  indifferent  to  their  hurried  thanks 
as  they  spurred  away  toward  the  knolls 
and  dyke-tops :  where  that  leaping 
kyloe-keeper  again  found  various  posts 
of  vantage,  successively  to  see  or  hear  the 
upland  chase.  In  utter  silence  did  the 
boy  hasten  behind  his  father,  unnoticed 
when  at  first  he  overtook  him.  Somewhat 
stern  was  the  abrupt  resumption  of  their 
task  for  the  brief  remainder  of  the  way 
home. 

It  was  only  to  Mrs.  Rowland,  when  after 
dinner  the  minister  lingered  a  little  on  his 
way  to  the  study,  that  he  calmly  men- 
tioned his  having  spoken  that  day,  for 
the  first  time  in  several  years,  to  one  of 
his  parishioners  who  had  long  ceased  to 
be  a  hearer.  She  knew,  of  course,  about 
the  tenant  of  Wanton- Walls  and  his 
repute.  Ever  since  that  sermon  which 
offended  him,  as  well  it  should,  his 
church-coming  had  ceased.  He  was  but 
like  others  of  his  order  in  that  region 
of  great  lordly  farms  with  subject  hinds, 

c  c 


378 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


and  a  few  humbler  neighbours  almost 
equally  scorned.  Full-blown  and  pros- 
perous, often, — like  this  laird  of  distant 
Edenside,  and  owner  of  lands  elsewhere, 
— they  claimed  part  among  the  gentry 
without  their  better  tastes,  and  rode 
about  boldly,  like  Colonel  Monilaws  or 
Maviswood  of  Maviswood  himself,  ex- 
cept to  church  or  to  any  other  place  of 
benefit  Whart,  indeed,  did  they  leave 
behind  to  their  farm-grieves,  who  ma- 
naged their  thousand-acred  holdings,  of 
the  sordid  grossness  of  the  soil  that 
clung  to  them  ?  They  could  but  keep 
each  other  in  dull  countenance  ;  swollen 
and  red-faced  men,  too  of  ten  thus  hoary  in 
their  indifference,  belonging  now  to  the 
past  generation  ;  chiefly  revelling  apart 
in  their  own  appropriate  company,  with 
such  orgies  as  those  that  had  been 
rumoured  from  Wanton- Walls  since 
Mr.  Murray  ceased  to  go  to  church  at 
all  The  more  reckless  he,  perhaps,  at 
first,  on  that  very  account :  but  he  had 
at  no  time  been  regular,  as  Mrs.  Row- 
land could  well  remember,  from  the 
date  of  her  own  coming  to  Kirkhill. 
These  men  were  dying  out  now.  At 
Wanton-Walls,  if  ever  meeting  now-a- 
days,  their  mirth  must  be  comparatively 
tame,  blank,  and  secret,  so  little  was  it 
heard  of  lately.  Then  their  example 
had  no  danger  in  it  now.  The  humbler 
people,  always  seeming  to  have  held  it 
in  dread,  were  taught  its  horror;  and 
the  better  class  looked  down  with  con- 
tempt. For  how  jmt  had  been  that 
condemnation  launched  in  the  said  ser- 
mon— as  all  others  had  acknowledged, 
but  the  offender,  that  it  was  loudly  called 
for — against  vices  such  as  his  !  It  had 
been  couched  generally  ;  without  a  per- 
sonal inference,  on  any  other  individual's 
part,  from  the  text  that  had  chanced  to 
strike  him  so.  And  Mrs.  Rowland  was, 
indeed,  disposed  to  resent  the  course  he 
had  taken,  in  absenting  himself  from 
church  in  consequence  ;  because,  by  uni- 
versal admission,  as  she  rather  simply 
remarked,  Mr.  Rowland's  preaching  had 
greatly  improved  since  then;  nay,  there 
were  reasons  to,  think,  that  gifts  and 
labours,  too  little  appreciated  hitherto, 
would  ere  long  produce  their  due 


result!     The  loss  was  the  man's  own, 
truly! 

Her  husband  made  little  answer  at 
that  time,  .but  leant  his  head  forward 
on  his  hand,  with  an  elbow  on  the 
table ;  his  features  working  as  if  he 
took  some  blame  to  himself.  He  had 
been  at  that  time  offended  in  his  turn, 
not  condescending  to  go  and  visit 
Wanton- Walls  for  an  unwilling  hearer  : 
and  now  there  were  years  passed,  so  that 
it  was  more  difficult  to  go  than  before. 
He  rose  at  length,  looking  at  her  ab- 
stractedly, with  some  irrelevant  reply, 
and  went  to  study  his  weekly  sermon. 


CHAPTER  II. 

TOUCHING    CERTAIN   COINCIDENCES — ALSO 
THE   NEW    HORSE    "  RUTHERFORD." 

Now,  if  there  had  been  any  reason  as 
yet  for  piecing  together  various  circum- 
stances, or  if  the  different  members  of 
this  one  household  had  but  united  their 
separate  knowledge  in  a  single  thought, 
already  might  things  that  seemed  uncon- 
nected have  taken  an  intelligible  shape. 

Nurse  Kirsty,  brought  up  in  her 
youth  with  the  master's  own  family, 
could  tell,  perhaps,  better  than  even 
he,  of  the  beginnings  of  certain  matters 
which  occupied  his  thoughts.  To  her,  too, 
the  Man  Andrew  could  have  communi- 
cated divers  parochial  facts,  and  sundry 
records  of  that  court  yclept  the  Kirk- 
session  ;  which,  if  Hugh  had  now  men- 
tioned the  kyloe-herd  to  her,  or  spoken 
of  Murray  of  Wanton- Walls  at  the  fox- 
hunt, might  have  shed  a  light  for  her 
devout  reflection.  But  the  boy  was 
estranged  from  Kirsty,  with  a  feeling 
that  tended  to  hatred  at  times  ;  and  as 
for  Andrew,  his  unexpected  marriage 
had  just  then  removed  bim  from  her 
circle.  Not  only  was  he  removed  from 
the  evening  fireside  in  the  kitchen,  and 
from  the  stable-loft  where  he  shared  his 
bed  with  the  glebe  cow-boy ;  he  was  out 
of  Kirsty's  austere  good  graces  altogether, 
at  a  cottar's  hearth  of  his  own,  under 
the  same  thatch  with  the  few  hinds  of 
little  Kirkhill  Farm.  He  was  daily  at 


Kyloe-Joclc  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


379 


hand,  indeed;  his  business  lying  daily 
nearer  home,  each  day  that  told  more 
plainly  of  winter.  His  flail  was  loud  in 
the  barn,  his  pitchfork  rustling  in  byre 
and  stable  ;  and,  however  solid  those 
tufted  towers  of  corn  he  had  been  helped 
to  build,  if  he  now  fell  on  one  of  them, 
to  thresh  and  take  to  the  mill,  it  soon 
gave  way  before  his  unaided  might.  Once 
a  weel$  with  a  weapon  like  a  giant's 
sword,  he  stood  on  the  great  hay-rick 
that  had  seemed  to  mimic  the  church 
itself,  and  shore  one  gable  down  till  it 
was  liker  still.  For  the  small  red  church 
had  at  one  end  a  smaller  structure,  flat 
upon  the  top,  and  roofless,  called  the 
aisle;  and,  when  frosty  sunsets  came 
redder  each  night,  sometimes  they  would 
throw  a  ruddy  gleam  upon  the  stack- 
yard, with  that  implement  of  Andrew's 
glittering  silent  in  the  hay-rick,  although 
the  church  itself  was  then  left  pale 
and  peaceful  toward  the  leaden  clouds, 
skirted  by  bare  branches. 

In  himself,  Andrew  was  not  solemn 
on  every-days ;  nor  did  he  in  his  com- 
mon clothes  speak  severely;  nor  was  he 
to  the  young  mind  inseparably  associated 
with  the  bell-chain  and  pulpit-books, 
and  with  the  sessions  of  secret  discipline. 
And,  instead  of  Andrew's  growing  less 
indulgent  to  the  children,  as  he  left 
the  circle  of  Nurse  Kirsty  under  her 
incurred  displeasure,  he  was  now  even 
more  good-humoured  at  any  faults,  more 
easy  to  access  and  curiosity.  Very  readily 
had  he  explained  why  the  lad  with  the 
kyloes  had  seemed  a  stranger  to  Hugh  ; 
though  so  well  known,  and  belonging 
to  the  parish.  It  was  no  other  than  poor 
John  Scott,  to  whom  Andrew  himself 
was  as  an  official  guardian;  "the  bit 
orphan  lad,"  the  kind  of  natural,  as  they 
said — the  callant  that  was  on  the  parish ; 
a  decent  lad  enough,  though  his  honest 
calling  held  him  mostly  of  late  from  the 
kirk  or  school :  the  very  same  who  was 
known,  all  round  about,  by  the  name  of 
Kyloe- Jock.  So  much  Hugh  could  easily 
learn.  If  there  had  been  further  in- 
terest to  satisfy,  it  seemed  beyond  the 
informant's  own  remotest  guess  ;  for,  in 
the  man  Andrew,  whatever  might  be 
oracular  was  chiefly  silent. ' 


Curiosity  itself  could  have  needed  no 
information  respecting  the  Murrays  of 
Wanton- Walls;  had  that  house  possessed 
the  remotest  connexion  with  the  matter. 
If  Mr.  Eowland,  from  his  secluded  study, 
had  never  seen  Mr.  Murray  ride  by  the 
Manse  of  late  years,  on  the  quiet  road 
which  passed  behind ;  yet,  at  the  high 
nursery -window  looking  over  that  road, 
there  had  been  no  such  ignorance.  No 
question  could  have  existed  there  as  to 
his  riding  still  that  way,  when  occasion 
led :  like  any  other  of  the  passers-by ;  who 
were  all  so  few,  so  far  between,  and  so 
important,  that  every  one  had  been  as  a 
painted  frontispiece  or  quaint  initial  to 
some  ample  comment  or  plenteous  re- 
cital by  Nurse  Kirsty's  tongue.  Super- 
fluous now,  however,  her  readiest  flow 
of  prate  upon  many  things,  seen  for  one- 
self outside  ;  and  most  of  all  upon  this. 
She  could  not  have  told  Hugh,  in  her 
least  capricious  mood,  things  half  so 
entertaining  about  Wanton- Walls,  as 
would  rise  to  his  fancy  of  their  own  ac- 
cord, when  he  remembered  how  the  rest- 
less horses  had  been  flecked  with  foam, 
and  their  sinews  swollen,  their  wide 
nostrils  sending  out  blasts  of  breath,  so 
that  they  scarce  had  stayed  for  their 
masters,  except  to  know  the  track  of 
the  hunt  ;  and  how  those  crimson 
stains  were  in  the  scarlet  coats,  but 
were  less  odd  than  the  spots  that  had 
rushed  out  in  Mr.  Murray's  red  face,  as 
if  the  sight  of  Hugh's  father  had  cut  the 
man  somewhere,  like  that  unforgotten 
penknife.  Was  it  all  becaiise  of  the 
absence  from  church,  or  had  he  killed 
so  many  foxes  1  Why,  too,  was  there 
no  such  surprise  and  annoyance  on  the 
other  hunter's  face,  so  eager,  yet  so 
old  and  fat ;  with  its  white  hair,  and 
purple  pimples  on  the  nose ;  and  with 
a  laugh,  in  spite  of  those  bad  words 
that  had  been  said  ? 

But,  as  to  wondering  who  Mr.  Murray 
was,  that  would  have  been  strange  indeed 
at  the  Manse  of  Kirkhill,  close  as  it  was 
to  the  very  churchyard,  where  all  parish 
pedigrees  of  any  note  lay  open,  as  in 
books,  for  those  who  could  read.  There 
a  whole  family  of  Wanton- Walls,  be- 
fore or  coeval  with  Mr.  Murray,  were 
c  c  2 


380 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


among  the  nearest  neighbours  to  life. 
They  did  not  dwell  outside,  indeed,  in 
the  open  churchyard — that  summer  play- 
ground of  early  boyhood — where  the 
dandelions  and  buttercups  glowed  in  the 
grass,  and  merry  insects  buzzed,  and 
every  gravestone  was  familiar.  Their 
abode  was  even  in  a  house, — a  house 
that  was  shared,  with  hereditary  state 
apart,  between  the  Murrays  themselves 
and  a  select  few  besides.  As  Wanton- 
Walls  had  long  been  tenanted  by  the 
family  while  living,  so  did  their  final 
resting-place  when  dead  lie  within  the 
small  end-aisle  of  the  little  parish  church. 
Older  than  the  present  creed  was  Kirk- 
hill  Church;  older  also  than  the  time 
of  ploughs  and  harrows  was  Wanton  - 
Walls  :  at  which  farmstead  there  stood, 
close  by,  a  square  and  roofless  Border- 
tower;  while  here,  close  by,  was  the 
small  square  end-aisle,  an  inclosure  that 
never  had  been  roofed  at  all.  The  sun- 
light and  sky  still  looked  in  freely,  as 
from  the  first ;  though  the  very  moss- 
trooper of  old  had  gone  to  dust  in  it, 
and  the  particular  earth  that  was  here 
had  been  consecrated,  by  priestlier  hands 
than  Mr.  Eowland  claimed  to  use. 

Although,  in  early  boyhood,  Hugh 
could  not  have  climbed  the  aisle-wall  to 
look  in  like  the  sunlight  and  sky,  never- 
theless, in  days  less  subject  to  fear,  he  had 
found  a  new  pleasure  there.  Under  the 
broad  noon,  while  the  upper  farmhouse 
windows  were  in  sight  close  by,  he  had 
sometimes  stolen  to  the  old  sunlit  door, 
and  risen  on  tiptoe  from  some  gathered 
stones,  to  peep  curiously  through  the  key- 
hole. Within,  truly,  was  stillness  itself, 
that  yet  sent  forth  a  thrill  to  make  the 
heart  quiver.  No  ripple  of  the  summer 
wind  on  the  grass  outside  passed  in  to 
stir  the  tall  fibres  shooting  there  right 
upward,  a  living  hair ;  to  move  the  out- 
spread hands  of  hemlocks  that  bore  up 
their  seed  on  high ;  to  rustle  the  harm- 
less nettles,  or  shake  the  puff-ball  of  the 
dandelion  in  its  refuge.  But  it  was  not 
dark ;  nay,  a  companion  ray  of  light 
was  ever  peeping  in  with  the  looker 
through  the  keyhole  ;  and  this  went  in 
aslant  before  the  eye,  touching  part  into 
fairy  hues,  throwing  most  of  it  into  a 


green  obscurity,  making  the  rest  rather 
marvellous  than  doleful  Under  that 
built-up  arch  into  the  church-gable, 
where  the  ivy  clung,  one  sparrow  always 
made  her  inaccessible  nest ;  on  one 
corner  of  the  open  wall-cope,  a  single 
wallflower  always  seemed  to  thrive  and 
grow  golden  in  the  sky  :  and  if,  below, 
there  were  old  scattered  fragments  of 
things  unspeakable, — mouldered  pieces 
of  broken  deal,  odd  rusty  handles,  tar- 
nished metal  ornaments,  scarce  seen 
among  the  weeds ;  yet  midway  round — 
side  facing  side,  front  meeting  viewless 
front  more  strangely, — what  suspended 
variety  of  diverting  image-work  and 
lively  enigma !  The  alphabet,  made 
thus  important,  had  been  there ;  and 
spelling  had  then  grown  pleasant,  even 
to  the  self-consciousness  of  a  superior 
accuracy  in  the  observer  ;  while  inci- 
pient arithmetic  had  practised  itself  with 
zeal,  to  compute  those  striking  dates. 
There  had  been  implied  a  kind  of  ethics 
and  philosophy  :  they  were  so  good,  so 
exemplary  for  virtue,  so  sage,  resigned, 
tranquil,  and  often  pious,  those  records 
of  Wanton- Walls,  which  stood  for  whole 
generations  of  parents,  husbands,  wives, 
or  early-sainted  children.  And  they 
had  let  dimly  backward  into  history, 
by  that  ancient  remnant  of  one  heraldic 
tablet,  which  still  bore  the  armed  hand 
above  the  coat-of-arms — which  still,  with 
unobliterated  Border  wildness,  silently 
cried  the  knightly  war-cry,  "  A  moy, 
Ellyols."  Modern  allegory  and  poetry 
had  been  there,  if  but  in  embryo ; 
where  Time  held  his  scythe,  where 
cherubs  and  angels  were  rudely  carved, 
or  a  later  circlet  of  white  marble  was 
put  in,  to  show  a  mourner  by  an  urn, 
with  lines  of  polite  verse  beneath. 
There,  too,  the  preacher  had  uttered 
sermons  to  an  attentive  ear;  for  there 
were  texts  that  needed  long  peering  to 
decipher.  Even  there  a  teacher  had  pro- 
pounded Latin  lessons,  that  stirred  the 
wish  to  understand  them  ;  for  there  was 
"  Resurgam  "  and  "  Sic  itur  ad  astra  ;" 
and  one  stone  there  was,  only  half  seen 
from  the  keyhole,  which  began  its 
legend  with  "Memento/",  but  showed 
not  what  it  would  have  one  to  Eemem- 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


381 


her,  ere  it  passed  out  of  sight  too  near 
the  doorway. 

Thus  was  Wanton- Walls  so  familiar, 
though  as  yet  unseen ;  standing  as  it 
did  on  the  utmost  bounds  of  Kirkhill 
parish.  And  thus  was  old  Mr.  Murray, 
however  absent  from  church,  or  estranged 
from  the  minister,  nevertheless  the  well- 
known  single  representative  of  the  most 
intimately-acquainted  family  of  near 
neighbours.  On  that  very  account,  he 
gave  but  little  interest  to  boyhood,  and 
cost  it  no  concern.  Far  from  caring  to 
dwell  on  him  or  his  matters,  there  could 
have  been  nothing  from  which  Hugh  so 
pleasantly  relieved  himself  when  lesson- 
time  was  over.  Much  gladder  was  it 
then,  as  the  long  twilights  deepened  to 
early  nights,  to  skirt  off  around  the 
churchyard  and  reach  new  pleasures 
by  a  circuit.  Happier  the  hours  ever 
grew,  that  could  be  gained  by  stealth  in 
visiting  the  dear  old  farmhouse  kitchen, 
where  Mistress  Arnot  baked  or  spun, 
knitted  or  mended,  still  with  her  old 
foster-motherly  favour  about  her,  still 
homely  and  kind,  despite  her  Amazonian 
temper  and  her  thrifty  sharpness.  Yet 
rather  than  reach  it  some  minutes 
sooner,  by  the  stile  and  footpath,  so 
natural  once,  that  traversed  the  church- 
yard, Hugh  Kowland  would  have  stayed 
at  home  and  lost  the  whole.  It  was  late 
in  the  year;  the  nights  deepened;  it 
should  have  been  winter  ! 

No  great  sacrifice  of  sociality  was 
required,  for  all  that.  He  did  not 
need  to  lose  his  hidden  indulgence 
in  those  fireside  sports  of  Halloween 
that  make  the  dusk  seem  eerier  ; 
nor  to  give  up  hopes  of  witnessing 
the  rustic  masquerade  of  Hogmanay, 
when  guizards  would  come  rhyming 
in,  to  fight  or  die,  to  use  mystic  words, 
and  usher  the  New  Year  with  secular, 
profane,  and  superstitious  mumming 
for  pecuniary  dole.  Among  the  youth- 
ful neighbours  it  was  rumoured — un- 
known to  the  parochial  man-Andrew, 
still  more  deeply  unknown  to  the  mi- 
nister— that  of  all  the  suspected  guizards, 
or  Christmas  mummers  of  Kirkhill 
parish,  the  most  skilful  was  Kyloe-Jock. 
Whether  his  charge  upon  the  hill  were 


gone  for  the  winter,  or  left  there  un- 
tended,  Jock  would  doubtless  head  the 
band,  and  be  the  great  Alexander  or 
conquering  St.  George.  Soon,  indeed, 
after  the  frost  began,  when  the  farm- 
yard was  at  the  merriest  in  the  dusk 
of  a  Saturday  afternoon — because  then 
the  parish  school-children  joined  the 
game  at  Bogle-round-the-stacks  on  their 
way  past — there  would  be  seen  among 
them,  oftener  and  oftener,  grown  lad  as 
he  was,  with  his  old  tail-coat  and  his 
charge  of  kyloes,  and  his  dog — setting 
aside  his  serious  relation  to  the  Kirk- 
session  and  Andrew  the  bethral — Kyloe- 
Jock  in  person,  playing  like  the  very 
eagerest.  Among  the  eagerest  would 
have  been  Hugh  Eowland,  but  for  the 
whisper  of  so  imposing  a  visitor.  As 
it  was,  the  knowledge  of  so  important  a 
presence  as  that  of  Kyloe-Jock.  made 
Hugh  shy  and  awkward,  until  when 
the  infection  of  the  sport  caught  him. 
Then,  whirled  into  its  vortex  on  the 
sudden,  he  insensibly  forgot  his  awe; 
and,  once  or  twice,  darting  breathless 
through  the  giddy  labyrinth  from  some 
unknown  pursuer,  or  changed  by  a 
magic  touch  into  the  pursuer  himself,  he 
almost  dreaded  that  he  and  Jock  might 
come  immediately  into  contact.  Yet  on 
these  occasions  did  Jock  only  familiarize 
himself  to  the  sight  by  momentary 
glimpses,  with  a  swiftness  and  a  skill 
that  never  failed.  It  was  strange  that  a 
being  so  superior  should  condescend  to 
play  ! 

At  such  times  the  forbidden  touch  of 
vulgar  boys  did  encompass  Hugh,  with 
their  forbidden  voices  and  company — 
forbidden  by  his  father  because  they 
were  unknown :  the  touch,  too,  and 
the  voice,  and  the  company  of  their  own 
glebe  cowherd,  little  Will,  whicn  above 
all  were  forbidden  by  his  father,  be- 
cause known  very  well.  But  how  dif- 
ferent was  Kyloe-Jock,  whom  Hugh's 
father  both  knew  and  cared  for !  A 
herd,  indeed :  yet  on  how  mighty  a 
scale ;  wildly  superior,  invested  with 
the  greatness  of  the  hill,  ruler  of  un- 
tamed cattle  !  Nay,  there  was  no  danger 
of  his  companionship,  were  it  such  as 
could  be  disapproved  ;  and,  if  it  had  been 


382 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


possible  to  partake  it  in  reverential  de- 
ference for  a  moment,  one  must  have 
partaken  it  with  his  dog  too.  An  un- 
inviting beast  to  behold,  though  seeming 
wise  with  a  sagacity  beyond  nature,  it 
was  as  the  shadow  or  the  waiting  fami- 
liar spirit  of  Jock,  whose  plaid  it  sat 
upon,  or  between  whose  heels  it  jealously 
looked  up,  with  that  one  eye  which  was 
not  white  and  horny.  In  outer  aspect  like 
the  picture  of  Abyssinian  hysenas — one 
ear  torn  to  a  rag,  which  had  been  healed 
by  time — through  its  name  of  Bauldy 
it  repelled  the  more.  For  it  only  waited 
or  followed,  very  gravely,  while  its  master 
took  holiday ;  needing  no  play  itself, 
appearing  to  have  witnessed  such  things 
so  long  with  patience  that  it  could  have 
slept,  were  there  no  kyloes  on  the  hill. 
So  long  as  they  were  there,  in  truth, 
neither  Bauldy  nor  his  master  grew  dis- 
tincter  than  shadows — both  coming  and 
going  with  the  dusk.  It  was  even  said 
that  in  the  daytime  they  watched  by 
turns  all  night,  and  relieved  each  other, 
sharing  the  same  rude  bothy  of  furze 
and  fern  ;  while,  if  the  lad  had  ever  for- 
gotten his  wild  black  charge  too  long, 
the  dog  would  have  reminded  him  or 
returned  alone. 

Therefore  the  boy  Eowland  looked 
upon  them  the  while  as  halfseen  no- 
velties, requiring  no  mention  at  home, 
and  stole  back  thither  quietly  himself, 
through  the  early  dark,  across  the 
shades  from  the  windows,  ever  in 
time  for  due  assemblage  round  the  de- 
corous tea-table,  as  well  as  for  the  solemn 
privilege,  extended  to  him  now,  when 
the  nursery  was  safe  in  bed,  of  waiting 
up  to  join  the  early  household  prayers. 
There  the  faces  of  Andrew,  and  Nurse 
Kirsty,  and  the  other  servant,  joined  no 
less  solemnly.  Their  scrutiny  then,  at 
least,  was  not  perilous.  Perilous,  in- 
deed, would  one  scrutiny  have  been  : 
had  it  not  been  always  so  unsuspicious, 
though  so  severe,  in  its  single-minded 
prohibition  of  all  evil.  Such  was  the 
terror  for  Hugh  of  rousing  that  autho- 
rity into  wrath  that  the  very  gloom  of 
those  wintry  nights  in  the  churchyard 
would  have  been  trivial  by  comparison, 
if  there  had  been  need — as  there  was 


not,  save  in  an  after-dream  of  remorse — 
to  hurry  backward  through  it,  so  as  to 
be  within  doors  in  time.  Such  dreams 
there  were  that  season.  Once  they  took 
the  form  of  an  abhorred  fascination  to 
the  deserted  door  of  the  end-aisle  ;  which 
was  suddenly  flung  open,  and  with 
horror  did  it  seem  as  if  straightway  all 
the  Hurrays  were  bursting  forth,  to 
troop  mounted,  red-coated,  with  shout 
and  tally-ho,  to  the  hills  above.  But  a 
relief  of  yet  more  sudden  delight  came 
in  ;  for  instead  of  them  it  was  Kyloe- 
Jock  without  his  Bauldy,  though  in 
knightly  armour  and  a  moss-trooper's 
helmet,  riding  gloriously  on  a  headstone 
beside  Hugh,  as  Hugh  had  often  done 
alone.  Then  the  kyloe-herd  shouted 
angrily  in  his  ear  ;  and  the  shout  was  in 
Latin,  as  of  the  boys  in  Corclerius ;  and 
he  awoke  rejoicing  that  it  was  not  true. 

Thus  partly,  perhaps,  because  about 
that  time  the  old  grey  mare,  Beauty, 
proved  insufficient  for  the  cart-work 
and  winter  ploughing;  so  that  Andrew 
at  length  took  her  to  Thirlstane  Fair 
for  sale ;  with  money  enough  besides  to 
buy  another.  He  had  corue  home  suc- 
cessful with  a  younger  horse,  a  stout 
brown  nag ;  that  had  been  most  used, 
no  doubt,  to  saddle  and  light  harness, 
though  sober  enough  now  for  other 
work.  And  when  Andrew's  master, 
the  minister,  saw  it  in  the  stable,  he 
approved  on  the  whole ;  for,  as  Andrew 
said  gravely,  on  distant  visitations  and 
presbytery-days  it  was  equally  needful 
for  them  to  have  a  good  beast  for  their 
use,  light  of  pace  and  pleasant  to  the 
eye,  as  to  work  the  glebe  well  next 
spring— which  said  season  was  farther 
off  besides  than  the  dead  of  winter,  no\f 
at  hand,  with  its  leisure  for  public  duty, 
and  its  solemn  calls  that  might  not  be 
put  by. 

Surely  there  must  have  risen  in  An- 
drew's shrewd  eye,  behind  the  minis- 
ter's back,  a  curious  twinkle ;  knowing 
something  even  then,  as  he  must  have 
done,  of  the  new  horse's  previous 
ownership.  He  familiarly  caressed  it, 
and  called  it  "Rutherford"  by  name; 
which  to  the  children  was  a  proof  of  his 
knowledge.  For  the  rest,  he  had  made 


Priam  and  Hecuba.  383 

his  purchase  from  a  well-known  dealer,  been  used  as  a  hunter,  and  had  actually 
whose  final  closure  of  the  business  once  belonged  to  Mr.  Murray  of  Wanton- 
might  have  involved  some  social  re-  Walls.  It  was  a  precarious  and  delicate 
freshment,  making  Andrew  more  than  subject  as  yet,  at  Kirkhill  Manse,  to 
ordinarily  triumphant,  candid,  and  well  speak  of  that  person.  And  no  hint  of 
nigh  loquacious  on  the  subject.  Still,  this  could  have  pointed  those  coinci- 
if  he  knew  the  fact,  he  did  not  then  let  dences  of  dreams,  to  which  the  mere 
it  out,  by  the  faintest  allusion,  that  changings  of  horses  might  have  led. 
"Kutherford"  had  some  time  or  other  To  be  continued. 


PEIAM  AND  HECUBA. 
ILIAD.     BOOK  XXII. 

[The  scene  preceding  the  death  of  Hector  is,  perhaps,  the  most  pathetic  picture  in  the  whole 
range  of  poetry.  Achilles  has  defeated  the  Trojans  and  driven  them  into  the  city,  but  has 
been  prevented,  from  following  them  close  by  Apollo,  who,  in  the  shape  of  Agenor,  has 
lured  him  away  in  another  direction.] 

THUS,  flying  wild  like  deer,  to  their  city  hurried  the  Trojans  ; 
There  from  their  sweat  they  cool'd,  and  assuaged  the  rage  of  their  hot  thirst, 
Leaning  against  the  crest  of  the  wall ;  and  on  the  Achaians 
Nearer  came,  with  their  shoulders  join'd,  close  locking  their  bucklers. 
But  outside  to  remain,  his  malign  fate,  Hector  ensnared, 
There  in  front  of  the  Ilian  wall  and  the  Skai'an  portals. 
And  thus  then  to  Pelides  outspake  Phoebus  Apollo  : 

"  Why,  0  Peleus'  son,  in  rapid  pursuit  dost  thou  urge  me, — 
Me,  an  immortal,  a  mortal  thou  ? — nor,  blindly,  discernest 
That  I  deity  wear,  and  that  thy  anger  is  futile. 
Carest  thou  not  to  distress  thy  Trojan  foes,  who  have  fled  thee 
Into  the  city  safe,  while  thou  rushest  devious  hither, 
Seeking  me  to  kill  whose  life  is  appointed  immortal  1 " 

Him,  in  wrath  profound,  thus  addressed  swift-footed  Achilles  : 
"  111  with  rhe  hast  thou  dealt,  malignant  most  of  the  godheads, 
Luring  me  thus  from  the  wall ;  else,  sure  full  many  a  foeman 
Earth  had  bit  in  his  fall  ere  he  reacht  the  Ilian  ramparts. 
Now  from  me  thou  hast  snatcht  my  glory,  and  them  thou  hast  saved ; 
Small  is  the  cost  to  thee,  nor  hadst  thou  fear  of  requital. 
Swift  should  my  vengeance  be,  if  vengeance  on  thee  were  allow'd  me." 

Thus  spake  he,  and  in  ire  majestic  toward  the  City 
Bent  his  rapid  career,  like  some  victorious  racer 
When  to  the  goal  he  his  chariot  whirls,  swift  scouring  the  champain ; 
Agile  so  in  his  limbs  and  his  feet,  advanced  Achilles. 

Him  then  aged  Priam  saw,  first  marking  his  motion, 
Blazing  like  to  a  star  in  the  sky,  as  he  travers'd  the  champain — 
Like  the  autumnal  star,  that,  brightest  of  all  in  the  heaven, 
Shines  in  the  stillness  of  night  'mid  a  crowd  of  scantier  splendours, — 
Him  whom,  to  mark  him  forth,  they  call  the  Dog  of  Orion ; 
Brightest  of  all  the  stars  is  he,  but  his  sway  is  malignant ; 


384  Priam  and  Hecuba. 

Fever  he  brings  and  disease  to  the  dwellings  of  mortals  unhappy  : 

So  did  the  brazen  arms  of  Achilles  shine  as  he  moved. 

Then  did  the  old  man  wail,  and  smote  his  head  with  his  two  hands, 

Holding  his  arms  aloft ;  and  groan'd  with  pitiful  accent 

Uttering  pra/rs  to  his  son  :  but  he  in  front  of  the  portals 

Stood,  insatiate  longing  to  join  in  fight  with  Achilles. 

Him  the  old  man,  with  hands  stretcht  forth,  thus  piteous  urged  : 

"  Hector  !  my  son  beloved  !  wait  not  thus  alone,  I  implore  thee, 

That  dread  man's  approach,  lest  fate  precipitate  whelm  thee, 

Smit  by  Pelides'  might ;  for  alas  !  far  mightier  he  is. 

Creature  abhorred  and  feared !     0  were  he  to  the  Immortals 

Only  as  dear  as  to  me  !     Then  soon  would  the  dogs  and  the  vultures 

Tear  him,  stretcht  on  the  plain,  and  my  sore  breast  would  be  eased. 

Many  a  fair  son  now  do  I  mourn,  all  reft  and  bereaved, 

Slain  by  him,  or  sold  to  distant  isles  as  a  captive  ; 

And  e'en  now  there  are  two,  Lycaon  an'd  eke  Polydorus, 

Whom  I  cannot  discern  'mid  those  who  have  'scaped  to  the  city, 

My  dear  sons  and  sons  of  Leucothea,  fairest  of  women. 

But  if  they  live  in  the  Grecian  host  we  will  ransom  them,  surely, 

Paying  ransom  in  brass  and  in  gold,  for  of  such  we  have  treasure  ; 

And  great  store  of  these  gave  Altes  along  with  his  daughter  : 

But  if,  already  dead,  they  dwell  in  the  mansion  of  Hades, 

Great  is  the  grief  to  me  and  to  her,  their  mother  unhappy  ; 

But  on  the  rest  of  Troy  that  grief  will  lightlier  press  if 

Thou  too,  my  son,  fall  not,  smit  down  by  the  spear  of  Achilles. 

Nay  but,  0  son,  return  to  the  wall,  that  yet  thou  mayest  save  the 

Sons  and  daughters  of  Troy,  nor  feed  the  glory  and  pride  of 

Him,  Pelides,  and  so  may'st  escape  the  omen'd  disaster. 

Yea,  and  on  me  most  wretched  have  pity,  while  I  can  feel  it ; 

Me,  ill-fated,  whom  Zeus  severe  in  my  desolate  age  shall 

Dash  to  the  earth,  and  fill  the  measure  of  woe  he  has  sent  me, 

While  my  sons  he  has  slain  and  dragged  my  daughters  to  bondage, 

And  has  widoVd  the  wives,  and  seized  the  innocent  infants, 

And  has  dasht  on  the  stones  in  the  pitiless  fury  of  warfare, 

Naked  dragg'd  from  their  beds  by  the  ruthless  hands  of  the  Grecians. 

And  me  last,  the  ravenous  dogs  at  the  door  of  my  mansion 

Limb  from  limb  shall  tear,  when  some  foe  with  murderous  steel  shall, 

Stabbing  or  flinging  the  dart,  dislodge  my  soul  from  my  bosom, — 

Dogs  that  I  fed  in  my  house,  that  ate  the  crumbs  of  my  table, — 

"They  shall  lap  my  blood  and  wrangle  over  my  body, 

As  it  lies  at  the  door.     In  the  youth,  even  death  has  its  graces, 

When,  fresh  fallen  in  fight  and  markt  with  wounds  on  his  bosom, 

-On  the  field  he  lies  ;  then  all  is  beauty  and  glory. 

But  when  the  silver  beard  and  the  hoary  head  of  the  agM 

Dogs  obscene  devour,  as  it  lies  cast  forth  and  dishonour'd, 

That  is  the  last  of  woes  in  the  wretched  fortune  of  mortals." 

So  the  old  man  spoke,  and  his  silvery  locks  in  his  hands  full, 
Tore  from  his  head  ;  yet  still  unmoVd  was  the  spirit  of  Hector. 

And  on  the  other  side  his  mother  wept  and  lamented, 
Baring  her  bosom  and  showing  her  breasts  on  this  and  on  that  side, 
And  with  a  flood  of  tears  thus  in  winged  accents  besought  him  : 


New  Books  on  Sport  and  Natural  History. 


385 


"  Hector !  0  look  on  this,  my  child,  and  pity  thy  mother : 
Yea,  if  ever  from  these  Avhite  founts  I  nourisht  thy  childhood, 
Pity  me  now,  and  shun  to  meet  this  terrible  warrior 
Down  in  the  plain  :  remain  in  the  Avails,  nor  rashly  expose  thee, 
Wretched.     For  if  he  slay  thee,  ne'er  shall  thy  funeral  pallet 
Flow  with  the  tears  of  me,  the  tender  mother  who  bore  thee, 
Nor  of  thy  loving  wife  :  but  far  away  from  our  wailings 
There  at  the  Grecian  ships  shall  the  dogs  unclean  devour  thee." 

Thus  with  weeping  words  did  the  parents  plead  with  their  son,  and 
Earnestly  prayed ;  but  yet  not  so  was  Hector  persuaded, 
But  still  waited  the  mighty  Achilles  as  near  he  approached. 

w.  w. 


NEW  BOOKS   OF  SPOET  AND  NATUEAL  HISTOEY: 

FOE  SEPTEMBEE. 

BY     HENRY     KINGSLEY. 


A  GOSSIP 


ARE  any  of  our  readers  in  town  still  1 
Not  many,  we  hope,  this  droughty  Sep- 
tember day.  We  would  rather  wish 
that  they  may  be  scattered  to  the  four 
winds,  after  the  manner  of  Englishmen, 
to  meet  again  at  the  end  of  jolly  Octo- 
ber to  compare  notes  about  what  they 
have  seen  :  nay,  we  are  pretty  sure  that 
the  large  majority  are  away,  and  conse- 
quently we  have  visions  of  this  present 
Number,  in  its  elegant  puce-coloured 
wrapper,  being  read  in  all  sorts  of  queer 
places.  We  cannot  help  wondering 
what  its  own  brother,  the  May  Number, 
would  say  if  he  had  to  go  through  the 
experiences  of  this  one.  May  (lucky  . 
rogue  !)  was  in  town  at  the  very  height 
of  the  season.  He  lay  about  on  drawing- 
room  tables,  and  was  cut  with  the  most 
beautiful  paper-knives  ever  you  saw,  and 
altogether  Hved  a  rose-coloured  exist- 
ence. This  fellow  will  have  a  very 
different  time  of  it.  After  being  kicked 
about  through  country  post-offices  for  a 
day  or  so,  and  surreptitiously  read  on 
his  way  by  people  with  dirty  fingers, 
who  get  deep  into  "Tom  Brown,"  and 
are  driven  mad  by  finding  the  leaves 
tmeut  just  at  the  critical  place — after  all 
this,  I  say,  he  will  probably  have  his 
leaves  cut  with  a  fishing-rod  spike,  and 
be  dropped  into  the  bottom  of  a  ferry- 
boat to  take  his  chance. 

But   although  A  may  be   on   Loch 


Corrib,  B  on  Loch  Awe,  C  at  Tal-y-llyn, 
D  in  the  Njordenfels,  and  E  trying  to 
break  his  precious  neck,  and  those  of 
the  fathers  of  five  large  Swiss  families, 
by  scrambling  into  places  where  there  is 
nothing  worth  seeing  compared  to  what 
he  may  see  in  perfect  safety  from,  below; 
yet  still  I  think  there  are  some  few 
readers  left  to  go  on  parade.  We  still 
hear  of  marchings  out  from  head- 
quarters ;  the  theatres  are  open ;  we 
believe  some  few  of  the  clergy  are  left 
in  town,  and  are  preaching  to  respect- 
able and  attentive  congregations ;  in 
short,  there  must  be  a  few  thousand  or 
so  of  reading  people  in  town,  who  will 
be  pleased  to  get  a  taste  of  the  woods, 
fields,  and  mountains,  were  it  only  done 
by  deputy.  With  this  view,  therefore, 
we  have  three  or  four  books  to  introduce 
to  our  readers'  attention,  whose  authors 
we  can  recommend  as  trustworthy  guides 
on  this  aerial  expedition. 

We  begin  by  presenting  Mr.  Cornwall 
Simeon.1  Away  go  streets,  hot  pave- 
ments, crowds,  omnibuses,  and  dull 
care ;  we  take  his  hand,  and  are  off 
with  him  a-fishing.  Down  to  the  mile- 
long  meadows,  where  noble  old  Father 
Thames  pours  his  brimming  green  flood 
over  thundering  lashers;  where  the 

1  Stray  Notes  on  Fishing  and  Natural  His- 
tory. With  Illustrations.  By  Cornwall  Simeon. 
Macmillan  &  Co. 


386 


New  Books  on  Sport  and  Natural  History  ; 


lofty  downs  heave  up  above  stately 
groups  of  poplar,  elm,  and  willow ;  where 

"  On  either  side  the  river  lie 
Long  fields  of  barley  and  of  rye, 
That  clothe  the  wold  and  meet  the  sky, 
Down  by  towered  Camelot." 

Hither,  and  to  many  other  pleasant 
places,  both  on  salt  and  fresh  water,  you 
may  wander  with  him,  gathering  as  you 
go  both  pleasure  and  profit  from  the 
stores  of  an  acute  and  experienced 
observer. 

And  this  is  the  place  to  say  that  the 
book  before  us  possesses  in  an  eminent 
degree  an  excellence  which  is,  alas  !  but 
too  rarely  possessed  by  books  on  natural 
history.  I  mean  that  the  facts  are 
thoroughly  trustworthy.  We  have  here 
no  second  or  third-hand  evidence,  or 
any  of  that  reckless  want  of  correct 
observation  which  would  not  be  allowed 
for  an  instant  in  any  science  but  natural 
history,  but  which  (in  spite  of  the 
example  Humboldt  has  given  us,  of 
trusting  almost  entirely  to  his  own 
observation,  and  receiving  with  great 
caution  the  facts  of  others)  prevails  to 
a  very  great  extent.  Some  men  seem 
to  think  that  if  they  have  got  the  evi- 
dence of  a  gamekeeper,  they  have  settled 
the  question.  "  Why,  good  gracious  ! " 
say  such  men,  "  surely  he  must  know ; 
a  man  who  has  spent  his  life  in  watch- 
ing animals ! "  A  gamekeeper  is  the 
worst  evidence  in  the  world.  He  walks 
the  world  with  a  jaundiced  mind.  He 
has  one  idea — game,  game,  game.  The 
whole  world  is  in  conspiracy  against 
him,  from  the  young  fellow  who  meets 
his  sweetheart  in  the  wood,  whom  he 
accuses  of  poaching,  down  to  the  water- 
rat  that  he  accuses  of  eating  his  trout. 
He  is  an  invaluable  fellow,  and  one  who 
will  risk  life  and  limb  in  the  just  defence 
of  his  master's  game,  but  he  is  not  the 
man  to  go  to  for  facts  in  natural  history. 
His  evidence  and  that  of  all  other  un- 
educated persons  should  be  taken  with 
extreme  caution.  This  class  of  people  ha- 
bitually generalise  from  an  insufficient 
number  of  facts,  often  from  one  solitary 
fact,  often  from  a  merely  supposititious 
fact,  and,  once  having  erected  a  theory, 
will  cling  to  it  with  astonishing  obstinacy, 


and  are  no  longer  capable  of  viewing 
the  matter  under  observation  Avithout  a 
bias.  As  an  instance  —  the  elderly 
labourers  in  a  village  we  are  well  ac- 
quainted with  believe  that  a  trouble- 
some disease  to  which  cows  are  subject 
in  the  udder  proceeds  from  the  bite  of  a 
viper.  It  was  no  use  my  representing 
to  them  that  in  cases  of  cattle  and 
horses  being  bitten  by  snakes  (a  not  un- 
common accident  in  Australia),  they 
were  invariably  bitten  in  the  nose,  and 
that  the  disease  in  question  was  natural. 
Nothing  upset  their  theory  or  shook 
their  faith,  until  a  new  old  man  came  in 
and  attributed  the  whole  affair  to  the 
hedgehogs.  This  staggered  them.  They 
seemed  to  think  that  there  was  some 
degree  of  probability  in  this.  At  all 
events,  it  was  better  than  our  reckless 
and  subversive  theory  of  its  being  can- 
cer or  some  such  ailment.  Thereon, 
hearing  our  especial  favourites,  the 
hedgehogs  (we  wouldn't  like  to  trust 
the  rogues  too  near  pheasants'  eggs, 
mind  you),  so  grossly  libelled,  we  left 
them  in  disgust. 

The  first  two  or  three  chapters  of 
Mr.  Simeon's  book  ought  to  be  read  by 
all  anglers,  and,  what  is  more,  remem- 
bered. He  is  evidently  a  master  of  the 
craft,  and  writes  for  masters,  or  those 
who  aspire  to  be  so.  These  chapters 
consist  principally  of  fishing  "wrinkles," 
most  pleasantly  put  together,  and  inter- 
spersed with  amusing  anecdotes,  and 
might  be  read,  we  should  think,  even 
by  a  German,  who  is  not  usually  an 
appreciator  of  the  noble  art.  By-the-bye, 
what  odd  notions  that  intellectual  na- 
tion have  about  fishing  !  We  tried  once 
to  make  some  Germans  understand  what 
the  spike  on  our  fishing-rod  was  in- 
tended for,  by  repeatedly  sticking  it  in 
the  ground,  and  illustrating  what  an 
advantage  it  was  to  have  one's  rod 
stand  upright  instead  of  laying  it  down ; 
but  they  left  us  under  the  full  impres- 
sion that,  in  case  of  the  fish  making  off 
with  a  fly,  we  used  the  spike  as  a  har- 
poon, and  bodily  hurled  our  rod,  tackle 
and  all,  at  the  retreating  "  trout."  The 
other  day,  in  the  "Fliegende  Blatter," 
or  "  Kladderblatsch,"  we  forget  which, 


A  Gossip  for  September. 


387 


there  was  a  series  of  cuts  illustrating  a 
rake's  progress.  The  young  man  has  a 
fortune  left  him.  He  takes  to  evil 
courses.  He  goes  down  the  course  of 
ruin  and  dissipation,  lower  and  lower 
each  time,  through  twenty-one  capitally 
executed  vignettes.  In  the  twenty- 
second  he  is  represented  as  a  desperate, 
ruined,  drunken  gambler.  In  the 
twenty-third  he  is  depicted  fishing  with 
a  float.  The  measure  of  his  crimes  is 
now  full.  It  is  time  to  draw  the  cur- 
tain over  the  humiliating  spectacle.  In 
the  twenty-fourth  and  last  he  dies 
miserably  in  jail. 

But  to  return  to  Mr.  Simeon.  His 
account  of  Mr.  Maltby's  fish-ponds  near 
Brussels,  and  the  method  of  breeding 
and  rearing  carp  and  tench  pursued  by 
that  gentleman,  are  exceedingly  valuable 
and  curious,  not  more  to  the  angler  or 
scientific  man  than  to  the  country  gentle- 
man or  farmer. 

Mr.  Maltby  is  our  Vice-Consul  at 
Brussels,  and  has  given  his  attention 
very  much  to  the  farming  of  fish-ponds. 
Out  of  a  pond  rented  by  him  near 
Brussels,  carp  of  no  less  than  thirty- 
three  pounds  have  been  taken.  The 
largest  carp  mentioned  by  Yarrell  is 
nineteen  pounds  ;  the  largest  which  has 
come  under  our  own  cognisance,  was 
caught  in  the  buck  stage  on  the  Loddon, 
at  Swallowfield,  Wiltshire,  which  turned 
the  scale  at  eighteen  pounds.  These  are 
of  a  very  exceptional  size  for  England  ; 
but  Mr.  Maltby,  in  the  February  of  last 
year,  took  from  his  ponds  twenty  carp, 
weighing  from  twenty  to  twenty-five 
pounds  each  !  We  must  not,  however, 
be  surprised  at  this.  England  is  not 
the  home  of  the  carp.  The  carp  is  a 
continental  fish,  and  in  his  own  waters 
may  be  expected  to  range  much  larger. 
These  extraordinary  large  fish  seem  to 
be  from  about  fifteen  to  twenty  years 
old. 

We  confess  we  have  never  partici- 
pated in  a  successful  effort  to  make  carp 
a  fit  article  for  human  consumption, 
having  always,  on  these  occasions,  been 
left  with  the  impression  of  having  eaten 
a  pumpkin-pie,  into  which  a  box  of 
mixed  pins  had  accidentally  fallen.  We 


would  prefer  "going  in"  for  the  perch 
and  tench  part  of  the  business — either 
of  which  fish,  properly  dressed,  is  a  dish 
for  a  king.  Before  leaving  the  subject 
of  fishing  we  must  call  attention  to  hints 
given  on  sea  fishing,  which,  though 
only  too  short,  were  very  much  wanted. 
There  is  plenty  of  room  for  a  good  long 
book  on  this  same  subject,  on  which,  as 
far  as  we  are  aware,  though  the  works 
and  brochures  on  freshwater  fishing 
would  take  a  summer's  day  to  count,  we 
have  not  a  single  reliable  treatise. 

The  second  part  of  the  book  before 
us  is  given  up  to  Stray  Notes  on  Natural 
History.  Here,  as  we  said  before,  we 
have  the  experience  of  a  close  and  con- 
scientious observer,  pleasantly  told,  with 
a  great  deal  of  humour.  To  those  who 
retain  the  capacity  of  unextinguishable 
laughter,  we  should  recommend  the 
story  of  the  Parrot  Show,  at  page  163  ; 
though  "  we  are  free  to  confess,"  as 
they  say  in  the  House,  and  nowhere 
else,  that  we  think  that  Mr.  Simeon's 
own  story,  at  page  162,  about  the  parrot 
who  was  naughty  at  prayers,  and  how 
he  was  carried  out  by  the  butler,  and 
what  he  said  when  he  was  going  out  at 
the  door,  is  perhaps  the  best  of  the  two. 

As  a  specimen  of  Mr.  Simeon's  way 
of  telling  his  anecdotes,  we  give  the 
following.  The  subject  is  that  of  "Wart 
Charming,"  a  rather  out-of-the-way 
one  : — 

"  I  myself  knew  an  instance  in  which  the 
cure  was  so  rapid  and  perfect,  that  any  doctor 
might  have  pointed  to  it  with  pride  as  a  con- 
vincing proof  of  the  efficacy  of  his  treatment. 
It  was  a  case  of  warts;  the  patient  being  a 
little  girl  of  about  seven  or  eight  years  old, 
the  daughter  of  a  servant  in  our  family.  She 
came  up  one  day  to  the  house  for  some  work, 
and,  when  the  lady  who  was  giving  it  to  her, 
remarking  that  her  hands  were  covered  with 
bad  warts,  noticed  the  fact  to  her,  she  said, 
'  Yes,  ma'am,  but  I'm  going  to  have  them 
charmed  away  in  a  day  or  two.'  '  Very  well," 
answered  the  lady,  glad  to  have  an  opportunity 
of  convincing  the  child  that  the  whole  thing 
was  a  delusion ;  '  when  they  are  charmed  away 
come  and  show  me  your  hands.'  But  about 
six  weeks  had  elapsed  after  this  had  taken 
place,  when  she  was  again  told  that  the  girl 
wished  to  see  her.  She  was  accordingly  shown 
up,  when  she  said,  '  If  you  please,  ma'am,  you 
told  me  to  come  and  show  you  my  hands  when 
the  warts  were  charmed  away,  and  you  see, 


388 


New  Books  on  Sport  and  Natural  History  ; 


ma'am,  they're  all  gone  now.'  This,  it  must 
be  confessed,  was  rather  a  '  sell '  for  the  lady ; 
however,  the  fact  being  undeniable,  all  she 
could  do  under  the  circumstances  was  to  say 
that  it  was  a  very  good  thing  she  had  got  rid 
of  them,  and  that  she  was  very  glad  of  it." 

And  so  we  take  leave  of  Mr.  Simeon, 
with  only  one  regret — that  his  charming 

book  is  not  longer. The  scene  changes; 

we  are  in  the  city  again.  The  "  dusty 
roar"  (which  we  claim  to  be  an  equally 
correct  expression  as  the  American  one 
of  "blue  thunder")  bursts  on  our  ears 
again.  Shall  we  take  another  excursion  1 
Very  well.  We  beg  to  introduce  you 
to  Mr.  Cliffe,1  who  we  can  promise  you 
will  take  you  a  very  pleasant  excursion 
indeed. 

Presto !  we  are  soon  on  the  ground. 
Here  is  a  change  indeed.  An  awful 
grey  wilderness  of  tumbled  stone,  and 
scanty  yellow  grass.  A  black  deep  lake, 
with  here  and  there  a  sullen  gleam  of 
light  across  its  surface,  where  some  flaw 
of  wind  strikes  down  a  cleft  in  the  black 
mountain,  which  hangs  all  around  a 
giant  curtain  against  the  sun.  Before 
us,  scarce  a  quarter  of  a  mile  off,  is 
a  perpendicular  cliff,  nine  hundred  feet 
high,  deep  in  whose  side  is  riven  a 
black  chasm,  from  which  a  slender  tor- 
rent of  water,  chafing  among  the  fallen 
boulders,  awakens  the  only  sound  in  this 
terrible  solitude,  and  makes  the  grim 
silence  around  the  more  perceptible. 

This  is  Llyn  Idwal,  in  Carnarvonshire, 
where  Prince  Idwal  was  pushed  into  the 
water  by  his  cruel  uncle — a  legend 
equalling  in  authenticity  that  of  the  more 
generally  received  and  accredited  one  of 
Willikins.  What  a  place  for  a  ghost ! 
Hush,  did  you  hear  that  ?  What  was 
that  wild  shriek  that  came  faintly  echo- 
ing back  from  the  cliff,  followed  by  a 
sound  like  distant  thunder  ?  Was  that 

"  Young  Idwal's  drowning  cry," 

as  spoken  of  by  the  poet  Gray,  in  "  the 
Bard  ? "  No,  my  dear  sir  ;  it  was  only 
the  Holyhead  express  going  through  the 
Britannia  tubular  bridge,  ten  miles  to 
the  north  there,  carrying  a  couple  of 

1  Clifife'g  Notes  and  Recollections  of  an 
Angler.  Hamilton,  Adams,  and  Co. 


hundred  people  on  at  racing  pace  towards 
that  mad,  prosperous,  warm-hearted 
oppressed  nationality  of  Paddyland, 
whose  faint  blue  mountains  you  may 
see  from  the  top  of  that  mountain  before 
us. 

You  will  be  kind  enough  to  take  off 
your  shoes,  and,  putting  them  in  your 
pocket,  follow  the  guide  up  over  the  cliff; 
and,  if  you  are  a  nervous  man,  keep  your 
eye  on  the  guide's  back,  feeling  every 
step  as  you  go,  and  not  looking  at  the 
ghastly  blue  lake  which  you  see  be- 
tween your  legs  five  hundred  feet 
below.  Having  at  the  risk  of  your  neck 
gathered  Rhodiola  rosea,  Mecanopsis 
Cambrica,  and — as  we  affirm,  though 
corrected  by  authorities — that  rare  little 
fern  Woodsia  hyperborea,  pull  on  your 
shoes  again,  and,  sloping  down  through 
Cwm  Fynnon,  come  into  the  great  road. 
Then,  casting  one  glance  down  the  rock 
walls  of  the  pass  of  Llanberis,  turn  along 
the  little  mine  road  at  Gorphwysfa, 
and  wind  along  through  the  mo  on  tain 
solitude,  till  wild  glorious  Llydaw 
spreads  his  broad  calm  sheet  of  green 
water  before  you,  and  the  Wydfa,  the 
highest  peak  of  Snowdon,  throws  up  his 
black  ribbed  peak  among  the  flying 
clouds. 

To  many  pleasant  places  will  Mr. 
Cliffe  take  you.  At  one  time  you  will 
stand  blinded  and  stunned  under  the 
falls  of  the  Llugwy,  or  Conway,  where 
the  green  water  comes  spouting  through 
a  thousand  arteries,  and  makes  the 
summer  leaves  quiver  with  the  shock. 
At  another,  on  lonely  Llyn  Adar, 
where  the  breeding  gulls  cackle  and 
bark  on  their  solitary  island  through 
the  long  summer  day.  Over  wastes  of 
tumbled  stone,  over  dizzy  precipices  by 
lonely  mountain  pools.  But  wherever 
you  go  with  him,  I  think  you  mil  find 
him  a  pleasant  intelligent  companion, 
with  a  very  good  power  of  describing 
scenery.  I  think,  as  he  says  on  his 
title-page,  that  he  has 

"  Llygad  a  all  weled  natur, 
Calon  a  all  deimlo  natur, 
A  phenderfyniad  a  feiddia 
Ddylyn  natur." 

Mr.  Cliffe  has  given  us  a  "crib"  to 


A  Gossip  for  September. 


389 


this  beautiful  verse.  We  shall  not 
follow  his  example,  being  of  opinion 
that  the  reckless  habit  of  allowing  literal 
translations  to  great  classical  works  has 
gone  far  to  ruin  all  real  scholarship 
amongst  us. 

But  we  must  say  good-bye  to  Mr. 
Cliffe  in  his  turn,  and  his  Welsh  scenery, 
for  we  have  to  go  further  afield  still. 
Sir  James  Alexander *  takes  \is  away  to 
Canada,  and  gives  us  a  large  book  on 
the  salmon  fishing  there — edited  by  Sir 
James,  but  apparently  written  by  an 
Irish  clergyman — which  contains  a  great 
deal  of  information  on  a  subject  but 
little  known.  It  has  often  surprised 
us  that  summer  fishing-expeditions  to 
Canada  were  not  oftener  made :  this 
book  appears  in  some  measure  to  account 
for  it.  The  difficulties  in  getting  at  the 
water  are  great;  the  hardships  under- 
gone are  very  severe ;  and  the  sport,  we 
suggest,  by  no  means  what  it  should  be, 
considering  the  expense  incurred. 

The  salmon  rivers  of  Lower  Canada 
all  flow  in  on  the  northern  shore  of  the 
St.  Lawrence,  at  points  extending  from 
Quebec  to  Labrador,  a  distance  of  500 
miles.  These  are  the  only  streams 
which  produce  salmon  in  any  quantity. 
Those  of  Upper  Canada  are,  like  those 
of  the  United  States,  utterly  ruined  by 
the  insane  stupidity  of  the  millers,  in 
not  leaving  steps  for  the  salmon,  and  by 
the  various  slaughterous  exterminating 
poaching  villanies  which  are  carried  on. 
Indeed,  salmon  appear  to  be  rarities  in 
Upper  Canada,  while  the  United  States 
are  supplied  from  Lower  Canada.  The 
rivers  we  speak  of  are  on  the  Hudson 
Bay  territory ;  and  it  is  the  opinion  of 
Dr.  Adamson,  in  his  able  paper  read  to 
the  Canadian  Institute,  that  if  the  pro- 
tection of  the-  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
were  withdrawn  for  one  year,  the  salmon 
would  be  extinct  in  Canada. 

The  plan  for  the  salmon  fisher  in 
Canada  is  as  follows  : — To  go  fishing  at 
all,  you  must  either  own  a  yacht  or  hire 
a  schooner.  A  schooner  may  be  hired 

1  Salmon  Fishing  in  Canada.  By  a  Resident. 
Edited  by  Colonel  Sir  James  E.  Alexander, 
K  H.  With  Illustrations.  Two  vols.  Long- 
man &  Co. 


from  one  of  the  brokers  in  Quebec  at 
the  cost  of  about  a  pound  a  day ;  which 
covers  the  wages  and  provisions  for  the 
crew,  the  owner  acting  as  skipper.  And, 
if  you  pursue  this  plan,  as  soon  as  you 
are  encamped  on  the  river  you  mean  to 
fish,  you  can  send  your  vessel  away  for 
fresh  provisions.  You  must  lay  in  a 
good  stock  of  provisions  to  start  with, 
an  awful  array  of  servants,  a  couple  or 
so  of  canoes,  tents,  beds,  blankets,  &c. ; 
and  when  you  have  got  all  these  things 
together,  have  beat  in  over  the  river  bar, 
have  disembarked  and  lit  your  fires, 
pitched  your  tents  and  had  your  supper, 
then,  if  you  are  human,  you  will  begin 
to  wish  you  had  died  in  infancy,  or  had 
stayed  safe  in  Quebec,  or  Jericho,  or 
anywhere  else,  instead  of  coming  after 
these  miserable  salmon.  For  the  torture 
of  the  flies  and  mosquitos  exceeds  human 
belief.  Next  to  the  Orinoco,  Canada 
bears  the  palm  against  the  world  for  the 
plague  of  flies.  Listen  to  this  : — 

"  The  voice  was  the  voice  of  our  friend,  but 
the  face  was  the  face  of  a  negro  in  convulsions. 
To  account  for  this,  it  may  be  well  to  state 
that  the  assault  of  the  black  fly  is  generally 
sudden  and  unexpected ;  that  the  first  indica- 
tion you  have  of  his  presence  is  the  running 
of  a  stream  of  blood  over  some  part  of  your 
face,  which  soon  hardens  there.  These  assaults 
being  renewed  ad  infinitum,  soon  render  it 
difficult  for  his  nearest  and  dearest  female 
relation  to  recognise  him.  The  effect  during 
the  night  following  an  attack  of  this  kind 
is  dreadful.  Every  bite  swells  to  the  size  of 
a  filbert ;  every  bite  itches  like  a  burn  and 
agonizes  like  a  scald — and  if  you  scratch  it 
only  adds  to  your  anguish.  The  whole  head 
swells,  particularly  the  glandular  and  cellular 
part,  behind  and  under  the  ears,  the  upper 
and  lower  eyelids,  so  as  in  many  tases  to  pro- 
duce inability  to  see.  The  poison  is  imbibed 
and  circulated  through  the  whole  frame,  pro- 
ducing fever,  thirst,  heat,  restlessness,  and 
despondency." 

Eeally  we  must  beg  leave  to  doubt 
whether  the  best  salmon-fishing  in  the 
world  is  worth  having  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, although  we  may  consider 
salmon-fishing  to  stand  first  among  all 
sports.  But,  with  regard  to  what  amount 
of  sport  one  may  expect,  we  give  an 
abstract  of  some  days'  fishing  in  the 
Godbout,  which  may  be  considered  as 
about  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  what  any 


390 


New  Books  on  Sport  and  Natural  History  ; 


reasonable  man  may  expect.  The  fishing 
on  the  Godbout  is  probably  greatly  de- 
teriorated since  the  time  we  speak  of, 
1853. 

"  7th  June,  2  rods,  nothing.     12th,  2  rods, 

2  fish  (5   days   blank,   you  perceive).     13th, 

3  rods,   2  fish.     14th,  3  rods,  3  fish.     15th, 
3  rods,   3  fish.     16th,  3  rods,  6  fish.     17th, 
2  rods,  5  fish.     18th,  2  rods,   3  fish.     19th, 
2  rods,   6  fish.     20th,   4  rods,  6  fish.     21st, 
21st,   2   rods,  2   fish.      22d,    4  rods,  4   fish. 
23d,  4  rods,  3  salmon,  and  a'  great  many  sea- 
trout.     24th,  2  rods  killed  13  salmon." 

No  more  account  of  specific  days' 
fishing  is  given,  but  it  is  stated  that 
the  party  remained  till  the  llth  July, 
"  killing  four,  six,  ten,  eleven,  and 
thirteen  fish  every  day."  We  purposely 
quote  the  exact  words  of  the  book,  be- 
cause for  seventeen  days  only  five  days 
seem  accounted  for.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  this  is  good  sport  enough  ;  but  this 
was  considered  exceptional  in  1853.  So, 
according  to  Dr.  Adamson,  the  salmon- 
fishing  in  Canada  should  be  in  a  poor 
way  now. 

The  book  before  us  has  considerable 
merits,  but  also  great  defects.  It  is 
too  excursive.  It  is  hard  to  pick  the 
wheat  (of  which  there  is  really  plenty) 
from  the  "  chaff,"  of  which  there  is  con- 
siderably too  much,  and  that  not  of  the 
best  quality.  One  thing  more  about  it 
is  remarkable, — the  great  power  the 
author  seems  to  have  of  writing  comic 
poetry.  The  lay  of  "  Sir  Joram  a 
Burton,"  at  page  34,  is  quite  worthy  of 
Barbara  himself  And  the  verses  on 
"  Navigation,"  at  page  212,  are  very  far 
above  the  average  of  that  sort  of  com- 
position. "VVe  cannot  conceal  from 
ourselves  that  the  Appendix,  by  Dr. 
Adamson,  Mr.  Henry,  and  Sir  James 
Alexander  himself,  contains  the  most 
valuable  information ;  but  the  book  itself 
is  very  readable,  and  there  is  also  con- 
siderable humour  to  be  found  in  the 
vignettes. 

One  more  excursion,  reader,  before 
we  part.  We  are  going  very  very  far 
a-field  this  time.  Mr.  Dunlop,1  C.B.  (of 

1  "  Hunting  in  the  Himalayas.  With  notices 
of  Customs  and  Countries,  from  the  Elephant 
Haunts  of  the  Dehra  Boon  to  the  Bunchowr 


whom,  unless  I  mistake,  we  heard  as  a 
volunteer  in  the  Indian  mutiny),  is  to 
be  our  guide.  Let  us  suppose  him  to 
possess  a  magic  carpet.  We  will  seat 
ourselves  on  it  along  with  him,  and  then 
up  and  away,  to  where  the  everlasting 
snow  lies  deep  over  pass  and  summit. 
Where  have  we  got  to  now  ]  To  the 
Alps?  The  Alps!  Mont  Blanc,  the 
monarch  of  mountains,  lies  an  insigni- 
ficant peak  3,000  feet  below  us.  And 
yet  overhead  the  grim  crystalline  Ai- 
guilles range  up  peak  over  peak  in  the 
deep  blue  firmament,  like  lofty  piled 
thunder-clouds  upon  a  summer's  even- 
ing. We  are  among  the  Ghats  of  the 
Himalaya ! 

And  what  is  Mr.  Dunlop  doing  up 
here,  in  the  name  of  goodness  1  Well, 
he  is  going  to  shoot  a  Bunchowr.  If 
you  are  not  above  asking  what  a  Bun- 
chowr is,  we  will  inform  you  that  a 
Bunchowr,  as  far  as  we  can  discover,  is 
the  grandfather  of  all  Buffalo  bulls, 
with  a  sheepskin  mat  nailed  on  his 
stern  instead  of  a  tail.  Add  to  this, 
that  he  is  desperately  shy,  and  horribly 
vicious,  and  that  he  has  to  be  hunted 
on  foot,  up  to  your  knees  in  snow,  and 
you  will  get  some  idea  of  what  Bun- 
chowr shooting  in  the  Himalayas  is 
like. 

Mr.  Dunlop  is  an  Indian  sportsman ; 
and  of  all  Indian  sportsmen  he  has 
written  the  pleasantest,  most  readable 
book.  Putting  Tennent's  "Ceylon"  out 
of  the  question,  we  have  met  no  book 
superior ;  a  bold  assertion,  but  one  we 
will  stand  by.  It  is,  like  all  good  books, 
too  short,  but  should  be  read  by  every 
man  who  cares  not  only  for  natural 
history,  but  for  the  little  queer  odds 
and  ends  of  society  and  manners  in 
that  furthest  limit  of  the  great  empire. 

He  begins  with  the  elephants.  He 
takes  us  along  the  great  boulder  preci- 
pices of  the  Sewalik  (the  debris,  we  pre- 
sume, of  the  great  mountains  above), 
and  shows  us  the  tracks  where  the  wild 
elephants  have  passed  through  the  jungle 
in  single  file  among  the  rank  grass  up 

Tracks  in  eternal  snow.  By  R.  H.  W.  Dunlop, 
C.B.,  B.C.S.,  F.R.G.S.,  late  Superintendent  of 
the  Dehra  Doon."  Bentley. 


A  Gossip  for  September. 


391 


to  some  lonely  gully,  and  then  have 
spread  out  to  feed,  ripping  the  boughs 
and  the  bark  from  the  trees,  in  herds 
sometimes  seventy  strong.  Then  he 
gives  us  his  experience  of  shooting  ele- 
phants, which,  in  the  Doon,  where  you 
have  to  go  after  them  on  foot,  appears 
very  ticklish  work  indeed.  The  best 
plan  seems  to  be,  to  get  as  near  your 
elephant  as  possible,  to  take  aim,  to 
shut  your  eyes  and  blaze  away,  and 
then,  as  a  Londoner  would  say,  to 
"  hook  it "  for  your  bare  life.  If  you 
are  so  fortunate  as  not  to  be  overtaken 
and  pounded  into  little  bits  by  the  in- 
furiated animal,  you  may,  after  a  con- 
siderable period,  venture  cautiously  to 
return,  and  pick  up  your  bird.  In 
confirmation  of  this,  Mr.  Dunlop  tells 
us  : — 

"  I  had  determined  to  go  down  the  most 
precipitous  bank  I  could  find,  if  my  shot  did 
not  prove  fatal,  and  started  back  directly  I 
had  'fired  to  where  my  Ghoorka  Shikaree  was 
standing,  within  thirty  paces  of  us.  A  tre- 
mendous crashing  of  trees  followed  the  sound 
of  my  gun,  and  I  isaught  sight  of  the  Brinjara, 
who  had  just  been  giving  me  such  valorous 
counsels,  flying  across  country  in  a  horrible 
fright." 

Decidedly  wise  on  the  part  of  the 
Brinjara ! 

"  As  I  was  unpursued,  I  returned,  and  saw 
the  elephant  lying  dead  a  little  way  down  the 
bank." 

A  commissariat  elephant  with  whom 
Mr.  Dunlop  was  acquainted,  took  it 
into  its  head  to  kill  an  old  woman  as 
she  was  filling  her  pitcher  at  the  water- 
course. Much  as  we  may  regret  the 
accident  to  the  poor  old  body,  we  must 
be  forgiven  in  roaring  with  laughter  at 
the  following  letter,  in  which  the  cir- 
cumstance was  reported  to  him  by  one 
of  his  native  writers,  who  prided  him- 
self on  the  correctness  of  his  English. 
He  gives  it  pure  et  simple. 

"  Honoured  Sir, 

"  This  morning  the  elephant  of  Major  R , 

by  sudden  motion  of  snout  and  foot,  kill  one 
old  woman.  Instant  fear  fall  on  the  inhabi- 
tants. 

"  Sir, 
"  Your  most  obedient  Servant, 

"MADAR  Bux." 


This  reminds  one,  in  its  absurd  pom- 
posity, of  the  story  told  by  the  talented 
authoress  of  "  Letters  from  Calcutta." 
She  was  jumping  her  new-born  baby 
up  and  down,  and  saying,  "  Baby,  why 
don't  you  speak  to  me1?"  when  her 
nioonshee  approached  her  with  a  salaam, 
and  said  solemnly,  "  Madam,  it  is  my 
"  duty  to  inform  you  that  that  child 
"  cannot,  as  yet,  speak.  He  will  not 
"  speak,  madam,  till  he  is  two  years  old 
"  or  more." 

Mr.  Dunlop  gives  us  two  chapters  on 
elephants,  both  highly  interesting,  the 
second  of  which  is  devoted  to  the  sub- 
ject of  hunting  and  killing  that  small- 
brained  but  sagacious  brute.  He  uses 
a  double  rifle,  sixteen  bore,  weighing 
nineteen  pounds,  and  carrying  as  much 
as  eight  drams  of  powder.  With  this 
handy  little  toy — just  the  sort  of  thing 
to  learn  one's  position  drill  with — he 
fires  at  the  centre  of  an  imaginary  line, 
drawn  from  the  orifice  of  the  ear  to  the 
eye,  which  will  exactly  penetrate  the 
brain, — "  the  only  spot  a  sportsman  can 
"  save  his  life  by,  when  the  elephant 
"  charges  him,  protecting  the  brain  by 
"  curling  up  the  trunk."  Miss  that, 
and  you  will  find  your  name  in  the  first 
column  of  the  Times  pretty  quickly. 
But,  to  conclude  this  subject,  we,  from 
all  we  have  read  about  elephant-hunting, 
would  give  this  piece  of  advice  to  those 
who  intend  to  practise  it — Unless  you 
happen  to  have  the  nerve  of  one  man 
out  of  fifty — Stay  at  home. 

Hush  !  There  is  a  sound  abroad 
upon  the  night- wind  besides  the  gentle 
rustling  of  the  topmost  forest  boughs, — 
a  deep  reverberating  moan,  low  rolling 
like  the  sound  of  distant  guns,  which 
causes  the  Europeans  to  take  their 
cigars  from  their  mouths  and  look  at 
one  another,  and  the  native  servants  to 
converse  in  frightened  whispers.  A 
royal  tiger  is  abroad  in  the  jungle,  and 
the  forest  is  hushed  before  the  majesty 
of  his  wrath  ! 

We  should  conceive  that  the  sound 
made  by  the  great  carnivorous  animals, 
when  in  search  of  food,  must  be  one  of 
the  finest  things  in  nature.  We  alas  ! 
have  only  heard  it  from  behind  prison- 


392 


New  Books  on  Sport  and  Natural  History. 


bars  ;  yet  even  there  the  snarl  of  the 
hungry  "  painter,"  like  the  brattling  of 
some  wild  war  drum,  moves  one's  blood 
strangely.  Mr.  Dunlop  has  been  face  to 
face  with  the  tigress  in  her  lair,  as  have 
many  other  of  our  Indian  officers ;  but 
Mr.  Dunlop,  unlike  some  of  our  Indian 
writers,  gives  us  a  really  graphic  idea  of 
what  the  situation  must  be  like.  He 
singularly  confirms  a  remark  we  made 
just  now,  when  speaking  of  Mr.  Simeon's 
took, — that  the  evidence  of  uneducated 
persons  must  be  taken  with  caution. 
He  says — 

"At  the  first  sharp  turn  in  the  course  of 
the  trench,  an  animal  rose  out  of  it,  and  stood 
for  a  second  on  the  opposite  bank,  within  sixty 

yards  of  our  line.     I  heard  one  of  R 's 

Qhoorkas  deliberately  pronounce  the  animal 
before  us  to  be  a  calf,  carelessly  assuming  it 
to  be  that  which  he  thought  most  likely  to  be 
met  with  on  the  spot,  though  in  truth  a  full- 
grown  tigress." 

His  account  of  the  startling  appear- 
ance of  a  tiger  in  the  very  middle  of 
the  fair  at  Hurdwar  in  1855, — in  the 
middle  of  a  crowd  of  from  two  to  three 
millions  of  people, — is  most  graphically 
told,  and  illustrated  by  an  excellent 
sketch  of  Mr.  Wolf's.  But  we  must 
pass  on  to  notice  shortly  the  other  parts 
of  the  book,  which  treat  of  subjects  less 
known  to  the  European  reader. 

The  Doon  is  a  tract  of  country  lying 
about  100  miles  north  of  Meerut; 
bounded  east  and  west  by  the  heads  of 
the  Jumna  (the  Delhi  river)  and  the 
Ganges,  north  by  the  rapidly-rising 
ranges  of  the  Himalaya,  and  south  by 
the  plains.  Lying  at  the  foot  of  the 
hills,  it  seems  to  be  composed  of  the 
debris  of  the  great  mountains  above, — 
the  highest  ranges  in  the  planet, — and 
consists  of  clay  and  boulders.  It  is 
covered  with  jungle  and  forest,  and 
swarms  with  game.  From  hence  Mr. 
Dunlop,  following  the  heads  of  the 
Ganges,  crossed  into  Thibet,  over  a  pass 
18,000  feet  above  the  sea,  to  the  heads 
of  the  Sutledge,  killing  a  vast  quantity 
and  variety  of  game  on  his  way, — sam- 
bah,  the  largest  of  Indian  deer,  cheetul, 
hog-deer,  para,  porcupine,  "  pig,"  pea- 
cocks, partridges,  quail,  and  floriken. 


"  Cocks  and  hens,"  too,  under  the  native 
name  of  Moorghee,  are  very  abundant, 
though  treated  with  contempt ;  while 
the  natives  use  to  hawk  at  curlew  and 
herons  with  the  "baz,"  and  Avith  the 
"  behree "  at  peacocks,  hares,  and  even 
antelope. 

The  fish  in  this  part  of  the  world 
must  be  spoken  of  with  reverence. 
The  "Musheer" — the  salmon  of  the 
country — is  caught  with  spinning  tackle. 
A  ten-pounder  is  nothing.  He  runs  up 
to  80  and  100  pounds  weight.  He  is 
a  mountain-fish,  living  in  the  highly 
aerated  waters  among  the  rocks,  never 
descending  to  the  plains.  Your  tackle 
must  be  strong,  for  the  villain  "Gowch," 
or  fresh-water  shark,  whose  weight  is 
often  120  pounds,  lies  in  wait  for  the 
unwary  angler,  and  causes  him  to  swear 
by  taking  his  bait,  playing  much  the 
same  game  as  a  five-pound  pike  does 
with  a  fine  set  of  gut  tackle. 

Before  taking  us  away  to  the  hills, 
Mr.  Dunlop  tells  us  a  sad  story,  which 
casts  a  gloom  over  an  otherwise  plea- 
sant chapter,  and  is  especially  worthy 
of  note,  as  illustrating  military  life  in 
India,  and  for  the  wise  remarks  he 
makes  on  the  necessity  of  providing 
amusement  for  the  men,  in  the  hot, 
dismal,  pestilential  plains.  So  great 
was  the  horror  of  our  soldiers  at 
the  dull  detestable  misery  of  their 
situation,  that  it  became  the  habit  to 
commit  some  trifling  assault  on  an 
officer,  in  order  to  get  transported  to 
Australia.  The  thing  must  be  stopped, 
and  orders  went  forth  that  the  next 
man  who  did  it  should  die  !  Shortly 
after,  a  common  soldier,  an  utter  stranger 
to  the  officer,  threw  his  cap  at  an 
assistant-surgeon,  who  was  driving  into 
Meerut,  with  no  earthly  object  but  to 
be  transported.  He  was  condemned 
to  death,  and  ordered  for  execution,  in 
spite  of  the  surgeon's  intercession.  The 
law  is  that,  should  the  man  not  be 
found  dead  after  the  volley  is  delivered, 
the  sergeant  shall  give  him  the  coup- 
de-grace.  On  this  occasion,  when  the 
rattle  of  the  rifles  died  away,  the  man 
was  still  kneeling,  blindfold,  by  his 
coffin,  unhurt.  A  terrible  alternative 


At  the  Sea-Side. 


393 


remained  with,  the  sergeant.  He  did 
his  duty.  He  walked  up  to  the  kneel- 
ing soldier,  blew  his  brains  out,  and 
went  back  to  his  barracks  desperate  and 
reckless.  Never,  never  more,  was  he 
to  grasp  the  warm  hand  of  a  friend, 
never  again  to  see  his  comrades'  eyes 
brighten  when  he  approached.  He  was 
a  shunned,  avoided  man.  Three  days 
he  bore  it :  on  the  fourth  he  committed 
suicide.  We  submit  that  this  is  one  of 
the  most  painful  stories  we  have  ever 
read.  Even  the  end  of  the  "Tale  of 
Two  Cities  "  is  not  more  tragical. 

But  come,  let  us  up  and  away  to  the 
Ghats  with  Mr.  Dunlop. 

"  Far  off  the  torrent  called  me  from  the  cleft, 
Far  up  the  solitary  morning  smote 
The  streaks  of  virgin  snow." 

Mr.  Dunlop  takes  us  up  and  on  through 
the  hills,  leading  from  range  to  range, 
and  giving  us  not  only  graphic  and 
accurate  descriptions  of  the  various 
kinds  of  game  to  be  killed,  but  also 
a  highly  interesting  and  important  ac- 
count of  the  manners  and  customs  of 
our  fellow-subjects  in  those  wild  regions. 
Her  Majesty's  lieges  in  those  parts,  we 
hear,  are,  in  their  social  relations,  not 
polygamists,  but  polyandrists, — the  wife 
of  one  brother  being  common  to  the 
rest  of  the  family ;  and  we  find,  also, 
that  this  astonishing  arrangement  tends 


to  a  great  disproportion  in  the  sexes. 
Mr.  Dunlop  found  a  village  in  which 
there  were  400  boys  and  only  120  girls  ; 
which  he  is  not  inclined  to  attribute  to 
infanticide,  but  rather  to  nature  adapt- 
ing the  supply  to  the  demand.  In 
these  hills,  also,  the  inhabitants  are  in 
the  habit  of  getting  drunk  on  surrep- 
titiously-distilled whisky  (a  custom  we 
have  heard  attributed  to  mountaineers 
rather  nearer  home  than  the  Himalayas). 
Arriving  at  8  P.  M.  at  a  village,  he  was 
informed  that  it  was  useless  to  attempt 
to  see  any  one  on  business  that  night, 
as  they  all  were,  or  ought  to  be,  drunk. 
The  women  do  all  the  work.  As  for 
the  men,  they  toil  not,  but  curious  to 
relate,  they  do  spin;  in  fact,  they  do 
nothing  else,  except  get  drunk.  They 
go  about  with  a  yarn  round  their  body, 
in  a  state  of  obfuscation,  and  spin  away 
till  they  are  too  drunk  to  see.  Taking 
it  all  in  all,  we  should  say  that  no  state 
of  society  in  the  world  approximates  so 
closely  to  "  Queer  Street,"  as  the  higher 
ranges  of  the  Himalayas. 

And  so,  with  many  a  pleasant  story, 
and  many  a  scrap  of  valuable  informa- 
tion, we  are  led  up  over  the  dizzy  snow 
slopes,  and  under  the  gleaming  glaciers, 
into  the  Himachul,  on  the  heads  of  the 
Sutledge  in  Thibet, — the  land  of  ever- 
lasting snow, — the  haunt  of  the  Ovis 
Ammon  and  the  Bunchowr. 


AT  THE  SEA-SIDE. 

BY    THE   AUTHOR   OF    "  JOHN   HALIFAX,    GENTLEMAN." 


0  SOLITARY  shining  sea 

That  ripples  in  the  sun, 
0  grey  and  melancholy  sea, 

O'er  which  the  shadows  run  ; 

0  many- voiced  and  angry  sea, 

Breaking  with  moan  and  strain, — 

I,  like  a  humble,  chastened  child, 
Come  back  to  thee  again  ; 

And  build  child-castles  and  dig  moats 

Upon  the  quiet  sands, 
And  twist  the  cliff-convolvulus 

Once  more,  round  idle  hands ; 

No.  11. — VOL.  n. 


And  look  across  that  ocean  line, 

As  o'er  life's  summer  sea, 
•"Where  many  a  hope  went  sailing  once, 

Full  set,  with  canvas  free. 

Strange,  strange  to  think  how  some  of 
them 

Their  silver  sails  have  furled, 
And  some  have  whitely  glided  down 

Into  the  under  world ; 

And  some,  dismasted,  tossed  and  torn, 
Put  back  in  port  once  more, 

Thankful  to  ride,  with  freight  still  safe, 
At  anchor  near  the  shore. 


394 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


Stranger  it  is  to  lie  at  ease 

As  now,  with  thoughts  that  fly 

More  light  and  wandering  than  sea-birds 
Between  the  waves  and  sky  : 

To  play  child's  play  with   shells   and 
weeds, 

And  view  the  ocean  grand 
But  as  one  wave  that  may  submerge 

A  baby-house  of  sand ; 

And  not  once  look,  or  look  by  chance, 
With  old  dreams  quite  supprest, 

Across  that  mystic  wild  sea- world 
Of  infinite  unrest. 


0  ever  solitary  sea, 

Of  which  we  all  have  found 
Somewhat  to  dream  or  say — the  type 

Of  things  without  a  bound — 

Love,  long  as  life,  and  strong  as  death ; 

Faith,  humble  as  sublime  ; 
Eternity,  whose  large  depths  hold 

The  wrecks  of  this  small  Time  ; — 

Unchanging,  everlasting  sea ! 

To  spirits  soothed  and  calm 
Thy  restless  moan  of  other  years 

Becomes  an  endless  psalm. 


VOLUNTEEKLNG,  PAST  AND  PKESENT. 
BY  JOHN  MAKTINEAU. 


To  a  student  of  the  Law  in  Chambers 
on  a  bright  day  in  May,  seeking  for 
mental  illumination  by  the  "gladsome 
light  of  Jurisprudence,"  there  will  ensue 
at  times,  after  declarations  and  pleas 
duly  drawn,  and  evidence  advised  upon, 
a  decided  distaste  for  "Chitty's  Practice," 
to  try  to  learn  law  out  of  which  seems 
very  like  reading  "  Liddell  and  Scott " 
to  learn  Greek.  His  thoughts,  perhaps, 
wander  to  his  last  Position-drill,  (for  of 
course  he  is  a  Volunteer,)  and  he  tries 
doing  a  little  drill  at  the  same  time,  by 
reading,  sitting  on  his  right  heel,  "  as  a 
rear-rank  kneeling ; "  which  attempt 
proving  both  uncomfortable  and  unsuc- 
cessful, "  Chitty's  Practice  "  has  to  be 
transferred  to  the  refractory  heel  for  a 
connecting-link  and  cushion,  and  being 
tnus  fully  occupied,  cannot  be  any  longer 
read.  So  by  way  of  lighter  reading,  and 
in  defiance  of  Chief  Justice  Wilmot's 
dictum  that  "  the  Statute-Law  is  like  a 
'  tyrant,  where  he  comes  he  makes  all 
'  void ;  but  the  Common-Law  is  like  a 
'nursing-father,  and  makes  void  only 
'  that  part  where  the  fault  is,  and  saves 
'  the  rest,"  he  turns  to  an  early  volume 
of  the  Statutes,  and  remembering  Mr. 
Froude's  history  of  those  times,  opens  at 
the  reign  of  Henry  VIIL  to  see  if  it  is 


possible  to  make  out  what  a  Volunteer 
of  the  16th  century  did,  and  thought, 
and  was  like. 

They  are  more  than  ever  interesting 
now,  those  quaint  picturesque  old  Sta- 
tutes, belonging  as  they  do  to  the  turn- 
ing-point of  English  history,  after  the 
death  of  the  middle  ages — times  of  as 
redundant  external  vigour  and  enterprise, 
and  of  greater  change  and  development 
of  "inner  life,"  than  even  these  times 
of  railways  and  telegraphs ;  when  the 
country  had  had  half  a  century  of  com- 
parative peace  (as  we  have  had  since 
the  French  war),  to  recover  from  the 
<civil  wars  which  had  destroyed  at  once 
the  feudal  aristocracy  of  the  country 
and  the  weapons  with  which  they  fought. 

The  long-bow  was  slowly  yielding  to 
the  "  handgonne "  and  the  "  hagbut," 
as  Brown-Bess  has  been  driven  out  by 
the  Enfield  and  the  Whitworth. 

Fondly  and  pertinaciously  did  the 
government  of  those  days  cling  to  the 
tradition  that  the  strength  of  England 
was  in  the  long-bow;  and,  when  war  and 
threatened  invasion  menaced  from  one  or 
other  of  the  two  great  empires  of  the 
Continent,  passed  act  after  act  against  the 
use  of  "crosbowes  and  hand-gonnes,"  and 
making  constant  practice  with  the  long- 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


395 


tow  compulsory  upon  "  every  man  being 
"  the  King's  subject  within  the  age  of 
"  sixty  years,"  adding  minute  directions 
for  the  supply  of  bows,  and  the  erection 
of  practice-butts  in  every  village  in  the 
country. 

In  1514  was  passed  a  statute  (con- 
firming a  previous  one),  enacting  that 
"  no  person  from  henceforth  shote  in 
"  any  crosbowe,  or  any  handgonne,  un- 
"  less  he  have  land  and  tenement  to  the 
"yerely  value  of  300  marke."  Eight 
years  later  this  shooting-qualification  is 
reduced  to  £100  a  year.  In  1534  a 
special  permission  is  granted,  as  a  pro- 
tection against  their  border  enemies,  to 
the  inhabitants  of  the  "Countrees  of  NOT- 
"  thumberland,  Durisme,  Westmorland, 
"  and  Comberland  tokepe  in  their  houses 
"  crosbowes  and  handgonnes  for  defence 
*'  of  theire  persones  goodes  and  houses 
"  against  Thefes  Scottes,  and  other  the 
"  Kynge's  enemies,  and  for  clensing  -and 
"  scouring  of  the  same  only,  and  for  none 
"  other  purpose."  A  tacit  admission  this, 
that  the  long-bow  was  not  the  best 
weapon  after  all,  and  that  the  "thefes 
•Scottes  "  required  some  more  formidable 
weapon. 

fe  But,  alas !  Volunteers,  in  those  days  as 
well  as  in  these,  sometimes  forgot  their 
mission  of  "  clensing  and  scouring  the 
Kynge's  enemies,"  and  used  their 
Aveapons  for  even  worse  purposes  than 
"  shooting  the  dog ;  "  for  in  1541  we  find 
that  "  divers  malicious  and  evil-disposed 
"  persons  of  their  malicious  and  evil-dis- 
"  posed  myndes  and  purposes  have  wil- 
"  fully  and  shamefully  committed  divers 
"  detestable  and  shamefull  murthers,  rob- 
"  eries,  felony es,  ryotts  and  routs,  with 
"  crosbowes,  little  short  handguns,  and 
"little  hagbuts,  to  the  great  pill  and 
"contynuall  fear  and  damage  of  the 
"  Kyng's  mostlovinge  subjects  ....  and 
"  now  of  late  the  said  evil-disposed  per- 
"  sons,  &c.  doe  yet  daylie  use  to  ride  and 
"goe  in  the  King's  highewayes.  .  .  .with 
"  little  hand-guns  ready  furnished  with 
"  quarrell-gunpowder,  fyer  and  touche,  to 
"  the  great  pill,  &c."  It  is  therefore  en- 
acted that  these  fire-arms  shall  be  of  a 
certain  fixed  length,  "  provided  alway .  . . 
"  that  it  shall  be  lawful!  for  all  gentle*- 


"  men,  yeomen,  servingrnen,  &c.  to  shote 
"with  any  hand-gune,  demyhake,  or 
"  hagbut,  at  any  butt  or  bank  of  earth 
"  onlye,  in  place  convenient  for  the  same 
" .  .  wherebye  they  may  the  better  ayde 
"  and  assist  to  the  defence  of  this  Eealnie 
"  when  nede  shall  require." 

The  first  mention  this,  of  butts  for 
ball  practice.  But  it  seems  they  were 
not  enough  used,  for  again  in  1548  we 
find  an  act,  described  in  the  Act  of 
William  III.  (which  repealed  it,)  as  for- 
bidding any  one  "under  the  degree  of 
"  a  Lord  of  the  Parliament  to  shote  any 
"  more  pellets  than  one  at  any  one  time." 
It  seems  very  hard  that  a  Lord  of 
Parliament's  shoulder  should  have  been 
subjected  to  the  recoil  of  a  charge  of 
two  bullets  at  once,  and  the  "Statutes 
Unabridged,"  on  being  referred  to,  do 
not  bear  out  the  description.  The  Act 
is  "againste  the  shootinge  of  .hayle- 
shote,"  and  runs  thus, — "Forasmuch 
" ....  as  not  onelye  dwelling-houses, 
"  dove-cotes  and  churches  are  daylye  da- 
"  maged  ...  by  men  of  light  conversacon, 
"  but  also  there  is  growen  a  customable 
"  manner  of  sho  tinge  of  hayle-shott,  where- 
"  by  infynite  sorte  of  fowle  ...  is  killed 
"  to  the  benefitt  of  no  man  ....  Also  the 
"  sd  use  of  hayle-shott  utterly  destroyeth 
"  the  certentye  of  shotinge  which  in 
"  warres  is  much  requisite,  be  it  therefore 
"enacted  that  noe  person  under  the 
"  degree  of  a  lorde  of  the  Parliament 
"  shall  from  hencefore  shoote  with  any 
"  handgonne  within  any  citie  or  towne  at 
"  any  fowle  or  other  marke  upon  any 
"  church  house  or  dove-cote  ;  neither 
"that  any  person  shall  shote  in  anye 
'place  anye  hayle-shott  or  anye  moe 
'  pellotts  (bullets)  than  one  at  one 
'  tyme,  upon  payne  to  forfayte  for  everie 
'  tyme  tennepoundes,  and  emprisonment 
'  of  his  bodye  during  three  months." 

But  the  churches  were  disturbed  not 
only  by  "pellotts"  from  without,  but 
(like  our  St.  George's-in-the-East)  by 
rioters  from  within.  Nor  were  they  (as 
there  is  good  hope  will  be  the  case  at 
St.  George's,)  to  be  calmed  by  the  devo- 
tion and  ability  of  one  clergyman,  under- 
standing the  wounded  instincts  of  both 
sides,  and  dealing  gently,  and  patiently, 
D»2 


396 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


and  firmly  with  each.  In  1552  sterner 
measures  were  needed ;  for  we  find  that, 
— "Forasmuch  as  of  late  divers  and 
"  many  outrageous  and  barbarous  beha- 
"  viours  and  acts  have  been  used  and 
"  committed  by  divers  ungodly  and  ir- 
"  religious  persons  by  quarrelling,  brawl- 
"  ing,  fraying,  and  fighting  openly  in 
"  Churches  and  Church-yards,  ..."  it 
is  enacted  that  if  the  offence  be  by 
words  only,  the  offender  shall  be  excom- 
municated ;  but  that  "  If  any  person 
"shall  strike  any  person  with  any 
"  weapon  in  Church  or  Church-yard, 
"  or  draw  any  weapon  in  Church  or 
"  Church-yard,  to  the  intent  to  strike 
"  another,  he  shall  be  adjudged  to  have 
"  one  of  his  ears  cut  off.  And  if  the 
"person  so  offending  have  none  ears 
"  whereby  they  should  receive  such 
"  a  punishment,  that  then  he  or  they 
"to  be  marked  and  burned  in  the 
"  cheek  with  an  hot  iron  having  the 
"  letter  F  therein,  whereby  he  or  they 
"  may  be  known  or  taken  for  Fray- 
"  makers  and  Fighters." 

It  would  be  an  endless,  though  not 
uninteresting,  task  to  trace  out  all  the 
Acts  bearing  upon  topics  so  familiar  to 
our  own  days ;  but  there  they  are — 
Sewers  Acts,  Poison  Acts,  Wine-Licenses 
Acts,  and  what  not. 

The  long-bow  must  soon  have  almost 
disappeared,  for  we  find  English  artillery 
in  the  ships  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  cap- 
tains superior  beyond  all  comparison  to 
any  that  could  be  brought  against  it, 
till,  with  our  usual  confidence  and  over- 
security,  allowing  it  to  be  exported  freely, 
Spanish  ships  came  to  be  armed  with 
English  metal;  and  in  1601,  in  a  debate 
on  the  subject,  we  find  Sir  Walter  Eaw- 
leigh  complaining,  "I  am  sure  hereto- 
"  fore  one  ship  of  Her  Majesty's  was  able 
"  to  beat  twenty  Spaniards;  but  now,  by 
"reason  of  our  own  ordnance,  we  are 
"  hardly  matched  one  to  one  " 

Already  half  demoralized  by  such  un- 
lawful studies,  how  is  a  luckless  law- 
student  to  resist  when  one  fine  morning 
there  comes  an  offer  from  the  war-office 
of  a  place  in  the  volunteer  class  of 
musketry  instruction  at  Hythe.  There 
is  nothing  for  it  but  to  leave  the  briefs 


unread  on  the  table  and  go.  Two 
or  three  hours  travelling  through  the 
meadows  and  hop-grounds  of  Kent,  and 
he  is  at  the  focus  and  head-quarters  of 
the  rifle  movement,  and  the  present  nine- 
teenth soon  drives  out  all  thought  of 
the  past  sixteenth  century.  The  town 
is  filling  fast  with  Volunteers,  who  come 
in  by  coach-loads  after  every  train,  and 
soon  settle  down  into  comfortable  little 
lodgings  in  various  parts  of  the  town. 

They  muster  for  the  first  time,  to  the 
number  of  eighty,  next  morning  on  the 
parade-ground  in  front  of  the  barracks, 
and  are  told  off  into  nine  squads  or 
sections,  grouped,  as  far  as  practicable, 
according  to  counties.  The  Scotchmen, 
(no  longer  "  Thefes  Scottes  and  Kynge's 
enemies,")  take  post  on  the  right  as 
section  No.  1.  Next  come  the  Norfolk, 
Suffolk,  and  Cambridgeshire  men. 
Middlesex,  which  sends  a  large  quota, 
makes  up,  with  Surrey  and  Sussex,  Nos. 
3  and  4.  Devon,  Cornwall,  and  Somerset, 
make  up  No.  5,  and  complete  the  right 
wing.  In  the  left  wing  are  four  sections 
from  the  Midland,  Northern,  Southern, 
and  South-eastern  counties. 

It  was  a  picturesque  sight  that  mor- 
ning, the  nine  many-coloured  groups  on 
the  fresh-mown  grass.  In  front  of  the 
barracks  is  a  broad  terrace  of  gravel, 
with  a  lawn  sloping  gently  down  from 
it  towards  the  road,  from  which  it  is 
separated  by  a  row  of  fine  elms  ;  and 
under  their  shade  each  squad  is  drawn 
up  in  line  facing  its  Instructor,  whose 
red  coat  stands  out  in  pleasing  contrast 
of  colour  against  the  bright  green  grass  ; 
while  at  the  further  end  are  a  group  or 
two  of  regulars,  drilling  one  another 
and  getting  the  "  slang  "  by  heart,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  adjutant,  and  amongst 
them  two  or  three  magnificent  figures 
in  fez  or  turban,  negroes  and  mulattoes 
from  West  India  regiments. 

Of  the  volunteers  scarcely  two  uni- 
forms are  alike.  Black  or  dark-green 
seems  to  have  least  to  recommend  it. 
It  soon  shows  dirt  and  wear,  is  hotter 
in  hot  sun  without  being  warmer  in  cold 
weather,  and  against  most  back-grounds 
is  quite  as  visible  as  red,  with  a  more 
qjlearly  defined  outline.  Silver-lace,  and 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


397 


such  tawdry  ornamentation,  soon  gets 
shabby  with  Hythe  use.  Chains  and 
whistles  did  not  often  appear,  their  only 
known  use  being  to  bring  the  dogs 
within  easy  range.  On  the  whole,  the 
least  visible  colour  is  the  government 
brownish-grey.  Everything  depends 
upon  the  back-ground ;  and  the  back- 
ground is  more  likely  to  be  of  that 
colour  than  of  any  other.  Roads, 
beaches,  sandy  rock,  dry  fallows,  &c., 
are  more  or  less  brownish-grey;  and 
even  under  the  greatest  disadvantage,  as 
when  seen  against  light  green,  a  body 
of  grey  men,  lying  still  in  long  grass  at 
six  hundred  or  seven  hundred  yards  dis- 
tance, might  easily  be  mistaken  for  a 
flock  of  sheep,  or  so  many  pieces  of  rock 
or  stone. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  an  open 
question  whether  it  is  desirable  to  be 
so  invisible.  At  first  it  was  laid  down 
that  Volunteers  were  to  act  only  as 
skirmishers,  or  as  half-drilled  irregular 
sharpshooters,  resting  on  the  regular 
troops  for  support.  But  their  number 
now  far  exceeds  that  of  the  regular  army 
present  at  one  time  at  home,  and  in  case 
of  war  and  impending  invasion  would 
be  increased  three  or  fourfold  at  least, 
so  that  it  is  to  be  hoped  we  may  count 
upon  having  on  an  emergency  at  least 
300,000  well-trained  Volunteers.  Now 
300,000  men  extended  in  files  at  skir- 
mishing distance,  six  paces,  or  five  yards, 
apart,  would  form  a  line  of  skirmishers 
426  miles  in  length.  Supposing  half 
this  force  to  be  not  engaged,  and  of  the 
remainder  half,  or  75,000,  to  form  the 
reserves,  and  a  quarter,  or  37,500,  to  be 
in  support,  there  would  still  remain  a 
line  of  front  always  ready  to  face  the 
enemy  of  37,500  men,  or  more  than 
fifty-three  miles  of  skirmishers,  capable 
of  being  reinforced  or  relieved  at  any 
point  and  at  any  moment — a  force  ab- 
surdly out  of  proportion  to  the  numbers 
of  the  regulars  in  line.  It  is  clear  that, 
if  all  are  to  be  available,  they  must  be 
prepared  to  act  exactly  as  regulars,  to 
take  any  place  and  perform  any  evolu- 
tion in  the  field  of  battle  that  may  be 
required  of  them.  And  here  is  the  uset 
of  the  old  red-coat.  What  a  relief  to 


the  volunteer  officer,  in  the  excitement 
of  being  under  fire  for  the  first  time, 
and  in  the  blinding  smoke  and  confu- 
sion of  the  battle,  to  know  that  a  red-coat 
covers  a  friend,  and  all  other  colours  a 
foe  !  What  a  horrible  suspense  to  await 
with  cocked  rifles  the  approach  of  a 
body  of  men  with  no  distinctive  appear- 
ance, some  eager  to  fire  on  them,  others 
as  certain  that  they  are  friends ;  or  if 
the  right  word  (to  fire  or  to  cease  firing,) 
has  been  given,  each  man  forming  his 
own  opinion  and  acting  upon  it,  in  the 
consciousness  (and  this  is  our  one  weak 
point,)  that  his  commander  has  little,  if 
any,  more  intelligence  and  knowledge 
and  experience  than  himself ! 

As  to  shape,  the  best  is  something 
looser  than  a  tunic  and  closer-fitting 
than  a  blouse.  The  6th  Wiltshire  is 
excellent ;  but  about  the  best  specimen 
is  one  that  was  made  for  the  captain 
commanding  the  19th  Middlesex,  but 
which  he  could  not  persuade  his  corps 
to  adopt.  Under  this  a  man  may  wear 
(if  he  likes)  as  many  waistcoats  as 
George  IV.,  and  thereby  avoid  the 
inconvenience  of  a  great  coat.  A  desire 
to  look  smart  and  soldierlike  has  been 
the  reason  for  many  corps  adopting  the 
tight  wadded  tunic.  Some  have  gone 
so  far  as  to  adopt  the  shape  and  fit  of  a 
boy's  jacket,  which  really  in  a  portly 
Briton  looks  too  scanty  for  propriety. 

Dandyism  unfortunately  bids  fair  to 
be  almost  as  mischievous  amongst  volun- 
teers as  red-tape  once  was  in  the  army, 
in  the  matter  of  uniform ;  and,  as  it  is 
not  likely  to  be  extirpated  in  a  hurry,  it 
must  be  taken  into  account  as  an  inevi- 
table evil.  But  why  does  dandyism  still 
crave  after  the  Tight  ?  One  had  hoped 
that  the  days  of  self-torture  by  means 
of  tight  coats,  tight  boots,  and  tight 
stocks  were  over.  Are  not  the  two 
loosest  of  modern  dresses  also  the  most 
graceful  and  becoming ;  namely,  a  lady's 
riding-habit,  and  a  clergyman's  surplice 
(the  latter,  at  least,  as  worn  by  under- 
graduates, without  hood  or  scarf  or  other 
incongruous  symbol  of  mundane  learn- 
ing)? 

The  great  diversity  of  dress  might  be 
a  serious  evil  in  the  field.  Could  not  a 


398 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


congress  of  commandants  meeting  at 
Hythe  or  elsewhere  agree  upon  some 
uniform  which  the  government,  by  giv- 
ing a  year  or  more  of  notice,  might  com- 
pel all  corps  ultimately  to  adopt,  as  a 
condition  of  receiving  government  rifles  ? 
Or  there  might  be  two  patterns,  say  a 
grey  and  a  red,  and  each  company  or 
corps  allowed  to  choose  between  them ; 
the  former  corresponding  to  the  rifles, 
and  the  latter  to  the  infantry,  of  the 
regular  army.  Already  there  are  many 
alike  enough  for  all  practical  purposes. 
If  (as  is  reported,)  the  rifle-regiments  of 
the  regular  army  are  some  day  to  adopt 
grey,  it  will  be  a  pity  if  the  volunteers 
do  not  take  the  opportunity  of  going 
into  either  red  or  grey,  so  as  to  have 
two  standard  colours  for  the  whole  mili- 
tary force  of  the  country. 

But  enough  of  dress :  let  us  look  at 
the  men.  They  are  of  course  above  the 
average,  not  being  of  the  over-worked 
portion  of  the  community.  One  or  two 
there  are,  remarkably  powerful  well-made 
men,  the  like  of  whom  (one  believes)  are 
not  often  to  be  seen  save  in  the  land  of 
cricket,  boats,  and  bathing ;  and  these 
are  fixed  upon  at  once  (though  often 
wrongly,  as  it  proved,)  as  sure  to  be  good 
shots.  All  ages  there  are,  from  eighteen 
to  very  nearly  if  not  quite  sixty.  Many 
are  captains  or  other  officers. 

The  instruction  begins  with  Position- 
drill  ;  which  goes  on  for  nearly  a  week, 
to  give  strength  and  firmness  to  the  left 
arm  and  a  correct  shooting  position.  In 
the  pauses  there  is  aiming  at  the  In- 
structor's eye,  or  at  the  little  black  dots 
on  the  barracks  (all  the  walls  about 
have  black  dots  on  them  as  if  they  had 
had  the  smallpox) ;  and  all  day  long  is 
heard  the  click  of  the  hammer  as  it  falls 
on  the  snap-cap.  Presently,  all  are 
marched  up  to  the  lecture-room  or 
school-room,  and  sit  down  on  a  form 
like  good  boys,  while  the  Instructor 
names  the  different  parts  of  the  rifle 
and  lock,  and  then  proceeds  to  catechize 
each  man  in  his  turn. 

The  lesson  over,  the  squads  are  dra\vn 
up  in  column  of  sections.  The  word 
"quick-march"  is  given,  immediately  fol- 
lowed by  "March  at  ease;"  for  it  is 


quite  clear   that   the   column  will  not 
march  otherwise  than  at  ease,  Volunteers 
having  very  different  ideas  (very  few  of 
which  are  recognised  in  the  Manual,)  as 
to  the  best  way  of  carrying  an  "  Enfield  " 
on  the  tramp.     An  Englishman's  march 
at  ease  is  a  very  steady  tramp,  though ; 
and   there   is   something   characteristic 
about  it,  which  makes  his  nationality 
recognisable  a  good  way  off  as  he  comes 
in  sight  over  the  brow  of  a  Swiss  moun- 
tain.    He  generally  keeps  up  an  even 
pace,  and  always  keeps  step  with  the  men 
alongside — a  habit  for  which  foreigners 
sometimes  laugh  at  us,  being  in  general 
not  fond  of  walking  themselves.     The 
column  soon  turns   aside   into  a  field 
with  a  target  in  it,  surrounded  by  the 
usual  smallpox-marked  walls.      Before 
each  section  is  a  tripod,  rest,  and  sand- 
bag, on  which  each  man  in  turn  lays  his 
rifle  for  the  criticism  of  the  Instructor, 
at  what  he  considers  a  correct  aim, — the 
intervals  of  time  being  as  usual  filled 
up    with    snapping    at    the    smallpox 
marks.    Then  column  of  sections  again, 
and   another  half-mile's   tramp  to  the 
"Shingles,"  for  "judging-distance  drill." 
The    "Shingles"  are    an    important 
feature  of  Hythe.     They  occupy  a  tract 
of  land  two  miles  or  more  in  length, 
by  perhaps  half-a-mile   in  breadth — a 
corner  of  Ronmey  Marsh,  once  covered 
by  the  sea  ;    and  now  an  arid  expanse 
of   deep  beach-shingle,  with  only  a  few 
thin  rank  blades  of  grass  forcing  their 
way  between  the  hungry  stones,   and 
here  and  there,  upon  an  accidental  oasis 
of  firm  earth,  a  bush  of  gorse  or  furze. 
On  one  side  is  the  sea,  two  or  three 
martello-towers,  and  a  fort  (the  last  just 
reoccupied  for  the  first  time  since  the 
last  French  war).  On  the  other  side  the 
greenest  of  hills,  like  the  Isle  of  Wight 
undercliff,  covered  with  rich  pastures. 

On  this  shingle  one  or  more  fatigue- 
men  are  posted  at  known  distances. 
The  sections  are  told  to  look  at  them 
attentively  and  observe  how  much  is 
visible  at  each  distance, — number  of 
buttons,  features,  or  colour  of  coat ; 
other  men  are  then  posted  at  chance 
•  distances,  and  each  volunteer  in  turn 
guesses  the  distance,  and  his  guess 


Volunteering ',  Past  and  Present. 


399 


is  taken  down  by  the  instructor.  The 
line  tramps  noisily  and  laboriously  over 
the  shingles,  stepping  the  distance, 
which  is  then  measured  by  a  chain ;  and 
points  given  to  each  man  according  to 
the  correctness  of  his  guess.  At  the 
end  of  the  drill  the  average  of  points 
obtained  in  each  section  is  taken,  and 
the  sections  march  home  in  order  of 
merit,  the  one  with  the  greatest  number 
of  points  triumphantly  heading  the 
column.  But  it  was  chance-work,  and 
the  section  which  was  first  on  one  day 
brought  up  the  rear  on  the  next. 

This  completes  the  morning's  work. 
There  is  a  muster  again  in  the  afternoon. 
More  Position-drill,  more  snapping, 
more  instruction  in  cleaning  of  arms,  or 
an  excellent  lecture  from  one  of  the 
officers  of  the  staff  on  the  theoretical 
principles  of  shooting. 

When  this  is  over,  all  further  drill  is 
voluntary,  and  each  section  drills  (or 
does  not  drill),  according  to  its  taste. 
Some  fire  blank  cartridge  (ball  is  not 
allowed) ;  some  learn  bayonet-exercise  ; 
and  others  wisely  stick  to  position- 
drill.  A  bathe  in  the  sea  fills  up  the 
time  till  the  mess-dinner,  which  is  pro- 
vided at  the  Swan  for  all  who  have  no 
wives,  or  have  not  brought  them  to 
Hythe. 

Thus,  or  nearly  thus,  passes  pleasantly 
enough  the  first  week  of  the  course. 
Messing  together  for  breakfast,  lunch, 
and  dinner,  we  are  soon  on  friendly 
terms.  Esprit-de-corps  springs  up  in 
each  section,  and  a  desire  to  obtain  a 
good  "  figure  of  merit."  There  is  a 
decided  difference  between  the  sections 
in  point  of  attention  to  drill  and  regu- 
larity. The  "Thefes  Scottes,"  after  the- 
manner  of  their  countrymen,  are  sedate 
and  patient  of  drill,  and  should  by  all 
known  rules  of  morality  have  obtained 
the  highest  figure  of  merit.  It  must 
be  owned,  however,  that,  though  they 
did  well,  they  were  beaten  by  sections 
far  less  deserving. 

Sunday  comes  round  soon,  and  with 
it  leisure  for  an  afternoon's  walk  about 
the  country  round. 

The  sun  of  the  good  Cinque-Port  of 
Hythe  set  some  five  or  six  centuries 


ago.  It  had  run  a  good  course  though, 
for  a  thousand  years  and  more,  and 
been  a  worthy  cradle,  in  Saxon,  Norman, 
and  Plantagenet  days  gone  by,  for  the 
baby  English  navy — changing  its  site 
and  moving  ever  eastward  after  the  re- 
treating sea,  as  yard  after  yard,  and  mile 
after  mile,  of  sand  and  shingle  were  cast 
up  into  the  roads  and  port,  leaving  a 
plain  of  arid  beach  and  unhealth 
marsh,  till  it  was  distanced  in  the  chase 
and  left  a  good  mile  behind.  And  now 
the  crack  of  rifles  and  whirr  of  bullets 
is  heard  where  once  rode  at  anchor 
"  caravels "  and  "  shoters,"  and  wine- 
laden  Bourdeaux  merchantmen. 

In  Roman  days  Limne  was  the  port. 
Enormous  masses  of  the  ruined  walls, 
seamed  with  layers  of  red  tile,  lie  on 
the  slopes  of  the  hills  some  three  miles 
from  the  present  town  of  Hythe.  Stand- 
ing above  it,  on  the  top  of  the  steep 
slope,  and  looking  over  Romney  Marsh 
at  the  distant  Fairlight  hills,  one  can 
almost  fancy  the  sheets  of  long  grass 
swept  by  the  gale  to  be  the  waves  of 
the  sea  come  back  repentant  to  its  old 
haunts. 

But  before  a  Saxon  keel  grounded  on 
Kentish  beach,  Limne-port  was  dry 
land,  and  West-Hythe  (as  it  is  now 
called),  a  mile  south-east,  had  taken 
away  its  population  and  its  trade.  A 
great  fight  was  fought,  it  is  said,  on  the 
beach  between  Hythe  and  Folkestone, 
in  Ethelwolf's  reign,  with  the  Danes 
retreating  to  their  ships,  and  a  great 
slaughter  of  them  made,  so  that  their 
bones  lay  whitening  in  sun  and  rain  for 
many  a  year,  till  some  one  gathered 
them  up,  and  covered  them  in  Church 
precincts  ;  and  they  lie  now  in  huge 
piles  in  a  crypt  of  Hythe  Church,  some 
of  the  skulls  with  a  hole  in  them,  as  if 
made  by  a  spear  or  by  the  sharp  end  of 
a  battle-axe. 

West-Hythe-port,  'in  its  turn,  was 
choked  with  sand  and  shingle,  and  was 
left  a  straggling  suburb  to  the  new 
town.  Yet  there  still  remain  there  the 
ruins  of  a  small  chapel  where,  some 
centuries  later,  in  the  Reformation-times, 
the  poor  Nun  of  Kent  preached  and 
raved. 


400 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


Thus  gradually  did  Hythe  reach  its 
present  site,  and  there,  under  the  Norman 
and  Plantagenet  kings  it  was  a  flourish- 
ing and  famous  Cinque  Port.  Close  by 
are  the  ruins  of  the  great  castle  of  Salt- 
wood,  where  Becket's  murderers  passed 
the  night,  and  whence  they  rode  in  the 
morning  to  Canterbury  to  do  the  deed. 
In  Edward  the  First's  reign  the  French 
showed  themselves  with  a  great  fleet 
before  the  town,  and  one  of  their  ships, 
having  200  soldiers  on  board,  landed 
their  men  in  the  haven  :  which  they 
had  no  sooner  done,  but  the  townsmen 
came  upon  them,  and  slew  every  one 
of  them. 

Leland  (writing  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIIL)  says  :  "Hythe  hath  been  a  very 
"  great,  town  in  length,  and  contained 
"  four  parishes  that  now  be  clean  de- 
"  stroyed.  .  .  In  the  time  of  King 
"  Edward  ,11.  there  were  burned  by 
'  casualty  eighteen  score  houses  and 
'  more,  and  straight  followed  a  great 
'  pestilence,  and  these  two  things 
'  minished  the  town.  There  remain 
'  yet  the  ruins  of  the  churches  and 
'  churchyards.  The  haven  is  a  pretty 
'  rode,  and  lieth  meatly  straight  for 
'  passage  owt  of  Boleyn  ;  it  croketh  in 
'  so  by  the  shore  along,  and  is  so  bakked 
from  the  main  sea  with  casting  of 
'  shingle,  that  small  ships  may  come  up 
'  a  large  mile  towards  Folkestone,  as  in 
'  a  sure  gut." 

The  "sure  gut"  is  gone,  but  our 
grandfathers  sixty  years  ago  were  still 
of  Leland' s  opinion  (though  they  did  not 
view  it  in  the  same  light),  that  Hythe 
ky  "  meatly  strayt  for  a  passage  owt  of 
Boleyn"  (Boulogne),  and  (not  feeling 
quite  easy  about  the  Martello  towers) 
they  set  to  work,  and  dug  a  military 
canal  along  what  was  once  the  sea-line. 
It  starts  from  near  Sandgate,  and  goes 
north-west  for  nearly  twenty  miles,  and 
must  have  been  a  work  of  enormous 
labour  and  cost.  Whether  it  would  be 
of  any  use  in  case  of  invasion  the  mili- 
tary authorities  know  best.  At  present 
it  has  a  reputation  only  for  suicides  and 
smells.  Near  its  south-eastern  end,  on 
the  breezy  top  of  the  cliffs  above  Sand- 
gate,  is  the  Camp  of  Shorncliffe — a  row 


of  wooden  one-storied  houses  three  deep, 
built  along  three  sides  of  a  rectangle, 
nearly  half  a  mile  in  length.  Thence  it 
is  less  than  eight  miles  to  Dover  castle. 
So  that  our  coast  is  pretty  well  watched 
thereabouts,  one  hopes. 

But  to  return  to  the  musketry-in- 
struction. The  first  week  over,  and  arms, 
feet,  and  shoulders  trained, to  the  proper 
position,  ammunition  is  served  out,  and 
the  sections  tramp  off  to  the  "shingles," 
each  to  its  own  target.  Twenty  rounds 
are  fired ;  and,  the  day  following,  the 
excitement  begins.  In  the  first  period 
all  are  in  the  third  class — that  is  to  say, 
they  fire  twenty  shots,  five  at  each 
distance  of  fifty  yards  from  a  hundred 
and  fifty  to  three  hundred  yards,  at  a 
target  six  feet  high  by  four  broad.  At 
the  first  two  distances  very  few  shots 
miss,  and  everybody  feels  sure  of  getting 
the  fifteen  points,  which  it  is  necessary 
to  get  in  the  twenty  shots  to  pass  into 
the  second  class  ;  but  at  two  hundred 
and  fifty  and  three  hundred  yards 
misses  are  more  frequent.  When  the 
twenty  shots  are  over,  about  five-and- 
twenty  unlucky  men  are  short  of  the 
number.  A  doleful  group  they  look  at 
first,  when  told  off  into  a  section  by 
themselves  for  a  second  period  in  the 
third  class  !  According  to  their  different 
shortcomings,  they  are  called  winkers, 
blinkers,  bobbers,  and  pokers,  (or  lame- 
ducks,)  which  designations  must  be  left 
to  the  imagination  and  appreciation  of 
the  reader,  as  being  as  unintelligible  to 
the  uninitiated  as  they  are  patent  to 
the  experienced.  The  General  goes 
down  to  the  beach  and  comforts  them  ; 
and  by  a  hint  or  two  many  are  so  im- 
proved, that  they  afterwards  pass  many 
of  those  who  had  got  into  the  second 
class  at  the  first  trial.  The  shooting  in 
the  second  class,  kneeling,  at  distances 
from  four  to  six  hundred  yards,  goes  on 
at  the  same  time.  In  twenty  shots, 
twelve  points  are  to  be  made  to  pass 
into  the  first  class ;  and  great  is  the 
excitement  during  the  last  five  shots  at 
six  hundred  yards,  when  distance  begins 
to  tell,  and  many  are  within  a  point  or 
two  of  their  number  but  cannot  hit, 
and  after  a  miss  or  a  ricochet,  entirely 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


401 


agree  with,  the  Eoyal  Irishman  (the 
only  representative  of  his  country,  the 
most  popular  man  of  the  whole  party, 
and  the  life  and  soul  of  the  mess,)  when 
he  calls  out  "  Bedad  !  I  wish  somebody 
"was  kicking  me  down  Sackville  Street 
"just  now!" 

Scarcely  less  anxious,  each  for  the 
success  of  the  men  under  him,  are  the 
Instructors.  No  Cambridge  tutor  was 
ever  more  eager  for  the  success  of  his 
pupils,  or  more  untiring  in  his  zeal, 
than  were  these  good  fellows  about  their 
(sometimes  unmanageable)  squads. 

And  here  let  mo  bear  my  humble 
testimony,  as  far  as  my  small  expe- 
rience goes,  to  the  excellence  of  every 
arrangement,  not  merely  at  Hythe,  but 
in  all  matters  whatsoever  connected 
with  the  Volunteers  with  which  the 
War-office  has  had  to  do.  It  is  really 
wonderful  to  reflect  how  enormous  a 
body  of  men  have  been  armed  and 
brought  into  something  like  organiza- 
tion in  a  single  year  by  a  department 
of  the  government  already  fully  occu- 
pied. Truly  there  has  been  no  want  of 
administrative  ability  and  patient  in- 
dustry here. 

It  is  over  at  last ;  and  the  skilful 
and  fortunate  pass  into  the  first  class, 
and  shoot  at  distances  'up  to  nine  hun- 
dred yards.  The  second  class  (reinforced 
by  a  batch  from  the  third  class,  most 
of  whom  passed  at  the  second  trial,) 
shoot  as  before  in  the  third  and  final 
period,  which  determines  the  classifi- 
cation. 

To  get  a  good  class  has  been  the  one 
object  of  life  for  the  last  fortnight,  and 
grave  men  are  as  eager  about  it  as  if 
they  were  boys.  Men  take  their  success 
very  differently.  A,  who  is  accustomed 
to  be  good  at  all  points — a  crack  game 
shot,  a  good  cricketer,  and  a  good  oar — 
frets  and  chafes  under  his  second-class 
as  if  he  were  ruined  for  life  ;  while  B, 
who  with  hard  reading  got  only  a  second 
at  Cambridge,  and  pulled  laboriously  in 
the  "  sloggers  "  all  his  time,  has  by  long 
experience  learned  that  it  is  better  to 
content  himself  with  mediocrity,  and 
takes  his  second-class  contentedly,  as 
neither  more  nor  less  than  he  deserves, 


half  believing,  with  Tacitus,  that  "feli- 
citas"  is  part  of  a  man's  mental  constitu- 
tion, which  is  born  with  him. 

Most  gratifying  it  is  to  meet  with  so 
much  encouragement  from  army-men. 
Indeed,  the  Volunteers  have  been  rather 
too  much  complimented,  and  (except  by 
the  small  boys  in  the  streets)  have  had 
too  much  respect  paid  them.  It  is  (or 
ought  to  be)  rather  unpleasant  for  a 
young  Volunteer  officer,  who  a  year  ago 
did  not  know  his  facings,  to  be  saluted, 
as  he  walks  down  Oxford  Street,  by 
a  Crimean  veteran  with  half-a-dozen 
medals. 

Cheering  it  is  too  to  see  on  the  whole 
(there  are  exceptions,  no  doubt,)  how 
little  exclusiveness  there  is ;  how  general 
the  wish  that  no  one  should  be  prevented 
from  joining  by  want  of  pecuniary 
means  : 

"  Che  per  quanto  si  dice  piu  li  nostro, 
Tanto  possiede  piu  di  ben  ciascuno, 
E  piu  di  caritade  arde  in  quel  chi- 
ostro." 

How  much  better  is  loyalty  than 
jealousy  for  equality !  What  if  Eifle 
Corps  should  be  an  instrument  for  ef- 
fecting what  agitations  and  monster 
meetings  seem  only  to  have  removed 
farther  off1?  May  it  not  possibly  be  a 
greater  privilege,  a  closer  bond  of  union 
between  Englishman  and  Englishman, 
to  stand,  to  be  ready  if  need  be  to  fight, 
side  by  side  in  the  ranks,  than  for  a 
man  to  have  the  privilege  of  pushing 
through  a  noisy  crowd  once  in  every 
three  or  four  years,  to  vote  that  A  rather 
than  B,  neither  of  whom  he  has  never 
spoken  to  in  his  life,  should  go  as  his 
"  representative  "  to  Westminster  1 

How  pleasant  too  are  the  opportunities 
which  it  affords  of  intercourse  between 
men  of  different  pursuits  and  occupa- 
tions, and  with  whom  Dame  Fortune 
has  dealt  unequally.  Not  the  least  satis- 
factory part  of  the  day  of  a  sham-fight 
some  fourteen  miles  from  home,  by 
no  means  remarkable  for  good  manage- 
ment, or  for  ability  on  the  part  of  some 
of  the  commanders,  was  the  tramp  home 
through  the  short  midsummer-night  to 
the  time  of  fragments  of  songs  and 


402 


Volunteering,  Past  and  Present. 


choruses,  with  an  occasional  note  from 
the  bugler  by  way  of  accompaniment. 
Never  before  did  those  dull  hard  black 
metropolitan  roads  seem  so  little  dull  to 
the  men  of  the  19th  Middlesex  as  they 
trudge  over  them,  and  the  clocks  in  the 
ugly  churches  strike  the  "  small  hours  " 
one  after  another,  and  road-side  ginger- 
beer  women  make  fabulous  gains,  till 
one  by  one  the  men  drop  off,  (hoping 
the  house-door  is  on  the  latch) ;  and  the 
toll-taker  on  Waterloo-bridge  looks  re- 
signed and  even  benignant  as  the  dimi- 
nished remains  of  the  Company,  without 
offering  him.  a  farthing,  pass  over  and 
get  home  and  to  bed  by  the  light  of 
the  rising  dawn,  full  of  friendliness  and 
respect  for  their  comrades,  and  not  ill- 
satisfied  with  their  share  of  the  last 
twelve  hours  work ;  for  the  ten  pounds 
weight  of  arms  carried  by  a  full  private 
is  no  joke  on  a  long  tramp  :  let  him 
who  doubts  try.  Yet  they  are  not 
more  tired  or  half  so  head-achy,  or  in 
any  respect  less  fit  for  church  next 
morning  than  if  they  had  got  home  two 
hours  earlier,  after  spending  Saturday 
evening  in  a  stifling  theatre. 

Is  it  not  possible  that  in  a  generation 
or  two  even  government  by  party  may 
become  less  prominent  in  the  list  of  our 
National  Institutions  ?  —  that  constitu- 
ents and  their  representatives  may  come 
to  be  of  opinion  that  time  and  labour 
and  money  spent  Upon  registration  com- 
mittees and  conservative  associations  and 
ballot  societies  may  be  worse  than  wasted1? 
Five  minutes'  walk  from  Palace  Yard 
are  foul  haunts  of  disease  and  corrup- 
tion, physical  and  moral,  hardly  sur- 
passed in  London, — corruption  so  ma- 
lignant that  even  the  masters  of  schools 
and  reformatories,  with  which  it  abounds, 
hardly  escape  the  contagion.  All  this 
misery  chiefly  for  want  of  proper  drain- 
age and  decent  dwellings  —  matters 
surely  within  the  scope  of  legislation ! 
But  how  can  Parliament  attend  to  such 
matters  ?  Is  not  the  Reform  debate 
taking  up  half  the  session  1  Has  not  this 
loss  rf  time  been  an  incalculable  evil  ? 
What  if  modern  Radicalism,  (the  more 
restless  discontented  elements  of  it,  at 
least,)  be  showing  symptoms  of  decrepi- 


tude, having,  for  instance,  in  its  extreme 
need,  or  second  childhood,  taken  to- 
believing,  or  pretending  to  believe,  in 
French  Imperialism,  and  be  likely,  ere 
very  long,  taking  a  chill  in  the  cold  air 
of  Volunteering,  to  go  the  way  of  all 
flesh, — the  way  of  old-fashioned  Tory- 
ism and  Whiggery,like  them  having  done 
its  particular  work, — proclaimed  its  par- 
ticular truth, — on  its  death  to  be  wrought 
imperishably  into  the  curious  fabric  of 
English  creeds  and  English  history  ? 
May  not  this  movement — by  extending 
as  it  does  in  a  great  degree,  and  as  it 
will  do,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  far  more,  to 
all  classes — be  a  sign  of  hope  that  one 
class  is  no  longer  afraid  of  another,  no 
longer  struggling  to  get  the  power  in 
its  own  hands,  and  thus  a  period  of  real 
union  be  ushered  in,  wherein,  in  the 
absence  of  any  merely  political  Reform- 
Bills,  there  may  be  leisure'and  inclina- 
tion for  undoubted  Reform,  financial, 
municipal,  educational,  sanitary  ?  .  The 
staunch  Church-and-State  heroes  who 
rallied  round  the  throne,  and  made 
glorious  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
were  not  unworthy  sons  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Reformation.  Need  the  sons 
of  those  who  carried  Roman -Catholic 
emancipation,  the  first  Reform-Bill,  the 
Poor-law,  and  Free-trade,  be  ashamed 
to  follow  in  their  footsteps  1 l 

1  With  some  of  the  sentiments  which  our 
respected  contributor  has  thought  it  right  to 
express  in  the  few  preceding  paragraphs,  I  do 
not  quite  agree.  Volunteering,  besides  its 
other  uses,  will  have,  I  believe,  a  wholesome 
effect  on  our  home  politics.  But  I  do  not 
know  that  the  nature  or  the  range  of  that 
effect  is  very  calculable  as  yet ;  nor  do  I  think 
it  desirable  at  the  outset  that  volunteering 
should  be  identified  with  any  one  expectation 
or  calculation  on  the  subject  —  particularly 
with  an  expectation  that  there  will  thereby  be 
a  cessation  of  interest  in  any  order  of  political 
questions.  Rather,  I  think,  Volunteers  should 
agree  to  consider  volunteering  as  a  unanimous 
association  to  preserve  for  Great  Britain, 
against  foreign  force  or  threat,  all  that  is, 
has  been,  or  may  be,  British;  in  the  very 
centre  of  which,  surely,  as  Britain's  greatest 
speciality  among  the  nations,  is  included  the 
right  of  her  inhabitants  to  be  Whigs,  Tories, 
or  Radicals,  as  they  see  fit,  and  to  wrestle  out 
their  views  on  all  subjects  whatever  by  free 
discussion  and  combination.  The  Whig 
Volunteer  defends  the  right  of  his  comrade  to 


Hints  on  Proposals. 


403 


But  the  course  is  over,  and  the  Yolun- 
teers  must  go  back  to  other  pursuits 
and  other  thoughts.  Yet,  not  without 
regret  that  it  is  all  over,  does  the 
cockney  Volunteer  look  back  from  the 
top  of  the  long  steep  hill  at  the  shingles, 
and  the  white  targets,  and  the  dark 
sea;  till  the  horses  trot  on  to  the  station 


and  he  is  caught  in  the  great  railway- 
web,  and  drawn,  as  with  unseen  clawr 
deeper  and  deeper  in  its  meshes  to  the 
clutches  of  the  great  city,  the  huge  "Web- 
spinner  of  it  all,  back  to  the  ceaseless 
noise,  and  the  pale  faces,  and  the  "  glad- 
some light  of  Jurisprudence." 


HINTS     ON    PEOPOSALS. 

BY   AN   EXPERIENCED   CHAPERONE. 


MOST  women  allow  that  in  the  course 
of  their  lives  they  have  gone  through, 
at  least  once,  the  ordeal  of  a  "proposal," 
but  then  they  feel  bound  in  honour  not 
to  disclose  circumstances  and  particulars. 
Men  naturally  enough  utterly  refuse  to 
detail  their  experiences  on  this  subject. 
Their  Edith  or  Georgina  sits  at  the 
head  of  their  table,  and  the  mystical 
words  used  to  induce  her  to  accept  that 
happy  position,  whether  inspired  by  the 
feelings  of  the  moment,  or  guided  by 
the  light  of  numerous  previous  failures, 
we  are  never  allowed  to  know.  I,  there- 
fore, as  an  elderly  matron,  hope  for 
some  gratitude  from  the  rising  genera- 
tion, if  I  offer  a  few  suggestions  and 
write  down  such  information  on  this 
mysterious  subject  as  I  have  stored  up 
in  the  course  of  a  long  life. 

In  the  first  place,  then : — Avoid  too 
much  haste  in  matrimonial  matters.  A 
clever  writer  in  the  Saturday  Review 
recommends  no  man  to  marry  till  he 
has  seen  his  beloved  with  a  cold  in  her 
head.  If  his  affection  will  stand  this 
test,  nothing,  he  thinks,  can  chill  it; 
but  this  writer,  I  gather  from  internal 
evidence  in  his  own  article,  is  young 
and  a  bachelor,  and  has  evidently  never 
made  a  sea  voyage.  However,  his  theory 
is  good  as  far'  as  it  goes,  and  might,  if 
generally  acted  upon,  prevent  some  of 
the  contretemps  arising  from  hasty 

be  a  Tory ;  the  Tory  Volunteer  the  right  of 
his  comrade  to  be  a  Whig ;  and  if,  out  of  the 
comradeship,  any  higher  sentiment  can  come, 
overarching  the  difference  of  Whig  and  Tory, 
so  much  the  better  ! — EDITOR. 


offers  of  marriage.  One  such  occurs  to 
me  at  this  moment.  A  proposal  was 
written  and  sent  by  the  post  in  the 
days  when  letters  travelled  quietly  at 
the  rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour  on  the 
mail  coach.  The  anxious  lover  for  the 
first  week  breathlessly  expected  the 
reply,  but  it  did  not  come.  The  next 
week  he  pined,  and  was  sleepless ;  still 
no  answer.  The  third  week  he  became 
indignant.  "A  civil  acknowledgment 
was  his  due.  She  was  heartless,  and  a 
flirt."  The  next  week  he  despised  her, 
and  congratulated  himself  on  his  escape ; 
and,  when  at  the  end  of  it  he  received 
his  own  letter  back  from  the  Dead 
Letter  Office,  because  he  had  in  his  agi- 
tation forgotten  to  direct  it,  he  had  so 
completely  outlived  his  love  that  he 
never  proposed  to  that  lady  at  all. 

In  the  second  place : — Always  deal 
with  principals.  If  a  girl  is  too  young 
to  know  her  own  mind,  you  had  better 
wait  till  she  is  older ;  and,  if  she  is  too 
undecided  to  judge  of  her  own  feelings, 
why  not  choose  some  one  a  little  wiser  ? 
I  know  a  fine,  disposition  which  was 
soured,  and  the  course  of  two  lives 
materially  darkened,  by  a  churlish  old 
father,  who  never  told  his  daughter  of 
the  declaration  of  attachment  he  had 
received  for  her,  because  he  considered 
the  income  offered  to  be  insufficient. 
She  thought  her  feelings  had  been 
trifled  with,  and  the  man  a  heartless 
flirt.  Many  years  afterwards,  she  found 
out,  by  accident,  how  much  she  had 
misjudged  him;  but  it  was  then  too 
late. 


404 


Hints  on  Proposals. 


Let  me  recommend  young  girls  to  shun 
the  man  who  is,  even  when  making  love, 
wrapped  up  in  himself  and  his  own  pur- 
suits, instead  of  being  able  to  throw  his 
mind  into  their  occupations,  or  to  sympa- 
thise with  their  feelings.  Such  a  man  is 
either  narrow-minded  or  narrow-hearted. 
I  once  saw  a  middle-aged  invalid 
making  love  to  a  young  girl.  After 
making  great  efforts  to  secure  an  oppor- 
tunity of  meeting  her,  he  drew  his 
chair  close  to  hers,  looked  into  her  face, 
sighed  heavily,  drew  his  chair  still 
closer,  and,  while  she  looked  at  him  in 
astonishment,  and  I  in  the  distance 
strained  my  ears  to  hear  what  tender 
remark  followed  all  this  preparation, 
I  heard  him  whisper  with  great  em- 
phasis, "Who  is  your  doctor]"  I  need 
hardly  say  that  the  proposal  failed 
which  followed  this  well-judged  com- 
mencement. A  more-  pardonable  case 
of  a  man's  absorption  in  his  own  pur- 
suits was  that  of  a  very  shy  lover, 
whose  one  idea  was  horses.  He  never 
found  courage  to  propose  till  he  had 
persuaded  the  lady  to  go  into  the  stable 
and  look  at  his  favourite  horse.  There 
he  spoke,  and  there  she  answered  yes. 
But  this  was  natural  and  pardonable ; 
a  shy  man  may  need  this  vantage 
ground,  and,  feeling  his  own  inferiority 
in  the  drawing-room,  may  yet  be  aware 
of  his  superior  knowledge  and  superior 
power  in  the  stable,  where  his  horse  is 
his  throne,  and  he  himself  a  king. 

Thirdly. — Never  express  strong  deter- 
minations on  the  subject  of  marriage, 
unless  you  mean  to  break  them.  I  have 
seldom  heard  an  old  bachelor  declare 
that  he  had  quite  decided  not  to  marry 
without  feeling  sure  that  the  subject 
was  engrossing  a  good  deal  of  his 
thoughts,  and  soon  afterwards  seeing 
his  marriage  announced  in  the  Morning 
Post.  If  a  man  assures  you  he  could 
never  marry  a  widow,  or  a  fast  young 
lady,  or  a  girl  who  is  fat,  he  is  sure  to 
do  it ;  and,  when  the  young  girls  who 
honour  me  with  their  confidence  assure 
me  they  never  could  marry  a  man 
who  is  short,  or  who  can't  ride  across 
country,  or  who  wears  a  beard,  or  who 
has  only  500£  a  year,  or  a  county  squire 


who  rides  without  straps,  or  forgets  to 
wear  gloves,  I  consider  that  their  doom 
is  sealed,  and  that  their  husbands  will 
be  the  opposite  of  their  youthful  ideal 
in  these  exact  particulars.  But  people 
fall  generally  du  cote  oil  Von  penche,  and 
the  penchant  of  this  generation  is  cer- 
tainly not  to  idealize  too  much.  Warn- 
ing, therefore,  on  this  head,  is  perhaps 
unnecessary.  Bather,  I  remind  them 
that  imagination  is,  as  Schlegel  tells  us, 
a  garden  of  Eden  within  us,  which  man 
ought  to  dress  and  keep  within  bounds, 
not  ruthlessly  fell 

I  plead,  therefore,  that  a  little  romance 
be  still  left  around  the  proposal  even  in 
this  money-making  and  money-seeking 
age.  Let  the  words  be  spoken  at  a  time 
and  in  a  place  which  imagination  may 
love  to  dwell  upon,  and  beware  of  the 

example  of  Sir  0.  P. a  well-known. 

physician.  He  is  said  to  have  rolled  the 
note,  in  which  he  asked  for  the  Duchess 
of  's  hand,  round  a  phial  of  medi- 
cine. She  accepted  the  bitter  draught 
but  refused  the  man.  I  have  also  heard 
that  a  beautiful  and  accomplished  lady, 
who  had  become  an  enthusiast  in  fann- 
ing with  the  view  of  benefiting  her 
tenants  and  dependents,  was  "proposed 
to  "  in  a  new  pig-stye  by  an  eminent  agri- 
culturist, while  they  were  discussing  the 
various  arrangements  and  improvements 
which  might  be  made  in  the  building. 
Here  an  engrossing  pursuit  in  common 
had  assisted  the  denouement;  but  such 
similarity  of  taste  may  be  but  temporary, 
and  is  a  frail  foundation  for  lasting  union. 

A  north-country  gentleman,  a  master 
of  hounds,  and  a  man  of  much  character 
and  originality,  but  shy  and  peculiar  in 
society,  was  by  such  similarity  of  taste 
thrown  much  in  the  way  of  a  lady  who 
rode  well.  My  elderly  cheeks  tingle 
with  a  blush  while  I  write  that,  the 
gentleman  not  improving  the  opportu- 
nities given  him  of  declaring  his  senti- 
ments when  riding  home  with  the  lady 
after  hunting,  she  took  a  step  which, 
as  I  am  presenting  the  different  aspects 
and  circumstances  of  proposals,  I  feel 
bound,  however  unwillingly,  to  relate  : 
"  Why  should  we  not  marry,  Sir  John  1" 
she  said.  "Ah!"  said  Sir  John;  "I 


Hints  on  Proposals. 


405 


had  often  thought  of  it."     And  married 
they  were ! 

There  are  fatalities  which  seem  to 
attend  upon  some  lovers — strange  events, 
unexpected  meetings,  which  sometimes 
promote,  sometimes  prevent,  proposals. 
A  marriage  took  place  not  many  years 
ago,  in  the  great  world,  where  the  two 
lovers  (long  attached,  but  separated  by 
the  desire  of  their  parents)  met  under 
an  archway  while  each  taking  refuge  in 
London  from  a  sudden  shower  of  rain. 
Neither  of  them  had  the  least  idea  of 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  other,  when 
the  sudden  meeting  occurred  which  de- 
cided the  course  of  their  future  lives. 
In  another  case  the  engagement  was 
broken  off  on  account  of  limited  means, 
and  the  gentleman  went  abroad.  Re- 
turning after  some  years'  absence,  he 
arrived  late  on  the  railway  platform,  and 
rushed  into  the  first  carriage  he  reached, 
just  as  the  train  was  in  motion.  In  it 
he  found  (with  her  mother)  the  lady  he 
had  been  so  long  vainly  endeavouring 
to  forget,  and  the  meeting  ended  in  one 
of  the  happiest  of  marriages. 

Hans  Andersen  gives  in  one  of  his 
books  an  amusing  account  of  a  young 
man,  newly  appointed  to  some  official 
position  in  the  court  of  Copenhagen, 
ordering  his  court  dress  in  great  haste, 
that  he  might  be  present  at  a  ball  where 
he  meant  to  declare  his  attachment  to  a 
beautiful  girl  whom  he  had  long  loved. 
All  went  smoothly,  and  he  was  on  the 
point  of  proposing,  nay,  had  spoken  a 
few  preliminary  words,  when  a  button 
gave  way  on  the  hastily-made  court 
dress.  The  lover  rushed  abruptly  away, 
and  the  lady,  hurt  at  his  unlooked-for 
departure,  made  an  engagement  for  a 
sleighing  party  next  day,  where  she 
received  and  accepted  the  offer  of  an- 
other lover.  Thus,  love,  as  well  as  life, 
often  hangs  upon  a  thread. 

In  matrimony,  as  in  other  affairs,  it  is 
all-important  to  put  the  critical  question 
in  the  way  best  adapted  to  the  character 
and  disposition  of  the  person  concerned. 
A  gentleman  who  had  several  sisters 
— agreeable,  sensible,  and,  some  of  them, 
fine  looking  women — was  one  day  asked 
how  it  happened  that  they  had  all 


reached  middle  age  unmarried.  "I  will 
explain,"  he  replied.  "  Proposals  with- 
out attentions,  and  attentions  without 
proposals  ;  this  is  the  clue  to  my  sisters' 
single  life."  To  take  an  opposite  ex- 
ample. A  friend  of  mine  with  a  warm 
heart  .and  quick  impulses  is  much  in  the 
habit  of  decidedly  negativing  any  propo- 
sition when  first  made  to  her,  merely  on 
account  of  its  novelty.  One  day,  while 
referring  to  her  happy  marriage,  I  en- 
quired how  it  happened,  with  her 
dislike  to  new  suggestions,  that  she  did 
not  say  JVo,  when  her  husband  proposed 
to  her.  "Ah  !"  she  said,  "I  did;  but 
he  knew  my  habit,  and  put  the  question 
in  such  a  way  that  saying  no  meant 
yes." 

Lastly : — Always  secure  your  retreat  in 
love  as  in  war.     This  is  a  precaution  never 

to  be   neglected.     Mr.  A ,  brother 

to  the  late  Lord  Z ,  whose  proud 

and  haughty  temper  was  proverbial, 
proposed  to  a  lady  in  Portman-square 
Gardens.  After  being  refused  the  re- 
jected lover  turned  away  from  her  in 
great  indignation,  but,  finding  the  gate 
of  the  garden  locked,  was  obliged  to 
return  to  the  lady  to  petition  for  the 
key.  Another  case,  still  more  trying,  was 
that  of  a  gentleman  travelling  in  North 
America,  who,  after  being  hospitably 
received  in  the  house  of  an  officer  high 
in  command  there,  proposed  to  his 
host's  daughter,  the  evening  before  his 
intended  departure,  and  was  refused. 
A  deep  fall  of  snow  came  on  in  the 
night;  the  roads  became  impassable;  and 
the  poor  man,  to  his  unspeakable  mor- 
tification, was  detained  for  a  week  in 
the  house  with  the  lady  who  had  re- 
jected him. 

Such  are  some  of  the  incidents  re- 
lating to  proposals  which  occur  to  me  at 
this  moment.  Stranger  and  more  varied 
cases  will  probably  rise  up  to  the  me- 
mory of  most  of  my  readers,  surrounded, 
in  some  instances,  by  sad  and  softening 
recollections  ;  embittered,  in  others,  by 
long  and  unavailing  regrets. 

Paiise,  then,  and  prosper,  my  young 
reader.  Bear  with  you  on  your  path- 
way the  elderly  chaperone's  best  wishes 
for  your  happy  entrance  into  this  land 


406 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


Remember   the    Italian 


of    promise, 
proverb — 

"E  mezzo  arniato 
'Che  di  buon'  donna  e  amato," 
and  believe  that  a  marriage  based  on 


mutual  esteem,  built  up  by  lasting 
affection,  and  crowned  with  heaven's 
blessing,  is  the  fair  remnant  left  us  on 
earth  of  the  institutions  of  Paradise. 

S.  W. 


THE  ECLIPSE  EXPEDITION  TO   SPAIN. 

BY   WILLIAM   POLE,   C.E.,    FELLOW  OP   THE   ROYAL   ASTRONOMICAL   SOCIETY. 


A  TOTAL  eclipse  of  the  sun  is  an  event 
which  never  fails  to  excite  great  atten- 
tion, not  only  on  account  of  the  gran- 
deur and  importance  of  the  phenomena 
which  attend  it,  but  on  account  of  the 
extreme  rarity  of  its  occurrence  in  any 
given  locality. 

The  phenomena,  even  as  presenting 
themselves  to  an  uneducated  spectator, 
are  indeed  striking.  The  sudden  blotting 
out  of  the  great  orb  from  the  face  of 
nature,  while  still  high  in  heaven ;  the 
substitution  for  it  of  a  celestial  appear- 
ance as  splendid  as  it  is  novel ;  the 
supernatural  effect  on  the  landscape  ; — 
all  these  things  cannot  fail  to  produce 
an  impression  which,  once  seen,  even 
for  the  few  seconds  they  last,  can  never 
be  effaced  from  the  mind.  And  then 
the  interest  of  the  occurrence  is  very 
great  in  a  more  scientific  point  of  view. 
The  proof  its  prediction  affords  of  the 
amazing  degree  of  accuracy  to  which  we 
have  brought  our  astronomical  calcula- 
tions, and  the  data  it  gives  for  still 
further  improving  them,  are  inestimable 
to  the  mathematician  ;  the  singular  and 
mysterious  appearances  which  present 
themselves  around  the  solar  disk  afford 
to  the  physical  astronomer  most  interest- 
ing glimpses  of  the  nature  and  consti- 
tution of  our  great  luminary — obscure, 
it  is  true,  but  still  such  as  he  can,  as 
yet  at  least,  obtain  in  no  other  way; 
and  finally,  we  have  in  an  event  so 
abnormal  as  a  total  eclipse  many  other 
phenomena,  meteorological  and  the  like, 
which  it  is  extremely  important,  for  the 
general  benefit  of  science,  to  register 
and  trace. 

The  interest  of  this  phenomenon  is 
moreover  much  enhanced  by  the  extreme 


rarity  of  its  occurrence  in  any  given 
locality.  While  a  total  eclipse  of  the 
moon  is  visible  to  the  whole  terrestrial 
hemisphere  to  which  she  is  above  the 
horizon,  one  of  the  sun  is  only  total  to  a 
very  small  portion  of  the  earth's  surface. 
The  moon's  shadow,  passing  across  the 
earth,  forms  only  a  narrow  belt  or  stripe 
of  from  100  to  150  miles  wide,  and  it  is 
solely  within  this  space  that  the  total 
obscuration  can  be  seen.  And  when 
it  is  considered  that  this  shadow  belt, 
even  when  it  crosses  the  earth  centrally, 
which  rarely  happens,  forms  much  less 
than  one-hundredth  part  of  the  earth's 
surface,  it  may  be  easily  imagined  that 
the  chances  of  its  falling  upon,  or  even 
within  a  reasonably  accessible  distance 
of  any  given  locality,  are  very  remote. 
A  great  many  total  eclipses  fall  on  the 
ocean,  or  near  the  poles,  or  otherwise  in 
places  that  may  be  considered  altogether 
inaccessible  to  the  more  civilized  of  the 
earth's  inhabitants. 

The  line  of  shadow  of  the  eclipse  of 
the  18th  of  July  last  began  at  a  high 
latitude  in  North  America,  traversed  the 
Atlantic,1  formed  a  broad  belt  obliquely 
across  the  north  of  Spain,  crossed  the 
Mediterranean  to  Algeria,  and  passed 
over  the  deserts  of  Northern  Africa  till 
it  ended  near  the  Red  Sea.  It  was  thus 
easily  accessible  to  European  astrono- 
mers ;  the  districts  were  considered 
favourable  for  the  chance  of  fine  wea- 
ther, and  the  totality  was  to  be  of  some- 
what long  duration.  The  conjunction  of 

1  It  is  believed  that  the  Hero,  which  sailed 
from  Plymouth  a  few  days  before  the  eclipse, 
conveying  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  Canada, 
put  herself  in  the  line  of  totality  to  afford 
H.R.H.  a  view  of  this  grand  phenomenon. 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


407 


all  these  circumstances  caused  the  event 
to  he  looked  forward  to  with  much  in- 
terest, and  many  were  the  projects  enter- 
tained by  private  astronomers  for  under- 
taking its  observation ;  but  in  the 
meantime  the  concurrent  efforts'  of  three 
individuals,  whose  names  will  stand 
conspicuous  in  the  English  records  of 
this  eclipse,  conspired  to  give  the  plans 
or  this  purpose  more  definite  form. 
The  first  was  Mr.  Warren  de  la  Eue, 
who  had  for  some  years  given  special 
attention  to  the  application  of  photo- 
graphy to  celestial  subjects,  and  who 
had  erected,  and  successfully  worked,  an 
instrument  at  Kew  Observatory  for  the 
purpose  of  photographing  the  sun.  Mr. 
De  la  Rue  saw  how  great  the  advan- 
tages to  science  would  be  if  photographs 
of  the  appearances  during  totality  could 
be  obtained ;  and  he  resolved  to  under- 
take the  difficult  task,  if  he  could  pro- 
cure the  necessary  facilities  for  the 
transport  and  fixing  of  the  somewhat 
cumbersome  preparations  he  would  re- 
quire. Here  stepped  in  another  amateur, 
Mr.  Charles  Vignoles,  the  engineer  of 
a  railway  in  course  of  construction  in 
the  north  of  Spain,  running  for  its 
whole  length  precisely  in  the  path  of  the 
shadow.  He  generously  offered  to  pro- 
cure for  any  number  of  astronomers, 
with  any  amount  of  apparatus,  who 
would  present  themselves  on  his  terri- 
tory, all  possible  facilities  ;  and,  taking 
a  bold  initiative,  he  further  went  to 
the  trouble  of  preparing,  and  to  the  ex- 
pense of  publishing  for  gratuitous  distri- 
bution, an  elaborate  and  beautiful  map 
of  the  shadow-path  over  the  whole  dis- 
trict, accompanied  with  a  book  of  valu- 
able detailed  information  for  the  guid- 
ance of  those  who  might  visit  the 
locality.  Last,  though  not  least,  came 
the  Astronomer  Royal  of  England,  Pro- 
fessor Airy,  who,  giving  the  weight  of 
his  sanction  to  Mr.  De  la  Rue's  projects, 
and  seeing  the  great  advantages  to  be 
derived  from  Mr.  Vignoles' s  co-opera- 
tion, undertook  to  organize  an  expedi- 
tion of  astronomers  and  scientific  men 
for  the  purpose  of  observing  the  eclipse. 
His  first  step  was  to  communicate  with 
the  Government,  and  request  their  aid. 


This  they  consented  to  give  with  a 
promptitude  and  a  neglect  of  red  tape 
which  does  them  unwonted  honour. 
They  agreed  to  put  a  steamer  at  the 
Astronomer  Royal's  disposal,  for  the 
gratuitous  conveyance  of  the  astrono- 
mers and  their  apparatus  to  and  from 
the  coast  of  Spain;  and  they  further 
made  interest  with  the  Spanish  Govern- 
ment to  relax  in  their  special  case  any 
vexatious  custom-house  or  passport  regu- 
lations, and  to  afford  the  expedition  all 
the  countenance  in  their  power. 

Invitations  to  join  the  expedition 
were  sent  to  the  most  eminent  astrono- 
mers of  Great  Britain  ;  and,  with  much 
liberality,  the  Astronomer  Royal  accepted 
freely  the  co-operation  of  many  astrono- 
mical amateurs  and  other  scientific  men, 
who  volunteered  to  join,  and  who  gave 
reasonable  prospect  of  being  able  to 
contribute  to  the  general  results.  It 
was  in  this  way  that  I  obtained  per- 
mission to  form  one  of  the  party. 

As  I  had  never  seen  a  total  eclipse 
before,  I  did  not  feel  warranted  in 
undertaking  any  particular  subject  of 
attention  in  s/>  new  a  field,  but  reserved 
myself  for  the  general  observation  of 
the  phenomena,  without  any  predeter- 
mined plan,  further  than  taking  all  the 
precautions  necessary  to  make  my  obser- 
vations as  good  as  the  circumstances 
would  permit.  I  resolved  to  eschew 
any  great  size,  power,  or  complexity  of 
telescope,  contenting  myself  with  a 
tolerable  sea-glass  by  Elliott,  thirty 
inches  long,  two-inch  object  glass,  and 
magnifying  about  twenty  times.  It  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  have  a  stand, 
and  for  some  time  I  was  puzzled  how 
to  contrive  this  without  burdening  my- 
self with  a  heavy  package ;  but  at  last 
I  bethought  myself  of  using  my  camera- 
stand,  which  I  had  to  take  for  photo- 
graphic purposes,  and  which  folded  up 
into  a  single  stick  for  convenience  of 
carriage.  On  this  I  managed,  by  a  very 
simple  contrivance,  partly  taken  from 
England  and  partly  made  by  a  carpenter 
at  Vitoria,  to  scheme  a  rough  mounting 
for  the  telescope,  which  I  fixed  equa- 
torially.  I  further  thought  it  might 
be  desirable  to  have  a  wire  in  the 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


field,  as  an  index  to  the  position  of 
anything  I  might  see ;  and  as  I  had 
neglected  to  get  this  inserted  before  I 
left  England,  I  was  obliged  to  do  it 
myself  in  Spain,  by  fastening  a  hair 
across  the  diaphragm  of  the  eye-piece. 
For  the  time — an  important  considera- 
tion even  for  general  observers  —  I 
trusted  to  a  compensated  lever  watch, 
by  Frodsham,  which,  though  sometimes 
eccentric  and  troublesome,  has  the 
faculty  of  going  like  a  chronometer 
when  it  is  in  a  good  humour,  as  fortu- 
nately it  remained  during  the  whole 
journey.  But  it  occurred  to  me  that 
my  watch  might  stop,  or  that  I  might 
forget  to  wind  it  up,  and  so  lose  the 
time ;  which  would  have  been  awkward, 
as,  when  out  of  the  way  of  others  of 
our  party,  probably  nobody  in  the  dis- 
trict could  tell  the  time  to  within  half 
an  hour.  So  I  took  with  me  a  pocket- 
sextant  and  an  artificial  horizon,  with 
which,  by  an  observation  on  the  sun  or 
a  star,  I  could  obtain  the  time  for  my- 
self in  any  place  without  troubling  any- 
body. A  small  azimuth  compass,  fitted 
with  one  of  my  own  clinometers,  for 
measuring  heights,  distances,  &c.,  and 
a  small  photographic  apparatus,  com- 
pleted my  scientific  provisions,  the  whole 
of  which  did  not  fill  half  a  moderate 
sized  portmanteau. 

We  had  been  informed  that  the  vessel 
destined  to  take  us  was  the  screw-steamer, 
the  Himalaya,  and  that  she  would  leave 
Plymouth  on  Saturday  morning,  the  7th 
July.  This  date  allowed  eleven  days  to 
reach  the  localities  and  prepare  for  the 
observations — a  time  apparently  longer 
than  was  necessary  ;  but,  as  all  who  were 
acquainted  with"  the  country  had  insisted 
on  the  importance  of  arriving  early  in 
Spain,  the  Astronomer  Eoyal,  knowing 
that  eclipses  wait  for  no  man,  wisely 
decided  to  leave  a  good  margin  for  con- 
tingencies. 

I  accordingly  left  Paddington  by  the 
express  train,  on  the  morning  of  the 
6th.  Professor  Airy,  the  chief,  and 
a  great  number  of  the  other  members  of 
the  expedition  were  also  in  the  train. 
Detained  by  slight  accidents,  we  arrived 
at  Plymouth  one  hour  later  than  our 


proper  time  ;  and,  after  a  due  amount 
of  confusion  at  the  Plymouth  station, 
attributable  to  the  puzzling  array  of 
scientific  packages  brought  down  by  the 
astronomers,  we  got  to  Mile  Bay  Pier, 
where  we  found  small  tender  steamers 
in  waiting,  to  take  us  off  to  the  Hima- 
laya. Arrived  on  board  the  large  vessel, 
the  allotment  of  comfortable  berths,  and 
a  capital  dinner,  made  us  feel  at  once 
at  home.  Next  morning  after  receiving 
a  few  passengers  who  had  loitered  on 
shore,  we  weighed  anchor,  and  steamed 
out  past  the  breakwater  about  half-past 
ten. 

The  Himalaya  is  one  of  the  largest 
and  finest  steamers  in  the  world,  after 
the  Great  Eastern.  She  is  of  iron,  and 
was  built  in  1853  by  Messrs.  Mare  and 
Co.,  of  Blackwall,  for  the  Peninsular 
and  Oriental  Company.  She  passed 
into  the  possession  of  the  Government 
some  years  afterwards,  and  has  since 
been  used  as  a  troop-ship,  on  which 
service  she  was  employed  in  the  Crimea 
during  the  Russian  War.  She  is  about 
3,500  tons  burthen ;  about  350  feet  long, 
forty-six  feet  beam,  and  thirty-five  feet 
depth  in  the  hold,  drawing  twenty  feet 
of  water.  She  is  fitted  with  horizontal 
trunk  engines,  by  Penn,  of  about  700 
nominal  horse-power,  and  has  one  of 
Griffith's  patent  -screws.  The  engines 
during  our  trip  made  usually  about  fifty 
revolutions  per  minute,  and  the  speed 
obtained  was  eleven  to  twelve  knots 
per  hour ;  but  it  was  said  that  this 
speed  could  be  much  exceeded  when  de- 
sired. She  has  a  handsome  saloon, 
about  120  feet  long,  by  twenty-eight 
feet  wide,  with  spacious  cabins  on 
each  side  ;  and  there  are  also  a  series  of 
comfortable  cabins  on  the  lower  deck. 
She  has  well-arranged  accommodation 
forward,  and  can  carry  1,500  men. 

Our  routine  on  board  this  splendid 
vessel  was  pleasant  enough.  Most  of 
the  passengers,  when  the  weather  was 
fine,  were  up  and  on  deck  early.  We 
breakfasted  about  half-past  eight ;  about 
nine  came  the  observations  for  the  lon- 
gitude, and  at  noon  those  for  the  lati- 
tude, in  both  which  such  of  the  savans 
as  had  brought  sextants  took  part.  We 


TJie  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


409 


had  a  little  joking  as  to  this.  Some  were 
congratulating  themselves  on  the  im- 
possibility that,  with  such  an  astounding 
amount  of  astronomical  science  on  board, 
the  ship  could  go  wrong  :  others  pro- 
fanely quoted  the  adage  about  "too 
many  cooks,"  while  I  fear  the  good- 
natured  captain  and  his  master  merely 
set  us  all  down  as  land  lubbers,  and 
quietly  ignored  our  nautical  science 
altogether.  Shortly  after  noon  we 
lunched ;  at  six  we  dined  ;  at  eight  we 
had  tea;  and  at  ten  grog.  Everybody 
who  has  been  at  sea,  and  in  eating  con- 
dition, knows  that  the  meals  form  the 
chief  points  of  interest  to  the  idle  pas- 
sengers, and  I  should  be  an  ingrate  if  I 
did  not  testify  how  well  the  Admiralty 
had  provided  for  us  in  this  particular. 
Soon  after  ten  we  were  obliged  to  go  to 
bed  ;  for,  about  eleven,  a  stern  marine 
came  round  to  the  cabins,  with  an  irre- 
vocable decree  to  put  out  all  the  lights. 

The  party  on  board  consisted  of  about 
fifty  or  sixty  in  number ;  partly  pro- 
fessional astronomers,  partly  eminent 
amateurs  of  astronomical  pursuits,  and 
partly  general  men  of  science,  interested 
in  the  eclipse.  Among  the  former  may 
be  mentioned,  in  addition  to  the  Astro- 
nomer Eoyal  of  England ;  Mr.  Otto 
Struve,  director  of  the  principal  Eussian 
Observatory  at  Pulkowa,  with  assistants ; 
Captain  Jacob,  late  of  the  Madras 
Observatory ;  and  a  deputation  of  astro- 
nomers from  Norway  ;  among  the  latter 
classes  were  Mr.  Lassell,  Mr.  Warren 
de  la  Eue,  Professor  Grant,  Mr.  Lowe, 
Dr.  Pritchard,  and  several  other  well- 
known  names.  Our  party  was  also 
enlivened  by  the  presence  of  a  few 
ladies,  relations  of  some  of  the  principal 
passengers. 

At  about  ten  P.M.  of  the  7th  we 
passed  Ushant  light,  and  entered  the 
Bay  of  Biscay,  and  soon  afterwards 
turned  to  the  eastward,  pointing  our 
course  directly  to  Bilbao.  The  next 
morning,  Sunday,  the  8th,  we  had  a 
moderate  breeze  from  the  eastward, 
which  gave  us  some  rolling,  and  con- 
siderably thinned  the  breakfast-table. 
Prayers  were  read  at  eleven  o'clock 
on  the  fore  main-deck.  In  the  after- 

jSTo.  11. — VOL.  ir. 


noon  we  had  thunder  and  rain,  but  the 
wind  lulled,  and  in  the  night  speed  was 
slackened.  About  four  A.  M.  the  coast 
came  in  sight,  to  the  eastward  of  our 
port ;  and,  when  we  turned  upon  deck 
in  the  morning,  we  found  ourselves 
running  along  the  coast,  making  for 
the  little  Bay  of  Portugalete,  in  which, 
after  taking  a  Spanish  pilot  on  board, 
we  anchored  at  about  eight  A.  M. 

It  may  be  well  to  give  a  little  more 
particular  account  of  the  locality  where 
the  eclipse  was  to  be  observed.  The 
moon's  shadow,  under  which  it  would 
be  total,  fell  upon  the  southern  coast  of 
the  Bay  of  Biscay,  occupying  two-thirds 
of  the  whole  extent  between  Bayonne 
and  Corunna.  From  thence,  crossing  the 
range  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  proceeding 
inland,  it  formed  a  belt  of  about  130 
miles  wide,  striking  across  the  country 
in  a  south-easterly  direction,  and  quit- 
ting Spain  on  the  coast  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean, between  Barcelona  and  Alicante. 
The  shadow  included  in  it  the  consider- 
able ports  of  Bilbao  and  Santander,  in 
the  Bay  of  Biscay,  and  of  Valencia  in 
the  Mediterranean ;  as  also  the  im- 
portant inland  towns  of  Oviedo,  Vitoria, 
Burgos,  Logrono,  Tudela,  and  Saragossa. 
The  English  expedition  were  to  occupy 
the  western  portion  of  this  belt,  and 
the  Astronomer  Eoyal  had  recommended 
that,  for  various  astronomical  and  me- 
teorological reasons,  the  observers  should 
be  spread  as  much  as  possible  over  the 
district.  In  accordance  with  this  sug- 
gestion, the  party  had  been  divided  into 
two  sections,  one  landing  at  Bilbao,  and 
the  other  at  Santander,  from  which  ports 
they  were  to  distribute  themselves  into 
the  interior.  As  I  belonged  to  the 
Bilbao  party,  I  must  follow  their  for- 
tunes in  my  history. 

We  had  scarcely  cast  anchor,  when 
we  observed  two  small  steamers  coming 
out  to  us.  One  was  an  excursion  vessel 
from  Bilbao,  crowded  with  curious 
Spaniards,  who  had  been  tempted  to 
come  out  under  promise  that  they  would 
be  allowed  to  view  the  great  English 
steamer,  (as  unwonted  a  sight  to  them  as 
the  "  Great  Eastern"  was  to  the  inha- 
bitants of  New  York;)  but  bitter  was 

E  E 


410 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


their  disappointment  when  our  Captain 
politely  told  them  it  was  impossible  for 
him  to  receive  strangers  on  board  at 
that  time.  The  other  steamer  was  one 
courteously  sent  out  by  the  authorities 
of  the  place,  many  of  whom  were  on 
board  her,  to  convey  us  and  our  luggage 
up  to  Bilbao.  Soon  after  ten  we  were 
all  transferred,  and  left  the  good  ship 
with  mutual  cheers. 

Bilbao  is  situated  about  six  or  eight 
miles  up  a  narrow  picturesque  river,  the 
Nervion,  whose  windings  are  "  the 
Bilboes,"  where  in  steam-tug-less  days 
our  ancient  mariners  feared  to  be  "  pen- 
ned," and  to  whose  entanglements  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  compares  the  noose 
of  being  married.  It  has  a  shallow  and 
dangerous  bar  at  the  mouth,  but  higher 
up  its  channel  is  enclosed  between  walls 
and  kept  tolerably  deep,  so  that  good- 
sized  vessels  can  arrive  within  a  mile  or 
two  of  Bilbao.  The  city  itself,  however, 
is  only  to  be  reached  by  smaller  craft, 
at  high  water ;  when  they  go  alongside 
a  handsome  quay,  forming  part  of  the 
"  paseo"  or  public  promenade  of  the  town. 
On  this  occasion,  the  tide  not  serving, 
we  were  obliged  to  land  at  the  lower 
point,  and  walk  up  to  Bilbao,  the  steamer 
following  with  the  baggage,  as  soon  as 
the  water  rose.  And  here  we  at  once 
-began  to  experience  the  results  of  the 
zeal  and  kindness  of  Mr.  Vignoles,  who, 
as  I  have  already  said,  had  promised,  in 
his  capacity  of  Engineer-in-Chief  to  the 
Bilbao  and  Tudela  Eailway,  to  afford 
the  expedition  every  assistance  in  his 
power.  The  Eailway  Company  on  his 
suggestion  appear  to  have  put  almost 
everything  aside  for  the  time  in  favour 
of  science — the  whole  of  the  available 
strength  of  the  establishment,  from  the 
managing  director  and  the  chief  engineer 
through  all  the  various  grades  down  to 
the  labourers,  being  converted  into  either 
astronomers  or  astronomers'  assistants. 
Mr.  Vignoles  himself  received  into  his 
house  the  chiefs  of  the  expedition ; 
others  were  billeted  upon  officials ;  and 
even  those  for  whom  no  private  homes 
could  be  found,  had  all  possible  help 
afforded  them.  The  gerant  of  the 
Eailway,  Senor  Montesino,  exerted  him- 


self to  the  utmost,  in  all  sorts  of  waysr 
for  our  benefit ;  and,  as  he  possessed  in- 
fluence in  high  quarters,  his  offices  were 
of  the  greatest  value.  The  English 
contractors,  through  their  resident 
agents,  also  lent  their  aid,  and  in  par- 
ticular undertook  the  conveyance  of  a 
large  quantity  of  cumbersome  apparatus 
over  the  mountains  into  the  interior. 
Many  of  the  junior  engineers  were  told 
off  to  accompany  and  act  as  interpreters 
and  assistants  to  those  parties  who  did 
not  understand  the  language;  and  every 
person  connected  with  the  railway,  who 
possessed  sufficient  ability,  was  instruct- 
ed to  take  careful  observations  at  the 
tune  of  the  eclipse,  and  to  report  them 
to  head  quarters. 

On  Tuesday,  the  10th,  a  meeting 
of  all  hands  was  called  at  the  Eail- 
way Office,  the  Astronomer  Eoyal  pre- 
siding, for  the  purpose  of  settling  finally 
as  to  the  stations  to  be  occupied  by  the 
different  parties;  and  the  Astronomer 
Eoyal,  after  registering  the  situations  to 
be  occupied,  gave  instructions  and  sug- 
gestions as  to  the  most  important  points 
to  be  attended  to  in  each.  In  the  after- 
noon another  meeting  was  held,  at  Mr. 
Vignoles's,  to  compare  the  different 
chronometers,  and  to  settle  the  true 
Greenwich  time ;  after  which  we  were 
left  to  find  our  way  to  our  various  points 
of  observation.  Here,  then,  I  must  take 
leave  of  the  rest  of  the  party,  and  con- 
fine my  narrative  to  the  proceedings  of 
myself  and  one  companion.  As,  fortu- 
nately, I  was  somewhat  acquainted  with 
both  the  language  and  the  country,  we 
were  able  to  get  on  comfortably  without 
any  assistant  or  interpreter. 

We  had  not  quite  decided  as  to  the  spot 
where  we  should  station  ourselves  ;  but, 
as  we  proposed  it  should  be  somewhere 
near  Vitoria,  we  left  Bilbao  for  that 
place  on  Wednesday  morning  by  dili- 
gence. We  followed  the  Bayonne  road 
as  far  as  Durango.  We  then  turned  off 
and  took  a  fine  picturesque  pass  through 
the  mountains  to  the  southward.  The 
ascent  was  so  long  and  steep  that  the 
diligence  had  to  be  drawn  up  by  oxen, 
but  the  southern  side  sloped  much  more 
gradually  down  to  the  elevated  plain 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


411 


about  1,800  feet  above  the  sea,  on 
which  Vitoria  stands. 

This  is  a  pleasant  little  town,  of 
about  10,000  inhabitants,  lying  on  the 
main  road  from  France  to  Madrid,  and 
furnished  with  good  hotel  accommoda- 
tion ;  and  we  found  ourselves  so  com- 
fortable at  the  Hotel  Pallares,  that  we 
determined,  if  possible,  to  find  an  eli- 
gible station  within  easy  reach  of  the 
town.  "We  met,  at  the  same  hotel,  M. 
Miidler,  the  astronomer  of  the  Eussian 
Observatory  at  Dorpat,  who  had  come 
with  one  or  two  friends  to  see  the 
eclipse,  and  who  was  afterwards  joined 
by  M.  D' Arrest,  of  Copenhagen,  and 
M.  Goldsmidt,  of  Paris.  We  had  at 
first  thought  of  joining  them ;  but, 
when  it  appeared  that  they  had  chosen 
a  site  on  the  flat  plain  close  to  the 
town,  that  it  was  to  be  enclosed  with 
ropes  like  a  prize  ring,  and  that  the 
crowd  who  would  naturally  flock  to  the 
spot  would  be  kept  at  bay  during  the 
eclipse  by  a  guard  of  soldiers,  I  declined 
to  take  any  part  in  such  an  exhibition, 
and  preferred  the  selection  of  an  elevated 
knoll  about  two  miles  south  of  the  town, 
from  which  we  should  have  the  ad- 
vantages of  a  fine  and  extended  land- 
scape, and,  at  least,  a  tolerable  chance 
of  observing  in  peace  and  quietness. 

On  Friday,  the  13th,  we  paid  a 
visit  to  the  station  occupied  by  Mr.  De 
la  Kue,  near  Miranda  del  Ebro,  and 
were  glad  to  find  he  had  his  house  and 
instrument  erected,  and  his  photo- 
graphic apparatus  in  promising  order. 
But  the  general  interest  of  everybody 
now  began  to  turn  upon  the  weather. 
Since  our  landing  it  had  been  very  un- 
satisfactory ;  we  had  had  occasional  sun- 
shine, but  heavy  clouds  had  prevailed. 
We  at  first  thought  that  the  clouds 
might  be  only  local  to  Vitoria ;  but 
accounts  we  heard  from  other  parts 
proved  their  existence  in  the  whole 
neighbourhood.  On  Saturday  afternoon, 
however,  it  cleared  up,  and  became  by 
night  beautifully  fine  and  clear ;  and 
when  we  saw  that  this  continued  on 
Sunday,  it  may  be  guessed  how  our 
courage  rose.  Little  doubt  was  enter- 
tained that  all  would  henceforth  be 


serene.  At  the  six  o'clock  table  d'hote, 
our  spirits  were  exuberant ;  we  had  a 
truly  gorgeous  southern  summer's  day, 
the  whole  sky  cerulean,  with  not  a 
vestige  of  a  cloud  to  be  seen.  During 
dessert,  however,  my  eye  caught  sight, 
peeping  over  the  distant  hills  to  the 
southward,  of  two  or  three  of  those 
massive  brilliant- topped  cauliflower-look- 
ing clouds,  which  are  so  well  known  to 
meteorologists  as  huge  repositories  of 
threatening  electricity.  "What  does 
that  mean  1 "  said  I,  pointing  the  ap- 
pearance out  to  an  eminent  astronomer 
sitting  by  me.  "  Oh,"  replied  he,  but 
with  a  little  evident  hesitation  in  his 
manner,  and  pulling  up  suddenly  in  the 
middle  of  a  plate  of  delicious  wild  straw- 
berries, "nothing,  I  hope.  Probably 
only  some  evening  mists  at  a  distance, 
after  the  fine  day."  Nothing  more  was 
said,  and  no  one  else  appeared  to  notice 
the  cauliflowers  ;  but  when,  a  quarter- 
of-an-hour  afterwards,  we  turned  out  to 
take  our  after  dinner  stroll,  a  general 
change  in  the  appearance  of  the  sky,  and 
masses  of  black  opaque  scud  that  began 
to  pour  over  the  Pyrenees  from  the 
northward,  gave  evident  signs  of  ap- 
proaching disturbance.  The  clouds  soon 
opened  and  thickened  ;  faint  flashes  of 
lightning  and  distant  thunder  followed; 
and  about  ten  o'clock  down  came  a 
heavy  thunder  storm,  which  lasted,  with 
slight  intermissions,  for  nearly  twelve 
hours. 

Now  thunder  storms  have  two  dif- 
ferent habits.  Sometimes  they  are  mere 
episodes  in  fine  weather,  serving  rather 
to  improve  than  to  damage  it,  nature 
bursting  out  with  unwonted  splendour 
and  freshness  after  the  disturbing  elec- 
tricity has  been  exhausted  from  the 
charged  atmosphere.  But  they  are  also 
sometimes  indications  of  more  perma- 
nent meteorological  disturbance,  usher- 
ing in  an  enduring  change  from  good 
weather  to  bad.  It  will  be  easily  ima- 
gined that  we  all  found  ourselves  on 
Monday  morning  studying  this  distinc- 
tion, and  exerting  our  best  philosophical 
discrimination  either  on  one  side  or  the 
other.  In  the  early  part  of  the  day  the 
advocates  of  the  permanent  bad  weather 

E  E  2 


412 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


hypothesis  had  the  advantage,  for 
though  the  rain  and  thunder  had  ceased, 
the  heavy  clouds  remained  ;  but  towards 
evening  the  sky  reappeared,  and  the 
episodical  doctrine  was  in  the  ascendant. 

Sad  indeed  was  our  "  madrugada,"  as 
the  Spaniards  call  it ; — our  "  getting  up 
early/'  on  Tuesday  the  17th,  and  sad 
indeed  were  our  spirits  during  the  day. 
The  heavens  were  covered  with  thick 
clouds — not  the  lively  isolated  passing 
fleeces  which  would  seem  to  give  us 
hope  rather  than  despondency,  but 
dogged  determined  looking  banks,  so 
nearly  stationary  that  we  could  not  tell 
from  which  quarter  the  wind  blew,  and 
which  seemed  to  mock  us,  saying,  "Here 
we  are,  ye  astronomers,  and  here  we 
intend  to  remain  till  after  the  new  moon ; 
we  wish  to  be  present  at  the  eclipse,  and 
we  have  the  priority."  Things  were 
indeed  looking  serious.  We  had  come 
nearly  1,000  miles  to  see  a  phenomenon 
of  three  minutes'  duration,  on  the  pre- 
sumption that  the  climate  would  afford  us 
a  clear  sky ;  and  here  we  were,  within  a 
few  hours  of  the  time,  in  as  thoroughly 
English  atmospherical  conditions  as 
those  which  shut  out  from  us  at  Blis- 
worth  the  great  annular  eclipse  of  March 
1858. 

Time  wore  on,  and  no  improve- 
ment took  place.  Those  who  were 
going  to  other  stations  had  left,  hoping 
for  better  luck  there ;  but  more  new 
arrivals  had  taken  their  places,  and  the 
hotel  was  literally  crammed  with  de- 
spondent astronomers  and  their  belong- 
ings. The  only  hope  seemed  to  lie  in 
prompt  removal  to  some  other  part  of 
the  country,  if  any  such  could  be  found 
within  reach,  where  better  atmospheric 
conditions  prevailed.  The  foreign  as- 
tronomers I  have  alluded  to  would  pro- 
bably have  gone  elsewhere  if  they 
could,  but  after  the  parade  made  for  their 
accommodation,  this  was  impossible. 
To  us,  however,  burdened  with  no 
such  ties,  it  seemed  imperative  to  make 
an  effort  in  this  way;  and  our  attention 
was  directed  to  three  points,  which, 
being  further  in  the  interior,  we  thought 
might  be  more  favourably  situated.  The 
first  was  Miranda,  and  we  at  once  tele- 


graphed to  Mr.  De  la  Rue,  to  ask  how 
he  fared.  His  reply  showed  he  was  no 
better  off  than  ourselves.  The  second 
was  Burgos ;  but  we  heard  that  there 
the  weather  was  worse  than  at  Vitoria. 
The  third  was  Logrono,  of  the  climate 
of  which  we  had  heard  a  very  favour- 
able account  from  an  intelligent  Spanish 
gentleman  at  Vitoria.  He  knew  the 
district  well,  and  would  undertake,  he 
said,  that  we  should  have  better  wea- 
ther if  we  would  go  there.  We  pro- 
posed that  he  should  substantiate  his 
recommendation  by  getting  at  once  a 
telegraphic  intimation  of  the  state  of 
the  weather  at  the  time  ;  which  he  did, 
and  the  answer  was — "  Sol  con  nubes." 
We  had  had  plenty  of  "  nubes,"  but  no 
"sol;"  and  as  this  showed  a  manifest 
advantage  in  the  locality,  we  decided  at 
once  (for  there  was  no  time  to  lose)  to 
go  to  Logrono,  by  the  diligence  start- 
ing from  Vitoria  at  10  P.M.,  in  which 
we  found  a  sufficient  number  of  places 
free. 

The  night  remained  cloudy,  and  there 
was  a  little  ominous  lightning  on  the 
journey,  but  in  the  morning,  as  we  de- 
scended the  valley  of  the  Ebro,  the 
weather  gradually  improved ;  the  clouds 
broke,  and  took  a  lighter  character,  and 
the  sun  began  to  appear. 

We  arrived  at  Logrono  about  eight 
o'clock  on  the  morning  of  Wednesday 
the  18th :  we  had  consequently  but  a 
very  short  time  left  to  prepare  for  our 
observation,  as  the  eclipse  was  to  begin 
between  one  and  two  P.M.  We  had 
been  recommended  to  station  ourselves 
on  a  hill  called  "La  Cantabria,"  about 
a  mile  east  of  the  town,  and  as  this 
appeared  eligible  we  adopted  the  sug- 
gestion. Having  got  our  instruments  in 
order  we  started  as  soon  as  we  could, 
with  an  intelligent  Spanish  fellow  lent 
us  for  a  day  or  two  by  Mr.  Vignoles, 
and  a  couple  of  boys  as  porters,  and 
arrived  on  the  spot  before  mid-day.  It 
was  an  elevation  immediately  overlook- 
ing the  Ebro,  on  the  north  bank,  and 
about  350  feet  above  it ;  and  it  com- 
manded a  wide  view  over  the  plains,  the 
landscape  being  bounded  by  ranges  of 
hills  many  miles  distant  in  all  directions. 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


413 


"We  chose  an  eligible  spot,  and  had  soon 
got  our  instruments  fixed  and  adjusted, 
waiting  leisurely  the  commencement  of 
the  eclipse.  A  difficulty,  however,  here 
arose  which-  threatened  at  one  time  to  be 
serious,  namely,  the  nocking  to  the  spot 
of  people  from  the  town.  I  had  already 
noticed,  with  some  pleasure,  the  interest 
excited  by  the  eclipse  among  the  natives 
generally,  and  the  desire  that  had  often 
been  manifested  to  obtain  information 
about  it ;  but  we  were  hardly  prepared 
for  a  manifestation  of  curiosity  coming 
so  yearly  home  to  ourselves.  The  arri- 
vals increased  fast  as  the  eclipse  went 
on ;  and,  notwithstanding  the  exertions 
of  ourselves  and  our  man,  the  people 
began  to  crowd  inconveniently  close  to 
us,  with  some  noise  and  disturbance.  I 
had  remonstrated  for  some  time,  and 
tried  to  persuade  them  that  other  points 
on  the  hill  would  answer  their  purpose 
fully  as  well  as  that  where  we  stood ; 
but  this  appeared  quite  ineffectual,  and, 
when  I  saw  long  strings  of  new  comers 
winding  slowly  up  the  hill,  and  direct- 
ing their  files  exactly  upon  us,  I  confess 
my  heart  failed  me,  and  I  began  to  con- 
sider the  advisability  of  moving  our 
station  further  away  before  the  totality 
came  on.  All  at  once,  however,  actuated 
either  by  some  inward  compunction,  or 
by  some  other  motive  I  have  never  been 
able  quite  to  understand,  they,  with  one 
unanimous  impulse,  suddenly  drew  back, 
distributed  themselves  quietly  over  the 
hill,  and  sat  down  in  a  most  orderly 
manner  upon  the  grass. 

The  time  of  totality  is  so  short,  and 
the  observer,  if  he  has  never  seen  a 
total  eclipse  before,  and  has  any  sensi- 
bility to  the  sublime  in  nature,  must  be 
so  overpowered  by  the  novel  and  super- 
natural effect  of  the  scene,  that  it  will 
be  impossible  for  him  to  remark  with 
any  accuracy  more  than  a  small  fraction 
of  what  there  is  to  observe.  It  is,  there- 
fore, only  by  the  careful  subsequent 
comparisons  of  the  accounts  of  many 
observers  that  anything  like  a  definite, 
complete,  and  accurate  description  of  the 
phenomena  of  the  eclipse  can  be  ob- 
tained. In  the  present  case  it  has  been 
arranged  that  all  the  reports  of  the 


members  of  our  expedition  shall  be  fur- 
nished to  the  Astronomer  Eoyal,  and  it 
is  believed  they  will  be  subsequently 
published  in  such  manner  as  he  may 
advise.  All  I  will  attempt  here,  there- 
fore, is  to  give  some  notion  of  the 
general  phenomena,  which  were  gene- 
rally observed  to  attend  this,  as  they 
have  attended  former  eclipses  of  the 
sun. 

I  had  calculated  from  the  data  in  the 
Nautical  Almanac,  that  the  first  contact 
would  take  place  about  Ih.  49m.  ;  and,  at 
fifteen  to  twenty  seconds  after,  I  saw 
the  slight  indentation  commence  on  the 
point  where  I  was  looking  for  it.  From 
the  commencement  till  within  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  of  the  totality  there  was 
nothing  calling  for  particular  remark, 
except  the  gradual  diminution  of  light, 
which,  the  variation  being  not  greater 
than  is  often  observed  from  other  causes, 
did  not  excite  particular  attention.  As, 
however,  the  totality  approached,  a  great 
change  came  on.  The  colour  of  the 
landscape  took  strange  unearthly  hues  ; 
the  shadows,  from  the  absence  of  penum- 
bra, became  peculiarly  sharp  and  intense, 
although  the  light  was  now  rapidly 
diminishing  ;  the  clouds  began  to  look 
dark  and  threatening,  and  appeared  to 
lower  down  towards  the  earth,  while  the 
parts  of  blue  sky  gradually  changed  to  a 
deep  sombre  purple. 

A  minute  or  two  before  the  totality 
the  shadow  had  reached  our  visible 
horizon  in  the  north-west,  and  after  en- 
veloping that  part  of  the  sky  in  a  dense 
shroud  of  the  most  fearful  gloom,  the 
most  awful  thing  I  ever  saw,  it  began  to 
cover  the  distant  mountains,  and  then 
gradually  to  creep  towards  us  over  the 
plain.  I  shall  never  forget  this  sight. 
My  companion  was  engaged  at  his  tele- 
scope, but  I  well  recollect  the  vehemence 
with  which  I  urged  him  to  "  look  at  the 
sky."  Another  minute  and  the  darkness 
was  upon  us,  and  then  I  recollect  also 
trying  to  make  some  remark,  when  the 
words  failed  me  altogether.  I  had  pre- 
sence of  mind  enough  at  once  to  turn  to 
the  telescope,  to  bring  the  sun  into  the 
field,  and  to  make  as  good  use  of  the 
time  as  I  could  for  observation ;  looking 


414 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


off  occasionally  upon  the  landscape  to 
rest  the  eye.  I  should  say  that  our  view 
of  the  sun,  during  the  progress  of  the 
eclipse,  had  been  frequently  obscured  by 
clouds,  and  we  had  been  in  a  state  of 
great  anxiety  lest  this  should  happen 
during  the  short  time  of  the  totality  ;  and 
when,  a  few  minutes  before,  we  saw  a 
huge  cloud  to  windward  gradually  ap- 
proaching, we  had  almost  given  our 
chance  up  for  lost ;  but  fortunately  the 
sun  remained  perfectly  visible  the  whole 
time,  being  only  occasionally  covered 
with  passing  films  of  a  thin  transparent 
haze. 

The  appearances  in  the  sun  and  moon 
generally  noted  as  of  interest  in  a  total 
eclipse  are  three — Bailj^s  Beads,  the 
Corona,  and  what  are  called  the  Red 
Prominences.  At  the  moment  when  the 
advancing  moon's  limb  is  about  to  ob- 
literate the  last  remaining  thin  crescent 
of  the  sun,  the  latter  is  seen  to  break  up 
into  small  pieces,  like  beads,  which  have 
been  sometimes  described  as  playing 
about  and  running  into  each  other,  like 
drops  of  quicksilver.  These  were  first 
noticed  by  that  celebrated  astronomer, 
the  late  Mr.  Baily,  and  at  first  were 
made  some  mystery  of;  but  they  are 
now  known  simply  to  arise  from  the 
projections,  or  mountains,  upon  the 
moon's  limb,  which  cut  up  the  fine  wire 
of  light  into  fragments,  the  supposed 
motion  being  a  mere  optical  illusion ; 
and  they  consequently  do  not  in  the 
present  day  attract  much  attention. 

The  corona  is  a  halo  of  soft  white 
light  which  surrounds  the  dark  circle  of 
the  moon  as  soon  as  the  more  powerful 
illumination  of  the  sun  is  shut  out,  and 
which  much  resembles  the  glory  shown 
round  the  heads  of  saints  in  old  pictures. 
It  forms  a  beautiful  object,  and,  from 
the  nebulous  nature  of  its  light,  is  better 
seen  with  the  naked  eye  than  in  the 
telescope.  It  is  supposed  to  be  a  sort  of 
faint  luminous  envelope  encircling  the 
sun,  the  appearance  of  which,  however, 
may  be  probably  modified  by  being  seen 
through  our  atmosphere.  It  has  different 
appearances  at  different  times.  In  this 
eclipse  it  seemed  to  be  formed  of  well- 
defined  rays,  spreading  out  radially  from 


the  sun,  and  of  very  unequal  length, 
some  very  long,  and  some  stated  to  be 
curved  at  the  outer  extremity. 

But  the  most  singular  and  mysterious 
of  the  phenomena  of  a  total  eclipse  are 
certain  protuberances  which  also,  when 
the  sun  is  entirely  covered,  are  seen  pro- 
jecting  round  the  black  disk  of  the 
moon,  and  which,  on  account  of  their 
colour,  are  called  "  the  red  prominences." 
They  are  often  very  numerous,  and  very 
varied  and  singular  in  shape.  Some  are 
low  long  serrated  ridges,  like  ranges  of 
mountains ;  others  are  isolated  objects  of 
the  oddest  forms,  which  have  been 
likened  to  pyramids,  cabbages,  flowers, 
flags,  boomerangs,  scimitars,  hooks,  ships 
in  full  sail,  mitres,  &c.  &c. ;  and  some 
have  been  frequently  seen  detached 
altogether,  like  balloons.  Their  colour 
is  called  generally  red,  but  the  precise 
hue  is  probably  a  pale  rose  colour  in- 
clining to  violet.  To  my  own.  vision, 
being  colour-blind,1  they  appeared  white, 
like  the  corona,  but  distinguished  from 
it  by  their  greater  compactness  and 
brilliancy.  What  these  prominences  can 
be  is  a  great  mystery.  They  vary  much 
in  different  eclipses,  and  are  supposed 
therefore  to  be  fluctuating,  and  not 
solid.  It  has  long  been  a  question  whe- 
ther they  belong  to  the  sun  or  the  moon, 
but  I  believe  the  observations  of  this 
eclipse  decide  in  favour  of  the  former. 
As  far  as  a  conjecture  can  be  hazarded, 
they  are  supposed  to  be  clouds  of  some 
luminous  matter  exhaling  from  the  sun, 
or  floating  round  it  in  the  circumambient 
atmosphere  of  the  corona.  They  are 
enormous  in  size  ;  some  projecting  two 
minutes  from  the  sun — equivalent  to  a 
height  above  his  surface  of  fifty  or  sixty 
thousand  miles,  or  as  many  times  bigger 
than  Mont  Blanc  as  Mont  Blanc  is 
bigger  than  a  paving-stone  !  Mr.  De  la 
Rue  has  obtained  interesting  photo- 
graphs of  these  prominences,  and  from 
his  and  other  data  there  will  be  no  lack 
by-and-by  of  good  drawings,  exhibit- 


1  See  Phil.  Trans,  for  1859.  This  observa.- 
vation  of  the  appearance  to  a  colour-blind 
eye  is  said  by  one  of  the  greatest  authorities 
on  the  subject  to  be  of  much  value. 


The  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


415 


ing  with  tolerable  accuracy  all  the  phe- 
nomena. 

There  has  been  heretofore  a  doubt 
whether  the  corona  and  prominences 
were  at  all  visible,  except  when  the  sun 
was  perfectly  shut  out.  The  present 
observations  have  completely  proved 
that  the  total  exclusion  of  the  light  is 
not  necessary.  I  myself  saw  them  dis- 
tinctly a  minute  and  a' half  after  the 
end  of  totality,  and  when  the  returning 
crescent  of  the  sun  had  become  so  light 
as  to  require  a  dark  glass  to  shield  the 
eye.  An  important  question  hangs  upon 
this,  as  to  whether  it  may  even  be  pos- 
sible to  get  glimpses  of  those  interesting 
appearances  at  other  times,  than  the  few 
and  far  between  opportunities  which 
total  eclipses  afford. 

The  darkness  during  totality  was  not 
so  great  as  on  a  dark  night.  I  had  a 
lantern  lighted,  but  did  not  use  it,  as  I 
could  see  the  seconds  hand  of  my  watch 
without  much  difficulty.  But  it  was  of 
a  very  unusual  character.  Various  parts 
of  the  sky  horizon,  where  the  sun  yet 
partly  shone,  were  lighted  up  with  an 
unearthly  lurid  light,  which,  though  it 
was  what  probably  gave  us  the  little 
light  we  had,  added  much  to  the  awe  of 
the  scene.  Many  large  stars  were  visible  ; 
Jupiter  and  Venus,  particularly,  were 
very  close  to  the  sun,  and  shone  with 
much  brilliancy. 

The  native  spectators  seemed  much 
interested  with  the  sight.  I  had  expected 
they  would  be  frightened ;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  as  soon  as  the  sun  quite  dis- 
appeared, they  set  up  a  great  shout  of 
applause ! 

The  eclipse  being  over,  and  a  stereo- 
scopic view  taken  as  a  memorandum  of 
the  preparations  and  apparatus  em- 
ployed, we  returned  to  Logrono,  where 
I  immediately  put  into  writing  and 
drawing  my  impressions  of  the  pheno- 
mena, before  communicating  with  any 
one  respecting  them — a  plan  always 
considered  proper  in  such  cases,  to 
secure' the  independence  of  the  descrip- 
tions. On  Friday,  the  20th,  we  returned 
to  Vitoria,  and  on  Saturday  the  21st,  to 
Bilbao,  where  we  had  to  amuse  ourselves 
for  some  days,  as  the  steamer  delayed 


starting  from  Santander,  for  the  sake  of 
a  "  Fiesta  de  Toros  "  which  took  place 
there  on  the  25th.  She  arrived  off 
Portugalete,  on  the  morning  of  Thurs- 
day, the  26th,  and,  to  make  amends  for 
her  former  unpoliteness,  received  visitors 
and  excursionists  on  board  all  day.  In 
the  afternoon  we  took  leave  of  our  kind 
hosts,  dropped  down  the  river,  went 
on  board,  and  at  half-past  six  P.M.  we 
were  on  our  way  home. 

We  had  now  rejoined  the  rest  of  the 
expedition,  with  the  exception  of  some 
few  who  had  gone  home  overland,  and 
we  had  the  opportunity  of  learning  the 
proceedings  of  other  observers.  The 
weather  on  the  day  was  more  or  less 
cloudy  everywhere;  and,  though  the 
majority  of  the  party  were  fortunate  like 
ourselves,  many  lost  the  totality  alto- 
gether. The  Astronomer  Royal  and 
his  friends  were  located  at  Pobes,  a  vil- 
lage on  the  southern  slope  of  the  moun- 
tains, not  far  from  Miranda;  they  had  rain 
in  the  morning,  but  it  cleared  off  just  in 
time  to  allow  of  good  observations. 
Professor  Otto  Struve,  who  had  seen 
the  two  eclipses  of  1842,  and  of  1851, 
in  company  with  Mr.  Airy,  determined  to 
cast  in  his  lot  with  him  this  third  time 
also.  Mr.  De  la  Rue  had  a  similar 
narrow  escape  j1  and  so  had  the  conti- 
nental observers  at  Vitoria.  Near  Bilbao 
itself,  the  totality  was  well  seen.  The 
Santander  party  were  hospitably  re- 
ceived, and  had  free  passes  given  them 
on  the  line  of  railway  there.  In  that 
district,  however,  the  weather  was  less 
favourable.  Those  who  stayed  by  the 
coast  saw  the  eclipse,  but  I  believe  it 
was  lost  by  almost  all  who  went  into 
the  mountains. 

On  Friday  morning,  the  27th,  a  meet- 
ing was  held  on  board,  for  the  purpose 
of  expressing  the  cordial  thanks  of  the 
expedition  to  various  parties  from  whom 
we  had  received  kindness  and  courtesy. 
Thanks  were  voted,  first,  to  the  Spanish 

1  A  long  account  of  Mr.  De  la  Rue's  pro- 
ceedings is  published  in  the  Times  of  August 
9th,  and  of  Mr.  Lowe's  in  that  of  July  25th. 
A  list  of  the  whole  party,  and  of  their  various 
stations  of  observation,  is  given  in  the  Times  of 
July  30th. 


416 


The,  Eclipse  Expedition  to  Spain. 


Government,  who  had  behaved  most  libe- 
rally. Our  luggage  had  never  been  once 
looked  at  either  at  the  coast  or  interior 
donanes,  nor  our  passports  once  asked  for. 
And  it  is  only  due  to  the  people  of  the 
country  to  state  that  this  friendly  spirit 
towards  us  seemed  to  obtain  in  all 
classes.  I  do  not  recollect  a  single  in- 
stance of  imposition,  or  scarcely  of  an 
incivility  offered  to  us  by  any  person 
whomsoever.  The  only  evidence  of  a 
contrary  spirit  I  heard  of  was  from  a 
Spaniard  of  some  education,  who  threat- 
ened us  with  all  sorts  of  vengeance  if,  in 
the  course  of  our  proceedings,  we  did 
any  damage  to  the  sun. 

Then  we  had  to  thank  the  railway 
companies,  both  of  Bilbao  and  Santan- 
der,  as  well  as  Mr.  Vignoles  personally, 


and  to  express  our  sense  of  the  courteous- 
behaviour  of  the  captain  and  officers  of 
the  ship  ;  and  we  had  also  the  pleasure 
of  collecting  a  testimonial  of  a  substan- 
tial character  for  the  crew.  These 
things  being  put  in  proper  train,  we  had 
only  to  take  advantage  of  the  circum- 
stance of  its  being  the  Astronomer 
Eoyal's  birthday,  to  drink  his  health  at 
dinner  (a  pleasant  form  of  the  usual 
concluding  thanks  to  the  president), 
and  the  business  of  the  voyage  came 
to  an  end. 

We  turned  Ushant  at  bed-time,  and 
after  passing  the  Queen  near  the 
Needles,  we  anchored  in  Spithead  at 
four  P.M.  on  Saturday,  the  28th,  and  in 
an  hour  or  two  were  all  on  the  way  to 
our  respective  homes. 


THE  TWO  BUDGETS  OF  1860. 


BY  W.  A.  PORTER. 


THE  budgets  here  proposed  for  dis- 
cussion, are  the  two  which  relate  respec- 
tively to  our  own  country  and  its  greatest 
dependency.  The  one  was  laid  before 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  10th  of 
February,  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  the 
other  before  the  Legislative  Council  at 
Calcutta  eight  days  later,  by  Mr.  Wilson, 
For  the  first  time  a  budget  has  been  pro- 
duced in  India  exactly  on  the  English 
model,  and  though  there  is  still  a  great 
and  fundamental  difference  between  the 
English  and  Indian  systems  of  finance, 
to  the  advantage  of  the  former,  the  two 
financial  statements  of  the  present  year 
have  some  striking  points  of  resem- 
blance. Both  begin  by  announcing  a 
tremendous  deficit,  and  both  end  by 
filling  up  the  gap  with  an  income  tax. 
Both  make  important  commercial  reforms, 
and  in  the  face  of  a  great  deficiency  make 
remissions  of  taxation  for  the  relief  of 
trade.  Both  deal  with  a  high  level  of 
expenditure,  which  of  late  years  has  in 
both  countries  been  enormously  raised. 
The  reception,  too,  which  these  budgets 
met  with,  has  not  been  dissimilar.  Both 
have  encountered  .  the  most  strenuous 
opposition,  leading  to  important  modifi- 


cations of  the  original  proposals,  and  to 
other  serious  results  ;  in  the  one  case  a 
conflict  between  the  two  Houses  of  Par- 
liament, and  in  the  other,  a  mutiny  of 
the  Government  of  Madras  against  the 
Supreme  Government,  which  was  only 
terminated  by  the  recall  of  Sir  Charles 
Trevelyan. 

There  is  much  in  the  circumstances 
of  the  present  year  to  make  both  these 
budgets  conspicuous.  The  decrease  of 
about  2,000,000£.  in  the  annual  charge 
of  the  national  debt  which  took  effect 
this  year  by  the  expiration  of  terminable 
annuities,  was  enough  to  make  1860  a 
marked  year  in  English  finance.  And 
it  gained  additional  distinction  from  the 
prospective  financial  legislation  of  1853. 
In  the  budget  of  that  year,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone did  not  confine  himself  to  the 
ordinary  estimates,  but  extended  his 
calculations  to  1860,  for  which  the  most 
desirable  results  were  predicted.  The 
present  year  had  therefore  prospectively 
double  claims  to  attention.  It  was  a 
year  of  relief,  and  a  year  of  prophecy. 
In  future  it  will  be  associated  with  the 
French  commercial  treaty,  with  the  com- 
pletion of  the  reform  of  our  tariff  so 


T/te  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


417 


happily  commenced  by  Sir  Eobert  Peel 
in  1842,  and  with  the  final  triumph  of 
free  trade. 

But  the  year  1860  is  a  marked  year 
in  Indian  as  well  as  English  finance. 
Between  the  30th  of  April,  1857,  and 
the  30th  of  April,  1860,  the  Indian 
debt  increased  by  no  less  a  sum  than 
38,000,000?.,  involving  an  increase  in 
the  annual  charge  for  interest  of  nearly 
2,000,000?.  This  permanent  addition 
of  2,000,000?.  to  the  annual  expenditure 
of  India  is  one  result  of  the  mutiny 
quite  definite  and  calculable.  There  is 
another  which  seems  at  present  quite 
incalculable.  Between  the  dates  men- 
tioned above,  the  military  expenditure 
rose  from  13,200,000?.,  at  which  it  stood 
the  year  before  the  mutiny, to  2 1, 700,000?. 
which  is  the  estimate  for  the  year  end- 
ing April,  1860 ;  and  Mr.  Wilson  affords 
no  hope  that  in  the  present  year  this 
estimate  can  be  reduced  by  more  than 
1,740,000?.  It  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  the  three  years  preceding  the  mu- 
tiny, which  were  years  of  peace,  were 
years  of  deficiency.  In  those  three  years 
the  expenditure  exceeded  the  income  by 
nearly  3,000,000?.,  giving,  on  the  average, 
an  annual  deficit  of  nearly  1,000,000?. 
If  to  this  be  added  the  increase  of  the 
charge  for  debt,  it  will  appear,  that, 
omitting  altogether  the  increase  of  the 
military  expenditure,  a  permanent  de- 
ficiency may  be  expected  for  the  future 
of  about  3,000,000?.  This  gives  a  very 
insufficient  idea  of  the  present  position 
of  Indian  finances.  Very  few  reductions 
have  yet  been  effected  in  the  military  ex- 
penditure ;  and  how  much  may  with  safety 
be  effected  in  that  direction  is  a  question 
of  policy  not  yet  settled.  One  thing  is 
certain,  that,  for  the  present  year,  the 
deficiency  of  income  as  against  expen- 
diture would,  without  the  aid  of  new 
sources  of  revenue,  rise  to  more  than 
double  the  amount  just  stated.  Mr. 
Wilson  enters  on  the  new  scene  of  his 
labours  at  the  most  important  crisis 
which  has  ever  occurred  in  the  finances 
of  India.  This  year  is  more  embar- 
rassing to  a  financier  than  the  years  of 
the  war.  The  easy  path  of  borrowing 
is  closed  to  him,  and  new  sources  of 


income  must  be  discovered,  or  the  old 
rendered  more  fruitful.  It  was  high 
time  that  that  department  should  be 
placed  under  the  charge  of  a  competent 
person.  India  now  possesses  an  annual 
income  of  nearly  40,000,000?.,  and  yet, 
till  the  end  of  last  year,  had  no  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer.  From  facts 
which  transpired  at  the  beginning  of 
this  year,  the  Indian  accounts  seem  to 
have  been  kept  with  a  carelessness  which 
exceeds  belief.  In  last  September,  a 
financial  balance  sheet  was  drawn  up  at 
Calcutta,  and  published  in  the  public 
prints,  in  which  errors  existed  to  the 
extent  of  above  2,000,000?.  One  most 
important  account  was  entirely  omitted. 
The  final  balance  presented  an  appear- 
ance of  prosperity  so  different  from  the 
reality,  that,  for  a  time,  the  impression 
prevailed  in  England  that  the  neck  of 
our  financial  difficulties  in  India  was 
broken.  A  system  in  which  such  errors 
were  possible  required  immediate  change ; 
and  every  one  will  be  of  opinion  that  the 
appointment  of  Mr.  Wilson  has  not  been 
made  a  moment  too  soon. 

To  recur  with  some  detail  to  each  of 
these  budgets,  in  order  ;  and,  first,  Mr. 
Gladstone's.  The  scheme  originally 
proposed  by  him  on  the  10th  of  Fe- 
bruary has,  in  the  course  of  the  session, 
undergone  one  very  important  altera- 
tion, and  several  others  of  less  moment. 
Besides,  it  has  lately  received  at  the 
hands  of  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  a  very 
unpleasant  addition  in  the  shape  of  a 
supplemental  war  budget,  to  meet  the 
expense  of  the  Chinese  expedition.  A 
very  brief  sketch  of  the  original  pro- 
posals, with  the  subsequent  changes  and 
additions,  will  here  be  given. 

According  to  the  scheme  of  1853,  the 
income-tax  was  to  terminate  on  the  5th 
of  April,  1860.  And  the  tea  and  sugar 
duties,  after  a  gradual  descent  for  seve- 
ral years  from  the  duties  then  existing, 
were  to  remain  at  the  following  rates  : — 
that  on  tea  Is.  a  pound,  and  those  on 
sugar,  which  vary  with  the  quality,  at 
about  an  average  of  11s.  a  cwt.  Though 
these  duties  were  granted  only  to  the  5th  of 
April,  1860,  it  was  understood  that  they 
should  be  then  renewed  at  those  mini- 


418 


The  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


mum  rates,  and  Mr.  Gladstone's  cal- 
culations proceeded  on  that  assumption. 
The  prediction  then  made  was,  that 
without  renewing  the  income-tax,  and 
with  the  tea  and  sugar  duties  at  the 
last-mentioned  rates,  the  income  would 
balance  the  expenditure  in  the  year 
1860.  We  have  seen  a  very  different 
result.  The  year  opened  with  the  fol- 
lowing state  of  accounts  : — income,  cal- 
culated on  the  above  assumptions  as  to 
the  income  tax  and  tea  and  sugar  duties, 
but  in  other  respects  according  to  the 
law  as  it  then  stood,  60,700,000?.  : 
expenditure,  70,100,000?.,  leaving  a 
deficiency  of  9,400, 000?.  This  has  been 
called  by  a  writer  in  the  Economist  a 
"rhetorical"  deficit,  thereby  implying 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  wished  to  magnify 
the  difficulties  of  the  task  before  him ; 
but  never  was  a  term  so  unhappily 
applied.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  if  all 
the  taxes  which  were  paid  last  year  were 
renewed  in  the  present,  these  nine 
millions  would  dwindle  to  a  very  insig- 
nificant figure.  But  it  is  abundantly 
clear  that  in  no  other  form  could  the 
state  of  the  finances,  and  the  choice  of 
measures  that  lay  before  the  house,  be 
so  clearly  presented.  The  choice  lay 
between  three  things.  The  amount  of 
the  income  tax,  the  addition  to  be  made 
to  the  minimum  rates  of  the  tea  and 
sugar  duties  fixed  in  1853,  and  the 
amount  of  remission  of  existing  duties, 
were  the  three  elements  to  be  determined. 
The  only  way  of  putting  the  matter 
clearly  was,  in  the  first  place,  to  take 
the  income  with  each  of  these  undeter- 
mined elements  at  the  zero  point ;  and 
accordingly  Mr.  Gladstone  calculated 
the  revenue  for  '  the  year  without  an 
income  tax,  without  any  addition  to 
the  tea  and  sugar  duties,  and  without 
any  remission  of  existing  duties.  And 
on  this  calculation  the  expenditure  ex- 
ceeded the  income  by  9,400,000?.  This 
mode  of  stating  the  account  has  the 
further  advantage  of  shewing  the  extent 
to  which  Mr.  Gladstone's  predictions  have 
failed.  One  element  of  his  calculations 
was  upset  by  the  Russian  war,  and  the  in- 
crease of  the  expenditure  in  all  the  ser- 
vices, civil  as  well  as  military.  Between 


the  years  1853  and  1860,  that  increase 
amounts  to  a  sum  which  is  the  exact 
equivalent  of  an  income  tax  of  Is.  \\d. 
in  the  pound.  The  other  part  of  his 
calculation  which  was  within  the  legi- 
timate province  of  financial  foresight 
was  eminently  successful.  Remissions 
of  taxation  were  made  in  that  year 
involving  a  loss  to  the  revenue  of 
1,656,000?.,  with  the  expectation  that 
the  consequent  development  of  trade 
and  increase  of  consumption  would, 
before  1860,  repair  this  temporary  loss, 
and  this  expectation  has  been  more 
than  verified. 

The  leading  features  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's present  budget  admit  of  being 
briefly  stated.  It  has  been  already 
said  that  the  choice  lay  between  three 
elements.  One  of  these,  the  amount 
of  remissions  of  customs  and  excise 
duties,  was  determined  by  a  circum- 
stance which  has  been  already  alluded 
to  as  giving  this  year  a  marked  cha- 
racter in  finance.  Mr.  Gladstone  de- 
termined that  the  relief  to  trade  should 
be  commensurate  with  the  relief  re- 
ceived from  the  fulling  in  of  the  ter- 
minable annuities — an  amount  of  about 
2,000,000?.  The  second  element  was 
determined  by  the  amount  at  which  it 
stood  in  the  previous  year.  The  renewal 
of  the  tea  and  sugar  duties  at  the  pre- 
viouslevel  gives  a  sum  of  over  2,000,000?. 
and  almost  exactly  counterbalances  the 
loss  from  remissions.  The  result  of 
these  two  operations  leaves  the  deficit  of 
9,400,000?.  at  its  original  amount.  It 
is  reduced  by  a  sum  of  1,400,000?. 
which  does  not  properly  belong  to  the 
revenue  of  the  present  year,  but  is 
brought  into  it  by  shortening  the  times 
of  credit  in  the  payment  of  the  malt  and 
hop  duties.  The  remaining  8,000,000?. 
is  made  up  by  an  income  tax  of  10c?.  in 
the  pound  on  incomes  from  150?.  and  up- 
wards, and  of  Id.  on  incomes  from  1 00?. 
to  150?.  Of  this  three-quarters  will  be 
collected  in  the  present  year,  and,  allow- 
ing for  an  error  which  appeared  in  the 
estimate  of  the  cost  of  collection  as  first 
stated,  there  would  have  been  on  the 
original  budget  a  surplus  of  about 
260,000?.  The  proposals  under  the  first 


The  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


419 


of  the  above  heads  relating  to  the  re- 
missions of  duty  and  certain  compensating 
charges,  require  to  be  stated  in  more 
detail,  inasmuch  as  the  changes  which 
the  budget  has  suffered  have  all  taken 
place  under  that  head.  The  net  loss  to 
the  revenue  from  the  remissions  con- 
sequent on  the  French  treaty  was 
estimated  at  1,190,0002.  The  loss  from 
the  additional  remissions  of  customs 
duties  was  910,0002.  The  loss  of  this 
latter  sum  was  made  good  by  the  new 
charges  which  Mr.  Gladstone  proposed 
upon  certain  mercantile  transactions, 
consisting  mainly  of  an  increase  of  what 
he  called  "the  penny  taxation."  The 
loss  from  the  repeal  of  the  paper  duties 
was  estimated  for  the  present  year  at 
about  1,000,0002.,  the  repeal  not  being 
intended  to  take  place  from  the  com- 
mencement of  the  financial  year.  Thus, 
taking  the  remissions  of  duty  and  the 
new  charges  in  a  single  view,  it  will 
appear  that  the  net  amount  of  the  relief 
somewhat  exceeded  2,000,0002.  The 
principal  alteration  which  the  budget 
has  undergone  is  the  retaining  the  paper 
duties ;  but,  as  the  uncertainty  regard- 
ing the  repeal  has  caused  some  confusion 
in  the  trade,  the  produce  of  these  duties 
is  not  expected  to  be  so  large  as  usual. 
Mr.  Gladstone  takes  credit  for  900,0002. 
instead  of  the  1,000,0002.  at  which  their 
loss  was  calculated.  By  that  amount 
his  position  is  improved.  On  the  other 
hand  there  is  a  loss  of  200,0002.  from 
changes  made  in  the  proposed  new 
charges  on  trade.  The  whole  effect  of 
all  the  alterations  made  in  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's original  proposals  is  to  add* 
700,0002.  to  his  surplus,  which  was  thus 
increased  to  960,0002. ;  or,  in  round 
numbers,  1,000,0002.  But  on  the  16th 
of  July  the  supplemental  Chinese  war 
budget  was  brought  forward,  which  uses 
up  this  surplus  of  a  million,  then  takes 
another  million  from  the  increase  of  the 
spirit  duties,  and,  finally,  makes  a  dive 
into  the  exchequer  balances  for  the 
remaining  1,300,0002. 

Of  the  sum  of  3,300,0002.  which  is 
thus  provided  for  in  three  nearly  equal 
portions  by  the  supplemental  budget, 
a  sum  of  450,0002.  is  a  debt  remaining 


from  the  last  Chinese  war.  The  exist- 
ence of  this  debt  was  not  known  till 
lately,  being  involved  in  the  compli- 
cated accounts  of  India,  through  which 
a  portion  of  the  expenses  of  the  war 
with  China  was  paid.  The  remainder, 
2,850,0002.  is  for  the  present  expedition. 
The  sum  provided  for  the  same  purpose 
in  the  first  budget,  was  2,550,0002.,  of 
which  exactly  one-third  was  charged  on 
the  previous  financial  year — the  state  of 
the  surplus  being  such  as  to  allow  of 
that  addition  to  the  expenditure — and 
the  remaining  two- thirds  on  the  present 
year.  The  entire  sum  provided  for  the 
Chinese  war  by  both  budgets  is  there- 
fore 5,400,0002.,  of  which  the  whole  is 
provided  for  by  the  ordinary  taxatipn 
of  the  country,  excepting  the  sum  ob- 
tained by  taking  up  the  malt  and  hop 
credits  and  the  portion  now  calculated 
at  1,300,0002.,  which  will  require  to 
be  taken  from  the  exchequer  balances. 
There  is  some  hope  that  a  considerably 
smaller  sum  than  that  last  mentioned 
will  ultimately  require  to  be  taken  from 
that  source. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  budget  is  framed  in 
the  spirit  which  has  guided  our  financial 
legislation  since  Sir  Robert  Peel  com- 
menced the  reform  of  the  tariff  in  1842. 
The  number  of  articles  in  our  tariff  was 
reduced  by  successive  steps  from  1052, 
at  which  it  stood  in  1842,  to  419  in 
1859,  and  by  the  present  budget  it  is 
reduced  to  44.  Its  effect  is  to  remove 
every  vestige  of  protective  and  differen- 
tial duties,  excepting  the  merely  nominal 
duties  on  corn  and  timber,  and  thus 
to  carry  out  the  principle  of  free  trade 
into  every  department  of  labour  in  this 
country.  It  has  been  the  good  fortune 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  complete  the  work 
which  was  so  happily  began  eighteen 
years  ago,  and  it  may  be  safely  asserted 
that  no  other  person  could  have  com- 
pleted it  in  the  present  year.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone has  stood  upon  the  old  paths,  and 
yet  the  opposition  has  been  as  strong  as 
when  the  new  course  was  first  adopted 
by  Sir  Eobert  Peel.  The  wonder  is,  that 
so  much  experience  should  have  been 
thrown  away.  Every  step  that  has 
been  taken  in  the  remission  of  taxation 


420 


The  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


since  1842,  was  taken  in  the  expecta- 
tion that  the  temporary  loss  of  the 
revenue  would  in  a  short  time  be  made 
up  by  the  greater  fruitfulness  of  the 
taxes  that  remained  ;  and  in  every  in- 
stance this  expectation  has  been  more 
than  fulfilled.  If  there  be  any  truth  in 
the  experience  of  the  last  eighteen  years, 
the  amount  of  remissions  made  by  Mr. 
Gladstone  is  not  permanently  trans- 
ferred to  the  income  tax.  It  is  trans- 
ferred there  for  a  time,  in  order  to 
remove  obstacles  in  the  way  of  trade, 
and  thus  to  increase  the  general  well- 
being  of  the  nation. 

It  is  curious  that  the  remissions  made 
in  pursuance  of  the  French  treaty  ex- 
cited more  opposition  than  those  made 
independently.  The  former  were  mainly 
protective  duties,  and  it  seems  to  have 
been  forgotten  that  the  removal  of  such 
duties  is  for  our  own  benefit,  and  that 
every  corresponding  approach  to  free 
trade  on  the  part  of  France  is  clear  gain 
to  this  country,  and  is  in  no  respect  to 
be  regarded  as  payment  for  a  loss  in- 
curred by  us.  Every  removal  of  a  pro- 
tective duty,  which  gives  rise  to  a  branch 
of  international  trade,  is  a  benefit  to  both 
nations  engaging  in  it,  for  the  transfer 
of  labour  from  one  department  to  another 
thus  caused  would  not  take  place  unless 
it  were  attended  with  advantage  to  both. 
The  removal  of  our  protective  duties 
benefits  France  as  well  as  ourselves,  and 
the  reduction  of  the  French  duties  will, 
so  far  as  they  cease  to  be  prohibitive, 
benefit  England  as  well  as  France. 

In  the  debates  on  the  budget,  an  at- 
tempt was  made  to  represent  Mr.  Glad- 
stone as  deserting  the  footsteps  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  and  thus  to  deprive  his 
budget  of  the  support  afforded  by  the 
successful  experience  of  the  last  eighteen 
years.  ' '  Sir  Eobert  Peel,"  says  Mr.  Hors- 
man,  "  represented  a  gentleman  who  laid 
"  out  a  certain  portion  of  his  income  in 
"  draining  his  land,  expecting  by  a  larger 
"  produce  to  pay  his  debts.  The  Chan- 
"  cellor  of  the  Exchequer  resembles 
"  more  the  irregularity  of  the  spend- 
"  thrift  who  squandered  the  money  that 
"  might  have  fertilized  the  soil,  and 
"  then,  when  his  debts  were  due,  went 


"  upon  the  highway,  and  robbed  the 
"  first  comer."  Reduction  of  duty  is 
praiseworthy,  but  abolition  is  intoler- 
able ;  and  this,  it  seems,  is  the  distinc- 
tion which  has  drawn  upon  Mr.  Glad- 
stone the  charge  of  "beginning  as  a 
"  spendthrift  and  ending  as  a  footpad." 
Between  1842  and  1853  the  duties  on 
six  hundred  articles  in  our  tariff  were 
abolished,  and  the  revenue  has  not 
suffered.  In  1853  the  excise. duty  on 
soap  was  abolished,  involving  a  loss 
nearly  equal  to  the  paper  duty,  and  the 
temporary  loss  was  soon  recovered. 
There  is  no  part  of  the  present  budget 
which  is  not  in  accordance  with  the 
principles  and  policy  of  Sir  Robert  PeeL 
It  is,  however,  satisfactory  to  observe 
that  the  form  which  the  attack  at  last 
assumed  shows  "  that  we  have  arrived 
"  at  last  at  a  time  when  it  is  admitted 
"  that  those  principles  and  that  policy 
"  constitute  not  the  mere  decoration  of  a 
"  name  or  a  party,  but  a  great  national 
"  inheritance  for  which  contending  par- 
"  ties  may  honourably  strive." 

In  passing  from  English  to  Indian 
finance  we  approach  a  system  whose  ad- 
ministration is  in  every  way  inferior  to 
the  one  we  have  left,  and  into  which 
Mr.  Wilson  has  as  yet  introduced  the 
forms  merely,  and  not  the  spirit  of  the 
system  of  this  country.  He  begins  by 
announcing  the  estimated  deficiency  of 
income  as  against  expenditure  for  the 
year  commencing  May  1st,  1860.  It 
stands  at  the  respectable  figure  of 
6,500,000£. ;  but  as  to  how  this  amount  is 
arrived  at  no  precise  information  is  given. 
It  seems  to  have  been  got  at  by  the 
roughest  of  guess  work.  Mr.  "Wilson 
says  he  has  taken  the  best  means  in  his 
reach,  but  adds  that  he  has  "  an  especial 
"  dislike  to  prospective  budgets."  To  this 
it  is  replied,  with  conclusive  force,  that 
a  budget  is  in  its  essence  prospective. 
It  is  nothing  else  but  a  prospective  esti- 
mate of  expenditure  for  the  year,  a 
similar  estimate  of  income,  and  a  plan 
for  disposing  of  the  surplus  or  supplying 
the  deficiency.  The  preparation  of  the 
estimate  of  expenditure  by  the  heads  of 
the  several  departments,  according  to  the 
English  system,  gives  occasion  for  a  com- 


The  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


421 


plete  animal  revision  of  each,  department, 
and  of  making  retrenchments  or  addi- 
tions as  the  case  may  require.     There  is 
no  such  annual  revision  in  India.     Some 
ludicrous  and  many  serious  consequences 
which  follow  from  the  want  of  this  are 
stated  by  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan.     At 
one    of   the   public    mints    a   host   of 
persons  are  engaged  in  weighing  copper 
money  with  Lilliputian  scales,  while  a 
slight  change  in  the  machinery  would 
enable  the  same  work  to  be  done  by  two 
or  three  men.    The  fares  on  the  Madras 
railway,  which  is  at  present  a  heavy  drain 
on  the  public  finances,  are  fixed  at  a 
higher  rate  than  the  natives  can  pay, 
and  yet  they  remain  unaltered.     One 
other  consequence  of  the  want  of  this 
annual  revision  is  too  important  to  be 
omitted.     To  quote  the  words   of  the 
late  Governor  of  Madras  : — "  Expendi- 
'  ture  is  often  continued  long  after  the 
'  circumstances  which   originally  occa- 
'  sioned  it  have  ceased  ;  and  when  it  is 
'  at  last  stopped  it  is  owing  to  accident, 
'or  to  an  overwhelming  financial  pres- 
'  sure  like  that  which  at  present  exists." 
It  is  no  fault  of  Mr.  Wilson's  that  the 
first    essential    requisite    of    a  budget 
should  be  wanting  in  his  first  essay  in 
Indian  finance.     The  defective  system 
hitherto  existing  in  India  did  not  afford 
the  means  of  obtaining  an  accurate  esti- 
mate of  expenditure,  and  the  length  of 
his  residence  in  India  has  not  been  great 
enough  to   inaugurate   a  new   system. 
Mr.  Wilson  arrived  in  that  country  in 
the  latter  end  of  1859,  and  had  been 
little  more  than  two  months  there  when 
he  made  his  financial  statement.    Under 
these  circumstances  he  gives  no  details 
of  income  or  expenditure,  and  the  whole 
of  the   information  furnished   by   Mr. 
Wilson  on  this  subject  is>  contained  in 
the  following  extract  from  his  speech  : — 
"Availing  myself  of  the  best  infor- 
mation at  my  command,  as  things  now 
stand ;   allowing   for  a    reduction  of 
1,000,OOOJ.  which  will  appear  in  the 
accounts  of  the  present  year"  (that  is, 
tie    year    ending    April   31st,    1860), 
as  compensation  for  losses  ;  allowing 
for  a  decrease  in  military  charges  of 
1,740,000£.    for  which   arrangements 


'  have  up  to  this  time  been  made  ;  and 
'  allowing  too  for  an  increase  of  income 
'  from  salt  duties,  for  which  the  neces- 
'  sary  sanction  has   been  obtained,  of 
'  410,000£.  ;   I  cannot,  even   with   all 
'  these  allowances,  reduce  the  deficit  of 
'next  year  below  6,500,0002."      The 
amount    of    reductions   is   given   in  a 
lump  sum,  without  any  particulars,  and 
the  whole  of  this  part  of  the  subject  is 
therefore  entirely  withdrawn  from  pub- 
lic criticism. 

The  greater  portion  of  Mr.  Wilson's 
speech  is  taken  up  with  the  elucidation 
of  his  plans  for  supplying  this  defi- 
ciency. 

The  first  part  of  his  proposals  has 
relation  to  the  customs  law,  and  the 
changes  made  by  him  in  that  depart- 
ment are  earned  out  on  the  most  ap- 
proved principles  of  political  science, 
and  though  they  lead  to  no  great  finan- 
cial results,  are  calculated  to  further 
very  much  several  important  branches 
of  trade  in  India.  Articles  of  Indian 
produce,  which  have  to  compete  in  the 
foreign  market  with  similar  produce 
from  other  countries,  will  henceforth 
be  exported  free  of  duty,  the  direct 
effect  of  export  duties  being  to  place  the 
Indian  producer  at  a  disadvantage  com- 
pared with  his  foreign  competitor,  or 
even  in  some  cases  to  exclude  the 
article  from  the  foreign  market  altoge- 
ther. Thus  wool,  that  has  to  encounter 
a  fierce  competition  with  the  wool  of 
Australia,  South  America,  and  the  Cape ; 
hides  and  hemp,  that  compete  with 
the  produce  of  Russia;  and  tea,  the  culti- 
vation of  which  in  India  has  been  lately 
attempted  with  success  in  rivalry  with 
China, — are  all  placed  on  the  free  list. 
As  these  branches  of  trade  are  still  in 
their  infancy,  that  of  hides  and  hemp 
having  its  origin  in  the  Russian  war, 
the  loss  to  the  revenue  from  these  re- 
missions of  duty  is  very  slight,  and  if 
the  development  of  trade  that  will 
thence  result  correspond  in  any  degree 
with  Mr.  Wilson's  anticipations,  the  loss 
will  soon  be  compensated  by  the  revenue 
from  the  imports  received  in  return. 
On  the  other  hand  there  are  certain 
articles  which  are  produced  almost  ex- 


422 


The  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


clusively  in  India.  In  the  foreign 
market  these  undergo  no  competition, 
and  the  direct  effect  of  an  export  duty 
is  to  increase  the  price.  Saltpetre  is  the 
chief  article  of*  this  sort,  and  on  this 
Mr.  Wilson  has  considerably  increased 
the  export  duty.  It  is  worth  mention 
that  in  the  month  of  April,  shortly 
after  these  measures  came  into  operation, 
Mr.  Wilson  was  able  to  give  confirma- 
tion of  the  soundness  of  his  views  on 
this  point  by  the  news  which  had  come 
by  telegraph  from  Europe,  that  the  price 
of  saltpetre  had  risen  to  the  full  amount 
of  the  increased  duty,  while  the  price  in 
India  remained  as  before,  shewing  that 
the  duty  would  fall  on  the  consumer  in 
Europe,  and  not  the  producer  in  India. 
A  reduction  to  10  per  cent,  of  cer- 
tain import  duties  which  had  in  the 
previous  year  been  raised  to  20  per  cent., 
and  the  equalisation  of  the  duties  on 
cotton,  yarn  and  twist,  and  cotton  piece 
goods,  appear  to  complete  the  commer- 
cial changes  effected  by  Mr.  Wilson's 
budget.  Their  immediate  financial  re- 
sult is  not  great.  On  the  whole  there 
is  a  gain  to  the  revenue.  Mr.  Wilson 
estimates  the  gain  at  about  350,000?. 
which  goes  a  very  small  way  towards 
supplying  the  deficiency.  But  the  value 
of  Mr.  Wilson's  measures  must  not  be 
estimated  by  that  test.  Their  main 
purpose  was  to  develop  the  trade  of  India 
and  remove  the  obstacles  which  the 
customs  duties  threw  in  the  way  of  pro- 
gress, and  in  this  respect  they  have 
generally  met  with  and  seem  to  deserve 
unqualified  praise. 

The  remainder  of  his  budget  which 
relates  to  his  three  new  taxes,  the 
licence  tax,  the  income  tax,  and  tobacco 
tax,  has  had  a  different  reception.  On 
the  part  of  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan,  and 
the  whole  of  the  Madras  Government, 
it  met  with  the  most  unqualified  con- 
demnation. Attention  was  for  a  little 
aroused  in  England  by  the  spectacle 
of  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  in  open  rebel- 
lion against  the  Government  of  India, 
but  after  his  recall  the  public  soon  re- 
sumed its  usual  indifference  to  Indian 
affairs.  The  correspondence  between 
the  Governments  of  India  and  Madras, 


and  the  other  papers  ordered  to  be 
printed  by  the  House  of  Commons, 
make  a  book  of  nearly  200  pages,  and 
have  been  accessible  for  more  than  two 
months,  but  public  interest  has  not  been 
again  awakened.  The  book  is  in  reality 
the  report  of  a  great  debate  carried  on 
between  Madras  and  Calcutta,  and  no 
debate  reported  in  Hansard  this  year 
is  of  greater  interest  or  importance. 
The  question  discussed  is  two-fold. 
First,  are  any  new  taxes  necessary? 
Secondly,  are  the  proposed  taxes  good 
ones  1  On  the  first  point  Mr.  Wilson 
appears  to  have  a  strong  case.  It  rests 
on  four  grounds.  A  state  of  deficiency 
before  the  mutiny ;  a  large  increase  of 
debt  since ;  a  great  increase  of  military 
expenditure,  which  has  not  yet  been  re- 
duced, and  cannot  safely  be  reduced  to 
what  it  was  in  1857  ;  and,  lastly,  an 
inelastic  revenue.  If  the  expenditure 
exceeded  the  income  three  years  ago, 
and  has  since  received  two  enormous 
accessions,  while  the  income  has  re- 
mained stationary,  it  is  pretty  clear  that 
to  restore  the  equilibrium  without  loans 
new  sources  of  income  must  be  sought. 
And  this  is  the  justification  which  Mr. 
Wilson  gives  for  the  imposition  of  these 
"three  tremendous  taxes."  The  defi- 
ciency before  the  mutiny,  and  the 
augmentation  of  debt  since,  cannot  be 
denied.  But  the  other  two  points  are 
strongly  controverted.  By  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  excessive  land  tax  in  Madras, 
whereby  the  landowners  have  been  en- 
couraged to  bring  new  lands  into  culti- 
vation, the  revenue  of  that  presidency 
was  increased  in  the  last  financial  year 
by  above  500,000/.,  or  nearly  one-tenth 
part  of  the  whole  revenue.  Sir  Charles 
Trevelyan  believes  that  a  reduction  in 
the  salt  tax  would  produce  similar  re- 
sults. But  the  important  point  is  the 
reduction  of  the  military  expenditure. 
At  present  many  civil  duties,  which  in 
this  country  are  performed  by  the  police, 
are  in  India  discharged  by  the  military 
force,  and  in  consequence  the  army  is 
scattered  in  many  detached  portions, 
each  station,  however  small,  having  its 
commissariat  and  other  establishments 
which  constitute  a  large  part  of  the 


TJie  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


423 


military  expenditure.  "  The  key  to  the 
"  reorganization  of  our  Indian  military 
"  system,"  says  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan, 
"  is  the  reformation  of  the  existing 
"  police  on  the  English  and  Irish  con- 
"stabulary  system."  This  has  been  for 
some  time  in  process  of  being  carried 
out  in  the  Madras  Presidency,  and 
when  complete,  the  army  might  be  con- 
centrated at  a  few  commanding  stations, 
which  would  effect  the  greatest  saving. 
Sir  Charles  asserts  that  the  military 
expenditure  in  Madras  and  Bombay 
alone  could  be  reduced  in  the  present 
financial  year  by  upwards  of  2,000,000^., 
which  is  more  than  Mr.  Wilson  has  set 
down  for  the  whole  of  India,  and  that 
by  the  end  of  another  year  equilibrium 
could  be  restored  between  income  and 
expenditure  without  any  new  taxes 
whatever,  and  with  great  additional 
security  to  our  position.  On  this  sub- 
ject Sir  Charles  Trevelyan  is  able  to 
speak  with  authority.  He  is  personally 
acquainted  with  all  the  Indian  Presi- 
dencies. He  served  twelve  years  in 
Bengal  and  Upper  India,  and  has  lately 
been  Governor  of  Madras.  It  ought  to 
be  known  that  a  man  thus  qualified  to 
speak  stakes  his  reputation  on  the  asser- 
tion that  the  new  taxes  are  utterly 
unnecessary. 

On  the  second  question,  which  relates 
to  the  merits  of  the  particular  taxes, 
the  Madras  Government  are  no  less 
strongly  opposed  to  Mr.  Wilson. 

The  tobacco  tax  appears  to  be  univer- 
sally condemned.  Mr.  Wilson  proposed 
to  place  a  duty  on  home-grown  tobacco 
as  nearly  as  possible  corresponding  with 
the  import  duty  on  foreign  tobacco,  and 
to  levy  it  by  licensing  the  cultivation  of 
tobacco  on  payment  of  a  fee  calculated 
at  so  much  for  a  given  area.  The  culti- 
vation of  the  tobacco  plant,  except  un- 
der licence  from  the  collector,  would  be 
prohibited.  There  are  two  objections  to 
this  tax,  which  have  not  been  satisfac- 
torily disposed  of  by  Mr.  Wilson.  The 
payment  of  a  fee  for  the  liberty  of  culti- 
vating an  acre  of  tobacco  is,  in  fact, 
equivalent  to  raising  the  rent  payable  to 
Government,  and  this  would  be  a  direct 
breach  of  contract  with  the  landowners 


in  all  the  districts  where  permanent 
settlements  of  the  rent  have  been  made. 
It  would  press  with  particular  hardship 
on  the  cultivators  of  garden  lands,  on 
which  a  high  rent  has  been  fixed  on 
account  of  their  peculiar  fitness  for  the 
growth  of  tobacco.  The  permanent 
settlement  ought  to  be  a  protection  to 
the  landowner  against  any  increase  of 
his  rent  laid  either  directly  on  the  land 
or  indirectly  on  the  growth  of  a  par- 
ticular crop.  It  will  not,  of  course, 
exempt  him  from  the  payment  of  any 
general  tax,  such  as  the  tax  on  incomes, 
which  applies  equally  to  all  classes. 
The  other  objection  to  the  tobacco  tax 
applies  with  especial  force  to  the 
Madras  Presidency.  The  Government  of 
India  cannot,  of  course,  impose  the  tax 
on  the  native  states  that  are  independent 
or  on  those  under  our  protection.  The 
cultivation  of  tobacco  in  these  states 
must  remain  free  as  before,  and  there  is 
no  land  customs  establishment  to  pre- 
vent its  importation  into  our  own  terri- 
tories. A  reference  to  the  map  will 
show  the  importance  of  this  considera- 
tion as  regards  Madras.  Our  territories 
there  are  intermixed  with  and  surrounded 
by  native  states.  The  effect  of  the  tax 
would,  therefore,  be  to  transfer  the 
growth  of  tobacco  from  our  own  terri- 
tories to  other  places,  and  therefore  in- 
flict an  injury  on  our  own  cultivators 
without  benefiting  the  finances  of  the 
state.  The  opposition  to  this  tax  has  been 
so  strong  that,  according  to  the  latest 
advices  from  India,  Mr.  Wilson  has  been 
induced  to  give  it  up,  and  it  is  only  to 
be  regretted  that  he  did  not  come  sooner 
to  this  conclusion. 

The  objections  to  the  income  'tax 
are  of  a  different  nature.  It  is  not 
the  abstract  justice  of  the  tax,  but  its 
impolicy,  and  the  practical  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  its  collection,  that 
are  mainly  insisted  on  by  the  Madras 
Government.  With  a  people  prosperous 
and  contented,  a  much  smaller  military 
force  will  be  required,  and  the  new  police 
in  process  of  formation  would  be  ordi- 
narily sufficient  for  the  preservation  of 
order.  With  the  whole  people  of  India 
urged  into  discontent  by  unpopular 


424 


The  Two  Budgets  of  1860. 


taxes,  and  all  united  by  a  common 
grievance,  such  an  increase  of  military 
force  will  be  necessary  as  to  more  than 
counterbalance  the  produce  of  the  new 
taxes.  Besides,  it  is  said  that  the  in- 
quisitorial nature  of  the  tax,  and  the 
principle  of  self-assessment,  which  are 
urged  so  strongly  against  it  in  England, 
apply  with  greatly  increased  force  in 
India.  It  is  stated  on  competent  au- 
thority, that  "  the  natives  will  view 
'  it  with  great  distrust  as  an  inqui- 
'  sitorial  measure,  adopted  with  a  view 
'  to  further  taxation,  on  Government 
'  becoming  fully  acquainted  with  the 
'  true  state  of  their  affairs."  And  the 
state  of  native  morality,  on  the  part  both 
of  payers  and  receivers,  renders  India  in 
a  peculiar  manner  unfit  for  an  income 
tax.  "  The  greatest  evil,"  says  Sir 
Charles  Trevelyan,  "  with  which  the 
"  south  of  India  has  been  afflicted,  is 
"  the  redundant  number  and  the  ill-paid 
"  irresponsible  character  of  the  native 
"  revenue  officers."  One  of  the  reforms 
commenced  by  the  Madras  Government 
was  to  limit  the  number  and  improve 
the  position  of  these  officers.  The  im- 
position of  the  income  tax,  and  the 
machinery  for  collecting  it,  will  arrest 
this  reform.  Mr.  Wilson  has  simplified 
the  machinery  for  collecting  the  tax, 
with  the  view  of  making  it  less  unpalat- 
able to  the  natives.  And  with  these 
modifications  he  has  proceeded  with  the 
bill  imposing  an  income  tax  for  five 
years.  The  licence  tax  on  trades  has 
been  imposed  permanently.  The  new 
taxes  are  expected  to  produce  3,500,000^ 
next  year,  and  1,000,OUOZ.  in  the  pre- 
sent year,  part  of  which  had  elapsed 
before  they  came  into  operation.  The 
remainder  of  the  deficit,  which  is  now 
stated  at  above  seven  millions,  will  be 
made  up  from  the  Exchequer  balances, 
which  are  at  present  extremely  large. 

Though  the  opposition-  excited  by  the 
Indian  budget  has  resulted  in  the  un- 
fortunate loss  to  India  of  the  invaluable 
services  of  Sir  Charles  Trevelyan,  while 


he  was  in  the  midst  of  a  series  of  well- 
considered  reforms  in  his  own  Presidency 
it  has  also  been  productive  of  good.  The 
steps  of  the  Government  of  India  towards 
reduction  of  expenditure  have  been 
quickened.  The  reductions  in  the  army 
now  proposed  amount  to  2,600,000^ 
More  infportant  still,  Mr.  Wilson  has 
lost  his  "  dislike  to  prospective  budgets." 
On  the  llth  of  April  a  most  important 
financial  notification  from  the  Govern- 
ment of  India  was  inserted  in  the  Cal- 
cutta Government  Gazette,  the  following 
extract  from  which  will  sufficiently 
attest  Mr.  Wilson's  progress  : — 

"  The  most  important  step  towards 
'  securing  financial  economy  will  be  the 
'  establishing  of  a  system  whereby  a 
'  budget  of  imperial  income  and  expen- 
'  diture  shall  be  prepared  annually,  so 
'  that  the  financial  estimates  for  each 
'  year  may  be  arranged,  considered,  and 
'  sanctioned  by  the  supreme  Government 
'  of  India  before  the  year  commences. 
'  The  system  prevails  in  England,  and 
'  it  will  now  be  introduced  and  rigidly 
'  carried  out  in  India.  Before  the  com- 
'  mencement  of  each  official  year,  the 
'  Supreme  Government  will  require 
'  careful  estimates  to  be  framed  of  the 
'  anticipated  income,  and  the  proposed 
'  expenditure  of  the  empire  for  the 
1  coming  year.  .  .  .  And  after  weighing 
'  the  recommendations  of  the  several 
'  executive  Governments,  and  the  heads 
'  of  departments,  the  Supreme  Govern- 
'  ment  will  allot  and  appropriate  to  each 
'  branch  of  the  Service,  and  to  the 
"  several  detailed  heads  within  each 
"  branch,  specific  sums." 

The  two  capital  reforms  required  in 
the  Indian  system  of  finance  are  here 
pointed  out — prospective  estimates  of 
expenditure,  and  appropriation  of  specific 
sums  to  the  several  departments.  The 
second  will  ensure  greater  independence 
within  certain  limits  to  the  subordinate 
Governments,  while  the  first  will  give 
an  effective  control  to  the  Supreme 
Government. 


MACMILLAN'S   MAGAZINE. 


OCTOBEE,  1860. 


ON  THE  USE  OF  ENGLISH  CLASSICAL  LITEEATUEE 
WOEK  OF  EDUCATION. 

BY   THE   REV.   H.    G.    EOBINSON,    TRAINING   COLLEGE,    YORK. 


THE 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  somewhere  tells  a 
story  of  a  nobleman,  who,  while  tra- 
velling on  the  continent,  visited  one 
of  the  most  romantic  and  beautiful 
scenes  in  Switzerland.  Struck  with  the 
magnificence  of  the  view,  his  lordship 
asked  the  guide  if  this  was  not  consi- 
dered one  of  the  finest  prospects  in  the 
world.  "  There  is  but  one  equal  to  it, 
I  believe;"  was  the  reply,  "and  that 

is  the  Pass  of in  Scotland."    "  The 

Pass  of !"  exclaimed  the  noble  tra- 
veller, "  why,  that  is  on  my  own  estate, 
and  I  have  never  seen  it."  The  case 
of  the  Scottish  nobleman  is,  in  some 
sense  or  other,  the  case  of  nearly  every 
one  of  us.  The  past,  the  distant,  and 
the  strange,  attract  us  more  powerfully 
and  fix  our  attention  more  closely  than 
those  facts  and  objects  which  are  con- 
temporaneous and  immediately  before 
our  eyes.  In  some  instances,  at  all 
events,  the  sympathy  seems  to  increase 
with  the  distance.  Thus  it  fares  with 
our  national  literature  as  compared  with 
that  of  ancient  Greece  and  Eome.  Many 
persons  who  are  competently  or  even 
deeply  versed  in  the  latter,  have  a 
very  slender  acquaintance  with  the 
former.  Good  classical  scholars  are 
often  met  with ;  good  English  scholars 
are  scarce.  By  a  good  English  scholar,  I 
mean  not  simply  one  who  has  a  general 
knowledge  of  his  country's  authors,  and 
who  writes  and  speaks  his  mother- 
tongue  with  correctness  and  elegance, 
but  rather  one  who  has  studiously  in- 
No.  12. — VOL.  IL 


vestigated  the  origin,  development,  and 
constitution  of  his  native  speech,  and 
has  nightly  and  daily  revolved  the  great 
exemplars  of  his  native  literature.  Now 
it  is  certainly  not  my  wish  to  disparage 
the  study  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 
Classics,  or  to  censure  those  who  have 
expended  much  time  and  attention  upon 
them ;  assuredly,  in  judging  others,  I 
should  here  be  condemning  myself. 
Classical  Literature  deserves  the  atten- 
tion it  has  received;  and  to  point  out 
its  value  as  an  educating  agency,  to 
insist  on  the  fact  that  it  underlies  all 
modern  literatures  and  is  necessary  to 
make  them  intelligible,  that  it  embo- 
dies some  of  the  sublimest  thoughts 
that  the  mind  of  man  has  conceived, 
expressed  in  the  most  perfect  forms  of 
utterance  that  man's  organs  of  speech 
have  fashioned,  would  only  be  to  repeat 
statements  that  have  long  since  been 
worn  down  into  truisms.  But,  as  far 
as  Englishmen  are  concerned,  the  wri- 
ters of  Greece  and  Eome  can  no  longer 
claim  to  occupy  the  chief  seats  at  the  feast 
of  reason.  They  must  give  place  to  a  later 
birth  of  time.  Henceforth  their  true  posi- 
tion is  a  secondary  one.  They  do  but 
prepare  the  way  for  communion  with 
the  moderns ;  and,  as  these  increase,  they 
must  even  more  and  more  decrease  in 
their  demands  on  the  homage  of  the 
great  brotherhood  of  scholars.  It  is  a 
pity  then  to  meet  with  Englishmen  who, 
while  they  are  intimately  conversant 
with  the  magnificent  scenes  and  images 

F  P 


426 


On  the  use  of  English  Classical  Literature 


to  be  found  in  the  poetry  of  ancient 
Greece,  have  scarcely  ever  allowed  their 
eyes  to  rest  on  the  beautiful  land- 
scapes that  adorn  their  literary  inheri- 
tance at  home. 

The  fact  that  examples  of  this  kind 
are  not  uncommon  is  unquestionably  due 
to  the  prevailing  systems  of  education. 

Of  a  thoroughly  liberal  education  the 
ancient  classics  have  for  generations 
been  in  this  country  the  recognised  basis 
and  chief  element.  And  in  principle 
this  is  sound  and  good.  To  be  im- 
bued with  the  spirit  of  ancient  litera- 
ture, does  at  once  refine  and  liberalise, 
gives  somehow  a  larger  prospect  and 
a  manlier  tone.  At  the  same  time 
to  learn  languages  so  elaborate,  so  copi- 
ous, so  mechanically  perfect  as  Greek 
and  Latin,  is  a  training  and  discipline 
to  the  mind  the  like  of  which,  take 
it  for  all  in  all,  has  not  yet  been  dis- 
covered. But,  even  in  our  great 
public  Schools,  why  should  not  the 
study  of  English  authors  have  a  recog- 
nised place  side  by  side  with  that  of 
the  ancients  ?  why  should  not  the 
English  language  be  scientifically  taught 
in  friendly  rivalry  with  Greek  and  Latin? 
Unquestionably  the  association  would  be 
mutually  advantageous.  Something  in- 
deed would  have  to  be  abstracted  from 
the  time  allotted  to  the  present  monopo- 
lists ;  but  what  they  might  lose  in  this 
way  they  would  gain  by  the  cheering 
and  stimulating  influence  of  such  com- 
panionship on  the  minds  of  the  scholars. 
Possibly,  indeed,  in  many  schools  there 
may  be  an  approach  t6  the  recognition 
of  the  claims  of  English  literature. 
Passages  from  standard  poets  may  be 
learnt  by  heart;  occasional  reference 
may  be  made  to  standard  prose  writers  ; 
but  that  our  national  literature  is  ad- 
mitted into  the  programme  on  anything 
like  equal  terms  with  its  elder  sisters  no 
one  will  assert.  The  claim  here  made 
for  it  would  secure  it  a  position  some- 
what more  equivalent  to  its  merits. 
Then  a  play  of  Sophocles  would  alter- 
nate with  a  play  of  Shakspere ;  Homer 
and  Milton  would  interchange  civilities ; 
and  the  student  would  pass  from  Thucy- 
dides  or  Tacitus  in  the  morning  to 


Clarendon  or  Gibbon  in  the  afternoon. 
And  it  would  be  the  fault  of  the  teacher 
if  this  interchange  were  allowed  to  be  a 
transition  from  serious  study  to  light 
reading.  There  should  be  the  same 
laborious  "  getting-up "  of  the  English 
author  as  of  the  ancient ;  language  and 
matter  ought  to  be  as  closely  analysed 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  ;  the  stu- 
dent should  be  encouraged  to  discover 
resemblances  or  contrasts  of  sentiment  ; 
to  detect  affinities  of  language,  differ- 
ences of  idiom,  peculiarities  of  structure 
illustrating  the  laws  of  comparative  gram- 
mar. Among  other  advantages  of  such 
a  method  of  education,  there  would  be 
this  very  important  one,  that  -the  studies 
of  school  would  no  longer  seem  so  re- 
mote from  the  realities  of  life.  The 
intervention  of  modern  thought  and 
modern  speech  would  flash  light  into 
the  dark  places  of  antiquity,  and  would 
unite  the  world  of  two  thousand  years 
ago  with  the  busy  progressive  world  of 
to-day.  It  will  perhaps  be  urged  that 
our  public  schools,  engaged  as  they  are 
in  preparing  their  pupils  for  a  University 
career,  can  only  recognise  those  studies 
which  are  available  for  the  achievement 
of  University  distinction.  It  may  be 
replied  that,  by  having  learnt  Greek  and 
Latin  in  co-partnership  with  English, 
nothing  would  be  lost  at  Oxford,  where 
varied  and  general  accomplishments 
always  tell  on  the  results  of  an  examina- 
tion •  or  at  Cambridge,  where  the  power 
to  translate  into  elegant  and  idiomatic 
vernacular  goes  some  way  towards  secur- 
ing a  good  place  in  the  tripos. 

Besides,  it  would  surely  not  be  beneath 
the  dignity  of  our  great  Universities  to 
recognise  a  little  more  decidedly  than 
they  do  the  fact  that  we  have  the  noblest 
native  literature  in  the  world.  They 
might  make  some  other  use  of  Shak- 
spere, Massinger,  Milton,  and  Tennyson, 
besides  drawing  on  them  for  matter 
convertible  into  iambics  or  anapaests, 
elegiacs  or  alcaics.  Bacon  and  Burke 
assume  readily  enough,  under  competent 
manipulation,  an  Attic  or  a  Roman 
dress,  but  they  have  also  other  and 
greater  merits  which  deserve  to  be 
recognized. 


In  the  Work  of  Education^ 


427 


I  cannot  persuade  myself  that  a  paper 
on  English,  literature  and  language 
would  be  out  of  place  among  the  sub- 
jects of  the  classical  tripos ;  but,  if  it 
would,  a  comer  might  be  kept  in  "  the 
moral  sciences/'  which  would  be  none 
the  worse  and  none  the  less  popular  for 
such  a  leaven.  It  is,  however,  in  con- 
nexion with  what  is  called  "  middle- 
class  education"  that  the  claims  of  Eng- 
lish literature  may  be  most  effectively 
urged.  In  that  literature,  properly 
handled,  we  have  a  most  valuable 
agency  for  the  moral  and  intellectual 
culture  of  the  professional  and  commer- 
cial classes.  By  means  of  that  literature 
it  seems  to  me  that  we  might  act  very 
beneficially  on  the  national  mind,  and 
do  much  to  refine  and  invigorate  the 
national  character.  How  is  it,  as  things 
are  now,  with  the  education  of  the 
upper  middle  classes?  They  are  gene- 
rally brought  up  at  provincial  grammar- 
schools,  or  at  academies  entitled  "classi- 
cal." They  learn  Greek  and  Latin  up  to 
a  certain  point — Caesar  and  Virgil  in  one 
case,  and  Xenophon  and  the  first  book 
of  the  Iliad  in  the  other,  being  generally 
the  utmost  bourne  of  their  travels. 

Now,  in  many  of  these  schools  the 
classics  are  indifferently  taught ; — super- 
ficially, clumsily,  with  slurring  of  diffi- 
culties and  neglect  of  niceties,  because 
taught  by  men  whose  scholarship  is 
neither  very  accurate  nor  very  profound. 
Hence  boys  do  not  gain  from  their 
lessons  much  command  over  the  lan- 
guage, or  much  insight  into  the  author. 
In  ordinary  cases  a  few  years  suffice  to 
obliterate  most  of  what  has  been  learnt, 
and  a  very  faint  and  scarcely  discernible 
aroma  of  classical  knowledge  is  all  that 
remains.  But  besides  Greek  and  Latin, 
other  subjects  enter  into  the  curriculum 
of  the  schools  in  question.  There  are, 
of  course,  "  all  the  usual  branches  of  an 
English  education."  And  which  be 
they1?  History,  as  exhibited  in  the  pages 
of  Pinnock's  Goldsmith;  geography, 
according  to  some  one  or  other  of  the 
popular  manuals  ;  and  arithmetic,  not 
now  indeed  "  according  to  Cocker,"  but 
most  likely  according  to  Colenso.  There 
are,  besides,  the  ologies — smatterings  of 


physical  science,  shreds  and  patches  of 
information  on  a  good  many  subjects  ; 
here  a  globule  of  chemistry,  there  a 
pittance  of  astronomy,  a  screw  of  botany 
at  one  time,  a  pinch  of  mechanical  philo- 
sophy at  another.  To  crown  all,  the  de- 
partment of  taste  is  probably  under  the 
care  of  Enfield's  Speaker,  or  some  kin- 
dred work.  Now,  undoubtedly  some  of 
the  subjects  referred  to  here  must  be 
taught  in  schools  of  the  class  I  am  de- 
scribing. History  and  geography  are 
indispensable;  but  then  they  surely 
need  not  be  taught  exclusively  through 
the  medium  of  arid  manuals,  as  free 
from  warmth,  colour,  sentiment,  as  a 
table  of  contents  ?  Again,  physical  sci- 
ence should  not  in  these  days  of  utility 
and  progress  be  overlooked ;  [  teach  it 
by  all  means,  but  select  some  one  branch 
and  teach  it  thoroughly.  When,  how- 
ever, all  this  has  been  done,  a  great 
want  still  remains  to  be  supplied. 
Nothing  has  so  far  been  effected  for  the 
development  of  higher  thought,  for  the 
culture  of  the  imagination,  for  the  ex- 
pansion and  elevation  of  the  moral  feel- 
ings. To  accomplish  this  we  want  an 
educating  element  combining  in  itself 
thought,  imagination,  sentiment,  ex- 
pression. Such  an  element  is  the 
national  standard  literature,  the  utter- 
ance of  the  highest  and  most  gifted 
minds  of  the  nation.  This  then  is  my 
plea, — that  the  English  classics  are 
admirably  fitted  for  purposes  of  edu,ca- 
tion,  and  that  it  is  very  desirable 
to  teach  them  systematically  in  our 
schools,  and  especially  in  those  schools 
where  it  is  impossible  that  the  majority 
of  the  pupils  can  ever  become  good 
Greek  or  Latin  scholars.  Greek  and 
Latin  should  not,  indeed,  be  altogether 
banished  from  such  schools;  but  they 
should  be  taught,  not  as  they  now  are, 
in  a  shambling,  purposeless  sort  of  way, 
but  expressly  and  distinctively  with  a  view 
to  their  bearing  on  English — that  is,  for 
the  sake  of  illustrating  the  constitution 
of  our  own  language  and  the  principles 
of  universal  grammar. 

Now,  when  any  one  contemplates  such 
an  innovation  upon  existing  systems  of 
education  as  that  involved  in  my  propo- 

F  F2 


428 


On  the  t@e  of  English  Classical  Literature 


sition,  it  is  incumbent  on  him  to  spend 
some  time  and  trouble  in  setting  forth 
the  practical  advantages  of  the  study  he 
recommends,  and  in  showing  how  it  may 
be  prosecuted  to  most  advantage.  It 
remains  to  do  this,  and  it  shall  be  done 
as  fully  as  space  will  permit  and  consi- 
deration for  the  reader  justify. 

L  In  the  first  place,  I  have  already 
anticipated,  in  some  degree,  the  argu- 
ment from  the  merits  of  the  national 
literature  itself — the  argumentum  ad 
pudorem  I  may  call  it — which  bids  us 
remember  that  it  is  a  shame  to  neglect 
the  intellectual  treasures  we  possess, 
and  that  to  set  aside  our  standard  au- 
thors in  favour  of  manuals  and  com- 
pendiums,  and  catechisms,  is  to  teach 
the  mental  appetite  to  leave  ambrosial 
food  "  and  prey  on  garbage." 

Then  again  the  example  of  the  an- 
cients themselves  may  be  urged.  Though 
captive  Greece  captured  in  turn  her 
fierce  conqueror,  and  in  some  degree 
domesticated  her  literature  and  language 
on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  yet  the 
education  of  young  Rome  was  not  the 
less  carried  on  by  the  help  of  native 
authors.  The  expressive  words  of 
Juvenal  tell  us  how  well-thumbed 
were  the  Horace  and  Virgil  of  the 
Eoman  school-boy  : — 

"  quum  totus  decolor  esset 
Placcus,  et    hsereret    nigro    fuligo 
Maroni." 

The  value  of  English  literature  as  an 
instrument  of  mental  training  will  be 
more  easily  seen  if  people  can  be  brought 
to  admit  that  the  young  may  be  taught 
to  reason  and  to  think,  not  only  by 
means  of  technical  contrivances,  such  as 
Logic  and  Mathematics,  but  at  least  as 
well  by  converse  with  a  thoughtful 
writer,  and  by  the  careful  study  and 
analysis  of  the  arguments  of  a  great 
reasoner. 

Important  indeed  is  the  use  of 
Geometry  in  the  education  of  the  rea- 
soning powers.  But  what  makes  it  so 
effective  ?  It  is  the  rigid  and  inflexible 
necessity  with  which  one  step  is  evolved 
out  of  another,  and  immediately  follows 
it.  By  contemplating  this  sequence  the 


mind  is  insensibly  trained  to  discrimi- 
nate between  the  relevant  and  the  irre- 
levant in  argument,  and  to  recognise  the 
proper  relation  between  premises  and 
conclusion,  while  it  is  disciplined  to  the 
habit  of  patient  and  concentrated  atten- 
tion. Now,  without  any  intention  of 
superseding  geometry,  it  may  safely  be 
asserted  that  when,  through  its  agency, 
some  foundation  has  been  laid,  and  the 
reasoning  powers  have  been  awakened 
into  incipient  activity,  the  process  of 
their  development  may  very  well  be 
carried  on  by  means  of  standard  works 
characterised  by  great  closeness  and 
strength  of  argument.  Such  a  work, 
for  instance,  is  "  Chillingworth's  Re- 
ligion  of  Protestants."  I  mention  it  for 
its  excellence  in  this  respect,  and  not 
because  it  is  in  any  other  respect  par- 
ticularly adapted  for  an  educational  text- 
book, Nowhere  can  better  examples 
be  found  of  closely  riveted  chains  of 
reasoning,  of  sophistries  detected  and 
exposed,  of  the  refutation  of  fallacies 
dependent  for  their  semblances  of  truth 
on  ambiguity  of  language.  A  chapter 
or  two  of  such  a  work,  carefully  dis- 
sected and  thoroughly  mastered,  would 
do  a  great  deal  towards  strengthening  a 
pupil's  reasoning  powers,  and  would 
very  materially  enlighten  him  as  to 
what  reasoning  actually  is.  So  again, 
if  you  want  to  call  forth  and  stimulate 
thought,  what  more  suggestive  than  that 
household  book,  the  Essays  of  Bacon, 
or  than  some  of  the  prose  works  of 
Raleigh  and  Milton  ?  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  mind  is  to  be  directed  to 
social  and  political  questions,  is  to  be 
aided  in  forming  opinions  on  law  and 
government,  is  to  be  made  wise  and 
prudent  by  the  lessons  of  the  past,  it 
will  be  found  that  Clarendon,  and 
Robertson,  and  Hallam,  and  Macintosh, 
and  Macaulay  are  not  bad  substitutes 
for  Thucydides,  Livy,  and  Tacitus, 
when  the  latter  cannot  be  had,  and  that 
Burke  and  Adam  Smith  are  competent 
to  fill  up,  with  fair  credit,  the  hiatus 
made  by  the  absence  of  Aristotle  and 
Cicero.  But  our  case  seems  strongest 
when  we  come  to  consider  the  use  that 
might  be  made  of  the  English  poets  in 


In  the  Work  of  Education. 


429 


the  work  of  education.  The  culture  of 
the  imagination  is  an  important  element 
in  the  training  of  the  young ;  its  im- 
portance, indeed,  appears  in  these  days 
to  be  rather  underrated  than  otherwise. 
Some  people  seem  afraid  of  this  faculty, 
as  if  it  were — when  viewed  in  connex- 
ion with  the  other  children  of  Noi/s 
— the  spendthrift  and  prodigal  of  the 
family.  "Young  persons,"  say  the 
grave  and  elderly,  "  are  apt  to  be  carried 
away  by  their  imagination."  True ;  it 
is  not,  however,  the  strength  but  the 
irregularity  of  the  imagination  that 
misleads.  And,  therefore,  it  is  all  the 
more  necessary  to  train  and  educate  it. 

This  is  to  be  done  not  merely  by 
ballasting  it  with  solid  and  sober  mate- 
rial, but  also  by  giving  it  the  choicest 
and  purest  varieties  of  that  provision  on 
which  it  delights  to  feed.  Its  aberra- 
tions and  extravagancies  will  be  best 
corrected  by  means  of  homoeopathic  treat- 
ment. To  this  end  we  must  have  re- 
course to  poetry.  In  the  long  succession 
of  our  great  poets,  from  the  days  of 
Chaucer  to  our  own  day,  we  have  ex- 
haustless  nutriment  adapted  not  only  to 
invigorate  and  brighten  the  imagination, 
but  also  to  give  it  a  sound  and  healthy 
bias,  and  to  store  it  with  noble  and  ele- 
vated creations. 

And  it  is  not,  let  us  remember,  the 
imagination  only  that  poetry  of  the 
higher  kind  educates  ;  its  influence  ex- 
tends to  many  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  faculties  ;  it  pours  into  the  soul, 
with  the  rich  flood  of  song,  the  pro- 
foundest  truths  of  divine  philosophy 
itself.  It  is  the  expression  of  the 
purest  and  most  generous  emotions  of 
the  deep  heart  of  man.  It  catches  the 
manners  living  as  they  rise,  and  per- 
petuates the  very  form  and  pressure  of 
the  time.  It  mirrors  the  varied  loveli- 
ness of  nature,  and  ever  and  anon 
throws  gleams  of  light  into  her  infinite 
mysteries.  Not  vainly,  therefore,  did 
poetry  bear  so  large  a  part  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  world  when  the  world  was 
young.  Not  vainly  was  old  Homer  the 
text-book  for  many  a  generation  of  the 
youth  of  Athens,  and  helped  to  form 
the  warriors  who  defended,  and  the 


statesmen  who  governed,  and  the  orators 
who  fulmined  over  Greece.  That  subtle, 
busy,  questioning,  Attic  mind,  too,  owed 
the  activity  of  its  play,  and  the  bright- 
ness of  its  polish  to  contact  with  the 
highest  type  of  poetry,  when  year  after 
year  the  great  theatre  of  Bacchus  was 
vocal  with  the  "mighty  lines"  of  ^Eschy- 
lus,  or  witnessed  the  stately  tread  of  the 
"  Sophoclean  cothurnus."  And  whatever 
Homer  and  the  Dramatists  could  do  for 
Greece,  Shakspere  and  Spenser  and 
Milton  can  do  for  the  education  of  the 
youth  of  England.  If  these,  our  great 
national  prophets,  prophesy  to  us 
through  a  less  polished  and  perfect 
organ,  they  are  not,  at  all  events,  one 
whit  behind  the  chiefest  of  the  ancients 
in  the  sublimity  of  their  sentiments,  or 
the  splendour  of  their  imagery.  Nay, 
compare  sentiment  with  sentiment,  and 
image  with  image,  and  it  will  be  found, 
if  partiality  do  not  warp  the  judg- 
ment, that  our  moderns  as  much  excel 
the  ancients  in  the  loftiness  of  their 
thoughts,  as  the  latter  surpass  them  in 
felicity  of  expression.  It  is  to  be  sus- 
pected, indeed,  that  the  excellence  of 
the  medium,  in  the  case  of  Greek  poetry, 
often,  like  perfection  of  taste  in  dress, 
gives  a  false  air  of  beauty  and  dignity 
to  a  sentiment  which  is  really  very  com- 
mon-place. 

Consider  now  what  must  have  been 
accomplished  for  him  who  has  been 
made  thoroughly  conversant  with  some 
of  Shakspere' s  masterpieces,  with 
Hamlet  and  Lear,  with  Macbeth  and 
Julius  Caesar.  He  has  been  introduced 
to  scenes  calculated  to  awaken  some  of 
the  strongest  and  deepest  emotions  of 
his  soul ;  he  has  listened  to  the  almost 
prophetic  voice  of  "  old  experience  ;"  he 
has  gazed  upon  the  swift  and  compli- 
cated action  of  the  world's  machinery  ; 
he  has  pored  over  the  most  graphic 
and  life-like  delineations  of  human 
nature ;  character,  life,  wisdom,  feeling, — 
he  has  been  in  contact  with  them  all ; 
and  surely  his  spirit  must  be  "duller 
than  the  fat  weed  that  rots  on  Lethe's 
wharf,"  if  it  is  not  stirred,  and  taught, 
and  disciplined  by  the  association. 

And  here  it  must  be  urged,  that  to 


430 


On  the  use  of  English  Classical  Literature 


develop  certain  intellectual  faculties,  to 
improve  the  memory,  to  strengthen  the 
reasoning  powers,  to  cultivate  the  habit 
of  abstraction,  is  not  all  the  work  that 
education  has  to  do.  Its  province  is  of 
far  wider  range,  and  includes  still  more 
exalted  aims.  Its  processes  are  as  much 
moral  as  intellectual,  embrace  within 
their  sphere  all  the  tempers,  habits, 
qualities,  tendencies  of  the  man,  and 
are  consummated  by  all  possible  appli- 
ances and  influences  that  can  act  on 
every  separate  element  of  man's  nature. 
Now  this  consideration  will  enable  us 
more  decisively  to  contend  for  the  educa- 
ting power  of  our  own  English  literature. 
For  observe  the  society  into  which  it 
introduces  us  !  We  are  brought  by  it 
into  contact  with  minds  of  the  loftiest 
order.  And  what  does  more  to  form 
and  fashion  us  than  our  companionship  1 
Insensibly  we  become  assimilated  to 
those  with  whom,  we  associate.  Just  as 
those  minute  insects  which  we  may  dis- 
cover in  the  grass  wear  the  livery  of 
that  green  herbage  on  which  they  bat- 
ten, so  virtue  is  always  passing  out  of 
great  authors  into  their  readers.  Not 
only  the  sentiments,  but  the  very  soul 
and  spirit  are  transfused.  Thus  the 
study  of  an  elevated  literature  will 
silently  and  little  by  little  take  eifect  on 
the  man's  nature,  and  the  various  elements 
of  character  will  grow  in  correspondence 
with  the  influences  that  act  on  them. 

"  lit  flos  in  septis  secretus  nascitur  hortis 
Quern  mulcent  aurae,  firmat  sol,  educat 
imber." 

Catholicity  of  feeling  and  breadth  of 
views  will,  in  some  measure  at  all 
events,  result  from  such  influences. 
The  student  will  learn  to  appreciate  the 
temper  with  which  great  minds  ap- 
proach the  consideration  of  great  ques- 
tions ;  he  will  discover  that  truth  is 
many-sided,  that  it  is  not  identical  or 
merely  co-extensive  with  individual 
opinion,  and  that  the  world  is  a  good 
deal  wider  than  his  own  sect,  or  party, 
or  class.  And  such  a  lesson  the  middle 
classes  of  this  country  greatly  need.  They 
are  generally  honest  in  their  opinions, 
but  in  too  many  cases  they  are  narrow. 


It  must  be  remembered  that  there  is  a 
wide  distinction  between  narrowness 
and  definiteness  of  view.  On  this  point 
people  are  apt  to  mistake.  Those  who 
complain  of  the  narrowness  of  party 
views  are  very  often  regarded  as  advo- 
cating laxity  and  vagueness  in  matters 
of  opinion.  They  are  stigmatised  as 
latitudinarian  in  a  bad  sense.  No- 
charge  can  be  more  unfair.  The  true 
latitudinarian  does  not  disparage  clear- 
ness and  distinctiveness  of  opinion,  but 
only  one-sided  dogmatism  and  over- 
strained compression  of  truth.  Now 
the  tendency  of  earnest  middle-class 
Englishmen  is  to  compress  truth,  to 
square  and  shape  it  into  formulas  and 
to  confine  it  within  party  limits.  The 
fact  scarcely  needs  illustrating.  Take 
the  case  of  religion.  The  whole  field 
of  it  is  divided  into  petty  enclosures, 
overgrown  with  an  iron  crop  of  shibbo- 
leths. Whenever  an  honest  English- 
man looks  beyond  the  verge  of  his  own 
circle  and  takes  a  peep  into  his  neigh- 
bour's enclosure,  he  inevitably  draws 
back  his  head  with  a  grave  shake  and 
a  subdued  muttering,  a  few  words  of 
which,  such  as  "unsound,"  "danger- 
ous," "heterodox,"  are  alone  permitted 
to  reach  the  ear.  The  same  sort  of 
thing  exhibits  itself  with  regard  to  social 
and  political  questions.  The  majority  of 
fairly  intelligent  every-day  people  can 
only  look  at  them  from  their  own  con- 
fined point  of  view.  They  base  their 
opinions  on  the  contracted  foundation  of 
the  little  sphere  in  which  they  move, 
and  apply  to  the  interests  of  an  empire 
the  maxims  and  rules  which  they  draw 
from  the  experiences  of  the  market  and 
the  shop.  To  this  the  use  of  English 
literature  in  education  would,  in  some 
measure  at  least,  supply  a  corrective. 
It  would  assist  in  the  formation  of 
deeper  and  broader  views  in  religion 
.  and  politics.  It  would  do  so,  not  so 
much  because  such  views  are  to  be 
found  in  the  works  of  our  standard 
writers — though  this  is  necessarily  true 
— but  because  it  would  strengthen  and 
enlarge  the  mind's  range  of  vision,  and 
would  breathe  a  loftier  and  more  catholic 
spirit  into  the  soul.  Another  and  a 


In  the  Work  of  Education. 


431 


kindred  result  would  be  increase  and 
extension  of  the  sympathies.  Large 
views  help  to  generate  large  sympathies  ; 
and,  by  converse  with  the  thoughts  and 
utterances  of  those  who  are  intellectual 
leaders  of  the  race,  our  heart  comes  to 
beat  in  accord  with  the  feelings  of  uni- 
versal humanity.  We  discover  that  no 
diiferences  of  class,  or  party,  or  creed, 
can  destroy  the  power  of  genius  to 
charm  and  to  instruct,  and  that  above 
the  smoke  and  stir,  the  din  and  turmoil 
of  man's  lower  life  of  care  and  business 
and  debate,  there  is  a  serene  and 
luminous  region  of  truth  where  all  may 
meet  and  expatiate  in  common.  A 
zealous  monarchist  and  Stuart  partizan 
may,  while  studying  the  political  history 
of  the  great  Civil  War,  come  bitterly  to 
dislike,  and  angrily  to  denounce  the 
Secretary  of  Cromwell  and  author  of 
the  "Defensio  Populi  Anglicani ;"  but 
when  he  makes  acquaintance  with  the 
rich  and  luxuriant  poetry  of  "Comus,"  or 
when  the  solemn  organ-like  melodies  of 
"  Paradise  Lost"  are  heard  by  him,  his 
prejudice  is  disarmed,  he  is  irresistibly 
taken  captive,  and  he  finds  that  the 
great  political  and  ecclesiastical  here- 
siarch  and  himself  have  a  common 
heritage,  and  are  citizens  of  one  common 
city.  It  is,  indeed,  a  good  thing  that 
men  should  be  constrained  to  admire 
those  with  whom,  in  matters  of  opinion, 
they  disagree ;  and  high  genius  joined 
with  high  moral  tone  and  purpose  can 
enforce  such  admiration. 

Yet  again  it  may  be  contended  that 
an  education,  based  on  the  national 
literature,  would  assist  in  developing  a 
spirit  of  enlightened  patriotism.  Eng- 
lishmen, indeed,  are  anything  but  un- 
patriotic ;  they  love  their  country, 
glory  in  its  renown,  are  willing  to 
die  for  its  safety  ;  but  they  do  not 
always  seem  to  understand  wherein  its 
chief  nobility  lies.  They  are  fascinated 
by  its  historic  renown,  by  its  commer- 
cial enterprise,  by  its  material  resources ; 
they  are  not  sufficiently  alive  to  the 
measureless  importance  of  an  elevated 
national  character.  They  need  to  be 
taught  to  appreciate  thoroughly  those 
moral  qualities  traditionally  regarded  as 


distinctively  English.  Their  education 
should  be  such  as  to  inspire  them  with 
a  love  for  manly  sincerity,  stainless 
faith,  fearless  advocacy  of  truth.  These 
are  doubtless  in  some  sense  national 
traits ;  the  germs  of  them  are  latent  in 
the  unformed  nature  of  the  English 
boy;  but  they  must  be  drawn  forth,  and 
the  high,  generous,  and  manly  spirit 
that  breathes  in  English  literature  is 
exactly  the  agency  for  educing  them. 
Again,  the  English  character  is  con- 
fessedly deficient  in  refinement.  The 
natural  Englishman  is  almost  always 
coarse ;  his  tendencies  are  somewhat 
animal,  and  his  tastes  incline  to  the 
boisterous  and  material.  Now  we  have 
all  known,  ever  since  we  first  learnt  our 
Latin  syntax,  that  acquaintance  with 
the  liberal  arts  softens  and  refines. 
Assuredly  then  among  the  liberal  arts 
that  so  humanize,  standard  literature 
occupies  the  first  place.  If  anything 
will  take  coarseness  and  vulgarity  out 
of  a  soul,  it  must  be  refined  images  and 
elevated  sentiments.  As  a  clown  will 
instinctively  tread  lightly  and  feel 
ashamed  of  his  hob-nailed  shoes  in  a 
lady's  boudoir,  so  a  vulgar  mind  may, 
by  converse  with  minds  of  high  culture, 
be  brought  to  see  and  deplore  the 
contrast  between  itself  and  them,  and 
to  make  an  earnest  effort  to  put  off  its 
vulgarity. 

A  reference  to  taste  and  refinement 
suggests  the  thought  that  an  early  in- 
troduction to  really  great  writers  would 
have  the  effect  of  improving  the  pre- 
vailing literary  taste  of  future  genera- 
tions. A  course  of  standard  authors 
would  be  found  a  powerful  corrective  of 
any  excessive  liking  for  the  feeble,  shal- 
low, ephemeral  literature  that  is  now  so 
much  in  vogue.  There  is,  however, 
yet  another  argument  which  I  must 
ask  leave  to  advance  on  behalf  of  the 
cause  I  plead.  Thorough  and  accurate 
study  of  the  English  language  and 
literature  would  supply  what  the  great 
body  of  fairly  educated  people  are 
grievously  deficient  in,  viz.  power  of  ex- 
pression. It  has  never,  I  imagine,  been 
ascertained,  how  large  a  percentage  of  the 
middle  class  of  this  country  can  write 


432 


Gn  the  use  of  English  Classical  Literature 


and  speak  their  own  mother  tongue 
with  fluency  and  correctness.  This 
is  too  delicate  and  subtle  an  inquiry 
for  the  machinery  of  the  census ;  but, 
were  such  an  inquiry  possible,  the 
results  would  not  afford  much  gratifica- 
tion. As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  language 
is  degenerating  in  the  hands  of  pro- 
fessional writers  ;  hybrid  words,  awk- 
ward and  conventional  phrases,  daring 
anacoloutha,  and  extraordinary  syntac- 
tical licences,  are  continually  manifesting 
themselves  in  the  current  literature  of 
the  day.  Much  more  then  must  we 
be  prepared  for  maltreatment  of  the 
Queen's  English  among  the  trading 
and  commercial  classes.  And  we  find 
it  plentifully.  To  be  able  to  tell  a 
plain  tale  in  plain  words;  to  make  a 
statement  simply,  clearly,  concisely;  to 
record  the  details  of  business  in  vigo- 
rous business-like  terms — is  an  ac- 
complishment that  does  not  always 
appear  in  company  with  shrewd  sense 
and  sound  business  capacity.  Now  it 
would  go  far  to  remedy  this  defect^  if 
the  nascent  hopes  of  the  commercial 
classes  were  carried  through  a  course  of 
the  strong  nervous  racy  prose  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Barrow  and  South 
may  be  voted  somewhat  dry  reading ; 
but  the  former  helped  to  make  Chatham 
an  orator,  and  the  latter  can  boast  of  a 
style,  the  mixed  excellences  of  which 
adapt  it  for  the  use  of  the  rhetorician 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  practical  man 
of  business  on  the  other. 

It  is  surely  not  necessary  to  seek 
further  arguments  in  favour  of  such  a 
reform  or  modification  of  existing  me- 
thods of  education  as  shall  more  pro- 
minently and  more  effectually  enlist  in 
the  cause  the  services  of  our  National 
Literature.  If  that  literature  embody 
all  the  excellences  for  which  we  give  it 
credit,  if  it  be  full  of  the  living  power  of 
genius,  if  it  be  a  rich  store -house  of 
thought  and  argument  and  imagery,  if  it 
breathe  a  manly,  generous,  liberal  spirit, 
and  be  pervaded  by  a  pure  and  healthy 
morality,  it  must,  if  rightly  applied, 
act  powerfully  and  benignantly  on 
the  opening  faculties  of  our  English 
youth. 


II.  It  only  remains  to  consider  how 
it  may  be  rightly  applied,  or,  in  other 
words,  effectively  taught. 

To  this  end  it  must,  above  all 
things,  be  thoroughly  taught.  To  run 
through  a  standard  author  in  a  cursory 
and  superficial  way  is  a  mere  waste  of 
time  and  dissipation  of  mind.  And  in 
the  study  of  an  English  writer  there  is 
some  danger  of  being  hurried  and  super- 
ficial, because  the  scholar  does  not  at  the 
outset  encounter  the  same  difficulties 
which  he  meets  with  when  he  enters  on 
the  examination  of  a  Greek  or  Latin 
book.  In  the  latter  case  he  has,  in 
order  to  get  at  the  thoughts,  to  crack 
the  shell  of  a  foreign  and  unfamiliar 
language.  This  compels  attention,  re- 
search, deliberate  weighing  of  words,  so 
that  the  mind  is  at  once  invigorated  by 
necessary  effort  and  trained  to  habits  of 
thorough  and  exhaustive  inquiry.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  the  language  is 
vernacular,  the  mind  travels  over  it  so 
easily  and  rapidly  that  the  thoughts 
have  scarcely  time  to  imprint  themselves 
on  the  understanding,  and  such  im- 
pression as  they  do  leave  is  faint  and 
imperfect. 

This,  then,  is  the  thing  to  be  guarded 
against.  It  is  an  utter  mistake  to  sup- 
pose that  the  study  of  English  Litera- 
ture, be  it  poetry  or  prose,  belongs  in  any 
sense  to  the  department  of  "  light  read- 
ing." It  would  be  just  as  rational  to 
consider  gold-digging  as  simply  a  form 
of  spade-husbandry.  It  is  possible,  of 
course,  to  content  oneself  with  merely 
turning  up  the  surface  soil,  but  he  who 
does  so  will  never  get  possession  of  the 
treasure  which  lies  hid  beneath. 

I  contend,  then,  that,  to  be  of  any  use 
for  purposes  of  education,  an  English 
author  must  be  studied  as  carefully  and 
as  deeply  as  a  Greek  one,  and  very 
much  in  the  same  way.  It  will  not,  I 
hope,  seem  pedantic  if  I  venture  to  pre- 
scribe rules  for  such  a  study. 

1.  Take  first  the  department  of  lan- 
guage. 

This  should  be  critically  investigated. 
There  is  a  notion  that  English  cannot  be 
taught  scientifically  on  account  of  the 
want  of  definiteness  and  system  in  Eng- 


In  the  Work  of  Education. 


433 


lish  grammar.  We  have  not  indeed  in 
English  that  structural  nicety  which  the 
predominance  of  inflected  forms  gives  a 
language.  Hence  there  is  little  scope  for 
applying  laws  of  syntax  to  our  mother- 
tongue.  But  we  have  compensation  in 
some  other  departments.  The  fact  that 
the  English  language  is  composite  opens 
out  a  very  interesting  and  a  very  edu- 
cating line  of  study  in  connexion  with 
it — the  study  of  words  in  their  origin  and 
in  their  variety  and  changes  of  meaning. 
Everybody  knows  how  much  literature 
owes  to  Dean  Trench  in  connexion  with 
this  subject ;  he  has  indeed,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  indicated  a  course  which,  rightly 
used,  may  be  made'  fruitful  of  most 
precious  results  in  education. 

The  school-boy  then  should,  while 
learning  his  Latin  grammar,  which  will 
help  him  to  appreciate  one  element  of 
his  native  speech,  be  allowed  some  in- 
sight into  the  more  domestic  and  abori- 
ginal element  of  that  speech,  as  exhi- 
bited in  its  older  and  purely  Saxon 
forms.  He  should  be  taught  how  the 
language  has  grown,  and  changed,  and 
developed ;  how  inflections  have  gradu- 
ally dropped  out ;  how  new  words  and 
new  idioms  have  as  gradually  slipt  in  ; 
how  old  words  have  gotten  for  them- 
selves new  meanings ;  and  how  prevailing 
opinions,  and  shifting  fashions,  and 
national  temperament  affect  the  "  jus  et 
norma  loquendi." 

Again,  when  he  comes  to  study  an 
English  author,  he  should  be  required 
to  note  every  striking  and  important 
word  and  phrase  ;  to  discriminate  the 
exact  shade  of  meaning  proper  to  the 
word  in  that  particular  connexion  ;  to 
register  such  idioms  as  have  become 
obsolete,  or  involve  note-worthy  gram- 
matical peculiarities,  and  to  make  a  col- 
lection of  such  forms  and  expressions  as 
deserve  to  be  treasured  up  for  use  in 
composition. 

2.  From  the  language  we  pass  to  the 
subject-matter,  and  here  again  there  is 
scope  for  great  and  varied  labour. 

In  the  first  place  the  general  drift  and 
tenor  of  the  argument  should  be  mas- 
tered. With  this  view  the  pupil  should, 
after  reading  a  certain  portion  of  his 


author,  be  required  to  make  an  analysis 
or  abstract  of  the  portion  read.  He 
must  be  trained,  in  doing  this,  to  seize 
and  pick  out  the  leading  thoughts,  to 
indicate  the  steps  in  the  argument,  and 
to  bring  into  full  relief  the  master-truth 
which  the  author  wishes  to  exhibit. 

Further,  he  must  be  made  to  "get 
up"  a  clear  and  full  explanation  of  all 
classical,  historical,  and  other  allusions, 
and  he  must  patiently  and  faithfully 
disentangle  all  involutions  of  language, 
and  all  intricacies  of  thought. 

Yet  again,  in  order  to  call  into  play 
his  reasoning  and  reflective  powers,  he 
must  be  required  (where  the  opportu- 
nity presents  itself)  to  weigh  in  his 
own  mind  the  force  and  soundness  of 
some  particular  argument,  the  truth  and 
falsehood  of  some  particular  position, 
and  to  form  and  express  his  opinion 
about  them. 

So  too,  according  to  the  character  of 
the  work  studied,  certain  points  will 
require  special  attention.  If  the  pupil 
is  engaged  on  a  historian,  he  must  be 
led  to  consider  the  evidence  on  which 
the  historical  facts  are  based,  and  the 
validity  of  the  inferences  drawn  from 
them.  The  study  of  a  poem  or  drama 
will  afford  opportunity  for  another  sort 
of  culture.  Character  must  be  ana- 
lysed, the  propriety  and  beauty  of  the 
imagery  illustrated,  poetical  forms  of 
expression  and  figures  of  speech  brought 
under  notice. 

3.  In  the  last  place,  such  a  study  as 
I  am  advocating  must  be  accompanied 
by  frequent  and  varied  exercises  in 
composition.  A  popular  and  useful 
exercise  of  the  kind  is  what  is  called 
paraphrasing,  which  consists  in  express- 
ing the  thoughts  of  the  writer  in 
different  but  equivalent  terms.  This 
approaches  in  some  measure  to  the 
practice  of  written  translation  from 
a  foreign  language,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  supplies  its  place  as  an  instru- 
ment of  education.  Another  and  still 
more  valuable  exercise  is  writing  from 
memory  the  substance  of  a  portion  of 
an  author  after  having  carefully  studied 
it  some  little  time  before.  In  this  case, 
the  original  and  the  imitation  should 


434 


Co-operative  Societies  ; 


afterwards  be  carefully  compared.  Ori- 
ginal themes  and  essays  should  also 
be  set  on  subjects  suggested  by  the 
work  in  hand.  It  may  be  well  some- 
times to  follow  out  a  proposition  barely 
suggested  by  the  writer,  sometimes  to 
controvert  one  of  his  statements  or 
positions,  and  sometimes  to  compose  a 
critique  on  his  general  line  of  argument 
and  style. 

To  pursue  this  subject  further  would 
be  tedious.  What  has  been  said  suf- 
ficiently indicates  the  direction  that 
should  be  taken,  and,  I  hope,  also  does 
something  to  prove  what  may  be  called 
the  capabilities  of  English  Literature  as 
an  instrument  of  mental  training  and 
discipline.  In  this  hope  I  commend  the 
subject  to  the  fair  and  thoughtful  con- 
sideration of  all  whom  it  may  concern. 
And,  in  good  sooth,  it  concerns  every- 


body. We  are  all  interested  in'  the 
formation  of  the  national  character  and 
the  culture  of  the  national  mind.  The 
tendencies  of  education  are  certainly 
just  now  in  a  purely  utilitarian  and  scien- 
tific direction.  Some  partial  reaction  is 
wanted.  Let  the  useful  be  duly  honoured; 
let  science  occupy  its  own,  and  that  a 
worthy  place.  But  open  the  way  also 
for  moral  influences,  for  the  assimilation 
of  high  thoughts,  and  communing  with 
great  minds.  Let  England's  immortal 
dead  speak  again  in  the  Colleges  and 
Schools  of  their  country,  and  their 
voices  will  not  fall  vainly  on  the  ears  of 
England's  children.  Their  burning  words 
and  breathing  thoughts  will  stimulate 
and  nourish  our  national  manhood,  and 
will  help  to  maintain  an  exalted  national 
character. 


CO-OPEEATIYE  SOCIETIES ;  THEIR  SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMICAL 

ASPECTS. 


BY    HENRY   FAWCETT. 


MR.  HALLAM,   an  historian  whose  ac- 
curacy  cannot   be   questioned,   has  re- 
marked— "  I  should  find  it  difficult  to 
'resist  the  conclusion,    that,   however 
'  the  labourer  has  derived  benefit  from 
'the  cheapness  of  manufactured  com- 
'  modities,  and  from  many  inventions 
'  of  common  utility,  he  is  much  inferior 
'in  ability  to  support  a  family  to  his 
'  ancestors  three  or  four  centuries  ago." 
In  the  time  of  the  Tudors,  the  weekly 
wages  of  ordinary  labourers  would  enable 
them  to  purchase  tAvice  as  much  wheat 
and  meat  as  would  the  wages  of  a  similar 
class  of  labourers  at  the  present  time. 
It  therefore  appears  that  improvement 
in  the  material  condition  of  a  large  sec- 
tion of  the  community  has  not  accom- 
panied the  great  progress  in  the  nation's 
wealth.    For  England's  commercial  pro- 
gress is  unparalleled;  she  accumulates 
capital  for  a  great  portion  of  the  civilized 
world ;  by  her  aid  railways  are  carried 
into  the  far  West ;  her  commerce  has 


been  developed  by  the  greatest  triumphs 
of  mechanical  genius  ;  her  exports  have 
advanced  in  afewyears  from 50,000,000^. 
to  130,000,OOOZ. ;  and  yet  no  correspond- 
ing effect  seems  to  have  been  produced 
in  the  material  condition  of  her  poorest 
classes. 

Philanthropic  institutions  continue  to 
unfold  the  same  tales  of  dire  distress. 
Needlewomen  exh'aust  their  strength  and 
ruin  their  health  for  the  most  beggarly 
pittances;  and  labourers  frequently  can- 
not be  provided  with  such  food  as  the 
necessities  of  nature  demand — for  by 
many  meat  can  now  never  be  tasted 
more  than  once  a  week.  It  appears, 
therefore,  quite  evident  that  increased 
production  does  not  insure  a  happier 
distribution  of  a  nation's  wealth.  Yet 
there  may  be  divers  opinions  as  to  how 
a  more  equable  distribution  is  to  be 
brought  about. 

I  may  be  thought  hard-hearted  if  I 
seek  a  remedy  in  the  lessons  which 


Their  Social  and  Economical  Aspects* 


435 


political  economy  teaches.  The  remedy, 
however,  which  I  shall  describe  has  the 
advantage  of  having  been  tried  and 
proved  to  be  effectual. 

The  most  characteristic  feature  in  the 
social  condition  of  this  country  is  the 
fact  that  all  classes  of  labourers  depend 
for  their  remuneration  upon  the  capital 
which  has  been  accumulated  by  others. 
As  long  as  our  social  relations  continue 
thus,  the  remuneration  of  the  labourer 
must  be  regulated  by  the  same  laws  as 
at  the  present  time.  Wages  are  now 
determined  by  the  relative  rapidity  with 
which  the  population  and  the  accumula- 
tion of  capital  advance.  The  wage-fund 
of  a  country  is  a  component  part  of  its 
capital ;  if  this  increases  with  greater 
rapidity  than  population,  wages  will  rise. 
We  may  regret  that  a  labourer  should 
only  obtain  ten  shillings  a  week ;  but 
such  wages  are  absolutely  decreed  to  him 
by  our  existing  social  conditions,  and  can- 
not be  raised  by  the  mere  desires  of 
humane  sympathy.  We  are  thus  able 
to  discern  the  only  effectual  means  by 
which  wages  can  be  raised,  since  they 
are  determined  by  a  ratio  between 
population  and  capital ;  but  there  is  a 
wide-spread  opinion  amongst  our  labour- 
ing classes,  which  comes  out  prominently 
in  the  agitation  of  strikes,  that  wages 
are  reduced  by  a  tyrannical  fiat  of  the 
capitalist.  When  the  labourers  express 
enmity  towards  capitalists,  they  should 
remember  that,  as  long  as  the  labourers, 
as  a  class,  do  not  save,  they  render  capi- 
talists, who  do  not  labour  with  their 
hands,  absolutely  necessary.  Capital  is 
that  portion  of  past  produce  which  has 
been  saved  to  aid  future  production ; 
capital,  in  fact,  sustains  the  labourer 
until  the  results  of  his  labour  become 
available  for  consumption.  If  the  la- 
bourer will  not  save,  he  must  look  for 
others  to  sustain  him,  and  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  produce  of  his  labour  must 
be  devoted  to  compensate  the  capitalist  - 
for  his  accumulation,  for  his  risk,  and 
for  the  labour  of  superintendence.  When, 
therefore,  labourers  become  a  saving 
class,  there  will  have  been  secured  the 
most  important  advance  not  only  in  their 
social,  but  also  in  their  material  condi- 


tion, as  they  will  then  obtain  from  their 
own  savings  all  those  services  for  which 
they  now  have  to  pay  the  capitalist  so 
heavy  a  price.  .  This  may  appear  an 
Utopian  expectation  ;  and  it  will  per- 
haps be  objected,  "What  is  the  use  of 
saying  it  is  a  good  thing  for  the  labourers 
to  save  1  Every  one  knows  that ;  the 
difficulty  is,  how  to  induce  them  to 
save."  I  recognise  the  difficulty,  and 
will  meet  it  with  a  remedy,  which  I 
believe  may  well  impress  us  with  its 
practical  significance.  All  saving  in- 
volves a  present  sacrifice  for  a  future 
advantage.  A  sure  sign  of  inferior 
education  is  the  absence  of  foresight. 
The  poor,  therefore,  will  not  generally 
be  provident ;  and,  of  course,  saving  be- 
comes much  more  difficult  when  it  can- 
not be  made  from  a  superfluous  abun- 
dance, but  involves  the  sacrifice  of  some 
of  the  necessaries  of  life.  We  will 
recognise  to  the  full  all  these  obstacles 
to  saving,  for  we  shall  then  be  better 
able  to  discern  the  manner  in  which 
saving  can  be  most  effectually  encou- 
raged. The  first  thing  which  is  of 
special  importance  is  to  place  distinctly 
before  the  labourer  the  advantage  which 
his  saving  will  bring  him.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  there  should  be  an  ab- 
sence of  saving  amongst  the  poor  at  the 
present  time.  Few  labourers  would  be 
able  to  accumulate  100?.  without  many 
a  severe  sacrifice.  When  this  100?.  is 
accumulated,  tjie  labourer  will  not  be  in 
a  different  social  position ;  the  100?. 
will  be  placed  in  the  savings  bank,  and 
fifty  shillings  a  year  will  be  the  only 
reward  of  his  prudence.  If,  however, 
he  could  use  this  100?.  as  capital  to  sup- 
port him  while  labouring,  he  would  then 
cease  to  pay  the  capitalist  the  heavy 
price  he  now  pays  him.  The  advantage 
to  the  labourer  of  being  his  own  capi- 
talist can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  He 
would  be  advanced  to  a  different  social 
grade ;  the  whole  produce  of  his  labour 
would  be  his  own  ;  and,  depend  upon  it, 
prudence  amongst  the  labouring  classes 
would  not  then  be  so  rare  a  virtue  as  it 
is  now.  •  But  how  is  this  to  be  effected  ? 
The  whole  tendency  of  civilisation  is 
against  it ;  every  year  production  is 


436 


Co-operative  Societies  ; 


carried  on  upon  a  larger  scale;  every 
year  small  capitalists  and  small  producers 
find  it  difficult  to   compete  with  large 
commercial    undertakings.        Manufac- 
turing on   an  extensive   scale  is   more 
economical,  and  the  small  manufactories 
are  being  entirely   absorbed  by  those 
marvels  of  commercial  enterprise  with 
which   Lancashire    and   Yorkshire   are 
studded.       Large   farms   are    gradually 
absorbing  the    small    holdings ;    in  a 
village  there  are  now  but  three  occu- 
piers, where,  perhaps,  a  few  years  since 
there  were  thirty  ;  and  this  tendency 
will  be  found  to  increase  in  every  de- 
partment of  industry,  in  proportion  as 
the  application  of  machinery  is  extended. 
It  is  therefore  hopeless  to  expect  that 
production  will  ever  again  be  carried  on 
by  uncombined  labourers,  such  as  the 
peasant  cultivators  of  India,  or  the  arti- 
sans and  artificers  of  bygone  days.  How, 
therefore,  can  a  labourer  in  this  country 
convert  his  savings  into  capital  to  sup- 
port his  own  labour  ?     This  can  be  vir- 
tually done,  and  has  been  done,  by  a 
number  of  labourers  putting  their  joint 
savings   into   one   common  fund,  thus 
forming  a  capital  sufficient  to  establish 
a  large  commercial  undertaking.     Those 
who  have  contributed  this  capital  may 
act   as  labourers  in  the  concern,  thus 
becoming   their    own    capitalists,    and 
taking  to  themselves  the  whole  of  the 
profits  which  are  now  paid  to  the  capi- 
talist.    If  the  savings  of  the  labouring 
classes   could  be   thus   invested,   it   is 
quite  evident  that  accumulation  would 
be  most  powerfully  stimulated.     Fifty 
shillings  a  year  received  as  interest  from 
100?.  by  the  working  man  can  make  no 
perceptible  change  in  his  social  condi- 
tion ;  but  if  this  100?.  would  enable  him 
to  become  a  working  partner  in  a  thriving 
joint-stock  concern,  he  is  at  once  ad- 
vanced into  a  different  social  grade.    He 
is  no  longer  a  hired  labourer,  who  toils 
on  from  year  to  year  without  prospect 
of  advancement ;  but  his  career  becomes 
cheered  by  the  blessings  of  hope.  Under 
these   benign  influences  he  will  attain 
prudential  habits,  and  all  those  indus- 
trial virtues  which  so  pre-eminently  dis- 
tinguish the  middle  classes. 


But,  it  may  be  objected,  such  com- 
binations of  labour  for  commercial  pur- 
poses can  never  succeed.  The  requisite 
confidence  will  not  be  placed  in  the 
managers ;  there  will  be  divided  councils ; 
and  it  will  therefore  be  impossible  to 
compete  with  the  energy  of  the  indivi- 
dual capitalist.  Such  objections  appear 
theoretically  to  be  unanswerable ;  they 
will,  however,  be  completely  refuted  by 
the  examples  of  success  which  I  shall 
adduce. 

I  will  now  describe  the  extraordinary 
career  of  two  Co-operative  Societies  at 
Leeds  and  Rochdale  ;  and  I  would  re- 
mark beforehand  that  I  believe  their 
success  has  been  due  to  no  exceptional 
causes.  Working  men  originated  them ; 
every  farthing  of  the  capital  has  through- 
out belonged  to  working  men ;  and,  from 
the  commencement,  the  management  has 
been  entirely  in  the  hands  of  working 
men. 

In  1844,  the  working  classes  of  Leeds 
believed  that  they  were  compelled,'  in 
consequence  of  a  combination  of  millers, 
to  pay  a  high  price  for  adulterated  flower. 
They  therefore  determined  to  supply 
themselves  with  pure  flour  at  the  lowest 
market  price.  Three  thousand  pounds 
were  raised  by  shares  of  21s.  each  :  no 
person  being  permitted  to  hold  more 
than  one  share.  As  no  suitable  mill 
could  be  rented,  one  was  purchased  for 
5,000?., — part  of  the  purchase-money 
remaining  on  mortgage.  It  was  resolved 
to  purchase  the  very  best  English  wheat, 
and  to  sell  no  flour  but  that  of  the  first 
quality ;  and,  after  a  careful  calculation, 
it  was  resolved  that  as  many  shillings 
per  quarter  as  were  paid  for  wheat,  so 
many  halfpence  per  stone  should  be 
charged  for  flour.  Thus,  if  wheat  was 
40s.  per  quarter,  flour  would  be  Is.  8d. 
per  stone.  In  Leeds,  flour  had  always 
been  sold  one  penny  or  two-pence  per 
stone  above  the  price  thus  determined. 
But  all  the  millers  have  now,  by  com- 
petition, been  compelled  to  reduce  the 
price  to  that  charged  at  the  cooperative 
mill.  The  members  of  the  society  and 
the  public  purchase  upon  the  same 
terms  ;  but  each  member  receives  a  tin 
ticket  to  record  the  amount  of  each  of 


Their  Social  and  Economical  Aspects. 


437 


his  purchases,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
year  the  profits  are  thus  divided  : — Five 
per  cent,  is  paid  as  a  uniform  dividend 
upon  the  shares ;  and  the  remaining 
profits  are  divided  amongst  the  members 
in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  their  re- 
spective purchases,  this  amount  being 
registered  by  the  tin  tickets. 

In  1850,  the  capital  was  3,925?., 
business  done  26,100?.,  and  profits  506?. 
The  society  steadily  and  rapidly  pro- 
gressed in  prosperity.  In  1857,  taking 
an  average  of  the  preceding  five  years, 
the  business  done  was  55,930?.,  the 
capital  7,689£,  and  the  profits  1,786?. 
This  indicates  profits  of  25  per  cent. 
The  management  of  the  concern  appears 
to  have  been  admirable.  No  credit 
whatever  is  given.  The  retailers  of  the 
flour  are  remunerated  by  commission  of 
Is.  9d.  per  bag ;  and  they  are  not  allowed 
to  give  orders  for  less  than  10?.  at  a 
time  :  this  arrangement  diminishes  the 
cost  of  cartage  from  the  mill.  ,  The  eco- 
nomy and  excellence  of  the  management 
are  proved  by  the  fact,  that  the  cost  of 
retailing  is  reduced  50  per  cent. ;  and 
the  expense  of  grinding  is  40  per  cent, 
less  than  had  before  been  charged  in 
Leeds. 

At  Rochdale,  a  Co-operative  Store  is 
conducted  on  the  same  principles,  and 
with  equal  success.  It  commenced  in 
1844,  with  a  capital  of  281.  At  first, 
only  grocery  was  sold  ;  now,  butchers' 
meat  and  clothes  are  also  retailed ;  and 
within  the  last  few  years,  a  flour-mill, 
similar  to  the  one  at  Leeds,  has  been 
established.  In  1856,  the  number  of 
members  was  1,600,  the  amount  of 
funds,  12,920?.;  the  business  done  was 
63,179?.,  and  the  profits  made,  3,921?. 
In  this  society  a  member  can  hold  any 
amount  of  shares  less  than  100?.  The 
society  also  has  the  functions  of  a  bank 
of  deposit ;  for  members  can  add  or  with- 
draw capital  at  their  pleasure.  Profits 
are  divided  on  the  same  principles  as  at 
Leedsy  with  the  exception  that  2^  per 
cent,  of  the  profits  are  put  aside  for  the 
mutual  improvement  of  the  members  : 
an  excellent  reading-room  and  a  library 
are  thus  supported.  All  adulteration 
is  most  carefully  avoided.  The  officers 


are  elected  by  the  members  for  a  definite 
period.  A  box  is  kept,  in  which  any 
member  can  lodge  a  written  complaint, 
which  is  investigated  at  a  quarterly 
meeting ;  but  complaints  are  seldom 
made,  for  the  management  is  as  excel- 
lent as  at  Leeds.  Thus  the  working 
expenses  are  not  2^  per  cent,  upon  the 
returns.  This  is  much  less  than  half 
the  average  working  expenses  of  similar 
businesses.  The  Pioneers'  Co-operative 
Store,  at  Rochdale,  and  the  Leeds' 
Co-operative  Flour-mill,  have,  together, 
done  transactions  to  the  extent  of  more 
than  1,000,000?.  ;  and  they  have  not 
had  to  set  off  101.  for  bad  debts.  Pro- 
fessional auditors  have  examined  the 
books  of  these  two  societies,  and  affirm 
that  the  manner  in  which  ^the  accounts 
have  been  kept  might  serve  as  a  model  to 
any  commercial  undertaking.  As  an  off- 
shoot of  the  Pioneers'  Store,  a  Co-opera- 
tive Cotton-mill  was  established  at  Roch- 
dale in  1855.  The  Pioneers'  Society 
has  5,000?.  invested  as  capital  in  the 
undertaking.  At  first,  a  portion  of  a 
mill  was  rented  ;  and,  in  1856,  96 
looms  were  at  work  :  the  profits  of  the 
capital  were  13|  per  cent.  The  labourers 
receive  the  wages  current  in  the  trade, 
and  a  uniform  dividend  of  5  per  cent, 
is  paid  on  capital.  The  remaining  pro- 
fits are  divided  into  two  equal  shares ; 
one  of  these  is  paid  as  an  extra  dividend 
upon  capital ;  the  other  share  is  at  the 
end  of  each  year  divided  amongst  the 
labourers.  Each  labourer's  share  is  in 
direct  proportion  to  the  amount  of  wages 
he  has  received  throughout  the  year. 
The  most  efficient  workmen,  therefore, 
not  only  receive,  as  in  other  employ- 
ments, the  highest  weekly  wages,  but 
also  obtain  a  corresponding  advantage 
in  the  annual  division  of  profits.  The 
most  skilled  labour  and  the  highest 
efforts  of  that  skill  are  secured ;  and  the 
concern,  though  in  its  infancy,  is  able  to 
compete  successfully  in  a  business  where 
commercial  enterprise  has  been  most 
particularly  developed.1  The  great  suc- 

1  These  facts  have  been  summarised  from 
statements  of  accounts  which  I  have  obtained 
from  Leeds  and  Rochdale. 

Much  valuable  information  is  also  contained 


438 


Co-operative  Societies  ; 


<;ess  of  this  cooperative  cotton  manufac- 
tory induced  a  desire  to  extend  the 
undertaking.  As  no  mill  of  adequate 
size  could  be  rented,  it  was  resolved  to 
"build  one.  I  can  most  fitly  describe 
this  femarkable  undertaking  by  quoting 
.a  portion  of  a  letter  with  which  I  have 
been  favoured  from  the  manager,  Mr. 
Wm.  Cooper : — 

"  The  Rochdale  Cooperative  Manu- 
facturing Society  has  now  a  capital 
"  of  55,000^.  Its"new  mill,  which,  with 
"  the  machinery  and  capital  required  to 
"work  it,  will  take  44,000£,  will 
"  begin  to  work  almost  immediately.  The 
"society  decided  at  the  last  monthly 
"meeting  to  lay  the  foundation  this 
"  autumn  of  another  mill.  The  mill  con- 
tains 260  looms,  16  pairs  of  mules  or 
«  10,000  spindles,  46  throstles  or  11,000 
"  spindles,  and  carding,  &c.  in  proportion, 
"  and  will  employ  about  280  workpeople. 
"  The  society  has  ceased  to  take  more 
"  members  six  months  ago,  on  the  ground 
"  that  money  came  in  faster  than  the  so- 
""  ciety  could  profitably  work  it.  All  this 
"  has  been  effected  by  the  unaided  efforts 
'  of  the  labouring  classes,  and  they  never 
'  perhaps  achieved  a  nobler  or  more  hope- 
'  ful  work.  Numerous  other  co-operative 
'  societies  exist  in  different  parts  of  the 
'  country,  and  it  has  been  calculated  that 
'  these  societies  now  possess  an  aggregate 
'  capital  of  963,0002." 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  facts  adduced 
that  a  desire  to  obtain  unadulterated 
food  first  prompted  these  co-operative 
efforts,  and  that  they  were  in  no  way 
connected  with  those  social  and  political 
opinions  which  are  attributed  to  com- 
munism. These  societies  have  entirely 
freed  themselves  from  the  pernicious 
economical  fallacies  which  were  formerly 
propounded  by  the  apostles  of  co-opera- 
tion. Thus,  both  at  Leeds  and  Roch- 
dale,  competition  is  fully  recognised,  and, 
far  from  there  being  any  community 
of  property,  the  co-operative  manufac- 
tory at  Rochdale  is  based  upon  the 
principle  that  the  efficient  workman 
not  only  receives  higher  wages,  but  also 

in  a  paper  read  by  Mr.  John  Holmes,  of  Leeds, 
at  the  meeting  of  the  Social  Science  Asso- 
ciation, at  Birmingham. 


obtains  a  larger  share  in  the  ultimate 
division  of  profits.  The  remarkable 
results  above  stated  will  naturally  prompt 
us  to  seek  the  causes  which  have  tended 
to  produce  them.  In  the  first  place  it 
will  be  observed,  that  no  credit  what- 
ever is  given  ;  even  if  a  workman  has 
50£.  invested,  he  must  pay  ready  money 
for  the  smallest  article.  The  commer- 
cial prosperity  of  these  societies,  as  well 
as  the  welfare  of  the  workmen,  are  thus 
alike  promoted.  The  facility  of  getting 
into  debt  is  the  great  bane  of  the  work- 
ing classes.  Not  only  is  improvidence 
thus  encouraged,  but  the  workman  is 
bound  to  deal  with  those  tradesmen  to 
whom  he  is  indebted ;  who  too  often 
avail  themselves  of  this  opportunity  to 
extort  a  large  price  for  adulterated  articles. 
These  co-operative  societies  also  render 
unnecessary  a  large  portion  of  the 
present  expense  of  distribution.  Such 
a  quantity  of  flour,  for  example,  as  is 
produced  at  the  two  mills  at  Leeds  and 
Rochdale,  would  ordinarily  be  dis- 
tributed through  the  agency  of  a  vast 
number  of  small  shops;  whereas,  in 
their  case,  the  whole  cost  of  distribu- 
tion is  covered  by  a  commission  of  Is.  9d. 
on  each  bag  of  flour.  These  are,  no 
doubt,  most  important  agents  of  pros- 
perity, but  I  believe  the  chief  cause 
of  the  success  which  has  attended 
these  co-operative  efforts  yet  remains  to 
be  noticed. 

An  identity  of  interests  between  em- 
ployer and  employed,  is  a  doctrine  which 
many  delight  to  repeat :  let  us  inquire  to 
what  extent  this  identity  of  interest 
really  exists. 

The  produce  of  labour  is  divided  into 
two  shares.  One  share  forms  the  profits 
of  the  capitalist ;  the  other  the  labourer 
obtains,  and  it  is  termed  his  wages.  It  is 
therefore  quite  manifest  that  each  party 
is  directly  interested  in  securing  as 
large  a  share  as  possible.  The  more  the 
labourer  receives,  so  much  the  less  must 
there  be  left  for  the  employer;  and 
therefore,  with  our  'present  social  rela- 
tions, the  employer  and  employed  have 
not  identical  interests,  but  are  more 
accurately  in  the  position  of  buyer  and 
seller.  Does  not  a  railway  contractor 


Their  Social  and  Economical  Aspects. 


439 


take  the  same  care  to  obtain  labour  on 
the  best  possible  terms,  as  he  does  to 
buy  materials  at  the  cheapest  rate1? 
Does  any  large  employer  feel  that  his 
labourers  will  spontaneously  put  forth 
the  full  energy  of  their  labours  ?  Labour- 
ers have  to  be  watched,  and  kept  to 
their  work,  much  in  the  same  way  as 
the  unwilling  schoolboy  is  coerced  to  his 
task ;  and  do  not  employers  of  labour, 
from  one  end  of  the  coxintry  to  the 
other,  complain  that  their  labourers  are 
more  careless  of  their  masters'  interests 
than  they  were  formerly — that  they 
begin  to  show  a  more  haughty  indepen- 
dence, and  that  they  now  pass  from  one 
employer  to  another  for  the  slightest 
advantage  ?  The  Trades  Unions,  which 
have  increased  so  significantly  within 
the  last  few  years,  are  regarded  by  the 
labourers  as  combinations  to  defend 
their  rights  in  opposition  to  the  capital- 
ists ;  and,  far  from  the  employers  and 
employed  being  bound  with  the  sym- 
pathy of  mutual  interest,  every  thought- 
ful mind  must  be  impressed  with  the 
opposition  growing  up  between  these 
classes,  which  is  every  day  more  and 
more  felt.  It  is  evidenced  by  a  wide- 
spread dissatisfaction,  which  occasion- 
ally gathers  sufficient  strength  to  con- 
vulse society  with  a  strike.  Many 
dislike  to  acknowledge  these  indications 
of  an  opposition  between  employer  and 
employed,  and  wish  to  revive  between 
master  and  servant  those  feelings  of 
affectionate  dependence  which  existed 
in  days  of  yore.  But  you  cannot  have 
an  effect  when  its  cause  is  irrecoverably 
gone.  This  feeling  of  attachment  had 
its  source  in  the  protection  from  danger 
which  the  labourer  needed,  and  which  his 
master  extended  towards  him.  But  all 
this  is  changed ;  the  relations  of  em- 
ployers and  employed  are  now  purely 
commercial ;  and,  if  an  attachment  exists 
between  them,  it  must  be  based  upon 
some  identity  of  pecuniary  interests. 
At  the  present  time,  the  labourer 
has  seldom  any  motive  to  put  forth  his 
best  exertions ;  if  he  is  paid  by  fixed 
wages,  he  has  no  interest  but  to  do  as 
little  work  for  his  wages  as  possible. 
In  some  employments  piece-work  can 


be  introduced,  but  even  in  this  case  it 
is  the  labourer's  interest  to  concern  him- 
self simply  with  the  quantity,  and  not 
with  the  quality  of  the  work  done.  But 
in  co-operation,  the  profits  are  shared 
amongst  the  labourers ;  each  labourer 
therefore  is  directly  interested,  not  only 
himself  to  work  with  full  energy,  but  to 
see  that  every  other  labourer  does  the 
same.  An  efficient  inspection  is  thus 
spontaneously  created  without  any  ex- 
pense, and  there  grows  up  a  certain 
esprit  de  corps  which  never  exists 
amongst  mere  hired  labourers.  The 
mental  powers  of  the  workman  are 
called  forth  to  assist  him  as  far  as  possi- 
ble in  his  work,  whereas  it  would  be 
difficult  to  over-estimate  the  pecuniary 
loss  which  is  connected  with  that  mental 
apathy  and  inactivity  which  now  so 
peculiarly  distinguishes  many  of  our 
labourers.  In  fact,  as  it  has  been  well 
said,  co-operation  secures  the  highest  and 
most  skilled  efforts  of  the  workmen; 
and  this  is  sufficient  to  explain  the 
signal  success  which  has  attended  these 
co-operative  efforts,  whenever  the  labour- 
ers have  selected  proper  managers  from 
amongst  their  own  body,  and  placed  the 
requisite  confidence  in  them.  So  power- 
fully efficient  is  this  principle  of  co- 
operation, that  it  has  succeeded  even 
under  the  most  unfavourable  circum- 
stances. In  France,  many  of  these  co- 
operative societies  were  started  with 
borrowed  capital,  which  the  Provisional 
Government  of  1848  was  willing  to  lend. 
The  career  of  these  societies  was  cut 
short  by  dynastic  changes  ;  but  the  few 
years  of  their  existence  sufficed  to  pay 
off  all  the  capital  that  was  borrowed, 
and  leave  them  a  large  accumulative 
fond  of  their  own. 

I  do  not  wish  in  the  slightest  degree 
to  conceal  the  difficulties  and  dangers 
against  which  these  societies  must  con- 
tend. It  is  commonly  assumed  that 
joint-stock  undertakings  can  never  suc- 
cessfully compete  in  trade  against  the 
individual  capitalist,  because  a  manager 
paid  by  a  fixed  salary  will  not  put  forth 
the  same  active  energy  as  the  individual 
owner  of  a  business.  Co-operative  so- 
cieties, of  course,  rest  under  this  disad- 


440 


Co-operative  Societies  ;  their  Social  and  Economical  Aspects. 


vantage  in  common  -with  other  joint- 
stock  undertakings;  but  the  figures  I 
have  quoted  demonstrate  that  this  dis- 
advantage can  be  more  than  compen- 
sated by  some  of  the  other  conditions  of 
co-operation.  Thus,  no  credit  is  given, 
the  expenses  of  distribution  are  dimin- 
ished, and  every  labourer  is  directly 
interested  in  his  work,  and  thus  is  acted 
upon  by  those  same  influences  which  are 
considered  to  evoke  energy  and  skill 
from  the  individual  tradesman  or  manu- 
facturer. The  selection  of  proper  mana- 
gers is,  however,  the  great  difficulty 
with  which  these  co-operative  societies 
will  have  to  struggle.  It  cannot  be 
doubted  but  that  the  managers  at  Leeds 
and  Rochdale  have  been  men  whose 
talents  and  sterling  worth  would  have 
earned  success  in  any  walk  of  life.  Such 
men  are,  doubtless,  to  be  found  amongst 
every  large  body  of  workmen  ;  if  care  is 
not  taken  to  select  them,  co-operation  must 
inevitably  fail.  A  co-operative  manufac- 
tory will  meet  with  many  difficulties 
which  will  not  at  all  affect  a  co-operative 
shop.  Such  a  shop  need  make  no  specula- 
tive purchases  ;  and,  as  no  credit  is  given, 
the  risk  is  small  indeed.  But  in  a  co-ope- 
rative cotton  manufactory,  competition 
must  be  carried  on  with  a  class  of  men 
who  at  once  avail  themselves  of  the 
smallest  advantage  which  is  to  be  ob- 
tained, either  by  purchasing  the  raw 
material  at  a  particular  time,  or  by  the 
introduction  of  the  slightest  improve- 
ment in  machinery.  As  yet,  this  com- 
petition has  been  carried  on  with  a  suc- 
cess which  could  not  have  been  antici- 
pated. The  question  as  to  the  ultimate 
extension  of  such  co-operative  under- 
takings is,  as  yet,  however,  only  partially 
determined.  The  fluctuations  in  the 
cotton  business  are  great.  Will  a  body 
of  workmen  combined  in  a  cotton  manu- 
factory be  able  to  keep  together  during 
two  or  three  years  of  low  profits,  and 
withstand  the  difficulties  of  a  financial 
crisis  1  This  is  a  problem  which  yet 
remains  to  be  solved.  If  it  is  solved 
satisfactorily,  the  principle  of  co-opera- 
tion will  have  become  a  national  institu- 
tion and  one  of  the  greatest  of  social 
achievements. 


Several  co-operative  societies  have  not 
succeeded.  Such  cases  of  failure  ought 
to  be  carefully  considered,  as  in  this 
manner  the  requisites  of  success  may  be 
more  distinctly  perceived. 

I  would  for  one  moment  direct  atten- 
tion to  a  very  singular  popular  error 
connected  with  co-operation.  These 
societies  were  first  tried  on  a  large 
scale  in  France,  and  many  of  the  most 
eminent  apostles  of  co-operation  were 
leading  members  of  the  advanced  re- 
publican party.  Hence  it  was  for  a  long 
time  supposed,  and  I  fear  the  error  has 
not  yet  been  completely  exploded,  that 
there  was  some  democratic  element  in- 
volved in  their  constitution.  These  so- 
cieties are  not  in  any  way  directly  con- 
nected with  politics ;  in  fact,  at  the 
present  time,  I  believe  they  embrace 
men  of  the  most  opposite  political 
opinions.  Ultimately,  however,  they  will 
have  a  tendency  to  spread  a  healthy  and 
intelligent  conservatism  amongst  the 
operatives.  The  restless  and  turbulent 
element  of  a  nation  is  a  class  with- 
out property,  and  so  impoverished  that 
national  disturbances  cannot  leave  them 
worse  off  than  they  were  before. 

Co-operation  cannot  succeed  without 
calling  forth  many  of  the  highest  quali- 
ties of  man's  intellectual  and  moral 
nature.  It  demands  a  just  appreciation 
of  the  characters  of  others ;  it  calls  for  an 
intelligent  confidence  associated  with  a 
judicious  watchfulness ;  and  it  requires 
prudence  on  the  part  of  those  who  have 
not  been  accustomed  to  foresight.  The 
active  business  which  exists  at  the 
present  time  in  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts should  be  taken  advantage  of  by 
the  labourers  to  extend  these  co-operative 
societies.  Periods  of  prosperity  have 
hitherto  left  no  record  of  permanent 
social  advancement.  A  larger  temporary 
consumption  of  luxuries  by  the  working 
classes,  and  a  great  increase  in  the  num- 
ber of  marriages,  have  generally  been 
been  the  most  prominent  features  of 
prosperous  days.  A  rapid  increase  of 
population  is  thus  stimulated,  which,  in 
a  few  years,  again  makes  the  labour- 
market  redundant,  and  adds  to  the 
difficulties  of  those  recurring  periods  of 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


441 


distress,  when  trade  is  dull,  and  employ- 
ment scarce. 

The  practical  success  of  co-operation 
has  been  already  sufficiently  proved  to 
warrant  the  establishment  in  every  town 
and  village  of  shops  or  stores  similar  to 
those  at  Leeds  and  Rochdale.  A  co- 
operative manufactory  should  be  more 
cautiously  undertaken.  Permanent  suc- 
cess in  this  case  has  not  been  as  yet 
completely  proved,  and  the  capital  which 
must  be  risked  is  very  large.  But  a 
co-operative  shop  or  store  has  been  de- 
veloped from  the  smallest  beginnings. 
The  Pioneers  at  Rochdale  started  with 
a  capital  of  only  281.  The  working 
classes  are  very  generally  impressed  with 
the  belief  that  they  are  somewhat  im- 
posed upon ;  that  they  pay  high  prices 
for  bread  and  grocery ;  and  often  do  not 
get  a  good  or  pure  article  for  their 
money.  They  have  the  remedy  in  their 
own  hands.  Why  don't  they  withdraw 
their  deposits  from  the  savings' -banks, 
and  form  a  joint  fund  to  establish  a 


flour-mill,  a  bakery,  or  a  grocery-shop  ? 
The  workmen  of  Leeds  and  Rochdale 
did  this,  and  they  have  obtained  as  their 
reward  unadulterated  articles,  and  a 
profit  of  more  than  twenty  per  cent, 
upon  their  capital.  Why  should  the 
working  classes  be  encouraged  to  place 
their  earnings  in  the  savings' -banks, 
where  the  interest  is  so  remarkably 
small  ? 

A  few  words  contained  in  the  letter 
from  which  I  have  already  quoted,  will 
most  appropriately  conclude  these  re- 
marks— "  Co-operation  aims  at  giving  to 
"  the  workers  the  fruits  of  their  industry. 
"  It  is  a  kind  of  self-assistance,  and  yet 
"  has  no  hostile  feeling  against  capital." 

NOTE. 

After  this  paper  was  in  the  press  I  received  a 
letter  from  Mr.  Samuel  Ashworth,  one  of  the 
managers  of  the  Pioneers'  Society,  which  in- 
forms me  that  the  two  engines  of  120-horse 
power  in  the  Co-operative  Manufactory  at 
Rochdale  were  set  to  work  on  the  llth  of 
August. 


KYLOE-JOCK  ANT)  THE  WEIRD   OF  WANTON-WALLS. 

A  LEGEND  :  IN  SIX  CHAPTERS. 
BY  GEORGE  CUPPLES,  AUTHOR  OF  "  THE  GREEN  HAND,"  "  HINCHBRIDGE  HAUNTED,"  &C. 


CHAPTER  III. 

HOW  THE  MASTER  OP  THE  HOUSE  WAS 
ABSENT,  AND  IN  HIS  ABSENCE  IT  WAS 
BELEAGUERED. 

ON  some  errand  of  public  duty  or  private 
business,  Mr.  Rowland  soon  had  to  leave 
home  for  the  distant  city.  There  he 
was  to  stay  some  days,  which  might  be 
more  numerous  than  he  knew  yet :  and, 
as  he  much  disliked  to  be  long  absent 
from  the  parish,  or  indeed  to  leave 
home  at  all  for  a  single  night,  so  as  to 
lodge  with  strangers — thus  might  be  ex- 
plained the  cloud  of  gravity  that  sat 
upon  his  serious  forehead,  while  he 
parted  from  his  household  at  the  front 
No.  12. — VOL.  IL 


door ;  mounting  the  new  but  docile 
horse,  hight  "Rutherford,"  to  ride  to 
the  coach-town,  only  six  miles  off.  No 
horse  could  more  steadily  have  taken 
the  road,  than  Rutherford,  or  more  be- 
comingly have  sustained  the  dignified 
proportions  of  that  figure  after  which 
Andrew  looked,  with  a  well-satisfied 
interest,  from  the  open  gate.  The 
object  of  his  complacency  was  borne 
away  into  a  winter  fog,  that  blended 
horse  and  master,  dilating  them  grandly, 
like  the  chief  of  Centaurs ;  while  at  a 
sober  trot  it  reached  the  brow  of  the 
frosty  road ;  then  gently  vanished  down- 
wards, as  over  a  depth  of  antique  Fate. 
Still,  for  minutes  onward,  did  the  sound 
come  regular  and  far  from  the  iron-like 

G  G 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


ground,  through,  the  keen,  echoing  air. 
Then  the  silence  fell  vast,  like  an  augury 
of  old. 

*  "Winter  it  was,  without  a  doubt.  The 
days  were  at  the  shortest ;  and  the  in- 
tense icy  cold  possessed  the  earth,  bind- 
ing the  very  sky,  as  it  were  in  tyranny, 
from  letting  down  any  help  to  the  strife. 
So  vivid  was  the  sense  of  life  below,  for 
all  that,  as  to  send  up  exhilaration 
through  the  gloom  itself;  at  the  very 
sight  of  those  sharp  hacks  and  cracks 
•in  the  earth's  old  shape  again,  showing 
her  merely  wounded  as  before,  with  hard 
-wrinkled  ribs  laid  bare,  fleshless  arms 
and  bony  fingers,  eyes  all  puckered  and 
stony,  veins  empty  and  brittle  as  glass, 
fetters  of  steel  and  outspread  covers  of 
sealed  iron — all  •  to  be  changed  imme- 
diately into  fresh  novelties,  and  some 
time  or  other  be  restored  to  the  familiar 
state.  Already,  in  fact,  where  the  wet 
marsh  had  been  a  useless  place  in  the 
hollow  below  the  hill,  icy  enchantment 
had  come  upon  it;  making  it  worth 
the  boy's  pains  to  visit,  if  lesson-tune 
had  but  allowed,  in  days  so  brief. 
Only  the  lessons  with  his  father,  indeed, 
had  hindered  the  triumph  it  would  have 
been  for  Hugh  to  be  the  first  improver 
on  that  enchantment,  as  a  conjuror  of 
polished  slides  and  gliding  tracks,  push- 
ing alone  into  the  centre  of  those  rushy 
islands,  and  those  sedgy  quagmires, 
where  the  water-lily  had  been  inacces- 
sible before,  where  the  water-hen  had 
defied  approach  to  her  young,  and 
where  the  flocks  of  white-maws  had 
laid  their  precious  eggs  in  vain.  Nearer 
to  Kirkhill,  than  to  Etherwood  and  the 
parish-school,  how  just  were  Hugh's 
claims  to  the  first  pleasures  of  that 
place;  and  how  easily  could  he  have 
forestalled  the  vulgar  but  busy  school- 
children in  possession  of  it,  had  it  not 
been  for  that  ever-growing  Latin,  those 
too-swiftly  rising  Romans  of  Cornelius 
Nepos,  which  had  detained  him,  a  soli- 
tary pupil,  under  his  father's  concen- 
trated eye  !  Even  now  when,  in  the 
troubled  joy  he  felt  in  the  removal  of 
that  eye  for  a  space,  strange  hopes  were 
whispered  to  him  from  .behind — yet 
what  possibilities  of  terror  gazed  from 


before  !  For  had  not  his  father  ere  he 
finally  departed,  reined  in  the  horse 
Eutherford  a  moment  at  the  gate,  and 
called  him  to  the  horse's  side,  stooping- 
down  to  remind  him  of  the  pages  that 
were  to  be  revised  by  himself,  for  fuller 
mastery ;  also  of  the  rules  from  Ruddi- 
man's  Rudiments,  that  were  to  be  com- 
mitted to  memory  for  complete  use ;  in 
order  that  the  regretted  absence  might 
not  be  altogether  a  loss  ?  Then,  as  to 
the  ice,  Hugh  knew,  at  any  rate,  how  in 
-the  mean  time  its  best  charm  had  been 
already  taken  away.  Etherwood  school 
was  not  so  busy  or  so  bound  to  its  set 
hours,  but  that  children  on  the  way  to 
and  from  it  had  loitered  long  enough  to 
find  the  secret  of  so  tempting  a  sliding- 
ground ;  and  they  had  snatched  its  de- 
light in  their  play- time,  till  the  bloom 
of  the  spot  was  soiled  by  many  a  smear 
or  flaw.  Yet,  though  the  spot  had  been 
thus  invaded  before  him,  and  he  had 
lost  the  joy  of  first  possession,  there 
still  remained  for  Hugh  a  private 
relish  to  be  hastily  gratified,  now 
that  his  father  was  absent,  in  the 
safe  hours  of  parish  school-time, 
when  he  could  have  the  ground  to 
himself. 

The  first  day  of  his  release  from  his 
father's  vigilance  the  boy  found  in  his 
anticipated  pleasure,  by  himself,  in  the 
icy  hollow  the  new  zest,  not  of  watch- 
fulness only,  but  of  self-restraint  as 
well.  An  influence  hung  over  him, 
from  the  recent  glimpse  of  a  bliss  un- 
thought-of  before,  in  the  recent  gracious 
approval  of  his  teacher.  The  closer 
touch  of  paternal  kindness,  for  a  mo- 
ment like  that  he  had  felt  in  childhood, 
warmly  wrought  about  his  heart,  and 
moved  him  to  study  Cornelius  Nepos 
unseen ;  nay,  even,  for  the  future's  sake, 
to  prepare  the  Rules  of  Ruddiman, 
though  free  from  superintending  vigi- 
lance. Moreover,  Andrew  had  to  walk 
the  same  day  to  the  town,  where  the 
horse  would  have  been  left ;  and  to 
come  riding  back  at  night.  In  this 
circumstance  there  was  a  check  for 
Hugh  till  that  day  at  least  was  over. 
For,  had  it  not  been  heard  of  that 
coaches  were  missed,  and  that  travellers 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


443 


rather  returned  than  awaited  the  next 
day  tinder  hospitable  roofs ;  and  so,  if 
the  ice  tempted  too  long,  then  instead 
of  Andrew  at  the  stable-door  by  dusk, 
might  not  the  parlour  candle-light  show 
a  more  awful  form  ? 

But  Andrew  went  and  returned  duly, 
and  all  that  was  safe.  New  mornings 
brought  new  thoughts,  new  balances  of 
virtue  with  pleasure.  Again  was  the 
frosty  air  exhilarating,  sometimes  spark- 
ling ;  and  the  distant  marsh-ice,  with 
its  solitary  glidings,  its  swift  companion- 
less  exploits,  triumphs,  or  discoveries, 
grew  more  entrancing  than  expectation 
had  told ;  until  Cornelius  Nepos  and 
his  Romans  were  like  to  be  outweighed. 
Nay,  even  through  what  had  seemed 
most  helpful  to  them,  did  they  utterly 
lose  substance  and  kick  the  beam,  as 
when  Brennus,  leader  of  the  hostile 
Gauls,  threw  his  barbaric  sword  into  the 
Roman  scales.  For,  although  Hugh  Row- 
land knew  well  the  parish  school-hours, 
and  in  his  shy  solitude  adhered  to  these 
only,  if  on  no  other  account  but  a  wild 
shrinking  from  strangers — nevertheless, 
suddenly  a  little  troop  of  parish-scholars 
surprised  him  at  that  very  time,  and 
with  a  bound,  a  race,  a  hollow  hum,  and 
noiseless  rush,  flew  forth  upon  the  ice 
that  kept  him  spell-bound,  mingling 
their  slides  with  his.  What  wonder, 
indeed  that  they  should  be  there  in 
school-hours,  when  he  saw  them  headed 
by  little  Will,  the  sly  glebe  cow-herd — 
considering  how  idly  that  urchin  was 
inclined !  There,  at  their  head,  was 
this  school-hating  imp  of  mischief  with 
smaller  imps  behind  him,  not  so  igno- 
rant as  he.  But  this  was  not  the  chief 
surprise.  Most  wonderful  of  all  was  it 
to  behold  amongst  them  Kyloe-  Jock  and 
his  dog  Bauldy.  For,  though  they  both 
had  left  the  hill — whence,  at  this  sea- 
son, the  very  kyloes  had  departed  to 
some  shedded  camp,  with  vast  store  of 
turnips — yet  both  were  now  punctually 
each  Sabbath  at  the  church  ;  both  were 
well  known  to  be  busily  at  school,  under 
Andrew's  careful  supervision,  and  under 
the  very  eye  of  that  schoolmaster  who 
was  at  once  elder,  precentor,  and  Kirk- 
session  clerk.  Did  Jock  fear  no  penal- 


ties for  playing  truant  from  school ;  did 
Bauldy  entertain  no  prudent  fore- 
thought; or  could  they  both  be  led 
away  by  such  an  inferior  creature  as 
little  Will,  who  slunk  with  deference 
from  the  very  shyness  of  Hugh  Row- 
land? 

Truly  a  most  unaccountable  pair  were 
Kyloe-Jock  and  Bauldy.  To  see  them 
in  broad  day-light  again,  severed  from 
any  imposing  charge  of  wild  cattle,  away 
from  all  labyrinthine  obscurity  of  stack- 
yard or  Bogle,  was  fascination  more  than 
ever.  Hovering  apart,  unmixed  with 
them,  sliding  or  practising  the  incipient 
skates  in  independence  of  their  boon  or 
bane,  their  fear  or  favour — to  be  within 
view  of  them  was  yet  to  be  of  their 
circle  and  company.  Bauldy  remained 
a  stedfast  mark  upon  the  shore,  now 
dim  but  magnified,  now  distinct  though 
dwindled  back ;  and  for  the  most  part 
sat  on  end,  to  gaze  imperturbably,  what- 
ever his  master's  seeming  destiny. 
Luckless  might  that  destiny  have  boon 
supposed.  For,  big  as  was  Kyloe-Jock, 
wearing  a  shortened  tail-coat,  that  flew 
behind  him  as  he  ran,  there  were  little 
ones  in  pinafores,  who  belonged  to  his 
class  at  school,  and  who  hurried  at  last 
away  in  fear.  Even  Will  the  cow-herd 
boasted  over  him,  that  he  was  "Dults" 
(i.  e.  the  blockhead  of  his  class),  though 
without  angering  him ;  and,  but  for  Jock's 
heedlessness  of  all  this,  doubtless  Will 
himself  would  have  gone  away.  Not 
that  Kyloe-Jock,  like  little  Will,  cast 
any  sly  glance  at  the  boy  Rowland  then, 
as  if  claiming  secrecy  from  a  new  accom- 
plice in  higher  quarters ;  nor  did  he 
laugh  at  all,  like  Will;  but  only  with  a 
deep  enjoyment  rushed  again  upon  the 
slide,  that  glittered  with  him  into  a 
length  beyond  belief,  until  he  well  might 
hoot,  and  give  a  yell,  turning  slowly 
round — to  show  Bauldy,  perhaps,  that  he 
had  not  utterly  vanished.  Then,  depart- 
ing farther  for  another  race,  back  did  he 
come  steadily,  as  if  shot  forth  from  a 
gun,  his  form,  a  giant's,  his  breath  like 
smoke,  his  face  bright-red,  shooting  with 
incredible  speed  into  ordinary  view ; 
yet  was  not  the  smooth  ice  swift  enough 
for  him,  but  he  must  post  up  and  down 
GG2 


444 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


upon  it  marvellously  faster,  as  on  horse- 
back, then  fly  with  his  arms  along  it  as 
with  wings  like  an  ostrich ;  inevitably 
overtaking  in  a  moment  the  eagerest 
effort  of  that  cowherd,  whose  silly  pre- 
sence could  be  no  more  than  a  stumbling- 
block  and  pillow  to  his  magical  career. 
Yet,  for  all  his  magical  effect,  most  unas- 
suming was  JKyloe-Jock,  In  some  im- 
perceptible natural  way  he  grew  familiar 
to  the  mere  spectator,  and  took  hold 
upon  acquaintance  without  ceremonies 
of  introduction ;  so  that  ere  long,  neither 
seeking  it  nor  sought,  the  boy  was  with 
him.  Sharing,  joining,  sliding  and 
shouting  too,  he  seemed  to  have  been 
familiar  with  Kyloe-Jock  for  years  be- 
fore ;  not  now  even  excluded  by  the  dog 
Bauldy. 

Thus  did  they  glide,  float,  or  whirl 
into  a  dizzy  unison  of  recklessness,  alike 
superior  to  the  hungry  instinct  or  the 
trivial  fear  that  took  the  cowherd  home, 
whether  at  the  sight  of  the  quick  dark- 
ening of  the  afternoon,  or  when  the 
ice  gave  a  crack  and  a  weltering  groan,  as 
if  to  thaAV  beneath  them.  As  for  Jock, 
he  had  no  fear  :  he  could  tell,  merely  by 
peering  up,  that  it  was  not  so  late  as  it 
looked,  nor  would  it  thaw,  but  snow. 
And,  when  the  boy  at  last  misgave 
himself  too  greatly  to  stay  longer,  though 
Jock  and  Bauldy  would  still  have  sat 
or  slid  on  contented,  as  beings  without 
a  home,  a  dinner,  or  a  dread — they 
both,  nevertheless,  forsook  their  own 
satisfaction  to  convoy  him  on  the  right 
way ;  perhaps  at  view  of  a  sudden 
uncertainty  that  had  terrified  him — 
since  the  right  way  proved  to  be  of 
their  choosing,  so  that,  if  he  had  not 
turned  when  they  turned,  he  would 
have  found  himself  high  upon  an  un- 
known hill  in  the  dark.  Then  Hugh, 
as  they  left  him  alone  in  the  same  abrupt 
unceremonious  fashion,  still  gazed  be- 
wildered for  home,  on  the  wrong  side  ; 
till,  Like  a  dog  himself,  he  recognized  a 
scent  the  other  way,  of  the  kitchen- 
cookery  that  spoke  volumes  to  him  out 
of  the  fog,  and,  next  moment,  there 
broke  out  a  part  of  the  house,  with 
roof  lost  in  uncertainty,  and  endless 
wall — the  bare  branch  dripping  by  the 


dim  gable,  the  smoke  from  the  chimney 
striving  against  a  pressure  from  the 
viewless  sky,  and  one  fire-lit  window, 
hanging  in  the  air,  disclosing  its  inner 
spectacle  of  shadows.  A  sight  too  change- 
fully  dubious  still  on  the  brightest  back- 
ground, sometimes  too  colossal,  to  be 
trusted  without  caution  !  So  he  skirts 
around  to  reconnoitre  like  an  Indian,  to 
circle  in  upon  it  from  a  corner,  ere 
finally  stealing  upstairs.  He  has  seen, 
in  the  passage,  that  the  hat  and  great- 
coat are  absent  as  before !  The  snow  that 
had  been  prophesied,  too,  has  begun  to 
fall.  It  is  falling  faster ;  falling  to  make 
the  night  earlier  ;  falling  and  showering 
and  whirring  down,  to  cover  the  ground 
deep  as  of  old,  to  fill  the  roads,  to  block 
the  house  in,  to  sever  it  from  the  world, 
and  towns,  and  travellers.  Then  safely, 
with  book  in  hand,  out  of  his  little  new 
bedroom,  he  comes  down  at  leisure,  and 
seems  by  his  undisturbed  aspect  to  have 
been  some  time  in ;  if  at  all  too  late,  then 
seeming  not  to  have  heard  the  dinner- 
bell,  which  Nurse  Kirsty  rang  outside  ; 
nor  to  have  known,  in  his  studious  ab- 
sorption, that  her  harsh  voice  had 
searched  for  him  beyond,  prompted  by 
a  fonder  anxiety  than  hers. 

It  snowed  a  day  or  two  together,  but 
as  yet  only  to  brighten  the  earth  and 
clear  the  sky.  In  the  soft  radiant  in- 
tervals, what  augmented  pleasure  !  In- 
nocent satisfaction  comes  even  to  little 
Hannah  and  lesser  Joey,'  brushing  the 
snow  from  their  brief  track,  to  the 
wheel-ruts  outside  the  gate ;  enter- 
prizing  farther  along  the  road,  past 
the  very  barn  and  stable,  to  smooth  by 
dint  of  patience  one  icy  groove — even  to 
venture  on  the  ditch  below  the  fleecy 
elm-tree  in  the  powdered  hedge,  so  tire- 
somely  well  known  through  all  disguises 
from  that  weary  old  nursery-window 
which  still  keeps  the  children  in  sight. 
For  Nurse  Kirsty,  with  her  toothachy 
face  in  flannel,  stands  within,  ironing  or 
plaiting,  sewing  or  crimping.  She  could 
not  see  over  to  the  marsh :  she  knew 
nothing  of  Cornelius  Nepos ;  still  less 
than  the  mistress  herself,  who  might  at 
least  hear  her  eldest  boy  repeat  those 
rules  of  Buddiman,  to  make  sure  that 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


445 


he  observed  his  father's  grave  injunc- 
tion. Surely  neither  of-  them  knew 
anything  at  all  of  Kyloe-Jock ;  and,  if 
any  one  watched  in  secret,  to  lay  up 
a  store  of  new  power,  or  to  vindicate 
the  old,  it  certainly  was  not  the  mother, 
whose  chidings  were  so  open  at  the 
sharpest,  whose  purposes  were  so  trans- 
parent, however  eager.  It  surely  mat- 
tered not,  besides,  that  in  the  shoes 
of  Jock  there  were  holes,  and  but  ill- 
patched  fragments  of  other  cloth  on  his 
corduroy;  while  through  the  cap  he 
wore — a  blue  one  with  a  red  knob  upon 
the  top,  even  as  a  lid  over  something 
strange — there  came  up  tufts  of  his 
hair  like  dry  grass  ;  nor  were  the  hues 
of  his  face  less  vivid  by  comparison, 
but  even  with  a  more  life-like  glow  went 
kindling  out  to  his  projected  ears,  which 
mocked  all  inclemency  of  weather.  Not 
that  the  frost  or  snow  altered  him,  but 
he  lifted  up  to  them  the  standard  of 
their  measurement;  and  shoes  were  to 
him  not  for  clothing,  but  of  swiftness  to 
slide ;  caps  were  as  mere  adornment,  not 
covers  ;  a  coat  or  plaid  less  for  garment 
than  for  pockets  or  for  covering  in 
sleep.  Nay,  if  he  were  one  who  could 
not  learn  at  school,  he  threw  a  great 
light  upon  it  himself,  explaining  why 
he  was  said  to  be  only  half-witted. 
Though  with  a  look  askance,  suggest- 
ing deeper  knowledge,  well  did  he 
inquire — rather  as  if  from  Bauldy  than 
from  Hugh — why  then  did  the  folks 
want  him  to  know  the  catechism  ? 
why  turn  him  back  to  the  Second 
Primer  ?  why  be  angered  if  he  had 
played  the  truant  for  one  afternoon  ? 
Whereat  Hugh  wondered  equally  with 
Bauldy.  Not  that  Kyloe-Jock  was  going 
any  more  to  play  truant  in  order  to  be 
on  the  ice  !  It  was  now  only  between 
times  that  he  hurried  there,  or  on  the 
Saturday  afternoon.  For  the  master 
had  made  his  palms  so  thoroughly  to 
remember  his  duty  of  being  at  school 
that  he  still  writhed  as  he  showed  forth 
the  reminding  method.  He  did  so  not 
in  mockery  of  the  master,  but  only 
earnestly  to  prove  why  he  must  not 
delay  again  behind  the  rest,  so  long 
as  ice  and  snow  remained.  Moreover, 


with  his  mittenless  hands,  as  he  clapped 
them  in  the  frosty  weather,  he  had 
found  out  a  local  secret  which  he  made 
that  an  occasion  for  confiding  at  the 
same  time.  Taking  a  piece  of  frosted 
sedge,  and  standing  solemnly,  with  tails 
uplifted  to  the  lurid  sunset  that  glowed 
behind  him  like  a  fire  upon  the  snow, 
he  exhibited  himself  as  the  school- 
master, burning  one  end  of  that  mimic 
tawse  in  silence  at  the  school  fire,  and 
coughing  as  he  fixed  his  eye  upon  the 
distance.  Then  on  tiptoe  did  Jock 
walk  to  a  stump  of  paling  by  the  edge 
where  Bauldy  sat,  and  begin  to  lay 
successive  strokes  majestically  upon  the 
wood,  pausing  to  cough  loud  between, 
till  even  Bauldy  whimpered,  drawing 
back,  like  to  utter  a  yell — though  Hugh, 
shuddering  within,  would  have  laughed. 
But  the  frosty  air  was  all  echoes  then ; 
and  from  the  distant  brae,  through  some 
change  of  the  snow,  came  back  a  new 
echo,  so  deliberate,  distinct,  and  grave, 
repeating  everything  more  awfully,  that 
for  once  did  the  uncouth  dog  take 
fright.  It  fled  away  with  an  actual 
yell ;  swifter,  indeed,  than  the  else- 
where-muffled hill  deigned  to  record. 
But  when  Bauldy's  master  stopped,  in- 
dignant at  him,  and  summoned  him 
vainly  back — it  was  too  much  to  hear 
the  spectral  halloo,  the  ghostly  whistle, 
the  very  rustling  and  roar  of  phantom- 
Kyloes  that  returned.  Hugh  himself 
then  also  fled  in  terror  ;  nay,  when  the 
Kyloe-heid,  not  the  least  aghast  him- 
self, would  have  checked  the  boy's 
flight  in  turn,  he  only  quickened  it : 
for  back  again  came  graver  ejaculations 
from  above,  and  the  hill  shouted  so- 
lemnly Hugh's  own  name.  Then,  seeing 
more  need  to  overtake  Bauldy,  did  Jock 
take  but  a  sudden  step  or  two  to  a  long 
glassy  path,  that  bore  him  smoothly  and 
swiftly,  with  both  hands  in  his  pockets, 
towards  Etherwood  school. 

Back  to  school  must  even  Bauldy 
have  retreated.  Back  to  school  went 
Kyloe-Jock  after  him.  Hugh  Eow- 
land  alone  was  masterless,  wild,  and 
free.  And  still  gently  fell  the  inter- 
mittent snow,  to  separate  and  shut 
them  in. 


446 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


DESTINY   MARKS   OUT   KYLOE-JOCK. 

THE  snowy  country  was  but  sheeted 
by  degrees;  field,  hedge,  and  hill  only 
lost  their  shapes  imperceptibly  by  fairy- 
like  changes  to  one  shrouded  mould, 
under  a  sky  that  seemed  azure  above  it  all, 
or  amber,  or  vast  with  stars.  The  people 
could  still  come  with  ease  to  church  on 
that  Sabbath  when  the  stranger  preached; 
that  tall,  and  gaunt,  and  elderly  Proba- 
tioner— with  one  limb  mysteriously  dif- 
ferent from  the  other,  leaving  a  round 
print  beside  each  single  footstep  to  the 
church-door — who  stayed  two  nights,  and 
went  upstairs  to  bed  Avith  an  iron  sound, 
depositing  but  one  giant  shoe  outside 
the  "best-bedroom  door.  A  preacher 
whom,  it  was  said,  mysterious  powers  had 
bewildered ;  ever  since  that  day  when 
the  gipsies  captured  him,  marking  him 
out  to  the  glance  of  a  great  Magician 
who  lived  near  !  On  former  occasions, 
in  Mr.  Rowland's  absence,  had  that 
memorable  "  Dominie"  come  to  fill  his 
pulpit,  with  abstracted  mien,  and  wan- 
dering, dream-like  habit;  and  had  stood 
poring  into  a  stray  book  by  the  hour,  as 
he  did  now,  and  been  heard  strangely 
in  his  chamber,  stamping  to  and  fro, 
and  rehearsing  his  sermon  before  unseen 
attentive  audiences,  or  holding  dialogue 
with  fancied  Co-Presbyters — never  des- 
tined, poor  man,  to  enjoy  the  dignity 
of  either.  But  he  had  never  before  so 
delightfully  accorded  his  sympathy  to 
Mrs.  Rowland's  concern  for  the  progress 
of  Hugh  as  he  now  did  snuffing  up,  at 
the  names  of  Ruddiman  and  Cornelius 
Nepos,  an  air  of  inspiration ;  examin- 
ing the  boy  with  a  pedagogic  zeal,  and 
with  a  technical  keenness  discovering 
his  errors,  which  alarmed  while  it  aided. 
Fain  would  the  Dominie  have  revelled 
longer  in  a  congenial  delay  which  the 
mother  pressed,  in  order  that  the  relent- 
less exercise  might  have  helped  his  vic- 
tim. But  the  snow  warned  the  good 
Mr.  George  Simson  to  betake  himself 
homeward,  and  Hugh  Rowland  inwardly 
rejoiced.  The  preacher  swung  his  in- 
flexible wooden  limb  over  the  back  of 
his  small  pony,  as  if  he  had  walked  for- 


ward upon  it ;  and,  as  Andrew  with  a 
demure  gravity  disposed  the  skirt  of 
Mr.  Simson's  great  coat  above  the 
creature's  tail,  Mr.  Simson  waved  a 
hand  with  dignity,  to  let  the  bridle  go, 
and  to  bid  farewell  to  all.  Thereupon, 
less  like  a  Colossus  than  the  old  dispro- 
portionate forms  in  Christmas  revel,  or 
Abbots  of  Unreason  upon  pictured 
hobby-horses — one  foot  avoiding  the 
snow — he  was  borne  away  into  the 
wastes.  Borne  away  toward  his  paternal 
Manse,  which  stood  hard  by  the  ruined 
Monastery  of  "  Kennaquhair,"  near 
where  the  deathless  Enchanter  abode 
in  his  late  days.  He,  also,  the  Domi- 
nie, was  borne  away  immortal ;  although 
at  that  time  giving  place  in  Hugh 
Rowland's  mind  to  hopes  of  freedom 
with  Kyloe-Jocls.. 

Still  was  the  hoary  church  distin- 
guishable (and  the  flaky  end-aisle  that 
belonged  to  Wanton- Walls),  beside  the 
furry  trees,  from  the  hooded  corn- 
stacks  and  the  fleecy  hay-rick  with 
one  end  cloven  ;  where  Andrew  from 
the  stable  would  yet  mount  the  ladder, 
to  slice  it  down  with  his  trenchant  blade, 
under  the  hanging  icicles,  past  the  ice- 
sheathed  props.  The  horse  Rutherford 
was  champing  at  his  stall,  though  for 
the  most  part  idly;  and  his  hollow 
stamping  could  be  sometimes  heard,  if 
but  in  token  of  impatience.  Hard  the 
times  were  already,  indeed,  for  all  wild 
creatures  without  stall  or  herd ;  and 
the  shepherd,  though  at  home,  sought 
the  unfolded  sheep  on  the  braes  when 
they  wandered.  Birds  of  all  kinds  put 
off  their  shyness,  as  if  sorry  to  have 
been  wayward  and  secret ;  the  hare  and 
rabbit  trespassed  on  the  shrubbery,  in- 
vading the  garden  by  tracks  that  betrayed 
a  piteous  urgency  in  their  boldness ; 
while  poisonous  berries,  alike  with  culi- 
nary roots  or  precious  barks  of  fruit- 
trees,  were  turned  to  their  vital  uses. 
Sweet  it  was,  too,  even  yet,  to  see  the 
parlour-window  opened,  at  the  violet 
shadow  of  little  Robin-red-breast  on  the 
feathery  sill,  that  Hannah  and  Joey 
might  feed  him,  as  Hugh  could  have 
done  once,  with  crumbs  from  the  snug 
table  near  the  fire — disturbing  though 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


447 


Eobin's  visits  were  now  to  those  forced 
efforts  upon  Euddiman  and  his  despotic 
rules,  which  alone  brought  a  shiver  at 
the  letting  in  of  the  cold.  For  the 
others,  they  could  afford  to  hold  their 
breath,  not  even  whispering  lest  Robin 
might  take  fright :  each  peck  he  made, 
they  could  be  delighted;  till,  at  the 
triumphant  clapping  of  their  hands,  he 
fluttered  back  from  the  very  curtain 
within,  away  to  the  snow  outside.  Then 
with  old  stories  of  Babes  in  the  Wood, 
of  children  rescued  from  the  snow,  of 
brothers  that  came  back  in  time,  of 
merchants  hurrying,  home  with  gifts 
and  packages,  and  the  avalanche  that 
buried  the  cottage  for  a  .time — might 
Mamma  console  them  when  the  window 
was  shut,  and  the  curtains  drawn.  But 
oh  !  why  for  one,  had  there  been  Latin 
rules  invented,  harder  than  Draconic, 
more  deserving  the  sleepy  oblivion  that 
often  strove  against  them?  Why  had 
there  been  any  Romans,  why  such  an  offi- 
cious recorder  as  Cornelius  Nepos  ?  Why, 
indeed,  any  parents  except  mothers — 
who  were  so  easily  convinced  that  tasks 
had  been  got  by  heart,  when  they  were 
repeated  fresh  from  the  book?  They 
might  carefully  hear  over  the  rules  and 
the  exceptions,  but  demanded  no  prac- 
tical application;  and  they  could  see 
that  Cornelius  was  revised,  with  dic- 
tionary and  syntax  at  hand,  yet  not 
know  if  the  meaning  grew  clearer  in 
retrospect,  or  only  deeper,  darker,  more 
confused.  Maternal  anger  itself,  how 
simply  appeased,  how  soon  relaxed !  It 
could  be  talked  into  conviction  of  in- 
tegrity, and  argued  back  to  complacent 
trust  in  progress.  Under  such  soft 
supervision  the  books  might,  after  a 
little,  be  put  away;  and,  with  lifted  face 
and  ready  tongue,  the  gossip  might 
be  joined  in — the  little  trivial  children's 
gossip  which  the  servants  raise  even  in 
snow-time ;  which  spreads  about  the 
small  neighbourhood,  more  eagerly  as  it 
closes  smaller  in. 

Such  matter  of  gossip  there  was  for 
the  little  household  world  of  Kirkhill 
Manse,  during  the  absence  of  its  head 
in  f  that  season  of  deep  winter.  The 
hen-roost  had  been  suffering.  Now  a 


chicken,  and  now  a  duck,  had  gone; 
till  at  length  the  favourite  hen,  speckled 
and  crested,  that  had  laid  eggs  so  long, 
was  suddenly  missing  before  the  dusk 
of  the  afternoon.  This  was  after  An- 
drew, speaking  of  polecats  from  the 
planting,  or  weasels  from  the  dykes,  had 
closed  the  hutch  at  night.  That  pre- 
caution had  evidently  been  in  vain  ;  it 
could  not,  therefore,  be  weasel  or  pole- 
cat that  had  done  the  harm.  Nurse 
Kirsty  hinted  then  at  poor  old  Lucky 
Wood,  the  glebe-boy's  grandmother, 
who  was  on  the  parish,  and  would 
often  be  coming  to  the  Manse  in  her 
old  cloak,  with  stick  and  basket,  to 
hang  about  the  kitchen  for  old  bones, 
old  rags  —  perhaps  even,  as  Kirsty 
hinted,  for  better  things.  Was  she 
not  all  the  oftener  coming  in  that 
weather  ;  and  were  there  not  foot-steps 
in  the  morning  toward  the  hen-house 
door  ?  Yet  Andrew  said  openly  that 
the  steps  might  be  Nurse  Kirsty's  own  : 
on  which  supposition  of  his,  clearing 
away  suspicion  where  it  had  unduly 
fallen,  little  Will  had  come  back,  to 
sleep  by  Andrew's  leave  in  the  bar  i 
close  by,  with  a  rusty  gun  all  loaded — 
Will  firmly  believing  with  Andrew  now, 
as  a  greater  authority  than  both  of  them 
had  agreed,  that  the  real  evil-doer  was 
no  other  than  a  fox  from  the  firwoods 
on  the  hill.  No  less,  in  fact,  was  this 
great  authority  than  Kyloe-Jock  him- 
self with  Bauldy.  Tracing  the  marks, 
scenting  the  very  track,  they  were  aware 
by  what  ways  the  robber  had  come,  lain 
in  ambush,  and  departed.  Yet  to  no 
purpose  had  Will  kept  guard  two  nights. 
The  third,  as  Kyloe-Jock  declared,  he 
might  watch  till  morning  and  hear  no 
sign;  but  more  hens  would  be  taken 
away,  till  all  were  done,  or  till  the  snow 
was  melted !  Nevertheless  had  Nurse 
Kirsty  risen  to  higher  scorn,  and, 
speaking  of  Kyloe-Jock  for  the  first 
time,  had  vowed  like  an  oracle  that 
the  culprits  were  Jock  himself,  and 
his  dog  Bauldy.  She  told  of  his  idle 
doings  at  Halloween,  and  suspected  a 
truth  in  the  report  that  at  Hogmanay 
he  had  led  the  profane  guizards.  She 
nodded  her  head  more  darkly  yet, 


448 


Kyloe-Jcck  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Vialls. 


staking  it  more  ominously,  when,  to 
Mrs.  Rowland,  before  the  boy  Hugh, 
she  hinted  that  Kyloe-Jock  was  on  the 
parish  too— more  starved  than  Lucky 
Wood  herself ;  nay,  but  a  half-natural 
in  wits,  by  birth  even  something  worse 
— an  evil  example  and  a  bad  companion, 
of  whom  the  Minister  ought  to  hear 
when  he  came  home  !  These  things,  in 
greater  privacy,  did  the  boy,  roused  to 
resistance  by  Kirsty's  dark  insinuations, 
explain  and  reconcile  to  the  maternal 
judgment.  He  even  extolled  Kyloe- 
Jock,  and  used  cunning  eloquence  to 
show  him  to  be  the  only  help  in  this 
case  worthy  of  being  depended  on ; — 
thus,  at  least,  paving  the  way  for  secu- 
rity against  Kirsty,  should  she  say,  be- 
fore a  higher  bar,  that  JTyfoe-Jock's 
first  appearance  about  the  manse  had 
been  developed  farther  in  secret  than 
the  supreme  law  allowed.  He  did  not> 
however,  disclose  the  full  knowledge 
which  he  already  possessed  of  Kyloe- 
Jock's  purpose  to  constitute  himself, 
unsolicited,  the  protector  of  the  Manse, 
and  to  bring  the  true  depredator  to 
justice  by  a  competent  exercise  of  his 
own  energy  in  defence  of  his  own 
credit. 

How  suddenly  had  Hugh's  sensitive- 
ness to  the  touch  of  strangers  left  him  ! 
That  very  evening  in  secret,  in  the 
dark  back-court  behind  the  peat-stack, 
did  he  even  crouch  in  company  with 
the  glebe  cow-herd,  to  await  the  com- 
ing of  Kyloe-Jock  and  Bauldy  on  their 
mystic  purpose.  Neither  were  their 
plans  made  clearly  manifest  when  they 
came.  No  sooner  on  the  household 
premises,  indeed,  than  Bauldy  took  up 
the  ground  as  Jock's  own,  to  be  sen- 
tinelled against  the  most  customary 
frequenter  or  settled  occupant.  Yet 
Bauldy  followed  at  a  whisper,  to  con- 
sider alone  with  Jock  those  places  he 
examined — to  peer  forth  with  him  from 
that  opened  shrubbery-wicket,  where 
he  looked  toward  the  dark  hill ;  and, 
even  when  he  would  apparently  have 
left  it  open,  to  counsel  in  some  unac- 
countable way,  that  it  should  be  shut 
again.  This  was  a  wicket  which  the 
thoughtless  cow-herd  had  purposely 


opened.  So  opening  it,  each  fruitless 
night  he  had  watched,  in  order  that  no 
barrier  might  interrupt  the  approach 
of  Reynard.  At  that  did  Kyloe-Jock 
uncouthly  shrug  his  shoulders  up. 
Turning  to  Will  the  cowherd,  he  eyed 
him  with  an  eldritch  grin ;  and  there 
was  something  weirdly  in  the  silence 
wherewith  he  put  aside  that  glebe- 
boy's  advices,  stepping  back  to  the 
sheltered  nook  of  the  peat-stack,  as 
if  to  muse  alone  in  a  warm  place. 
Notwithstanding  which,  when  Bauldy 
curled  himself  satisfied  to  his  master's 
feet,  and  Will  leant  deferentially  by, 
with  little  Rowland  at  hand,  Jock  con- 
descended to  spend  a  certain  interval  in 
easy  colloquy,  as  if  to  await  the  time  for 
action  in  leisurely  discourse.  Compared 
with  the  knowledge  he  imparted,  what 
was  that  of  letters  ?  Without  parents, 
it  seemed,  or  effect  of  teaching,  what 
uninherited  lore  was  his — as  if  to  claim 
obeisance  from  patriarchs  before  a  Druid 
not  anointed !  He  seemed  even  about 
to  perform  some  sacrifice,  rather  than 
to  slay.  Meanwhile  he  turned  his 
thoughts  aside — reasoning  of  adders, 
how  to  deal  with  them  in  contest, 
how  to  prize  their  cast-off  skins;  of 
the  water-rat,  that  would  defy  the  wea- 
sel ;  of  the  toad,  and  of  that  dreadful 
creature  from  whose  touch  no  mortal 
survives — the  Ask  or  Eft,  which  like  a 
tiny  crocodile  is  seen  amphibious  about 
lonely  pools ;  also  concerning  the  horse- 
hairs which  in  water  can  be  converted, 
through  certain  observances,  into  living 
eels.  Of  Bauldy  he  spoke — how  Bauldy 
intercepted  rabbits  from  their  holes  ; 
nay,  how  in  the  course  of  that  last  sum- 
mer Bauldy  had  been  tempted  to  seize 
a  full-grown  hare.  For  it  had  lain 
staring  close  at  him  •  and  was  so  strong, 
squealing  so  loud,  that  it  proved  all  the 
dog  could  do  to  hold  her ;  and  Jock  had 
been  terrified,  thinking  maybe  it  might 
be  auld  Ailie  Mathie  from  Boon,  that 
was  reckoned  to  be  uncanny  in  her  dis- 
guises. "  Megsty,  man — Aih,  Wull ! " 
he  said,  with  a  fresh  emotion,  "  Wasna 
I  put  to  't  that  time — but  gin  I  hadna 
done  something  quick,  the  keeper  might 
hae  been  in  the  plantings  and  hear't 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walk, 


449 


her,  it  was  siccaii  a  clear  simmer-day — 
then  a'  owre  wi'  Bauldy,  puir  falla'.  So 
I  just  down  wi'  my  staff,  and  up  wi'  a 
palin'  stab,  and  fair  felled  her  wi'  the 
sharp  side  o't  ahint  the  lugs  o'  her,  till 
she  was  quiet.  Hoo  !  hoo  !  hoo  !  what 
think  ye  I  thocht  that  time  1"  chuckled 
he  wildly :  "  geyan  fear't  though  I  was  ?" 
But  when  Will  could  not  answer,  Jock 
pursued.  "  Man,  I  thocht  the  hare's  ee' 
gat  a  look  o'  auld  Ailie's,  the  vera  gait 
au'd  see't  her  sleepin'  i'  the  Kirk,  aetime 
I  was  there — wi'  her  rnooth  an'  her  ee' 
open,  though  the  Minister  was  thrang 
ca'in'  at  the  De'il  an'  her  !  Weel,  what 
did  I  do,  hut  I  buiry't  the  hare  in-under 
a  whin  buss,  an'  I  set  Bauldie  to  watch 
the  kyloes  his  'lane — an'  me  awa'  owre 
the  hills  to  Boon,  for  nae  ither  errant 
but  to  ken  gif  auld  Ailie  was  to  the 
fore  yet.  Man,  Wull,  wasna  I  glad 
when  I  seed  the  auld  donnart  body 
sittin'  i'  the  ingle  like  her  ordinal, 
thrang  at  the  stockin' -needles,  an'  girnin' 
at  the  neebors'  bairns  ?  The  very  minute 
I  was  gotten  back  to  the  hill,  didna  I 
howk  the  hare  up  in  a  jiffy,  an'  skinned 
her,  and  kennelt  a  bit  fire,  down  by  the 
burn  in  a  lown  spot,  and  pits  her  birlin' 
roond  atowre't  to  roast,  on  three  sticks 
like  a  tinkler's.  I  eatit  her.  At  ony 
rate,  Bauldy  an'  me  eatit  her,  stoop  and 
roop.  Aih !  what  wad  the  Laird  hae 
said?  or  Maviswud  o'  Maviswud?  or 
auld  Jock  Murray  o'  Wanton- Wa's  his- 
sel',  even  1  Hoo,  hoo,  hoo  ! "  And 
more  eldritch  and  weirdly  still  was  the 
laughter  of  Jock,  than  his  solemnity. 

Suddenly  Jock  rose,  and,  with  him, 
Bauldy  uncurling  himself  sat  up  on 
end.  They  looked  up  into  the  dark,  as 
at  the  sound  of  a  hushing  whisper  that 
passed  above ;  where  the  wan  half-face 
of  the  moon  had  ceased  to  strive  with 
the  moving  blackness,  but  downward 
from  her  place  came  wavering  some 
great  stray  snow-flakes,  that  lighted 
here  and  there  upon  the  peats,  the 
ground,  and  the  bristling  hair  of  Baul- 
dy. It  was  as  if  they  saw  in  these  the 
scattered  feathers  of  some  ravaged  fowl  in 
the  upper  world,  and  looked  at  each  other 
with  significance  accordingly.  Then  the 
Kyloe-herd  took  a  handful  of  the  former 


snow, "pressing  it  together  without  effect, 
but  nodding  conviction  at  this  sign  that 
it  was  frosty  still,  so  that  the  shower 
which  now  fell  scantily  and  slowly  would 
not  long  continue.  Thereafter  he  asked 
to  see  the  old  iron  rat-trap,  which,  as 
Will  had  admitted,  was  in  the  barn ; 
and  took  it  silently,  going  off  with  it 
alone,  while  his  sentinel  dog  remained. 
This  was  to  the  end  that  he  might  set 
down  the  trap  in  some  particular  spot, 
beyond  the  corner  of  the  wall,  near 
a  spreading  fir-shrub  there,  which  stood 
like  an  ambush  toward  the  back-yard. 
He  came  back  from  thence,  stooping 
along  the  wall,  below  the  ivy  and  below 
the  barn-eaves,  into  the  gutter  close  by, 
where  the  hen-house  door  stood  close, 
with  its  hutch  half-raised  as  usual.  It 
was  seen  then,  that  from  his  pocket 
he  had  been  sowing  upon  his  way  some 
mysterious  seed  j  the  last  grains  of  which 
he  sprinkled  out  carelessly  by  that  place 
of  egress  for  the  fowls  at  dawn,  and  re- 
turned thoughtfully  to  his  former  shelter. 
Faster  the  snow  fell  for  a  little,  and 
wavered  and  floated  again,  till  it  came 
to  a  close,  and  there  was  through  the 
dusk  a  soft  hoary  bloom  again,  with  the 
white  tops  of  things  more  discernible 
than  before,  and  the  woolly  fibres  of 
the  trees  reaching  at  the  wan  marblings 
of  the  sky.  A  sigh  might  have  been 
thought  to  come  in  the  stillness  from 
the  breast  of  -Kylot- Jock.  It  was  the 
glebe  cow-herd,  however ;  who  doubted, 
with  a  shiver,  that  the  fox  would  ever 
come  in  so  cold  a  night. 

"  Mcht  1  Nicht  !  "  responded  that  herd 
of  greater  creatures,  staring  at  him  side- 
wise.  "  Is't  nicht  ye  say  ?  An'  div  ye 
think  he  wad  ralely  come,  the  third 
time,  at  nicht  ava"?  Weel — oo'  dark 
folk  canna  but  whiles  wonder  at  you 
weiss  yanes,  daft  though  ye  may  ca' 
huz!  It's  easy  to  be  seen  ye  haena 
enter' t  into  the  gaits  o'  foxes.  The 
third  nicht  is  canny,  nae  doo't— but  it's 
no  till  the  dead  part  o't's  weel  owre, 
that  he'll  e'en  sae  niickle  as  slip  out  o' 
his  den  by  the  fir-plantin, — an'  no  till 
life  has  begoon  to  steer  again,  when  ye 
think  a's  safe,  that  he'll  loup  in  upon 
the  prey,  an'  awa'  wi't  ayont  the  dyke 


450 


Kyloe-Jock  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


an'  the  stank  an'  the -whins,  ben  intil 
his  hole.  There's  nae  less  nor  nine 
holes  o'  them  up  bye.  Though  ye 
maunna  think  they're  to  be  countit  by 
holes.  Na — they  hae  aye  a  front  door, 
an'  a  back  door,  an'  may  be  a  bit  side 
air-winnock  or  a  keek-hole — an',  when 
the  t'ane  door's  here,  t'ither's  maist  likely 
a  quarter  o'  a  mile  ben  the  wud.  I'm 
thinkin'  there's  just  aboot  three  auld 
grown-up  he-foxes  a'thegither,  the  'noo, 
on  this  side  the  big  plantin' — there's 
ane  a  broon  colour,  anither  red,  an' 
there's  anither  sandy.  I  wadna  wonder 
gin  it's  the  sandy  ane.  An',  gif  it's  him, 
man,  he'll  juist  come,  and  come,  an' 
better  come,  though  there  wasna  nae 
need  for't — as  lang  as  the  scent  winna 
lie,  an'  the  hunt  isna  out.  Mony  a 
time  has  he  been  huntit,  too  !  Man ! 
oo've  seen  aboon  twa-score  dowgs  a' 
efter  him  full  cry,  an'  Maviswud  o' 
Maviswucl,  an'  the  Laird  himsel',  and 
Baillie  o'  Mellerstain,  an'  sweerin'  Jock 
Murray  o'  Wanton- Wa's  like  a  vera 
deevil,  as  they'd  been  dragoons  efter  yae 
auld  cowenannter,  as  they  ca'd  it  lang- 
syne — an'  in  a  moment  they  lost  scent 
o'him  till  a'  was  dumb,  ilka  yowlin' 
tyke  lickit-back,  ilka  red-coat  glowerin' 
at  the  other,  till  at  last  they  rade  hame 
in  the  darkening  to  drink,  as  toom  an' 
fushionless  as  bourtree  whistles.  An' 
efter  a',  gif  he  did  come,  what  could  ye 
do  wi'  him?"  Almost  dreadfully  did 
Jock  ask  that  question,  which  none 
could  answer.  Mournfully  he  went  on, 
scoffing  down  the  paltry  purposes  of 
glebe-Will. 

"Gun?  Na,  na.  As  for  yon  bit 
ratton-trap,  he'll  juist  awa'  wi't,  an'  the 
chucky  forbye,  like  a  teegger  doon  the 
brae,  aff  to  the  neist-hand  cover  for 
hame.  An',  but  for  what's  said  at 
the  Manse  here — it  wadna  been  Jock, 
far  less  Bauldy,  that  wad  hae  made 
or  meddle't  wi'  auld  Saunders,  wha  has 
gotten  faes  eneuch,  puir  lad.  Man, 
couldna  ye  hae  pitten  yersel'  in  his 
place,  withoot  help  o'  huz  twa  that  kens 
him  sae  weel !  Ye've  corned  oot  o'  yeer 
hole,  oo'll  say,  doon  by  the  pailin',  across 
the  bog,  and  up  the  dyke  side — no  haein' 
pykit  a  bane  this  twal'  hours  and  niair, 


in  siccan  yaupish  weather,  sin'  ye  fand 
the  last  deed  craw  i'  the  ditch — an' 
what  div  ye  see  first,  when  ye  skirt  ahint 
the  hen-houses  ?  A  yett  wide  open, 
that  uised  for  to  be  aye  steekit  close. 
Oo'll  say  ye  e'en  gang  through,  for  a' 
that.  What  see. ye  neist,  on  the  vera 
spot  ye're  to  pass,  or  e'er  ye  win  to  the 
hen-house  door — or  whaur  the  first  hens 
boo't  to  come  scartin'  oot  by  day-break, 
as  ye  Kg  in  wait  aneth  the  mirkest  bield 
o'  a  fir-buss — what  but  the  hatch-hole 
lifted  like  a  trap  itsel',  and  the  grand  or 
the  snaw  steered  an'  smuithed  again, 
like  's  Ann'ra  the  Bethral'  hissel'  had 
howkit  a  grave  inunder  ?  Houts  !  ye're 
no  sic  a  gowk  an'  a  gomeral  as  juist  to 
gang  loupin'  in!  Na,  I'se  warrant  ye 
see  a  heap  glegger,  ma  man  Wull,  nor  ye 
div  the'  noo — ye  see  ilka  track  ye've 
made  in  the  snaw  yersel,  an'  ilka  spot 
that's  withoot  a  track.  The  lee' -lane 
thing  ye  dinna  see — it's  hoo  the  snaVs 
sel'  can  hae  the  hairt  to  work  against 
ye!" 

Finally  did  the  uncouth  speaker  grow 
silent,  plunging  his  hands  deep  from  the 
cold,  which  made  the  cow-herd's  teeth 
chatter,  till  he  urged  their  departure  to 
the  barn.  There  even  the  dog  burrowed 
into  the  straw,  as  if  heedless  of  further 
watching;  while  his  master  drew  the 
doors  as  close  behind  them,  as  if  the 
soundest  sleep  were  the  best ;  and  the  boy 
himself  hurried  gladly  back  within  the 
house,  to  forget  the  ineffectual  sight  of 
their  conclave,  that  seemed  idle  after 
all,  in  warmth  and  sleep. 

Coldly,  silently  did  the  morning 
break,  to  no  apparent  consequence  but 
that  of  troubled  recollections  about  other 
things.  The  blue  light  dawned  on  Eud- 
diman's  dull  boards,  where  the  book  had 
been  last  thrown  before  the  bedroom  win- 
dow-blind; and  the  first  demand  was  by 
its  early  warning  to  repair  past  neglect. 
For  the  first  voice  was  that  of  Andrew  at 
the  back  gate,  mounting  on  the  horse 
Eutherford ;  which  neighed  and  stamped 
as  Andrew  left  brief  word  with  Nurse 
Kirsty,  how  he  was  off  to  Thirlstane 
post-office  for  the  expected  letter,  but 
would  bring  the  groceries,  the  merceries, 
and  what  wares  besides  were  wanted. 


Kyloe-Joclc  and  the  Weird  of  Wanton-  Walls. 


451 


It  was  only  as  a  dream  that  the  earlier 
cock-crow  had  been  followed  by  alarms 
and  noises,  back  into  roost,  stable-yard, 
byre,  and  stye,  with  Rutherford  already 
neighing  at  his  stall.  All  this  was  a 
something  that  had  relapsed  to  the  usual 
sounds,  and  had  turned  on  the  other 
side,  as  it  were,  to  repose  again — by 
no  means  courting  the  new  daylight. 
And,  even  now  that  the  daylight 
had  come,  the  barn  doors  were  still 
snugly  closed,  as  if  on  sluggards — so 
that  Hugh  had  to  conclude  that  the 
night's  enterprise  had  failed.  As  he 
listens,  however,  it  ever  and  anon  grows 
plainer  that  Bauldy  by  fits  was  barking 
within  the  barn — a  signal  which  seems 
to  have  some  meaning,  and  which  tells 
Hugh  to  make  haste. 

When  they  came  out,  and  gathered 
again  in  private,  Kyloe-Jock  even 
stretched  his  arms  and  yawned.  It  was 
Bauldy  that  had  sprung  round  the 
corner  of  the  wall,  and  came  sniffling 
along  from  it  to  the  still-closed  wicket, 
scraping  there  eagerly,  making  the  snow 
fly  behind  him,  to  get  through,  or  to 
creep  under.  Those  marks  of  paws, 
of  dragging — might  indeed  be  his.  But 
at  the  end  of  the  train  of  barley-seed 
which  Jock  had  sowed,  round  the  corner, 
near  the  shelter  of  the  young  spruce-fir, 
what  scattered  feathers,  and  stray  bird- 
down  amongst  the  snow  !  Some  specks 
of  blood  in  it,  too — and  the  trap,  the 
buried  trap,  is  there  no  longer — and,  the 
moment  that  the  gate  is  opened,  like  an 
arrow  loosed  from  the  bow  did  Bauldie 
dart  away  across  the  snowy  paddock,  by 
the  white  churchyard,  down  the  stile, 
down  the  brae  toward  the  hollow  below 
the  hill ! 

Away  after  him,  shouting  at  the  fox's 
traces  confused  with  his,  flew  scarce  less 
swift  the  two  herds,  scarce  less  eager 
the  single  boy.  So  singular  were  those 
traces,  that  they  soon  passed  be- 
yond mistake.  First  scuffling  on,  over 
the  snow,  then  plucking  it  crisp  from 
bare  ground  in  patches  with  long 
bounds  between,  they  plunged  into 
the  deeper  places,  as  from  a  force  that 
had  bounded  still  on,  indeed,  and  had 
sprung  up  again  in  desperate  energy,  but 


lifted  whole  loads  away  with  them, 
tearing  out  the  very  earth  and  pebbles 
in  their  course.  At  length  had  they 
struggled  ;  till  they  had  rolled  like  a 
ball  altogether,  and  gone  rolling  till 
they  vanished.  Here  lay  the  ravished 
chicken,  and  there  ran  Kyloe-Jock,  and 
Will  ;  while  in  the  distance  below, 
round  a  knoll  of  purest  white,  still 
snuffed  and  searched  and  hovered  the 
disappointed  Bauldy.  A  snow-wrapped 
block  of  stone  it  seemed,  or  some  mi- 
niature of  an  -avalanche,  that  rested 
there  as  a  centre  of  the  dog's  bewil- 
dered barking,  of  his  circling,  of  his  re- 
treating for  aid.  All  else  but  his  own 
marks  was  spotless  ;  save  where  along 
the  hill  above,  with  a  hoary  sprinkling 
on  the  upper  plumes,  gloomed  the  dark 
of  the  pine-wood  behind  its  far-ranged 
columns.  But  Kyloe-Jock  spurned  the 
fleecy  ball  with  his  foot,  and  Will  the 
cow-herd  smote  it  into  a  powdery 
cloud,  while  through  the  powder  rushed 
in  Bauldy,  snapping,  struggling,  yelling 
painfully  in  the  struggle  with  a  form 
more  savage  than  himself.  Fettered  as 
was  the  fox,  half-enveloped  in  a  wreath 
around  the  snow-ball  that  clogged  his 
hind-foot,  his  wicked  eye  gleamed  out,  as 
he  gnashed  his  sharp  muzzle  intoBauldy's 
throat.  Nay,  Bauldy  was  so  vanquished 
that  he  turned,  dragging  both  with  a 
convulsive  spring  upon  his  master,  whose 
blow  from  a  mighty  bludgeon  was  immi- 
nently required.  Blows  rained  upon  the 
enemy  then  ;  a  cow-cudgel  wreaked  its 
revenge  upon  him ;  there  were  stones 
from  the  nearest  dyke  that  mauled  him, 
out  of  mere  frantic  impulse;  Bauldy, 
taking  fresh  courage,  ran  in  again,  and 
bit  and  shook  the  motionless  hind-leg  of 
the  helpless  foe.  He  was  silent  still — 
dying,  as  it  seemed,  in  grim  silence ; 
stretching  himself  out ;  muffling  himself 
in  his  white  mantle,  as  it  were,  and 
heaving  the  last  breath,  quite  dead  :  so 
that  the  others  would  then  have  taken 
him  up  in  triumph,  had  not  Kyloe-Jock 
pushed  them  back.  He  even  gave 
Bauldy  a  kick  away,  as  the  dog  shook 
the  carcass.  Yet  raising  a  hedge-stake 
he  had  pulled  close  by,  he  came  down 
with  it  one  mighty  stroke  behind  the 


452 


Tlie  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


head,  like  an  executioner,  and  for  a 
moment,  as  the  blow  descended,  that 
small  yellow  eye  might  have  been  seen  to 
open.  It  quivered,  it  shrank :  but  never 
closed  again.  It  stared  out  wide,  from  the 
attitude  of  a  last  snarling  turn.  Then  a 
second  time  the  blow  fell,  even  a  third  : 
but  all  was  quiet 

J£yloe-3ock  looked  grim  at  the  others, 
leaning  on  the  hedge-stake.  He  drew 
the  cuff  of  that  tail-coat  across  his  face, 
as  it  manifestly  had  often  been  drawn 
before,  and  surveyed  the  slain ;  not  un- 
heroically. 

"It's  the  sandy  ane,"  he 'said.  "Aih 
man  !  But  he's  been  teugh.  He  juist 
grippit-on  to  life  like  roots  o'  trees. 
Ye'd  hae  thocht  the  haill  feck  o'  us  was 
to  dee,  .afore  he  wad  dee ;  an',  efter  a', 
it  wasna  huz  that  could  hae  trickit  the 
likes  o'  him.  It  was  the  snaw,  man ! 
I'se  warrant  he  had  ten  times  the  gleg- 
ness,  an'  the  kenninness,  o'  the  haill 


heap  o'  us — Bauldy  an'  a'.  Trap,  quo' 
ye  !  Hoo  !  what  was  a  ratton-trap  to 
him  ?  My  certy,  hit  wadna  lang  hae 
been  a  fash  to  Sanders. — Oot  o'  that, 
Bauldy,  I  tell  ye,  ye  vicious  brute ! 
I'm  thinkin',  callants,  the  less  oo'  say 
aboot  this,  the  better.  For  Maviswud 
an'  the  Laird,  an'  a  heap  mae,  11  miss 
him  geyan  sair !'"' 

Doubtless  the  fox  was  safely  deposited 
away,  by  him  and  "Will.  As  for  the 
boy — whether  or  not  there  came  on 
him  from  those  words  a  chill  remem- 
brance of  very  different  speeches  in 
Cornelius  Nepos — he  hung  his  head 
even  as  he  told  at  home,  in  part,  how 
accused  innocence  had  been  vindicated. 
Ere  long,  Andrew  came  riding  back 
from  Thirlstane,  and  brought  the  ex- 
pected letter.  It  appointed  the  day 
when  Mr.  Eowland  would  certainly 
return  home. 

To  be  continued. 


THE  DUNGEON  KEY. 


"I  GIVE  this  key  to  the  kelpie's  keep- 
ing," 
He  cried,  as  the  key  smote  the  deep 

lake's  breast ; 

He  left  her  kneeling,  in  rueful  weep- 
ing, 
A  rayless  cell's  despairing  guest. 

Away  rushed    the  steed,  and  the  crow 

that  was  winging 
Its   flight  to  the   distant  wood  was 

passed ; 
"When  morning  dawned  keen  spurs  were 

stinging 
The  courser's  flanks  bike  a  frosty  blast. 


For  knight  and  lady  are  vassals  calling ; 

No  voice  replies  from  garden  or  bower ; 
Again  round  the  castle  is  darkness  falling, 

But  search  is  vain  in  turret  and  tower. 

Year  after  year  rolled  by  without  telling 
The  fearful  deed  one  cell  could  disclose ; 

Her  bones  lie  white   in   the  dungeon 

dwell  ing 
The  knight  for  his  lovely  lady  chose. 

That  key  is  yet  in  the  kelpie's  keeping; 

He  faithfully  grasps  that  iron  trust ; 
He  heard  her  rueful  cries  and  weeping, 

But  said  to  himself,  "  What  I  must,  I 
must."  • 


THE   CHEISTIAN   SUBJECTS   OF   TUEKEY. 

THE  events  which  have  recently  taken  not  so  much  our  object  to  discuss  the 

place  in  Syria  have  again  brought  the  eastern  question  in  its  present  aspect, 

eastern  question  prominently  into  pub-  as  to  consider  the  social  and  political 

lie  notice,  and  in  such  a  manner  as  to  condition  of  the  Christian  subjects  of 

draw  attention  to  the  position  of  the  the  Sultan.  The  investigation  is  attended 

Christians  in  Turkey.     It  is,  therefore,  with  peculiar  difficulty  on  account  of  the 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


453 


absence  of  ranch,  information  which  it 
would  be  of  great  advantage  to  possess. 
Travellers  often  ignorant  of  the  language, 
and  seldom  able  to  speak  it  fluently, 
cannot,  in  passing  hastily  through  a 
country,  form  an  accurate  opinion  of  the 
condition  of  the  people.  They  cannot 
expect  to  be  told  of  the  wrongs  endured 
by  the  inhabitants.  Still  less  can  the 
agents  of  Governments  allied  to  Turkey, 
accompanied  by  official  attendants,  learn 
the  true  state  of  affairs.  This  circum- 
stance is  of  itself  sufficient  explanation 
of  the  discrepancy  which  appears  to 
exist  in.  the  reports  received  by  different 
Governments  of  what  is  taking  place, 
although  in  all  these  reports  we  caa 
trace  the  obvious  desire  of  official  agents 
to  frame  them  so  as  to  meet  the  real 
or  supposed  opinions  of  their  superior 
authorities. 

The  condition  of  the  Christian  sub- 
jects of  the  Porte  has  been  improved  in 
many  respects  in  late  years.  The  tax 
termed  Haratch  which  was  imposed  on 
the  non-Mussulman  population  was  for- 
mally abolished  in  1855.  Distinctive 
dresses  and  other  marks  of  subjection 
and  insult  which  they  were  compelled 
to  wear  or  conform  to  have  fallen  into 
disuse.  Offensive  epithets  in  legal  and 
other  documents  are  no  longer  employed 
by  the  officers  of  the  Porte.  And  more 
freedom  is  allowed  with  respect  to  the 
erection  of  churches.  Such  are  the  chief 
reforms  which  have  been  actually  car- 
ried out. 

If  the  proclamations  of  the  Sultan 
were  acted  up  to  in  their  letter  and 
spirit  we  should  have  to  add  to  the  pre- 
ceding many  other  important  reforms. 
In  theory  all  classes  of  Turkish  subjects 
are  supposed  to  be  equal  in  the  sight  of 
the  law,  and  to  be  equally  eligible  for 
Government  employment.  But  not  even 
the  most  strenuous  defender  of  the 
Ottoman  administration  would  venture 
to  assert  that  these  provisions  have  ever 
been  put  in  force. 

In  places  where  there  are  European 
residents  the  authorities  are  obliged  to 
exercise  moderation,  but  it  is  far  other- 
wise in  the  interior.  There,  Christians 


who  are  not  under  foreign  protection 
have  little  security  for  either  life  or 
property.  When  they  prosecute  Maho- 
metans, a  decision  is  rarely  given  in  their 
favour,  and  yet  more  seldom  is  it  that 
the  sentence  when  obtained  is  carried  out. 
The  first  grievance  therefore  from  which 
the  Christians  suffer  is — 

I.  The  State  of  Turkish  Law. — The 
only  recognised  code  is  contained  in  the 
Koran.     There  the  judges  have  to  find 
the  principles  which  are  to  serve  for 
their   guidance    both    with    regard   to 
points   of    law   and    their  application. 
But  it  has  be/jome  so  apparent  that  the 
laws  of  the  Koran  cannot  be  fully  acted 
up  to  in  the  present  relative  position  of 
the    Ottoman    Empire    and    Christian 
Europe,   that    the    Sultan    has    issued 
various    "  Hatts "    or    special    decrees 
which  his  "  governors  and  slaves "  are 
enjoined  to  observe  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Government  and  of  justice. 
In  this  manner  a  sort  of  equity  has  been 
introduced  to  moderate  the  strict  letter 
of  the  law.     It  is  obvious  that  much  is 
thus  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  court. 
Besides,  it  often  happens  that  both  the 
court  and  people  are  ignorant  of  the 
very  existence  of  these  Hatts.     They  are 
not  distributed  in  the  provinces  ;  nor 
are  any  effective  measures  adopted  to 
put  them  into  execution.     The  Mussul- 
man authorities  either  covertly  or  openly 
oppose  their  enforcement ;  while  on  the 
other  hand  the  Christians   do   not,  as 
a  general  rule,  understand  the  language 
in  which  they  are  written ;  for  all  de- 
crees are  promulgated  in  Turkish — ac- 
companied,  indeed,    occasionally  by   a 
French  translation,  but  never  by  one  in 
the  vernacular  tongue. 

The  next  grievance  which  we  have  to 
consider  is — 

II.  The  Imperfect  Administration  of 
Justice. — In  Turkey  business  of  every 
kind  is  transacted  by  a  Medjlis  or  coun- 
cil.   If  peace  or  war  is  to  be  determined, 
the  Sultan  holds  a  Medjlis  on  the  sub- 
ject.    If  a  thief  is  to  be  caught,  the 
inspector  of  police  holds  a  Medjlis   of 
his  subordinates.     Every  department  of 
the  Government  has   its  Medjlis,  and 
nothing  is  ever  done  without  the  sane- 


454 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


tion  of  the  proper  council.  Each  -village 
has  its  Medjlis;  from  its  decisions  appeal 
lies  to  the  Medjlis  of  the  district,  then 
to  that  of  the  province,  and  ultimately 
to  Constantinople.  In  criminal  matters 
the  police  superintendent  has  his  Medj- 
lis, as  court  of  first  instance  ;  and  from 
him  the  appeal  lies  to  the  Pasha  of 
the  district  There  is  also  a  Medjlis  for 
commercial  cases,  and  often  other  Medj- 
les  exist  for  special  purposes.  But  when 
we  come  to  inquire  into  the  organization 
of  the  Medjles,  their  defects  become  ap- 
parent. In  every  place  which  Maho- 
metans and  Christians  inhabit  together 
the  majority  of  the  Medjlis  invariably 
consists  of  Mussulmen  who  represent 
local  prejudices  and.  jealousies,  and  can 
gratify  their  own  private  feelings  with- 
out incurring  personal  responsibility. 
The  Christian  members  thus  become 
mere  cyphers.  Too  often  they  follow 
the  example  of  the  others  and  take  what 
bribes  they  can  get.  If  they  have  the 
firmness  and  principle,  which  is  indeed 
rarely  the  case,  to  resist  unjust  decisions, 
they  are  of  course  outvoted;  and  in- 
stances are  known  when  assassination 
has  been  the  means  of  removing  a  trou- 
blesome colleague.  The  composition  of 
the  Medjlis  is  the  immediate  cause  of 
the  next  source  of  wrong  which  we  have 
to  mention,  namely — 

III.  Fiscal  Oppression. — It  is  impos- 
sible to  imagine  greater  confusion  to 
exist  in  the  finances  of  any  state  than 
that  shown  in  the  present  condition  of 
the  Turkish  treasury.  The  revenue  of 
.the  empire  is  derived  chiefly  from 
Vekouf  property,  customs  duties,  and 
tithes.  With  respect  to  the  two  former 
we  have  no  occasion  to  offer  any  re- 
marks, as  they  press  on  all  Turkish 
subjects  alike.  With  regard  to  tithes, 
however,  the  case  is  far  different.  Sup- 
pose the  Porte  requires  1,000,000?. 
The  Finance  Minister  asks  some  capi- 
talist to  advance  that  sum,  and  offers  to 
assign  to  him  the  tithe  of  such  an  article 
in  such  provinces.  The  capitalist  pro- 
cures the  money.  He  has  to  obtain 
repayment  of  the  sum  with  interest,  to 
incur  all  the  risks  and  expenses  of  col- 
lection, and  to  pay  the  Pasha  and  the 


members  of  the  Medjlis  for  the  assist- 
ance they  render  him.  If  such  a 
Government  as  that  of  Turkey  attempted 
to  collect  the  revenue  by  means  of  a 
Government  department,  the  expense  of 
collection  would  certainly  not  be  less 
than  10  per  cent,  on  the  amount  raised  ; 
but,  under  the  present  system,  at  least 
twice  as  much  as  the  nominal  sum  is 
paid  by  the  people,  and  often  nearly 
three  times  the  amount.  Thus,  to  enable 
1,000,000?.  to  be  paid  into  the  treasury, 
between  2,000,000?.  and  3,000,000?.  is 
extorted  from  the  tax-payers.  If  this 
oppression,  heavy  as  it  is,  affected  all 
classes  of  the  subjects  of  the  Sultan 
alike  we  should  not  have  occasion  to 
refer  to  it.  But  in  practice,  land  and  pro- 
perty belonging  to  Christians  is  assessed 
generally  a  third  higher  than  that  of 
Mahometans,  and  under  the  present  con- 
stitution of  the  Medjles  no  redress  is 
to  be  obtained.  Nor  is  this  all.  Far- 
mers of  taxes  are  not  noted  for  just 
dealing.  The  most  cruel  means  are  re- 
sorted to  to  compel  the  payment  of  the 
assessments,  with  the  sanction  of  the 
Medjles,  and  by  the  assistance  of  the 
troops.  Bosnia  and  the  neighbouring 
districts  have  suffered  most  in  this  re- 
spect in  late  years.  Several  deputations 
have  been  sent  to  Constantinople  to  lay  a 
statement  of  these  grievances  before  the 
Sultan,  but  in  no  case  has  relief  been  ob- 
tained ;  and  the  members  have  often  been 
imprisoned  and  fined  on  their  return. 

IV.  Evils  arising fromthe  Truck  System. 
— In  agricultural  districts  the  Medjles 
enforce  the  truck  system  when  it  would 
operate  in  favour  of  Mahometan  land- 
owners and  against  the  Clrristian  pea- 
santry. In  this  manner  a  state  of  things 
which  amounts  to  practical  slavery  exists 
in  many  parts  of  Turkey.  In  the  Spanish 
colonies  in  the  West  Indies,  when  an 
estate  is  to  be  sold,  the  price  depends 
not  on  the  land,  but  on  the  negroes 
living  on  it.  So  in  many  districts  in. 
Turkey,  when  an  estate  is  sold,  the  price 
is  determined  by  the  number  of  bonds 
hi  the  hands  of  its  possessor.  We  do 
not  say  that  the  truck  system  is  in  force 
in  all  rural  districts  in  Turkey,  but  only 
that  it  is  very  prevalent. 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


455 


V.  Military   oppression.  —  When   a 
Turkish  military  force  is  on  the  march, 
the   country  through  which  it  passes 
undergoes  all  the  suffering  which   the 
presence   of  a  hostile  force   occasions. 
When  the  pay  of  the  army  is  one  or  two 
years  in  arrear,  the  commissariat  could 
not  under  any  circumstances  be  expected 
to  be  in  proper  order.     But  what  must 
the  case  be  when  the  army  is  unpaid, 
and  there  is  no  commissariat  at  all  ? 
The  inhabitants  have  to  feed  the  soldiers, 
to  repair  or  complete  their  equipment, 
and  to   forward  them   on  their  way ; 
compensation  is  of  course  unthought  of, 
and  any  complaints  would  be  met  with 
derision,  if  they  did  not  lead  to  further 
ill-usage. 

When  it  is  known  that  a  military 
force  is  in  motion,  the  villagers  often 
desert  their  huts  and  retire  to  woods 
and  caves,  taking  with  them  what  articles 
they  can  conceal.  When  they  return 
they  find  their  huts  destroyed  and  their 
churches  desecrated.  The  hardships 
thus  occasioned  fall  chiefly  on  the  Chris- 
tians. Every  man  seeks  to  save  himself 
from  loss  as  far  as  possible  ;  and  Maho- 
metan rulers  and  soldiery  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  supply  their  wants  impartially 
from  their  co-religionists  and  the  giaours. 

In  the  rural  districts  the  police  are 
exclusively  quartered  on  Christian  fami- 
lies, who  have  to  provide  for  all  their 
wants.  Travellers  and  Government 
officers  when  passing  through  the  coun- 
try are  also  lodged  at  the  expense  of  the 
Christians,  and  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  add  that  no  repayment  is  ever  made. 
Closely  connected  with  this  grievance 
is  that  which  we  have  next  to  consider, 
the  most  cruel  of  the  many  wrongs 
which  afflict  the  Christian  population ; 
we  mean, 

VI.  The  systematic  abduction  and  ill- 
treatment  of  Christian  women. — It  is  only 
in  Turkey  that  outrages  of  this  descrip- 
tion either  meet  with  no  punishment  or 
are  actually  rewarded.     Some  years  ago, 
considerable   attention  was   excited  by 
the  case  of  Saleh  Pasha,   Governor  of 
Varna.     He   caused  to  be  removed  to 
his  harem  the  daughter  of  one  of  the 
chief   men    at    Toulcha.      Some    time 


elapsed  before  the  father  discovered 
what  had  become  of  his  child.  When 
he  attempted  to  procure  her  release,  he 
was  arrested,  and  his  property  confiscated. 
But  Varna  was  then  garrisoned  by  an 
English  force,  and  the  case  was  so  noto- 
rious that  our  authorities  are  understood 
to  have  remonstrated.  The  result  was 
that  the  dead  body  of  the  girl  was  found 
some  days  afterwards.  An  inquiry  took 
place  respecting  Saleh  Pasha's  concern 
both  in  the  abduction  and  in  the  mur- 
der. He  was  removed  from  his  post 
and  sent  to  Constantinople  to  be  formally 
tried ;  and  tl^e  father  was  released.  But 
we  believe  that  we  are  perfectly  correct 
in  stating  that  Saleh  Pasha  was  at  once 
set  at  liberty,  and  has  been  since  living 
in  the  capital,  not  having  undergone 
even  the  semblance  of  a  trial ;  and  that 
the  father's  property  has  been  retained 
by  the  Government.  Outrages  of  this 
description  are  extremely  frequent  in  the 
rural  districts  in  Europe,  and  are  never 
punished. 

It  is  not  uncommon  to  quarter  troops 
on  houses  only  inhabited  by  female 
Christians.  In  these,  as  well  as  in 
other  instances,  seldom  does  a  male  re- 
lative, who  interferes  on  their  behalf, 
escape  alive. 

Forcible  abduction  is  encouraged  by 
the  following  means.  In  Albania  the 
prestige  which  it  confers  leads  to  per- 
sonal advancement  in  Government  em- 
ployment. In  Bulgaria  it  is  facilitated 
by  placing  the  relatives  of  a  Christian 
girl  who  becomes  a  Mahometan  on  the 
same  footing  as  Mahometans  with  re- 
spect to  protection  from  fiscal  oppression. 
In  Monastic,  and  we  believe  elsewhere, 
a  Turk  who  carries  off  a  Christian  girl 
and  causes  her  to  become  a  Mahometan, 
is  exempted  from  military  service. 

The  conduct  of  the  Ottoman  authori- 
ties in  this  respect  is  most  reprehensible. 
The  theory  is  that,  on  any  case  of  abduc- 
tion being  made  known,  the  girl  is  to  be 
placed  under  the  care  of  the  chief  of  the 
religious  sect,  to  which  her  parents  be- 
long, at  the  place  where  they  reside, 
until' the  case  is  decided.  This  is  done 
at  large  commercial  ports  where  a  Euro- 
pean element  compels  the  observance  of 


456 


TJie  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


some  form  of  law  and  justice.  In  the 
interior  another  mode  of  procedure  is 
adopted.  Such  cases  are  declared  by 
the  Government  of  Constantinople  to 
be  religious  and  civil  cases,  not  criminal 
ones.  The  girl  is  brought  before  the 
Medjlis  and  asked  what  her  religion  is. 
If  she  replies  Mahometan,  the  case  is  of 
course  at  an  end.  If  she  declares  her- 
self a  Christian,  the  result  is  the  same. 
The  Medjlis  quotes  the  Hatti-Humayun 
of  1856.  In  this  much- vaunted  edict, 
which  has  everywhere  and  in  every  re- 
spect proved  to  be  a  "delusion,  a  mockery 
and  a  snare,"  it  is  only  provided  that 
Christian  evidence  shall  be  received  in 
commercial,  correctional,  and  criminal 
cases.1  The  Medjlis  decides  that  the 
case  before  it  is  a  civil  question.  It 
consequently  refuses  to  hear  the  girl's 
statement  or  that  of  her  relatives  ;  and 
unless  a  Mahometan  comes  forward  to 
give  evidence  against  his  co-religionist 
in  a  matter  which  his  creed  regards  as 
meritorious — an  extremely  rare  occur- 
rence— the  Medjlis  decides  against  the 
Christian  plaintiff.  This  shows  the 
nature  of  the  next  grievance,  which 
demands  our  consideration,  viz. — 

VII.  Tlie  non-admission  of  Christian 
evidence  in  civil  suits.  It  would,  we 
imagine,  scarcely  be  believed  that  in  the 
year  1860  the  whole  Christian  popula- 
tion of  a  country  should  be  placed  below 
the  level  of  convicted  criminals  by  the 
existence  of  a  law,  or  a  custom  having 

i  Extract  from  Hatti-Skerif  of  1856. 

Toutes  lea  affairs  commerciales,  correction- 
nelles  et  criminelles  entre  des  Musulmans  et 
dea  sujets  Chretiens  ou  autres  non-Musul- 
mans,  ou  bien  des  Chretiens  ou  autres  de 
rites  diffe'rents  non-Musulmans,  seront  de'fe'- 
re'es  a  des  Tribunaux  Mixtes  (i.e.  the  Medjles). 

L'audience  de  ces  tribunaux  sera  publique ; 
les  parties  seront  mises  en  presence  et  pro- 
duiront  leurs  te'moins,  dont  les  depositions 
seront  recues  indietinctement,  sous  un  serment 
prete"  selon  la  loi  religieuse  de  chaque  culte. 

Les  proces  ayant  trait  aux  affaires  civiles 
continueront  d'etre  publiquement  jugeX  d'apres 
lea  lois  et  les  reglements,  par  devant  les  Con- 
seils  Mixtes  des  Provinces,  en  presence  du 
Qouverneur  et  du  Juge  du  lieu. 

Civil  suits  are  thus  to  remain  on  the  same 
footing  as  before ;  consequently  Christian  evi- 
denc  e  ieinadmissible 


the  force  of  law,  by  which  their  testi- 
mony is  refused  acceptance  in  a  court  of 
justice  on  account  of  their  religion.  Yet 
such  is  the  case  in  Turkey.  In  criminal 
cases,  where  Christian  evidence  is  ad- 
mitted, little  attention 'enough  is  paid  to 
it ;  but  it  is  not  creditable  to  England 
and  France  to  have  permitted  this  dis- 
tinction to  be  perpetuated  in  civil  suits. 
The  influence  which  the  Western  Powers 
possessed  when  the  Hatti-Humayun  of 
1856  was  promulgated  was  undoubtedly 
powerful  enough  to  have  induced  the 
Porte  to  decree  that  the  evidence  of 
Christians  should  be  received  in  all  cases 
equally  with  that  of  Mahometans.  The 
consequence  is  that  Christians  must  pro- 
duce Mussulman  witnesses  in  civil  suits 
in  which  they  are  interested  ;  and  this 
leads  to  a  most  frightful  amount  of 
perjury.  A  regular  class  of  false  wit- 
nesses live  by  this  means,  and  are  ready 
to  swear  to  any  case.  The  result  is  not 
so  injurious  to  the  Christians  as  might 
have  been  expected,  but  it  requires  no 
proof  to  show  what  the  effect  to  a  state 
must  be  when  perjury  becomes  a  pro- 
fession. 

VIII.  Insecurity  of  property.    Chris- 
tian evidence   not  being  received,   the 
property   of    Christians   is    necessarily 
rendered  much  less  secure  than  it  other- 
wise would  be.    Oral  testimony  is  always 
preferred  to  documentary  evidence,  and 
in  this  manner  Christians  are  often  dis- 
possessed of  an  estate  by  the  weight  of  evi- 
dence given  by  perjured  witnesses.  While 
such  a  state  of  things  exists  improve- 
ment of  any  kind  is  not  to  be  looked 
for. 

IX.  Religious  intolerance.   The  power- 
ful protection  which   the   Greek    and 
Roman     Catholic     communities    enjoy 
prevents  the  Mahometans  from  perpetra- 
ting    those     disgraceful     outrages     in 
churches  which  they  are  wont  to  indulge 
in  when  it  can  be  done  with  impunity. 
Religious  intolerance  evinced  by  rules  of 
service,  opposed,  we  will  not  say  to  good 
feeling,  for  that  we  could  not  expect  to 
find,  but  to  sound  policy,  prevents  the 
entrance  of  Christians  into  the  army. 
Forcible  conversions  of  males  are  rare. 
They  are  generally  accompanied  with 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


457 


such  a  public  breach  of  the  peace  as  to 
enable  the  ambassadors  at  Constantinople 
to  make  representations,  and  are  there- 
fore inconvenient. 

The  Ottoman  Government  is  ready 
enough  to  afford  every  facility  to  Euro- 
pean missionaries,  whether  Protestant  or 
Eoman  Catholic.  It  is  well  aware  that, 
while  it  can  play  off  one  sect  of  Christians 
against  another,  it  increases  existing 
differences  between  them,  and  perpetuates 
a  state  of  things  from  which  it  alone  can 
derive  benefit. 

Few  Mahometans  are  ever  converted 
to  Christianity.  There  are  many  reasons 
against  it ;  but  the  only  one  to  which  we 
need  refer  here  is  the  law  of  the  Koran, 
which  condemns  to  death  a  Mussulman 
who  renounces  his  faith.  The  present 
practice  is  to  imprison  and  banish  these 
converts;  but  so  late  as  November,  1853, 
when  the  English  and  French  fleets 
were  at  anchor  in.  the  Dardanelles,  a 
Christian  convert  was  tortured  and 
executed  at  Adrianople,  almost  within 
sound  of  the  guns  of  the  allied  fleet.  No 
attempt  was  made  to  save  his  life,  or  to 
obtain  reparation.  Hatti-Sheriffs  may 
be  issued  to  satisfy  the  demands  of 
European  nations ;  but  the  people  can 
entertain  no  very  high  opinion  of  the 
sincerity  either  of  the  Ottoman  or  of 
other  Governments  when  they  see  on 
every  side  a  systematic  disregard  of 
these  laws  evinced  by  the  Turkish 
authorities,  and  can  perceive  no  efforts 
on  the  part  of  the  Christian  Powers  to 
compel  their  enforcement. 

Such  were  the  chief  grievances  from 
which  the  Christians  suffered  in  the 
spring  of  1860.  No  arguments  are  re- 
quired to  prove  the  accuracy  of  the 
Eussian.  declaration  that  their  condition 
had  become  intolerable.  So  much  weight 
was  felt  at  Constantinople  to  be  attached 
to  this  declaration  that  a  change  of 
ministry  ensued,  notwithstanding  all  the 
efforts  of  the  Mahometan  party.  Ka- 
brisli  Pasha — almost  the  only  honest 
Turkish  statesman,  and  the  only  man 
we  believe  who,  after  filling  the  highest 
offices  of  the  State,  is  still  poor — was  re- 
appointed  Grand  Vizier ;  from,  which  post 

No.  12. — VOL.  n. 


he  was  dismissed  last  year  for  urging  on 
the  Sultan  the  necessity  of  economy. 
He  was  immediately  sent  on  a  mission 
of  inquiry  into  the  European  provinces, 
unaccompanied,  however,  by  delegates 
from  the  embassies.  We  imagine  that 
his  real  report  will  not  be  very  different 
from  the  foregoing  statement.  But  the 
public  version  will  probably  maintain 
that  these  grievances  have  been  much 
exaggerated.  Few  Christians  have  come 
forward  to  show  their  wrongs,  and  the 
most  will  be  made  of  this  circumstance. 
Kabrisli  would  have  protected  them; 
but,  after  his  departure,  they  would  have 
suffered  severely  for  having  given  evi- 
dence. Several  officials  have  been  re- 
moved chiefly  on  account  of  offences 
against  the  Government,  and  due  stress 
will  be  laid  on  this  point ;  and,  finally, 
the  general  aspect  of  the  provinces  will 
be  declared  highly  satisfactory.  But  a 
report  of  this  nature,  unsubstantiated  by 
the  concurrent  testimony  of  European 
commissions  (the  absence  of  whom  we 
consider  would  be  fatal  to  any  report), 
will  deceive  110  one.  Nor  will  it  be  re- 
garded by  the  Russian  Government,  who 
will  probably  avail  themselves  of  the 
first  opportunity  to  repeat  in  Eoumelia 
the  precedent  afforded  by  the  French  in- 
tervention in  Syria. 

We  believe,  moreover,  that  the 
Eussian  Government  is  fully  aware  that 
the  feeling  formerly  entertained  towards 
Eussia  by  the  Greeks  has  undergone  a 
considerable  change.  Centuries  of  the 
severest  oppression  had  produced  their 
inevitable  effect.  Nothing  more  debasing 
than  Ottoman  rule  can  be  imagined. 
Debarred  from  the  profession  of  arms, 
subjected  to  degrading  distinctions,  and 
exposed  unarmed  to  the  tyranny  of  a 
cruel  and  heartless  dominant  race,  it  is 
not  to  be  wondered  that  the  Greek 
character  deteriorated.  Nor  was  this 
all.  Every  year  their  most  promising 
children  were  seized  by  the  Moslems, 
and  brought  up  in  the  Mahometan  faith. 
In  this  state  of  insecurity  with  respect 
to  all  that  was  most  dear  to  them,  the 
Greeks  lived  for  the  present  moment  and 
became  regardless  of  the  future.  In  this 
manner  a  community  soon  degenerates 

H  II 


458 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


into  utter  barbarism.  If,  as  the  most 
eloquent  historian  of  modern  times  has 
shown,  the  excesses  of  the  French  Ee vo- 
lution are  to  be  palliated  because  they 
were  directly  attributable  to  the  mis- 
government  of  the  monarchy,  much 
more  should  the  shortcoming  of  the 
Greeks  be  excused.  It  is  remarkable 
that  they  have  done  so  well. 

It  is  to  the  influence  of  the  Church 
that  they  owe  their  present  position. 
During  the  long  period  of  persecution 
(for  such  has  been  its  normal  character) 
which  has  continued  since  the  Moslem 
conquest  in  the  East,  each  individual 
Christian  has  had  the  strongest  worldly 
inducement  to  abandon  his  faith,  while 
to  be  a  priest  has  been  a  special  cause 
for  personal  insult.  Yet  very  few 
Christians  have  ever  apostatized,  even 
to  save  their  lives,  notwithstanding  the 
low  moral  standard  to  which  the  oppres- 
sions they  have  undergone  unavoidably 
gave  rise.  Little  sympathy  have  they 
received  from  Christian  Europe,  and 
still  less  assistance.  "Without  exception 
each  nation  has  sought  to  Aveaken  the  na- 
tional Church,  and  to  obtain  adherents 
to  its  own  form  of  Christianity.  Russia 
has  endeavoured  to  substitute  the  autho- 
rity of  the  Archbishop  of  Moscow  for 
that  of  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople. 
Roman  Catholic  powers  have  made 
every  possible  effort  to  increase  the 
number  of  their  community ;  and  Pro- 
testant nations  have  tried  to  obtain 
converts  from  the  other  sects.  The 
Turkish  Government  made  the  appoint- 
ments to  bishoprics  depend  on  the 
bestowal  of  bribes  among  its  officials, 
and  generally  took  measures  to  confide 
the  direction  of  ecclesiastical  affairs  to 
unworthy  persons.  But,  notwith  standing 
all  these  calamities  and  drawbacks,  the 
Church  held  its  ground,  and  kept  alive 
in  the  minds  of  the  people  the  recollec- 
tion of  the  glory  of  their  ancestors. 
They  were  thus  prevented  from  sinking 
into  despair,  and  have  now  emerged 
from  the  fiery  ordeal  to  which  open 
enemies  and  false  friends  had  subjected 
them.  The  Greek  Revolution  brought 
the  dawn  of  better  times.  Thousands, 
indeed,  fell  during  the  contest  by  the 


sword,  by  pestilence,  and  by  famine,  and 
thousands  more  were  sold  into  hopeless 
slavery ;  and,  although  Europe  could  at 
last  no  longer  abstain  from  interfering, 
yet  even  then  the  jealousy  of  the  several 
powers  prevented  a  state  from  being 
constituted  which  should  by  its  extent 
and  resources  be  able  to  satisfy  the 
requirements  of  its  subjects. 

Unsatisfactory,  however,  as  the  settle- 
ment of  Greece  has  proved,  it  has  caused 
much  eager  longing  on  the  part  of  the 
less  fortunate  Greeks  who  are  still  sub- 
ject to  the  Sultan,  to  form  at  some 
happier  time  part  of  a  great  and  a 
united  nation.  In  England  much  mis- 
conception exists  with  regard  to  the 
state  of  Greece.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
Ionian  islands  can  freely  compare  their 
almost  independent  national  existence 
under  British  protection  with  the 
Government  of  Greece,  and  yet,  except 
in  the  official  class,  there  are  few  who 
would  not  prefer  to  join  the  Hellenic, 
kingdom.  What,  then,  must  be  the 
feelings  of  the  Chiistians  in  Turkey  ? 

Greece  occupies  to  the  latter  the  same 
position  which  Sardinia  holds  with  re- 
spect to  Italian  patriots.  But  the 
Governments  of  Modena  and  [Naples 
were  not  more  oppressive  than  that 
of  the  Ottoman  Porte  is  at  this  pre- 
sent time  with  regard  to  its  Christian 
subjects.  Should  an  insurrectionary 
movement  take  place  in  consequence  of 
massacres  by  the  Turks,  or  should 
treachery,  as  in  Syria,  lead  to  corre- 
sponding atrocities,  the  Greek  Govern- 
ment would  either  be  compelled  to  inter- 
fere by  the  force  of  popular  pressure,  or 
would  be  as  powerless  to  resist  the 
unanimous  efforts  of  the  people  as  Sar- 
dinia has  been  to  prevent  the  departure 
of  volunteers  from  its  ports.  The 
Western  Powers  have  encouraged  the 
progress  of  the  union  party  in  Italy  ;  can 
they  do  less  in  the  East,  where  so  much 
reason  for  such  a  movement  exists  1 

Russia  is  well  aware  of  these  senti- 
ments of  the  Greek  population.  Turkish 
oppression  caused  them  to  seek  the  pro- 
tection of  the  Czar,  but  there  never  was 
any  cordial  agreement  between  them. 
What  could  there  be  in  common  be- 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


459 


tween  the  despotism  of  Russia,  and  the 
love  of  personal  freedom  inherent  in 
the  Greek  race — between  the  form  of 
Government  which  does  not  admit  of 
even  any  expression  of  opinion  contrary 
to  the  views  of  the  administration,  and 
the  passion  for  political  intrigue  and 
popular  discussion  which  often  ap- 
proaches to  the  excess  of  democratic 
license  1  A  nation,  like  an  individual, 
rarely  sacrifices  its  higher  principles  and 
cravings  to  the  mere  desire  of  prolonged 
existence.  A  bond  of  union  afforded  by 
religion  formed  the  connecting  link  be- 
tween the  Greeks  as  persecuted  for  their 
faith,  and  the  Russian  Government  and 
people  as  its  defenders.  Since  the  era 
of  Greek  independence  the  opposite 
tendencies  of  the  two  parties  have  been 
developing  ;  and  this  is  one  reason  why 
Russia  has  of  late  so  perseveringly  sought 
to  attach  to  her  the  Slavonic  population 
of  Bulgaria  and  the  Principalities. 

With  regard  to  the  amelioration  of 
the  social  and  political  condition  of  the 
Christians,  we  consider  that  the  welfare, 
or  the  existence  even,  of  the  Ottoman 
empire  depends  on  the  immediate  intro- 
duction of  some  degree  of  order  into  the 
finances.  A  Financial  Council  has  been 
recently  instituted ;  but  its  functions  are 
only  deliberative,  and  the  ministers 
decide  what  questions  are  to  be  submit- 
ted to  it.  It  is  needless  to  say  more 
respecting  it  than  that  it  is  another  con- 
trivance to  relieve  the  ministers  from 
personal  responsibility.  The  plan  which 
we  would  recommend  is,  that  a  mixed 
commission,  formed  of  the  representa- 
tives of  Great  Britain,  France,  and 
Russia — the  course  lately  adopted  at 
Athens — should  inquire  into  the  whole 
question.  They  might  be  assisted,  as  at 
Athens,  by  competent  officers,  and  the 
Turkish  Government  should  be  com- 
pelled to  carry  out  their  recommenda- 
tions. We  see  no  obstacle  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Turkish  finances  on  a 
sound  basis,  if  confidence  could  be  in- 
spired. The  debt  is  small — not  more 
than  50,000,000^  The  revenue  and 
expenditure  are  nearly  equal,  and 
amount  to  about  10,000,000^.  The 


former,  in  a  few  years,  might  be  doubled, 
by  developing  the  resources  of  the  coun- 
try ;  and  if  the  expenditure  was  wholly 
employed  for  purposes  of  public  utility, 
instead  of  being  wasted  in  personal  ex- 
travagance, great  benefits  would  be  con- 
ferred on  the  community.  The  debt 
might  be  paid  off  in  a  few  years  without 
any  extra  taxation.  Half  the  land  in 
Turkey  is  vakouf,  or  the  property  of  the 
charity  department.  This  is  now  ad- 
ministered by  the  Government.  Each 
tenement  is  held  on  a  tenure  similar  to 
copyhold,  and  the  Government  derives 
a  considerable  revenue  from  fines  and 
escheats.  This  land  should,  with  special 
exceptions,  necessary  for  the  charitable 
purposes  originally  intended — for  which 
a  tenth  of  the  whole  would  abundantly 
suffice — be  converted  into  freehold,  by  a 
money  payment.  The  vakouf  property 
in  and  about  Constantinople  alone  is 
valued  at  upwards  of  a  million  sterling. 
But  the  Porte  knows  that  Christians 
or  foreigners  would  buy  the  land,  and 
therefore  refuses  to  sell  a  single  acre  of 
this  vast  accumulating  property.  We 
think  it  should  be  gradually  sold — half 
the  proceeds  to  be  applied  to  paying  off 
the  debt,  and  the  other  half  to  the  con- 
struction of  roads,  &c. 

If  the  finances  were  placed  on  a  satis- 
factory footing,  the  next  thing  to  be 
done  is  to  appoint  competent  governors. 
Almost  every  Pasha  is  in  debt.  When 
his  creditors  will  no  longer  wait  for  the 
settlement  of  their  claims,  he  tells  them 
that  he  cannot  pay  them  unless  they  get 
him  appointed  governor  of  a  province. 
No  great  length  of  time  elapses  before 
the  Porte  has  recourse  to  the  capitalists, 
who,  in  advancing  money,  ask  the  little 
favour  of  the  nomination  in  question — 
which  is  granted  at  once.  What  can  be 
expected  from  such  a  man  1  The  subor- 
dinate functionaries  in  the  provinces, 
almost  without  exception,  have  been 
domestic  servants  at  Constantinople. 

While  the  finances  are  so  disorganised 
and  provincial  authorities  are  appointed 
in  this  manner,  while  the  most  terrible 
oppression  is  practised  by  the  officers  of 
the  State,  while  corruption  pervades 
every  branch  of  the  public  service,  and 
H  H  2 


460 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


•while  the  crimes  which  we  have  referred 
to  are  committed  with  impunity,  it  is 
worse  than  useless  to  look  for  any  im- 
provement in  the  empire.  But  if  the 
Sultan  could  be  persuaded  to  undertake 
measures  that  would  remedy  this  state 
of  things,  the  rest  would  be  easy,  and 
the  Turkish  empire  might  resume  its 
place  among  the  nations  of  Europe. 

The  Christians  could  then  entertain 
some  good  hope  of  relief.  More  offices, 
especially  important  ones,  should  be  con- 
ferred on  them,  including  several  seats 
in  the  Great  Council  at  Constantinople. 
Many  places,  in  the  islands  chiefly,  are 
wholly  inhabited  by  Christians ;  yet  a 
Turk  is  invariably  sent  as  governor.  He 
is  always  ignorant  of  their  usages,  and 
often  bigoted.  ~Soi  only  have  the  in- 
habitants to  supply  the  means  for  the 
repayment  of  his  debts,  and  to  provide 
biTn  and  the  other  Turkish  authorities 
with  means  for  the  future,  but  they 
have  likewise  to  endure  the  insults  and 
tyranny  in  which  such  men  generally 
indulge.  In  such  localities  a  Christian 
should  be  appointed  Pasha. 

The  special  measures  which  we  recom- 
mend for  the  amelioration  of  the  condi- 
tion of  the  Christians  are  : — 

I.  The   immediate   establishment   of 
a  general  penal   code,   to   be   at   once 
translated  into  the  different  languages 
of    the     empire  ;     and     that    justice 
should  be  strictly  and  impartially  ad- 
ministered. 

II.  The  Medjles  should  be  composed 
of  members  belonging  to  the  different 
religious  sects  in  each  locality,  in  pro- 
portion to  their  number  ;  but,  wherever 
practicable,  the  Medjlis  should  be  abo- 
lished, and  a  responsible  judicial  officer 
appointed  as  judge. 

III.  The    Government    should   take 
the  collection  of  the  revenue  into  its 
own  hands. 

IV.  The  truck-system  should  be  le- 
gally abolished,  and  all  claims  arising 
from  it  declared  to  be  null  and  void. 

V.  The    army  and    police,   and    all 
matters   connected  with   them,   should 
be  conducted   in  accordance   with   the 
rules  observed  by  civilised  nations. 

VI.  All  cases  of  abduction  of  females 


should  be  recognised  as  offences  to  be 
dealt  with  by  the  criminal  law. 

VII.  Christian    evidence   should   be 
admitted  in  every  court,  in  all  cases,  on 
the  same   footing   as   the   evidence   of 
Mahometans. 

VIII.  Documentary  evidence,  in  mat- 
ters where  it  is  reasonably  admissible, 
should  be  properly  received. 

IX.  All  instances  of  religious  intole- 
rance  ought  to  be  severely  punished  ; 
and,   lastly,  the   various   Hatti-Sheriffs 
which  have  been  issued  in  favour  of  the 
Christians  should  be  consolidated   into 
one,  which   should  be   ordered   to   be 
publicly  read  before  each  Medjlis,  in  the 
language   of  the  place,  twice   in   each 
year,  and  copies  of  which  should  be  cir- 
culated in  the  provinces. 

We  will,  in  conclusion,  offer  a  few 
remarks  respecting  the  recent  events  in 
Syria. 

The  mountainous  region  of  the  Leba- 
non is,  or  rather  was,  inhabited  by  two 
different  sets  of  people,  the  Maronites 
and  the  Druses — the  former  a  sort  of 
Roman  Catholics,  the  latter  a  kind  of 
heretical  Mahometans.  From  the  be- 
ginning of  this  century  to  1832,  the 
Lebanon  was  ruled  by  a  Christian 
Prince  of  the  Schahab  family.  In  that 
year  the  forces  of  Mahomet  Ali  con- 
quered Syria.  They  occupied  the  country 
till  they  were  expelled  by  the  English 
in  1839.  Under  the  Egyptian  rule  the 
country  flourished,  the  Christians  were 
protected,  trade  revived,  and  internal 
tranquillity  was  maintained.  But  it  has 
hitherto  been  the  policy  of  England  to 
make  everything  give  way  to  the  para- 
mount question  of  the  maintenance  of  the 
Ottoman  Empire,  and  Syria  was  there- 
fore again  replaced  under  the  Sultan's 
sway.  A  new  arrangement,  in  opposi- 
tion, however,  to  the  wishes  of  the 
Turkish  Government,  which  sought  to 
establish  its  own  direct  authority,  was 
made  with  regard  to  the  Lebanon :  the 
Maronite  and  Druse  districts  Avere  placed 
under  native  chiefs,  who  were  to  have 
the  title  of  Kaimakam,  and  to  be 
directly  subject  to  the  Pasha  of  Beyrout. 

The  establishment  of  two  rival  petty 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


461 


states  was  certainly  not  a  measure  cal- 
culated to  maintain  the  piiblic  peace, 
and  acts  of  violence  continually  occurred 
which  sometimes  led  to  actual  hostilities. 

What  orders  Khoorshed  Pasha  may 
have  had  on  this  subject  we  do  not  pre- 
tend to  say,  but  he  was  undoubtedly 
well  aware  of  the  wishes  of  the  Porte. 
He  succeeded  in  setting  race  against 
race,  and  class  against  class.  The 
Christians  were  encouraged  to  complain 
of  their  chiefs,  while  the  chiefs  were 
finally  upheld  ;  and  thus  thorough  dis- 
union was  spread  among  the  Maronites, 
and  he  and  his  subordinates  afforded 
active  assistance  to  the  Druses. 

The  accounts  of  the  late  events  in 
Syria  which  have  appeared  in  the  news- 
papers and  in  the  papers  laid  before 
Parliament,  fully  prove  the  complicity 
of  the  Turkish  local  authorities  in  all 
that  has  taken  place.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  how  far  the  Government  at  Con- 
stantinople is  implicated  in  these  trans- 
actions. Its  conduct  with  respect  to  the 
following  points  will  in  our  opinion  be 
decisive  whether  its  professions  of  regret 
at  those  atrocities  are  sincere. 

The  result  of  Khoorshed  Pasha's  trial 
will  be  of  the  utmost  importance. 
Ahmed  Pasha,  Osman  Bey,  and  the 
other  ruffians  who  have  disgraced  the 
Turkish  uniform  -have  acted  too  reck- 
lessly to  leave  the  result  of  their  trial 
doubtful.  With  regard  to  the  chief 
culprit  the  case  is  otherwise.  Al- 
though he  is  the  immediate  author  of 
all  the  misery  which  has  been  occa- 
sioned, he  acted  with  too  much  caution 
to  afford  direct  evidence  of  his  guilt. 
Circumstantial  evidence  there  is,  and 
enough  to  warrant  his  conviction ;  but 
a  partial  tribunal,  which  would  not  even 
dare  to  acquit  the  others,  might  venture 
to  make  an  attempt  in  his  favour. 

The  steps  which  will  be  taken  with 
regard  to  the  Christian  women  who  have 
been  carried  off  by  Mahometans  will  be 
the  next  measure  which  will  test  the 
sincerity  of  the  Turkish  Government, 
whose  civil  and  military  authorities  have 
everywhere  distinguished  themselves  by 
taking  a  most  active  part  in  these  out- 
rages. They  must  comprise  the  con- 


dign punishment  of  the  offenders,  the 
release  of  their  victims,  and  a  provision 
for  their  future  maintenance. 

Whole  villages  have  been  compelled 
to  embrace  the  Moslem  belief.  We  have 
stated  above  the  Turkish  policy  with 
regard  to  cases  of  conversion  to  Ma- 
hometanism.  What  course  will  be  pur- 
sued in  Syria  ? 

Besides  the  punishment  of  those 
guilty  of  acts  of  violence  towards  Chris- 
tians, of  the  destruction  of  their  property, 
and  the  desecration  of  churches,  fines 
should  be  levied  on  the  towns  which 
have  been  the  scenes  of  these  outrages, 
and  of  a  nature  to  cause  the  consequences 
attendant  on  the  commission  of  such 
crimes  to  be  remembered ;  and,  lastly, 
the  remaining  Christians  should  be  main- 
tained while  in  their  present  state  of 
destitution,  and  relieved  from  taxation 
for  two  years  at  least. 

After  reparation  for  the  past,  guaran- 
tees for  the  future  are  to  be  considered. 
We  presume  it  will  be  the  duty  of  the 
European  commission  which  has  pro- 
ceeded to  Syria  to  determine  what  these 
shall  be,  as  well  as  to  insist  on  full  and 
satisfactory  redress. 

The  Turkish  plan  for  the  future 
government  of  the  Lebanon  will  be  un- 
doubtedly the  establishment  of  their 
own  direct  rule  in  both  the  Maronite  and 
Druse  districts.  But  France  would  never 
consent  to  this.  French  gold  enabled 
the  Maronites  to  attain  to  that  degree  of 
civilisation  which  the  Druse  outrages 
have  just  brought  to  an  abrupt  and 
sudden  termination.  In  return  for  French 
capital  advanced  to  them  they  sold  their 
silk  produce  at  a  fixed  price  to  the  mer- 
chants of  Marseilles  and  Lyons.  The 
country  was  covered  with  homesteads, 
and  abounded  with  mulberry  trees.  Now 
there  is  scarcely  a  house  belonging  to  a 
Christian  which  has  not  been  burnt ;  al- 
most all  their  trees  have  been  destroyed ; 
and  about  2,000,000£.  French  capital, 
which  had  been  invested  in  this  man- 
ner, has  been  lost.  We  feel  sure  that 
the  Emperor  will  insist  on  steps  being 
taken  so  as  to  effectually  prevent  a  re- 
currence of  Druse  atrocities  and  of 
Turkish  misgovernment.  The  best  course 


.462 


The  Christian  Subjects  of  Turkey. 


rould  be  to  invest  the  Viceroy  of  Egypt 
vrith  the  Pashalic  of  Syria.  If  his  offer 
to  send  at  once  10,000  troops  into  Syria 
had  been  accepted,  not  half  the  mischief 
which  has  happened  would  have  taken 
place..  If  the  Turkish  rule  continues, 
we  do  not  see  a  possibility  of  the  return 
of  the  French  troops  for  some  time.  It 
would  have  been  well  if  an  English 
force  had  also  been  sent  to  Syria ;  but 
our  Government  and  merchants  seem  to 
leave  that  part  of  Turkey  entirely  to 
French  enterprise. 

The  punishment  to  be  inflicted  on  the 
Druses  must  depend  on  the  evidence 
which  Khoorshed  Pasha's  trial  brings 
to  light.  If  it  is  true  that  their  chiefs 
acted  by  his  orders,  the  punishment  of 
these-  chiefs,  especially  Mahomed  Nasur 
and  of  a  few  others,  and  the  imposition 
of  fines,  would  suffice ;  but,  if  the  Druses 
acted  spontaneously,  a  much  sterner 
measure  of  retribution  should  be  in- 
flicted. The  Porte  was  much  annoyed 
at  the  turn  affairs  took  when  the  mas- 
sacres extended  beyond  the  Lebanon. 
The  Government  of  Constantinople  had 
nothing  to  do  with  that,  and  hence  the 
severity  to  Ahmed  Pasha,  who  after  all 
was  not  so  bad  as  others  :  his  misconduct 
was  confined  to  permitting  acts  of  mur- 
der, violence,  and  plunder  ;  he  did  not 
take  an  active  part  in,  or  derive  benefit 
from  them  himself.  The  Porte  would 
have  been  well  pleased  if  the  Maronites 
and  Druses  had  facilitated  their  desire 
for  supremacy  in  both  districts  by 
mutual  destruction,  and  had  no  wish 
that  massacres  should  occur  on  such  a 
scale  as  to  lead  to  European  interven- 
tion. The  events  in  the  Lebanon  might 
have  passed  off  with  comparative  impu- 
nity, owing  to  the  jealousy  of  the  great 
powers  ;  it  was  the  news  from  Damascus 
which  led  to  the  French  expedition. 

It  is  impossible  to  imagine  greater 
dangers  to  threaten  any  state  than  those 
which  now  menace  the  Turkish  empire. 
The  Sultan  is  weak,  extravagant,  and 
most  unpopular.  The  officers  of  the 
Government  are,  with  scarcely  an  excep- 
tion, corrupt;  and  the  Ministers  are 
universally  distrusted.  The  treasury  is 
empty,  and  efforts  have  been  made,  with 


little  success,  to  raise  another  loan. 
The  array  is  unpaid  and  dissatisfied,  and 
all  classes  of  the  community  are  dis- 
contented. The  Mahometans  are  in- 
dignant that  the  Christians  have  been 
so  far  placed,  nominally  even,  on  a 
level  with  themselves,  and  at  the  loss 
of  their  former  prestige.  The  Christians 
are  almost  reduced  to  desperation  by 
their  miserable  condition  and  by  re- 
peated disappointments  with  regard  to 
measures  for  their  relief.  The  papers 
on  the  state  of  Syria  from  1858  to 
1860,  recently  laid  before  Parliament, 
show  the  normal  state  of  the  remoter 
provinces.  In  Bosnia  and  the  .Herze- 
govine,  an  insurrection  may  take  place 
at  any  moment,  and  great  excitement 
everywhere  prevails.  Such  being  the 
state  of  things  the  slightest  incident 
may  produce  the  impending  catastrophe. 
"Where  one  sees  on  every  side  the  cir- 
cumstances which  indicate  and  would 
bring  about  the  downfall  of  even  the 
most  powerful  monarchy,  we  may  ask 
what  ought  to  be  the  policy  of  Great 
Britain. 

Our  first  duty  is,  laying  aside  all  secta- 
rian prejudices,  to  take  measures  for  the 
welfare  of  our  fellow-Christians.  In  the 
last  few  months  thousands  have  suffered 
merely  because  they  were  called  Chris- 
tians, for  Jews  have  in  no  case  been 
molested.  Great  Britain  has  the  power 
to  prevent  a  recurrence  of  these  events, 
and  will  incur  great  responsibility  and 
guilt  if  that  power  is  not  properly  exer- 
cised. If  another  trial  can  be  given  to 
the  Ottoman  Empire  consistently  with 
this  object,  it  should  be  done  ;  if  not, 
its  existence  must  terminate,  or  be  so 
circumscribed  as  to  place  no  obstacles  to 
the  bond  fide  fulfilment  of  this  primary 
duty.  It  is  true  that  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Austria  have  guaranteed  the 
maintenance  of  the  Turkish  Empire ; 
but  that  treaty  is  not  binding  if  the 
Porte  cannot  enforce  the  first  principles 
of  civil  society. 

In  the  reign  of  William  the  Third, 
the  great  question  of  the  day  was  the 
future  of  the  Spanish  monarchy  :  the 
line  of  policy  which  England  then  took 
up  arms  to  maintain  was  directly  at 


The  Ammcrgau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


463 


variance  with  the  wishes  of  the  people 
of  Spain.  The  result,  however,  of  the 
war  of  the  Spanish  succession  was  the 
triumph  of  the  cause  England  had  op- 
posed ;  notwithstanding  which,  none  of 
the  dreadful  consequences  that  had  been 
anticipated  ensued.  This  is  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  dancer  of  acting 


against  the  unanimous  desires  of  a 
nation,  and  should  be  an  additional  in- 
ducement to  us,  in  dealing  with  the 
eastern  question,  to  pay  due  regard  to 
the  wishes  of  the  people,  especially  of 
the  Christian  population,  of  Turkey, 
and  not  to  attach  too  much  importance 
to  remote  and  improbable  contingencies. 


THE  AMMERPAU   MYSTEEY ;    OR   SACRED   DRAMA   OF   1860. 


BY    A   SPECTATOR. 


MOST  travellers  who  have  passed  during 
this  summer  through  the  neighbourhood 
of  Munich,  or  of  Innsbruck,  will  have 
heard  of  the  dramatic  representation  of 
the  history  of  the  Passion  in  the  village 
of  Ober-Ammergau,  which,  according  to 
custom,  occurred  in  this  the  tenth  year 
from  the  time  of  its  last  performance. 
Several  circumstances  have,  in  all  pro- 
bability, attracted  to  it  a  larger  number 
of  our  countrymen  than  has  been  the 
case  on  former  occasions.  Its  last  cele- 
bration, in  1850,  has  been  described  in 
the  clever  English  novel  of  "  Quits." 
Its  fame  was  widely  spread  by  two  Ox- 
ford travellers  who  witnessed  it  in  that 
same  year.  It  forms  the  subject  of  one 
of  the  chapters  in  the  "  Art  Student  of 
Munich."  There  is  reason,  therefore,  to 
believe  that  many  Englishmen  who  will 
have  frequented  the  spot  in  this  year 
will  not  be  unwilling  to  have  briefly  re- 
called to  their  thoughts  some  of  the  im- 
pressions left  on  one  who,  like  themselves, 
was  an  eye-witness  of  this  remarkable 
scene.  These  reflections  shall  be  divided 
into  those  suggested  by  the  history  of 
the  spectacle,  and  those  suggested  by 
the  spectacle  itself.1 

1  Three  printed  works  have  been  used  for 
this  description,  over  and  above  the  personal 
observation  of  the  writer  : — • 

1.  The  Songs  of  the  Chorus,  with  the  gene- 
ral Programme  of  the  Drama,  and  a  short 
Preface. 

2.  "The  Passion  Play  in  Ober-Ammergau." 
By   Ludwig   Clarus.      2d  Edition.      Munich, 
18GO. 

3.  A  similar  shorter    work,   by  Devrient, 
published  at  Leipsic  in  1851. 


I.  Ober-Ammergau  is,  as  its  name 
implies,  the  uppermost  of  two  villages, 
situated  in  the  gau,  or  valley  of  the 
Ammer,  which,  rising  in  the  Bavarian 
highlands,  falls  through  this  valley 
into  the  wide  plains  of  Bavaria,  and 
joins  the  Isar  not  far  from  Munich. 
Two  or  three  peculiarities  distinguish 
it  from  the  other  villages  of  the  same 
region.  Standing  at  the  head  of  its 
own  valley,  and  therefore  secluded  from 
the  thoroughfare  of  Bavaria  on  the  one 
side,  it  is  separated  on  the  other  side 
from  the  great  highroad  to  Innsbruck 
by  the  steep  pass  of  Ettal.  Although 
itself  planted  on  level  ground,  it  is  still 
a  mountain  village,  and  the  one  marked 
feature  of  its  situation  is  a  high  columnar 
rock,  called  "  the  Covel,"  apparently 
the  origin  of  its  ancient  name,  "  Cove- 
liaca."  At  the  head  of  the  pass  is  the 
great  monastery  of  Ettal,  founded  by 
the  Emperor  Lewis  of  Bavaria,  which, 
though  dissolved  at  the  beginning  of 
this  century,  exercised  considerable  in- 
fluence in  giving  to  the  secluded  neigh- 
bouring village  its  peculiarly  religious 
or  ecclesiastical  character.  The  inhabit- 
ants of  the  village  have  been  long  em- 
ployed on  the  carving  and  painting  of 
wooden  ornaments,  toys,  and  sacred 
images,  which,  whilst  it  required  from 
them  a  degree  of  culture  superior  to 
that  of  mere  peasants,  also  gave  them  a 

There  was  a  short  but  complete  account  of 
the  representation  this  year  in  the  Guardian 
Newspaper  of  July  25,  1860,  which  renders 
unnecessary  any  further  consecutive  descrip- 
tion. 


464 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


familiarity  with  sacred  subjects1  beyond 
what  would  be  felt  even  amongst  the 
religious  peasantry  of  this  part  of  Ger- 
many. Half  the  population  are  em- 
ployed in  these  carvings.  Half  the 
houses  are  painted  with  these  subjects. 

In  this  spot,  in  consequence  of  a 
pestilence  which  devastated  the  sur- 
rounding villages,  apparently  in  the 
train  of  a  famine  which  followed  on  the 
ravages  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  a  por- 
tion of  the  inhabitants  made  a  vow,  in 
1633,  that  thenceforth  they  would  repre- 
sent every  tenth  year  the  Passion  of 
Christ  in  a  sacred  play.  Since  that 
time  the  vow  has  been  kept,  with  the 
slight  variation  that  in  1680  the  year 
was  changed,  so  as  to  accord  with  the 
recurring  decennial  periods  of  the  cen- 
tury. 

Its  date  is  important,  as  fixing  its 
rise  beyond  the  limit  of  the  termination 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  with  which,  both  in 
praise  and  blame,  it  is  sometimes  con- 
founded. These  religious  mysteries,  or 
dramatic  representations  of  sacred  sub- 
jects, existed,  to  a  certain  extent,  before 
the  Middle  Ages  began,  as  is  proved  by 
the  tragedy  of  the  Passion  of  Christ,  by 
Gregory  Nazianzen.  They  were  in  full 
force  during  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the 
form  of  "  mysteries,"  or  "  moralities." 
But,  almost  alone  of  the  ancient  repre- 
sentations of  sacred  subjects  to  the  out- 
ward senses,  they  survivd  ethe  Middle 
Ages  and  the  shock  of  the  Reformation. 
This  very  vow  which  gave  birth  to  the 
drama  at  Ammergau  was  made,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Through  the  whole  of 
that  century,  or  even  in  the  next,  such 
spectacles  were  common  in  the  South  of 
Germany.  They  received,  in  Northern 
Germany,  the  sanction  of  Luther.  "Such 
"  spectacles,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said, 
"  often  do  more  good,  and  produce  more 
"impression,  than  sermons."  The 
founder  of  the  Lutheran  Church  in 
Sweden,  Archbishop  Peterson,  encou- 
raged them  by  precept  and  example. 

1  There  is  one  other  locality  in  Tyrol  where 
the  inhabitants  are  similarly  employed— the 
Grodner  Thai  near  Botzen. 


The  Lutheran  Bishops  of  the  Danish 
Church  composed  them  down  to  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  In 
Holland,  a  drama  of  this  kind  is  as- 
cribed to  the  pen  of  no  less  a  person 
than  Grotius.  Even  in  England,  where 
they  were  naturally  checked  by  the 
double  cause,  first,  of  the  vast  outburst 
of  the  secular  drama,  and  then  of  the 
rise  of  Puritanism,  they  Avere  performed 
in  the  time  of  the  first  Stuarts ;  and 
Milton's  first  sketch  of  the  "Paradise 
Lost,"  as  is  well  known,  was  a  sacred 
drama,  of  which  the  opening  speech 
was  Satan's  address  to  the  sun.  There 
was  a  period  when  there  seemed  to  be 
a  greater  likelihood  of  the  retention  of 
sacred  plays  in  England,  than  of  the  re- 
tention of  painted  windows,  or  of  sur- 
plices. Relics  of  these  mysteries,  of 
which  the  sacred  meaning,  however,  has 
long  past  away,  still  linger  in  the  rude 
plays  through  which,  in  some  parts  of 
England,  the  peasants  represent  the 
story  of  St.  George,  the  l)ragon,  and 
Beelzebub. 

The  repugnance,  therefore,  which  has, 
since  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, led  to  the  gradual  suppression  of 
these  dramatic  spectacles,  is  not  to  be 
considered  a  special  offspring  of  Pro- 
testantism, any  more  than  their  origin 
and  continuance  was  a  special  offspring 
of  the  Church  of  Eome.  The  prejudice 
against  them  has  arisen  from  far  more 
general  causes,  which  have  affected,  if 
not  in  equal  degree,  yet  to  a  large 
extent,  the  public  opinion  of  Eoman 
Catholic  as  well  as  of  Protestant 
countries.  If  in  the  Protestant  nations 
the  practice  died  out  more  easily,  in 
Roman  Catholic  nations  it  was  more 
directly  and  severely  denounced  by  the 
hierarchy.  In  1779  a  general  pro- 
hibition was  issued  by  the  Prince-Arch- 
bishop of  Salzburg,  whose  high  autho- 
rity in  the  country  which  was  the  chief 
seat  of  these  performances  gives  to  his 
decree  a  peculiar  weight  and  interest. 
All  the  objections  which  most  naturally 
occur  to  the  most  refined  or  the  most 
Protestant  mind  find  expression  in  the 
Archbishop's  manifesto — "  The  mixture 
"  of  sacred  and  profane  " — "  the  ludi- 


The  Ammergau  Mystery ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


465 


crous  and  disagreeable  effect   of  the 

bad  acting  of  the  more  serious  actors, 

or  of  the  intentional  buffooneries  of 

others  " — "  the  distraction  of  the  minds 

of  the   lower  orders  from   the  more 

edifying    modes    of    instruction    by 

sermons,  Church  services,  and  revivals  " 

— "  the  temptations  to  intemperance 

and  debauchery,  encouraged  by  the 

promiscuous     assemblages    of    large 

numbers  of  persons  " — "  The  scandal 

brought  on  the  Church  and  religion 

by  the  exposure  of  sacred  subjects  to 

'  the   criticism   and    ridicule    of    free- 

'  thinkers."     All  these  and  other  like 

objections  stated  by  the  greatest  prelate 

of  southern  Germany  were  followed  up, 

in  1780 — 1790,  by  vigorous  measures  of 

repression  on  the  part  of  the  Bavarian 

government  and  police. 

Amidst  the  general  extinction  of  all 
other  spectacles  of  this  nature,  that  at 
Ammergau  still  held  its  ground  ;  partly 
from  the  special  nature  of  its  origin, 
more  from  the  high  character  and  cul- 
ture of  its  inhabitants,  arising  out  of 
the  causes  above  specified.  In  1810, 
however,  the  recent  withdrawal  of  its 
natural  protectors  by  the  secularization 
of  the  Abbey  of  Ettal,  and  the  increas- 
ing alienation  of  public  opinion  from 
any  such  religious  exhibitions,  induced 
the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  authorities  at 
Munich  to  condemn  its  further  cele- 
bration, as  "  being  in  its  very  idea  a 
gross  indecorum."  Upon  this  a  depu- 
tation of  peasants  from  Ammergau  went 
to  plead  their  cause  in  the  capital.  The 
ecclesiastics  were  deaf  to  their  entreaties, 
and  bade  them  go  home,  and  learn  the 
history  of  the  Passion  not  from  the 
theatre,  but  from  the  sermons  of  their 
pastor  in  church.  At  this  last  gasp,  the 
Ammergau  spectacle  was  saved  from  the 
destruction  to  which  the  Church  had 
condemned  it  by  the  protection  of  a 
latitudinarian  king.  The  deputies  pro- 
cured an  interview  with  Max-Joseph, 
the  monarch  whose  statue  in  the  square 
at  Munich,  which  bears  his  name,  rests 
on  a  pedestal  characteristically  distin- 
guished by  a  bas-relief  of  the  genius  of 
Humanity  endeavouring  to  reconcile  a 
Roman  Catholic  prelate  and  a  Lutheran 


preacher.  He  received  them  kindly, 
and  through  his  permission  a  special 
exception  was  granted  to  the  Ammergau 
Passion  Play. 

As  a  just  equivalent  for  this  per- 
mission, the  directors  of  the  spectacle 
undertook  to  remove  from  it  all  reason- 
able causes  of  offence  ;  and  it  is  to  this 
compromise  between  the  ancient  religious 
feelings  of  the  locality  and  the  exi- 
gencies of  modern  times  that  we  owe 
the  present  form  of  the  drama.  Three 
persons  are  named  as  having  contributed 
to  this  result.  Weiss,  an  ex-monk  of 
Ettal,  and  afterwards  pastor  of  Ammer- 
gau, rewrote  the  dialogue  and  recast  the 
plot.  To  him  are  ascribed  the  strict 
adhesion  to  the  Biblical  narration,  and 
the  substitution  of  dramatic  human 
passions  and  motives,  especially  in  the 
case  of  Judas,  for  the  ancient  machinery 
of  devils,  and  also  the  substitution  of 
scenes  or  tableaux  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment for  the  allegorical  personages  who 
filled  up  the  vacant  spaces  in  the  older 
representations.  The  music  was  com- 
posed by  Dedler,  the  schoolmaster  and 
organist.  According  to  competent  judges, 
though  for  the  most  part  inadequate  to 
the  grandeur  and  elevation  of  the  sub- 
ject, it  is  much  beyond  what  could  be 
expected  from  so  Immble  a  source.  The 
prologue  was  written  by  an  ecclesiastical 
dignitary  (Dom- Provost),  apparently  of 
the  rank  of  archdeacon  or  rural  dean, 
Alliani,  known  as  the  Roman  Catholic 
translator  of  the  Bible  into  German. 

It  is  evident  from  this  account,  that, 
as  a  relic  of  medieval  antiquity,  the 
Ammergau  representation  has  but  a  very 
slight  interest.  It  is  on  more  general 
grounds — namely,  of  its  being  a  serious, 
and  perhaps  the  only  serious  existing 
attempt  to  reproduce  in  a  dramatic  form 
the  most  sacred  of  all  events — that  the 
spectacle  can  challenge  our  sympathy 
and  attention. 

But  before  proceeding  to  enlarge  on 
these  grounds,  a  few  words  must  be 
devoted  to  the  form  and  conditions  under 
which  the  representation  exists,  and 
which  can  alone  render  its  continuance 
justifiable  or  even  practicable. 

It  is  perhaps  the  strongest  instance 


4G6 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


that  could  be  given  of  the  impossibility 
of  transferring  an  institution  from  its 
own  sphere  to  another.  There  cannot 
be  a  doubt  that  the  same  representation 
in  London,  in  Paris,  in  Munich,  would, 
if  not  blasphemous  in  itself,  lead  to 
such  blasphemous  consequences  as  to 
render  its  suppression  a  matter  of  abso- 
lute necessity.  But,  in  fact,  it  would 
not  be  the  same  representation.  It 
would  be  something  the  very  opposite 
of  that  which  it  is.  All  that  is  most 
peculiar  in  the  present  performance 
would  die  in  any  other  situation.  Its 
whole  merit  and  character  lies  in  the 
circumstance  that  it  is  a  product  of  the 
locality,  nearly  as  peculiar  to  it  as  the 
rocks  and  fruits  of  the  natural  soil. 

The  theatre  almost  tells  its  own  story. 
Although  somewhat  more  akin  to  ordi- 
nary dramatic  representations  than  when 
the  play  was  performed1  actually  in  the 
churchyard,   it  still  retains  all  that  is 
essential  to  divide  it  from  a  common 
stage.     It  is  a  rustic  edifice   of  rude 
planks  and  benches,  erected  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  village.    The  green  meadow 
and  the  circle  of  hills  form  the  back- 
ground— its  illumination  is  the  light  of 
the  sun  poured  down  through  the  long 
hours  of  the  morning  on  the  open  stage. 
Its  effects  of  light  and  shade  are  the 
natural  changes  of  the  advancing   and 
declining  day  and  of  the  passing  clouds. 
The    stage     decorations    and    scenery, 
painted   in   the   coarsest   and  simplest 
style,  as  well  as  the  construction  of  the 
theatre  and  the  dresses  of  the  actors, 
are   the   work   of    the  villagers.     The 
colours  of  the  dresses,  the  attitudes  of 
the  performers,  are  precisely  the  same  as 
the  paintings  and  sculptures  along  the 
waysides,  and  on  the  fronts  of  the  houses 
in    Ammergau    and    the    surrounding 
country.    The  actors  themselves,  amount- 
ing nearly  to  500,  are  all  inhabitants  of 
Ammergau,  and  exhaust  a  large  part  of 
the  population  of  the  village.     How  far 
they  are  led  to  look  upon  their  calling 
as  an  actually  religious  service — in  what 
spirit  they  enter  upon  it — how  far  the 
parts  are  assigned  according  to  the  moral 

1  As  was  the  case  till  1830. 


characters  of  the  performers — are  ques- 
tions to  which,  under  any  circumstances, 
an   answer  would  be  difficult,  and  on 
which,  in  fact,  the  statements  are  some- 
what contradictory.2    The  only  inference 
which  a  stranger  can  draw  is  from  the 
mode  of  performance,  which  will  be  best 
noticed  as  we  proceed.     The  completely 
local  and  unprofessional  nature  of  the 
transaction  is  further  indicated  by  the 
want  of  any  system  for  the  reception  of 
the  influx  of  strangers.     Nothing  can 
exceed  the  friendliness  and  courtesy  of 
the    villagers    in    accommodating    the 
guests   who    seek  shelter  under   their 
roof — but  the  accommodation  itself  is  of 
so  homely  a  kind  as  to  be  sure  of  re- 
pelling the  common  sight-seer  or  plea- 
sure seeker.    For  a  similar  reason,  appa- 
rently, there  is  no  possibility  of  pro- 
curing either  a  printed  text  of  the  per- 
formance, or  any  detailed  pictorial  re- 
presentation of  the  scenes.     Lastly,  the 
spectators  are  equally  unlike   those  of 
whom  an  ordinary  theatrical  aiidience  is 
composed.     Although  a  few  of  the  very 
highest  classes  are  present,  as  for  ex- 
ample, on  one  occasion  this  year,  the 
Queen  and  Crown  Prince  of  Bavaria, 
with  their  attendants —  and  although  the 
covered  seats  are  mostly  occupied  either 
by  travellers  or  persons  above  the  rank 
of  peasants,  yet  more  than  three-fourths 
of  those  present  must  be  of  the  humbler 
grades  of  life,  who  have  come  on  foot, 
or  in  waggons,  from  localities  more  or 
less  remote,  to  witness  what,  it  cannot  be 
doubted,  is  to  them  (whatever  it  may  be 
to  their  superiors  in  station)  an  edifying 
and  instructive  spectacle.     From  them 
is  derived  the  general  atmosphere  of  the 
theatre.     There  is  no  passionate  display 
of  emotion  or  devotion.  But  their  demean- 
our is  throughout    grave    and   respect- 
ful.   Only  in  one  or  two  passages,  where 
the  grotesque  is  evidently  intended  to 
predominate,  a  smile  or  "  sensation "  of 
mirth  may  be  observed  to  run  down  the 
long  lines  of  fixed  and  attentive  counte- 

2  It  is  said  that  great  care  is  employed  in 
the  selection  of  the  best  characters  for  the 
chief  actors ;  that  they  are  consecrated  to  their 
work  with  prayer  ;  and  that  a  watch  over 
their  conduct  is  maintained  by  the  Committee. 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


467 


nances.  Almost  every  one  holds  in  his 
hand  the  brief  summary  of  the  drama, 
•with  the  choral  songs,  which  alone  are 
to  be  purchased  in  print.  Every  part, 
even  the  most  exciting,  is  received  in 
dead  silence ;  the  more  solemn  or 
affecting  parts,  with  a  stillness  that  can 
be  felt 

II.  In  such  an  assemblage  of  spectators 
there  is  a  contagion  of  reverence,  which, 
at  least  on  the  spot,  disarms  the  critical 
or  the  religious  objector.  What  is  not 
profane  to  them,  ought  not  to  be  profane 
to  any  one  who  for  the  moment  casts 
his  lot  with  them.  If  he  has  so  far 
overcome  his  prejudices  or  his  scruples 
as  to  come  at  all,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
surrounding  circumstances  to  revive  or 
to  aggravate  them.  He  may  fairly  hope 
to  receive  from  the  spectacle  before  him 
without  hindrance  whatever  instruction 
it  is  calculated  to  convey  beyond  the 
circle  of  those  for  whom  it  is  specially 
intended. 

(1.)  The  first  impression  which  an 
educated  man  is  likely  to  receive,  is 
one  which,  as  being  most  remote  from 
the  actual  scope  or  intention  of  the 
spectacle,  shall  be  mentioned  at  starting, 
the  more  so  as  it  is  suggested  in  the 
most  forcible  manner  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  performance.  In  that  vast 
audience  of  peasants,  seated  in  the  open 
air,  to  witness  the  dramatic  exhibition 
of  a  sacred  story,  bound  up  with  all 
their  religious  as  well  as  local  and 
national  associations,  and  represented 
according  to  the  traditional  typos  most 
familiar  to  them,  is  the  nearest  approach 
which  can  now  be  seen  to  the  ancient 
Athenian  tragedy.  Precisely  such  a 
union  of  rustic  simplicity  and  high 
wrought  feeling — of  the  religious  with 
the  dramatic  element — of  natural  scenery 
with  simple  art — was  exhibited  in  the 
Dionysian  theatre,  and,  as  far  as  we 
know,  has  been  exhibited  nowhere  since, 
through  all  the  numerous  offspring  of 
dramatic  literature  which  have  risen 
from  that  great  original  source.  The 
very  appearance  of  the  proscenium  is 
analogous.  Instead  of  the  palace  of 
Mycenae,  or  the  city  of  Thebes,  before 


which  the  whole  action  of  a  Greek 
tragedy  was  evolved,  is  the  palace  of 
Pilate  and  of  Annas,  and  the  streets  of 
Jerusalem,  remaining  unchanged  through 
the  successive  scenes.  And  the  spec- 
tacle is  opened  by  a  sight,  which,  if  not 
directly  copied  from  the  one  institution 
peculiar  to  the  Greek  drama,  is  so  nearly 
parallel,  as  to  convey  an  exact  image  of 
what  the  ancient  chorus  must  have  been. 
From  the  opposite  sides  of  the  stage 
advance  two  lines  of  solemn  figures, 
ascending  from  childhood  up  to  full 
grown  age,  who  range  themselves,  eight 
on  each  hand,  at  the  sides  of  a  Cory- 
phaeus, who  in  a  loud  chant  announces 
to  the  audience  the  plan  of  the  scene 
which  is  to  follow,  and  then,  in  con- 
junction with  his  companions,  sings  an 
ode,  precisely  similar  to  those  of  the 
Athenian  chorus,  evoking  the  religious 
feeling  of  the  spectators,  recalling  to 
their  minds  any  corresponding  events  in 
the  ancient  Jewish  history,  and  then 
moralising  on  the  joint  effect  of  the 
whole.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know 
how  far  this  element  of  the  sacred  drama 
is  a  conscious  imitation  of  the  Grecian 
chorus,  or  how  far  it  is  the  spontaneous 
result  of  parallel  circumstances.  That 
it  is,  in  essential  points,  of  indigenous 
growth,  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact 
that  its  part  was  in  earlier  times  per- 
formed by  a  personage  called  "  the 
Genius  of  the  Passion."  And  such  a 
personage  appears  in  other  religious 
solemnities  of  Southern  Germany.  In 
a  quaint  picture  preserved  at  Landek  (in 
the  Tyrol)  of  the  jubilee  of  the  consecra- 
tion of  the  village  church,  the  "Genius," 
draped  in  a  gay  court  costume,  marches 
at  the  head  of  the  procession  of  sacred 
banners  and  images  which  passes  through 
the  town  and  neighbourhood. 

(2.)  In  one  respect,  this  chorus  of 
guardian  spirits  is  less  directly  connected 
with  the  religious  element  of  the  drama, 
than  was  the  case  with  their  Pagan 
prototypes,  who  actually  performed 
their  evolutions  round  the  altar  erected 
in  front  of  the  stage.  But  this  difference 
is  compensated  by  the  uniformly  sus- 
tained elevation  of  their  choral  odes,  and 
the  stately  stillness  with  which  they 


468 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1 860. 


stand  during  their  recital,  and  yet  more 
by  the  curious  device  which  the  framers 
of  the  Ammergau  drama  have  adopted  to 
throw  life  into  these  moralising  allusions 
to  the  ancient  preludes  of  the  Christian 
history.  As  they  touch  on  the  events  of 
the  Old  Testament,  which  appear  to 
bear  more  or  less  nearly  on  the  evan- 
gelical incident  about  to  be  represented, 
they  open  their  ranks — the  curtain  of 
the  theatre  draws  up,  and  discloses  at 
the  back  of  the  stage  the  event  to  which 
the  recitation  refers,  exhibited  in  a 
tableau  vivant,  composed  of  the  peasants, 
who,  down  to  the  smallest  children, 
remain  fixed  in  their  attitudes  till  the 
curtain  falls  over  them,  again  to  rise 
and  disclose  another  of  like  kind,  ar- 
ranged with  incredible  rapidity,  again 
expounded,  and  again  withdrawn  from 
view,  whilst  the  chorus  proceeds  with 
its  task  of  didactic  exposition. 

These  tableaux,  which  thus  form  an 
integral  part  of  the  choral  representation, 
are  repeated  at  the  beginning  of  each 
scene,  and,  though  often  so  remotely  or 
fancifully  connected  with  the  main 
action  of  the  drama  as  rather  to  clog  its 
progress,  yet  powerfully  contribute  to- 
wards the  variety  and  the  continuous 
flow  of  the  performance.  They  are  of 
the  most  unequal  interest.  Some — such 
as  the  rejection  of  Vashti,  corresponding 
to  the  rejection  of  Jerusalem  ;  the  insult 
of  Hanun  to  David's  ambassadors,  corre- 
sponding to  the  mockery  of  Christ ;  and 
the  elevation  of  Joseph  in  Egypt,  con- 
trasted with  the  mock  elevation  of 
Christ  in  the  hall  of  Pilate — are  tame 
both  in  conception  and  execution.  But 
others — such  as  the  appearance  of  Joseph 
to  his  envious  brethren,  Adam  labouring 
in  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  the  gathering 
of  the  manna  in  the  wilderness,  and  the 
carrying  of  the  grapes,  corresponding 
respectively  to  the  councils  of  the  San- 
hedrim, the  Agony,  the  Last  Supper — 
are  at  once  touching  and  graceful,  even 
when  most  childlike  in  ideas.  In  all, 
the  immobility  of  the  figures,  some- 
times consisting  of  hundreds,  is  most 
remarkable.  In  all,  the  choral  odes 
derive  from  them  a  combination  of 
pictorial  and  poetical  representation  as 


singular  as  it  is  effective.  The  fine 
passage  in  which,  after  the  false  kiss  of 
Joab  by  the  rock  of  Gibeon,  the*  rocks 
of  Gibeon,  and  through  them  the  sur- 
rounding rocks  of  the  Ammergau  valley, 
are  invoked  to  avenge  the  treachery  of 
Judas,  is  a  stroke  of  natural  pathos, 
which  whilst  it  exactly  recalls  the  ana- 
logous allusions  in  the  choral  odes  of 
Sophocles,  could  be  reproduced  nowhere 
but  on  a  scene  such  as  that  which 
is  here  described. 

(3.)  After  the  first  prologue,  and  the  first 
tableau  (which  represents  the  expulsion 
from  Paradise),  begins  the  regular  action 
of  the  drama,  which,  alternating  with 
the  choral  odes  and  tableaux,  proceeds 
with  unflagging  continuity  (only  broken 
by  one  hour's  rest  in  the  middle  of  the 
day)  from  eight  in  the  morning  till  four 
in  the  afternoon.  This  untiring  energy 
of  action  is,  no  doubt,  a  powerful  ele- 
ment in  sustaining  the  interest,  and 
reproducing  the  animation  of  the 
actual  story.  The  first  part  begins 
with  the  Triumphal  entry,  and  closes 
with  the  capture  in  the  garden  of 
Gethsemane. 

(T)  The  first  scene  introduces  us  at  once 
to  the  Chief  Figure  in  the  sacred  story. 
The  wide  stage,  with  the  passages  ap- 
proaching it,  is  suddenly  filled  with  the 
streaming  multitude  of  the  Triumphal 
entry,  of  all  ages,  chiefly  masses  of  chil- 
dren, mingled  together  in  gay  costume, 
throwing  down  their  garments  in  the 
way,  and  answering,  with  jubilant  shouts, 
to  a  spirited  ode,  which,  in  this  instance 
rising  above  the  ordinary  music  of  the 
rest  of  the  lyrical  pieces,  is  sung  by  the 
exultant  chorus.1 

Hail  to  Thee !  hail  !  0  David's  Son  ! 
Hail  to  Thee  !  hail  !  thy  Father's  throne 

la  thine  award. 

In  God's  great  name  Thou  comest  nigh, 
All  Israel  streams  with  welcome  cry 

To  hail  its  Lord. 

Hosanna  !   He  who  dwells  in  heaven 
Send  from  above  all  help  to  Thee  ! 

Hosanna  !    He  who  sits  on  high 
Preserve  Thee  everlastingly ! 

1  This  and  the  following  literal  translations 
are  given  as  specimens  of  the  lyrical  parts  of 
this  rustic  drama. 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


469 


Blessed  be  the  life  that  springs  anew 
In  David's  house,  in  David's  race ; 

To  glorious  David's  glorious  Heir, 

Al!  nations,  bring  your  songs  of  praise ! 

Hosanna  !  to  our  King's  own,  Son, 

Sound  through  the  heavens  far  and  wide ! 

Hosanna  !  on  his  Father's  throne 
May  He  in  majesty  abide  ! 

Hail  to  Thee  !  hail ! 

It  is  amidst  this  crowded  overflow  of 
human  faces,  that  there  appears  seated 
on  the  ass,  the  majestic  Figure,  known 
at  once  by  the  traditional  costume  of 
purple  robe  and  crimson  mantle,  but 
still  more  by  the  resemblance  to  the 
traditional  countenance  of  the  Re- 
deemer. Of  this  appearance,  a  gifted 
eye-witness  in  1850  wrote  that,  from 
that  moment,  in  hsr  imagination,  "  This 
"  living  representation  would  take  the 
"  place  of  all  the  pictures  and  statues  she 
"  had  ever  seen,  and  would  remain  indel- 
"  ibly  impressed  on  her  mind  for  ever." 
In  every  such  representation,  of  what- 
ever kind,  the  Ideal  Person  will  still,  to 
every  religious  and  every  cultivated 
mind,  remain  unapproached,  and  there- 
fore unprofaned.  But  each  will,  in 
proportion  to  its  excellence,  exhibit 
some  aspect  of  the  Divine  Original,  in 
a  form  more  impressive  and  more 
intelligible  than  has  been  obtained  by 
any  previous  study  or  reading.  That 
which,  in  the  character  now  brought 
forward,  most  strikes  the  spectator  as 
with  a  neAV  sense  of  the  truth  of  the 
Gospel  narrative,  is  the  dignity  and 
grace  with  which  the  Christ  moves,  as 
it  were,  above  the  multitude  and  above 
the  action  of  the  drama,  although  bear- 
ing the  chief  part  in  it.  It  is  felt  that 
from  this  one  character  is  derived  the 
true  tragical  interest  attaching  to  every 
other  person  and  incident  in  all  the 
subsequent  scenes.  On  the  common, 
mass  of  the  audience  the  same  impres- 
sion appears  in  a  less  conscious,  but  a 
still  more  certain,  form,  through  the 
increased  stillness  which  pervades  the 
theatre  whenever  this  Figure  appears. 
But  this  pre-eminence  is  maintained,  not 
by  any  acting,  rather  by  the  absence  of 
acting.  The  clear  distinctness  of  the 
words  which  are  uttered  makes  them 


heard  and  felt,  without  the  slightest 
approach  to  declamation.  Every  ges- 
ture implies  a  purpose,  and  yet  there  is 
not  a  shade  of  affectation.  The  dis- 
ciples, the  priests,  the  money-changers, 
the  children,  press  around,  and  yet  the 
figure  of  the  Christ  remains  distinct 
from  them  all.  Few  have  ever  read 
the  sacred  narrative  without  a  sense  of 
the  difficulty  of  conceiving  how  He,  who 
is  there  described,  could  have  passed 
through  the  world,  as  in  it,  and  yet  not 
of  it.  It  is  one  advantage  of  the 
Ammergau  representation  that  it  gives 
us,  at  least,  a  glimpse  of  the  possibility 
of  such  a  passage  through,  yet  above, 
the  world. 

To  dwell  on  all  the  details  in  which 
this  idea  is  carried  out  would  be  super- 
fluous to  those  who  have  seen  the  spec- 
tacle, and  unintelligible  to  those  who 
have  not.  It  is  enough  here  to  say, 
that  amidst  all  the  changing  scenes 
which  follow,  and  of  which  some  notice 
will  be  taken  as  we  proceed,  the  iden- 
tity of  character  in  the  first  appearance 
is  never  lost. 

(2)  As  the  Christ  is  the  character  in 
the  drama,  where  the  effect  is  sustained 
by  the  absence  of  all  art  and  the  inde- 
pendence of  all  the  agitations  of  human 
passion,  so  the  next  most  important 
character  is  that  on  which  most  effort 
has  been  bestowed,  and  in  which  the 
play  of  imagination  and  dramatic  in- 
vention has  been  allowed  the  freest 
scope.  It  would  be  a  curious  inquiry 
to  ascertain  how  far  the  conception  of 
Judas  Iscariot  is  traditional,  or  how  far 
derived  from  the  fancy  of  the  last  re- 
visers of  the  drama.  It  is  a  certain  and 
an  instructive  fact,  that  in  the  moderni- 
sation of  the  spectacle  this  internal 
development  of  motives  has  taken  the 
place  of  the  demons  which  the  earlier 
machinery  reproduced  in  outward  shape 
as  Judas' s  companions.  This  accommo- 
dation to  what  may  have  been  thought 
modern  prejudice  is  in  every  sense  as 
it  should  be  :  it  is  not  only  a  more 
refined,  but  a  more  scriptural  represen- 
tation of  the  history  of  the  Traitor ;  and 
the  coincidence  of  the  two,  as  thus 
brought  out  in  the  drama,  is  well  worthy 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  •  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


of  the  attention  of  the  theological  stu- 
dent. But  the  particular  mode  in  which 
the  motives  of  Judas  are  conceived  is 
peculiar,  and  must  be  stated  at  length. 

He  is  conspicuous  amongst  the  Apos- 
tles, not  only  from  the  well-known  red 
beard  and  yellow  robe  (as  of  envy),  with 
which  he  always  appears,  but  from  his 
prominent  position,  always  pressing  for- 
ward, even  beyond  Peter  himself,  the 
restless,  moving,  active,  bxisy  personage 
of  the  whole  group.  The  scene  of  the 
breaking  of  the  box  of  precious  oint- 
ment is  worked  to  the  utmost.  The 
silent  profusion  of  the  Magdalene  and 
the  eager  economy  of  Judas  are  con- 
trasted from  the  two  sides  of  the  stage 
in  startling  opposition.  From  this  mo- 
ment a  monomania,  a  fixed  idea  of  re- 
placing the  300  pence,  takes  possession 
of  his  mind.  He  shakes  his  empty 
money-bag.  He  recurs  to  the  subject 
with  a  pertinacity  bordering,  and  appa- 
rently meant  to  border,  on  the  ludicrous. 
The  thirty  pieces  of  silver  are  repre- 
sented as  an  equivalent  for  the  loss. 
He  is  filled  with  nervous  apprehensions 
as  to  the  destitution  of  himself  and  his 
companions,  if  their  Master  should  im- 
peril Himself  at  Jerusalem.  In  this 
state  he  is  left  alone  to  his  own  thoughts, 
and,  in  a  scene  perhaps  too  elaborately 
drawn  out,  he  rushes  to  and  fro  between 
the  distractions  of  his  worse  and  better 
nature ;  until  the  balance  is  turned  by 
the  deputation  from  the  chief  priests 
suddenly  entering,  playing  on  his  delu- 
sion, getting  round  him,  and  entrapping 
him  into  the  fatal  compact.  The  ab- 
sorbing passion  is  brought  out  forcibly 
once  more,  when,  with  a  greediness  of 
the  actual  com,  truly  Oriental,  and  (if 
not  suggested  by  some  travelled  or 
learned  prompter)  wonderfully  resem- 
bling the  Oriental  reality,  he  counts 
over  the  silver  pieces  in  the  presence 
of  the  high  priests.  But  the  compunc- 
tions of  conscience  are  never  wholly 
repressed.  The  deadness  of  the  grasp 
with  which  he  takes  the  hands  of  his 
accomplices  in  the  compact  is  very  ex- 
pressive. The  shuffling  agitation  during 
the  Last  Supper;  the  outbreak  of  re- 
morse before  the  Sanhedrim ;  the  frenzy 


into  which  he  is  goaded  by  their  calm 
indifference  ;  the  fury  with  which  he 
offers  back  the  money  to  each,  and  with 
which  he  finally  flings  the  bag  behind 
him  and  rushes  out,  all  have  the  effect 
of  exhibiting  in  strong  relief  the  return 
of  a  better  mind  recovering  from  a 
dreadful  illusion.  "With  this  is  mingled 
something  of  the  ludicrousness  as  well 
as  of  the  horror  of  insanity ;  and  when, 
at  the  last,  he  clambers  up  the  fatal 
tree,  tearing  off  the  branches  as  he 
reaches  the  top,  and  the  curtain  falls1 
to  veil  his  end,  it  is  probably  as  much 
from  this  admixture  of  the  grotesque, 
as  from  a  sense  that  the  villain  has  got 
his  due,  that  the  commoner  part  of  the 
audience  is  roused  for  once  to  an  incon- 
gruous expression  of  derision.  In  one 
instance,  at  least,  of  a  more  thoughtful 
German  Catholic  of  the  middle  classes, 
the  representation  of  the  strength  of 
Judas's  repentance  left  the  impression 
that  "  we  have  no  right  to  say  that 
Judas  was  lost." 

No  other  personage  is  so  lifted  above 
the  incidents  of  the  drama  as  to 
claim  a  separate  notice.  But  if  none 
of  them  rise  above  the  general  action, 
none  of  them  fall  below  it,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  female  characters.  In 
former  times,  as  in  the  ancient  classical 
drama,  these  characters  were  all  sus- 
tained by  men  ;  and  the  failure  of  the 
present  practice  well  illustrates  the 
reasonableness,  almost  the  necessity, 
of  the  ancient  usage.  Not  to  speak  of 
the  inferiority  of  the  conception  of  their 
parts  —  perhaps  in  themselves  more 
difficult — the  inadequacy  of  any  ordi- 
nary female  voice  to  fill  the  immense 
theatre  in  the  open  air  is  painfully  felt ; 
and  the  fulness  and  distinctness  of  the 
speeches  of  the  men  brings  out  forcibly 
the  contrast  of  the  thin,  shrill  voices  of 

1  It  is  a  curious  Met,  and  confirms  the  re- 
marks made  above,  that  the  circumstances  of 
Judas's  death  have  been,  and  are  gradually 
being,  softened  down  in  the  representation. 
First,  the  devils  who  carried  him  off  were 
dropped ;  then  the  swine  devouring  his  en- 
trails ;  next,  in  1850,  his  death  was  indicated 
only  by  a  piercing  shriek  as  the  curtain  fell ; 
now,  in  1860,  the  curtain  falls,  and  the  shriek 
is  not  heard. 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


471 


the  women  who  have  to  act  the  parts, 
happily  less  prominent  in  the  drama 
than  might  have  been  expected,  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  the  Magdalene,  and  Martha. 
Possibly,  the  peculiar  accent  of  German 
women,  especially  in  the  lower  classes, 
may  conduce  to  this  result  on  English 
ears,  beyond  what  would  be  the  case 
with  their  own  countrymen. 

(3)  In  accordance  with  this  prominence 
of  the   character  of    Judas,    the    one 
event  round  which  the  whole  of  this 
portion    of   the   drama    revolves,   per- 
haps out  of  proportion  to  its  place  in 
the   sacred  narrative,  is   the  Betrayal. 
The   first  preparation  for  it  occurs  in 
the  first  scene  of  the  entry  into  the 
Temple,  through    the   intervention    of 
an  element,  the  importance   of   which 
must  be   ascribed  to  the  fancy  of  the 
framers  of  the  drama.     It  would  almost 
seem,    as   if  with  a  view   of  bringing 
home  the  moral  of  the  sacred  history  to 
the  minds  of  the  humbler  classes,  for 
whom  the  representation  is  chiefly  de- 
signed,  an   intentional    emphasis    had 
been  given  to  the  incident  of  turning 
the  buyers  and  sellers  out  of  the  Tem- 
ple.    The  incident  itself  is  brought  out 
with  much  force  in  the  loud  and  solemn 
utterance  of  the  words,  "  My  house  is 
called  a  house  of  prayer " — the  sudden 
overturning  of  the  table  of  the  money- 
changers— the  live   pigeons  flying  off 
into  the  open  air  above  the  heads  of  the 
spectators — the  wild  confusion  and  dis-' 
persion   of  the   traffickers   themselves. 
Immediately  afterwards  are  heard  their 
cries    of    "Revenge,    revenge!"     and 
throughout  the  subsequent  scenes  they 
are  made  the  malignant  and  ingenious 
agents    between    the    Sanhedrim    and 
Judas. 

(4)  A  large   proportion   of  this  part 
of  the  drama  is  occupied  by  the  debates 
in  the  Sanhedrim.     In  these  debates,  a 
larger  scope  for  the  dialogue  is  given 
than  in  any  other  part ;  and  from  this 
circumstance,  as  well  as  from  the  diffi- 
culty of  following  in  a  foreign  tongue 
arguments  not  founded  on  familiar  facts, 
or   couched  in  familiar  language,   the 
length    to    which    these    debates    are 
carried  is  perhaps  the  only  part  of  the 


spectacle  which  produces  an  impression 
of  wearisomeness.  But  for  the  common 
spectators  this  interlude,  as  it  may  be 
called,  of  ordinary  life  and  speech  may 
be  a  seasonable  relief ;  and  to  the  stray 
visitor  there  are  two  or  three  points  ex- 
hibited in  these  scenes  too  remarkable 
to  escape  notice.  He  cannot  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  prominence  (not  indeed 
beyond  the  strict  warrant  of  Scripture) 
given  to  the  fact  that  the  catastrophe  of 
the  Passion  was  brought  about  by  the 
machinations  of  the  priesthood ;  that 
Christ  was  the  victim  of  the  passions, 
not  of  the  people,  or  of  the  rulers,  but 
of  the  hierarchy.  The  strange  costume, 
as  well  as  the  vehement  and  senseless 
reiterations  of  the  arguments  and  watch- 
words of  the  leaders,  present  (unin- 
tentionally, it  may  be,  but  if  so,  the 
more  impressively),  the  appearance  of  a 
hideous  caricature  of  a  great  ecclesi- 
astical assembly.  The  huge  niitres 
growing  out  into  horns  on  the  heads 
of  the  high  priests  present  a  gro- 
tesque compound  of  devils  and  bishops. 
The  incessant  writing  and  bustling  agi- 
tation of  the  scribes  are  like  satires 
on  high  dignitaries  immersed  in  offi- 
cial business  and  intrigue.  What  may 
be  the  parts  assigned  to  the  lesser 
personages  in  the  Sanhedrim  it  would 
be  impossible  to  describe  without  the 
opportunity  of  more  closely  following 
the  thread  of  the  dialogue.  But  Annas 
and  Caiaphas  stand  out  distinct.  Cai- 
aphas  is  the  younger,  more  impetuous, 
more  active  conspirator.  Annas,  clothed 
in  white,  and  with  a  long  white  beard, 
represents  the  ancient,  venerable  de- 
pository of  the  Jewish  traditions.  He 
"  rejoices  that  he  has  lived  to  see  this 
"  day,  when  the  enemy  of  the  customs 
"  of  his  fathers  will  be  cut  off.  He 
"  feels  himself  new-born."  He  gives  to 
the  traitor  the  assurance  "  that  the 
"  name  of  Judas  shall  be  famous  for 
"  ever  in  the  annals  of  his  country." 
The  whole  scene  suggests,  in  its  own 
strange  fashion,  that  of  the  Council  in 
Milton's  Pandemonium.  But,  as  by  the 
great  poet  in  the  fallen  archangels,  so  in 
the  apostate  priests,  there  is  kept  up  by 
the  simple  dramatist  and  performers  of 


472 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


Ammergau,  something  of  the  dignity 
and  grandeur  of  a  former  and  higher 
state. 

(5)  The  scenes  which  represent  the 
Feast  in  the  house  of  Simon,  and  the 
Journey  from  Bethany  to  Jerusalem,  re- 
quire few  remarks.     The  solemn,  and, 
in  a  manner,   regal  appearance   of  the 
Christ,  surrounded  and  fenced  off  by  the 
constant  circle  of  the  Twelve^  each  with 
his  staff  in  his  hand,  recalls  what  doubt- 
less was  one  main  peculiarity  of  the 
journeys  recorded  in  the  Gospel   nar- 
rative.    The   parting   from   the  Virgin 
mother  and  the  friends  of  Bethany  on 
the  way  to  Jerusalem,  is  touching  and 
simple.     It  forms  one  of  the  few  ex- 
ceptions  to  the   failure   of  the  female 
parts  before  noticed,  and  it  is  accom- 
panied by  one  of  the  most  affecting  of 
the  choral  odes,  on  the  search  of  the 
beloved  one  in  the  Canticles. 

Where  is  my  love  departed, 

The  fairest  of  the  fair  ? 
Mine  eyes  gush  out  with  burning  tears 

Of  love,  and  grief,  and  care. 

Ah  !  come  again  !  ah  !   come  again  ! 

To  this  deserted  breast. 
Beloved  one  !  oh  !  why  tarriest  thou 

Upon  my  heart  to  rest  ? 

By  every  path,  on  every  way, 

Mine  eyes  are  strained  to  greet  thee ; 

And  with  the  earliest  break  of  day 
My  heart  leaps  forth  to  meet  thee  ! 

"  Beloved  one  !  ah !  what  woe  is  me  ! 

My  heart  how  rent  with  pain  ! " — 
"  0  friend  beloved — oh,  comfort  thee, 

Thy  friend  will  come  again. 

"  Soon  to  thy  side  he  comes  once  more 
For  whom  thy  soul  awhile  must  yearn ; 

No  cloud  shall  ever  shadow  more 
The  joy  of  that  return." 

(6)  The  scene  of  the  Last  Supper  is 
the  one  of  which  the  effect  on  the  audience 
is  the  most  perceptible,  and  of  which 
every  detail  most  firmly  rivets  itself  in 
the  memory.     From  the  first  appearance 
of  the  band  of  sacred  guests  at  the  table 
in  the  upper  chamber,  till  its  dispersion 
after  the  joint  recitation  of  a  prayer  or 
hymn,  the  whole  multitude  of  spectators 
is  hushed  into  breathless  silence,  deepen- 
ing  into    a   still    profounder   stillness, 
at  the  moment  when  the  sacred  words, 


so  solemn  in  the  ears  of  any  Christian 
audience,  introduce  the  institution  of 
the  sacrament.  There  is  probably  no 
point  in  the  spectacle  where  a  religious 
mind  would  naturally  be  more  shocked 
than  by  this  imitation  of  the  holiest  of 
Christian  ordinances.  There  is  rone, 
however,  where  this  feeling  is  more 
immediately  relieved,  both  by  the 
mamier  of  the  imitation,  and  by  the 
demeanour  of  the  spectators.  To  a 
critical  eye,  two  or  three  points  of  spe- 
cial instruction  emerge  from  this  strange 
mixture  of  dramatic  and  devotional  in- 
terest. Although  the  aspect  of  the 
actual  historical  event  is  in  this,  as  in  all 
pictorial  representations,  marred  by  the 
substitution  of  the  modern  attitude  of 
sitting  for  the  ancient  one  of  reclining,  yet 
the  scene  reproduces,  with  a  force  beyond 
many  doctrinal  expositions,  the  social 
character  of  the  occasion  out  of  which 
the  Christian  sacrament  arose.  Nor  is 
there  anything  (or  hardly  anything)  in 
the  form  in  which  that  first  origin  of  the 
sacrament  is  represented,  which  attaches 
itself  peculiarly  to  the  special  tenets  of 
the  particular  Church,  under  whose 
auspices  this  drama  has  been  preserved. 
The  attitude  of  the  Apostles  in  receiving, 
and  of  their  Master  in  giving,  the  bread 
and  wine  of  the  supper,  far  more  nearly 
resembles  that  of  a  Presbyterian  than 
of  a  Roman  Catholic  ritual.  The  cup  is 
studiously  given,  as  well  as  the  bread, 
to  all  who  are  present.  The  dignity  and 
simplicity  of  the  Chief  Figure  suffices  to 
rai.-,3  the  whole  scene  to  its  proper 
pitch  of  solemnity.  One  only  slight 
interruption  to  the  complete  gravity 
of  the  transaction,  is  the  sudden  flight 
of  Judas  from  the  supper,  which,  like 
most  of  the  details  of  his  character, 
blends,  as  has  been  already  observed, 
something  of  the  grotesque  even  with 
the  most  sublime  and  tragical  parts  of 
the  story. 

(7)  The  wild  and  touching  prelude  of 
the  chorus  to  the  scene  of  the  capture 
in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane  has  been 
already  noticed,  and  is,  with  its  living 
accompaniments,  amongst  the  most  ex- 
pressive parts  of  that  class  of  represen- 
tation in  the  spectacle.  The  scene  itself 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


473 


is,  and,  perhaps,  must  of  necessity  be, 
unequal  to  that  which  it  endeavours  to 
reproduce.  The  slow  and  painful  ascent 
of  the  rocky  side  of  the  garden,  the 
threefold  departure,  and  the  threefold 
return,  is  a  faithful  attempt  to  recall 
the  heaviness  and  the  sorrow  of  that 
hour.  But  of  the  remainder  of  the 
scene  it  is  difficult  not  to  feel  that  it 
would  have  been  better  if  all  had  been 
left,  as  some  parts  are  left,  merely  to  the 
imagination  of  the  spectators,  however 
welcome  to  a  rude  taste  may  be  the 
literal  exhibition  of  what  is  in  fact  in- 
capable of  being  exhibited.  Not  so, 
however,  the  sudden  change  of  the  still- 
ness of  the  scene  by  the  entrance  of  the 
armed  troop.  This,  with  the  gradual 
closing  in  of  the  soldiers  on  their  Victim, 
and  the  melting  away  of  the  disciples  on 
the  right  hand  and  on  the  left,  leaving 
their  Master  alone  (for  the  first  time 
from  the  beginning  of  the  action)  in  the 
centre  of  armed  strangers,  makes  the 
fitting,  as  it  is  the  truly  historical, 
climax  to  this  first  act  of  the  drama. 

(4.)  As  the  first  part  of  the  spectacle 
converges  to  the  Betrayal,  so  the  second 
part,  with  more  unquestionable  pro- 
priety, converges  to  the  Crucifixion. 
The  whole  action  of  the  representation 
changes  with  the  change  of  the  position 
of  the  Chief  Character ;  and,  in  this 
respect,  it  may  be  said  that  its  dramatic 
interest  is  lessened.  That  Character, 
although  still  the  centre  of  the  move- 
ment, is  now  entirely  passive.  The 
majesty  is  sustained,  even  more  remark- 
ably than  in  the  first  part,  but  it  is 
almost  exclusively  the  majesty  of  en- 
durance, and  probably  the  fact  of  the 
gospel  narrative  which  the  repre- 
sentation here  most  deeply  impresses 
on  the  spectator,  is  that  of  the  long, 
immovable,  almost  unbroken  silence, 
which,  with  very  few  exceptions,  is  the 
only  expression,  if  one  may  use  the 
word,  of  the  Sufferer,  in  all  the  various 
scenes  through  which  He  is  hurried, 
driven,  insulted,  tortured.  This  immo- 
bility of  the  Central  Figure,  added  to  the 
circumstance  that  the  groups  which  fol- 
low are  often  directly  copies  either  of  well- 
known  pictures,  or  of  the  sculptured 
No.  12. — VOL.  ii. 


representations  on  Calvaries,  gives  to  this 
second  part  much  more  the  appearance 
of  a  succession  of  scenes  in  painting  or 
sculpture  than  of  actual  life.  For  this 
reason,  there  are  fewer  points  than  in 
the  former  part  requiring  remark.  Such 
as  there  are  shall  be  briefly  noticed. 

(a)  The  long  and  constant  bandy  ings 
of  the  trial  to  and  fro  from  court  to 
court  are  powerfully  delineated.  How 
much  the  brief  narrative  of  the  gospel 
gains  by  some  such  development  of  its 
meaning  may  be  best  understood  by 
reading  the  admirable  attempt  at  such  a 
literal  development  in  Dean  Milman's 
"  History  of  Christianity."  What  that 
distinguished  poet  and  scholar  has 
achieved  by  the  art  of  his  pen,  the 
drama  of  Ammergau  has,  in  its  rude 
way,  attempted  in  its  living  actions  and 
figures. 

(2)  A  new  class  of  actors  is  here  in- 
troduced, in  whose  part  it  is  more  diffi- 
cult than  elsewhere  to  imagine  the  feasi- 
bility of  maintaining  a  proper  reverence 
of  sentiment,  namely,  -the  soldiers  and 
executioners.      Nothing  can   be   more 
natural  than  their  roughness  and  insen- 
sibility ;  but  of  all  the  scenes  of  the 
transaction,  these  are  the  most  painful 
to   witness.      The  chief  possibility  of 
reconciling  them  to  the  devotional  feel- 
ings of  the  audience  and  the  actors  must 
be  found  in  the  pictorial  character  of 
these  latter  scenes,  which  has  just  been 
noticed.     To  the  critical  observer  they 
have  the  merit  of  exhibiting  in  the  most 
graphic  forms  the  way  in  which  the  hard 
realities  and  brutalities  of  life  must  on 
this  occasion,  as  always,  have  come  into 
the  most  abrupt  and  direct  contact  with 
the  holiest  and    tenderest  of  objects,, 
which,  by  a  stretch  of  imagination,  we 
usually   contrive   to  keep    apart    fronx 
them. 

(3)  Of  these  scenes  one  of  the  most, 
effective,  and  (from  the  absence  of  the 
Christ  during  the  chief  part)  the  least 
offensive,  is  that  in  the  hall  of  Caiaphas, 
where  the  soldiers  and  the  maids  of  the 
palace  light   the  fire  and   interchange 
rude  jests  with  each  other  about  the 
recent  events  ;   whilst  Peter  and  John 
are  seen  stealing  in  and  mixing  them- 

I  I 


474 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


selves  with,  the  crowd.  Then  comes  the 
gradual  ahsorption  of  Peter  into  the 
conversation  round  the  fire ;  the  manner 
in  which  he  is  entangled  by  his  own 
forward  obtrusiveness ;  the  quick  suc- 
cession of  questions,  rejoinders,  retorts, 
and  denials  j  the  sudden  pang  as  his 
Master  enters,  and  turns  directly  upon 
him  a  fixed  silent  look  before  passing 
on  with  the  armed  band,  leaving  Peter 
alone  on  the  stage.  The  rapid  passage 
across  the  stage  of  the  two  successive 
solitary  penitents — Peter  and  Judas — 
is  full  of  instruction  even  to  those  who 
have  heard  the  contrast  drawn  out  in 
hundreds  of  sermons. 

(4)  A  character  now  appears,  which, 
as  it  is  conceived  by  the  Ammergau 
dramatists,  is,  in  dignity  and  gravity, 
though  in  no  other  particular,  second 
only  to  that  of  the  Christ.  This  is 
Pilate.  There  are  many  of  the  more 
subtle  traits  of  the  Governor's  character, 
as  they  appear  in  the  Gospel  narrative, 
— his  perplexity,  his  anxiety,  his  scep- 
ticism, his  superstition,  —  which  the 
spectacle  has  failed  to  reproduce.  The 
dialogue  is  less  impressive  than  it  should 
be  ;  the  question,  "  What  is  truth  1"  is 
cut  short  by  the  entrance  of  a  messenger 
who  calls  him  out,  as  if  by  an  external 
cause  to  account  for  his  discontinuance 
of  the  conversation.  But  it  is  remark- 
able to  observe  the  true  historical  tact 
of  nature  with,  which  these  half-educated 
peasants  have  caught  the  grandeur  of 
the  Roman  magistrate.  Every  movement 
of  himself,  and  even  of  his  attendants, 
is  intended  to  produce  the  impression 
of  the  superiority  of  the  Eoman  justice 
and  the  Koman  manners,  to  the  savage, 
quibbling,  vulgar  clamours  of  the  Jewish 
priests  and  people.  His  noble  figure,  as 
he  appears  on  the  balcony  of  his  house,- 
above  the  mob— his  gentle  address— 
the  standard  of  the  Roman  empire  be- 
hind him — the  formal  reading  of  the 
sentence— the  solemn  breaking  asunder 
of  the  staff  to  show  that  the  sentence 
has  been  delivered— are  bold,  though 
not  too  bold,  delineations  of  the  better 
side  of  the  judge  and  of  the  law,  under 
which  the  catastrophe  of  the  sacred 
history  was  accomplished. 


Herod,  on  the  other  hand,  is  depicted 
as  a  mere  Oriental  king,  furious  at  the 
silence  of  his  prisoner,  and  at  his  own 
inability  to  make  anything  out  of  the 
case. 

(5)  The  chief  priests  still  continue  to 
take  the  leading  part  in  the  transaction, 
which  they  have  sustained  through  its 
earlier  stages.  One  element  in  their 
conduct  is  brought  out  with  considerable 
truth  of  nature  as  well  as  of  history; 
namely,  the  spirit  and  zeal  with  which, 
as  fanatical  ringleaders,  they  conspire, 
and  then  disperse  in  various  directions 
to  rouse  the  Jewish  populace,  which  is 
represented  as  then,  and  by  these  means, 
turned  for  the  first  time  into  the  course 
of  furious  hostility  which  demanded  the 
Crucifixion. 

In  this  part  of  the  story  immense 
stress  is  laid  on  the  preference  of  Barab- 
bas. In  the  choral  ode  which  precedes 
the  scene  of  the  choice  between  the  two 
prisoners,  there  is  a  striking  combina- 
tion of  the  choral  and  dramatic  elements 
of  the  representation.  The  cries  of  the 
populace  for  Barabbas  are  heard  behind 
the  scenes,  to  which  the  Chorus  replies 
with  a  mixture  of  irony  and  remon- 
strance. 

People.       Let  Barabbas  be 

from  his  bonds  set  free. 
Chorus.      Nay,  let  JESUS  be 

From  his  bonds  set  free. 
Wildly  sounds  the  murderers'  cry  ! 
People.  Crucify  Him  !  crucify  ! 
Chorus.  Behold  the  man  !  behold  the  man  ! 

Oh  !  say  what  evil  hath  He  done  ? 
People.  If  thou  settest  this  man  free 

Caesar's  friend  thou  canst  not  be. 
Chorus.  Jerusalem  !    Jerusalem  !    woe,  woe  to 

thee! 
This  blood,  0  Israel,  God  shall  claim 

from  you ! 
People.  His  blood  on  us  and  on  our  children 

be! 

Chorus.      Yea  !  upon  you  and  on  your  chil- 
dren too. 

In  the  actual  release  of  Barabbas,  the 
contrast  is  heightened  by  the  assign- 
ment of  the  part  of  Barabbas  to  a  person 
who  is,  or  is  made  to  look,  the  image  of 
a  low  vulgar  ruffian ;  and  as  the  two 
stand  side  by  side,  the  majesty  and 
patience  of  the  one  is  set  forth  by  the 
undignified,  eager  impatience  of  the 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


475 


other,  shuffling   to   be  released  at  the 
earliest  moment. 

(6)  As  the  plot  advances,  the  repro- 
duction of  the  well-known  paintings 
on  the  subject  becomes  more  apparent. 
The  "Ecce  Homo"  is  an  evident  imi- 
tation of  the  picture  of  Correggio.  The 
Crucifixion,  without  perhaps  specially 
resembling  any  one  representation,  is  so 
much  more  like  a  picture  than  a  reality 
that  its  painful  effect  is  thereby  much 
diminished.  The  Descent  from  the 
Cross  is  an  exact  copy  of  Rubens'  fa- 
mous painting.1  Whatever  living  action 
is  carried  on  through  these  last  scenes 
lies  almost  entirely  in  the  rough  by- 
play, already  .described,  of  the  soldiers 
and  executioners.  Only  when  the  mo- 
tionless silence  of  the  Central  Figure  is 
broken  by  the  few  words  from  the  Cross, 
is  the  illusion  dispelled  which  might 
make  us  think  that  we  were  looking  on 
a  sculptured  ivory  image.  The  actual 
appearance  of  the  Crucifixion  is  produced 
by  mechanical  contrivances,  through 
which  the  person  is  sustained  on  the 
Cross  with  no  further  effort  than  that 
(which  is  no  doubt  considerable)  of  the 
extension  of  the  arms.  The  apprehen- 
sion or  the  knowledge  of  this  effort 
gives  a  sense  of  real  anxiety  to  the 
scene,  which  lasts  for  upwards  of  twenty 
minutes — and  also  of  real  care,  to  the 
mode  in  which  the  arms  are  gradually 
released  from  their  outstretched  position, 
and  the  body  is  slowly  let  down  from 
the  Cross  by  the  long  drapery  with 
which,  as  in  Rubens's  picture,  it  is 
swathed  and  suspended  as  it  descends. 
A  breathless  silence,  succeeded  by  a 
visible  relief,  pervades  the  vast  audience 
through  the  whole  of  this  protracted 
representation. 

(7)  With  the  entombment,  the  dra- 
matic portion  of  the  spectacle  properly 
ends.  The  scene  which  follows,  and 
which  is  intended  to  represent  the  Re- 
surrection  from  the  tomb,  in  the  presence 
of  the  watching  soldiers,  is,  as  might  be 
expected  from  the  nature  of  the  subject, 

1  The  engravings  of  these  pictures  in  the 
inns,  even  of  remote  parts  of  the  Tyrol,  render 
the  knowledge  of  these  pictures  less  remark- 
able than  it  would  otherwise  be. 


wholly  incongruous.  And  the  brief 
scenes  of  the  disappointment  of  the 
Chief  Priests,  of  the  arrival  of  Peter  and 
John  at  the  tomb,  and  of  the  appearance 
to  the  Magdalene,  are  unequal  to  the 
magnitude  of  the  interest  with  which 
they  axe  charged,  and  are  evidently  felt 
to  be  so  by  the  audience,  who,  though 
still  retaining  their  respectful  demeanour, 
now  begin  very  gradually  to  disperse. 
There  is  still,  however,  the  impressive 
conclusion,  when  the  chorus,  laying 
aside  the  black  robes,  which  they  had 
assumed  during  the  previous  scene  of  the 
Crucifixion,  come  forth,  and  in  the  pre- 
sence of  a  final  tableau,  embracing  a  vast 
mass  of  figures,  in  a  representation  of  the 
heroes  and  saints  of  both  Old  and  New 
Testament  united  in  one,  close  the  spec- 
tacle with  a  hymn  of  triumph. 

Conquering  and  to  conquer  all 
Forth  He  comes  in  all  His  might ; 

Slumbering  but  a  few  short  hours 
In  the  grave's  funereal  night. 

Sing  to  Him  in  holy  psalms  ! 
Strew  for  Him  victorious  palms  !' 

Christ,  the  Lord  of  life,  is  risen  ! 
Sound,  0  heavens,  with  anthems  meet  ! 
Earth,  with  songs  the  conqueror  greet ! 

Hallelujah  !  Christ  is  risen  ! 

Praise  Him  who  now  on  high  doth  reign  ! 
Praise  to  the  Lamb  that  ouce  was  slain  ! 

Hallelujah  ! 

Praise  Him  who,  glorious  from  the  grave, 
Comes  forth  triumphantly  to  save  ! 

Hallelujah! 

Praise  be  to  Him  who  conquers  death, 
Who  once  was  judged  on  Gabbatha  ! 

Praise  be  to  Him  who  heals  our  sins, 
Who  died  for  us  on  Golgotha  ! 

Let  Israel's  harp  with  gladdening  sound 
Joy  through  every  spirit  pour  ; 

He  with  the  cftnqtieror's  crown  is  crown'd, 
Who  died  and  lives  for  evermore. 

0  praise  Him,  all  ye  hosts  of  heaven  ! 

To  Him  all  praise  and  glory  be  ! 
Praise,  glory,  honour,  power,  and  might, 

Through  ages  of  eternity  ! 

III.  So  ends  the  Ammergau  spec- 
tacle. Its  fourteenth  and  last  represen- 
tation was  on  the  16th  of  September, 
and  it  will  not  recur  till  1870. 

What  may  be  the  religious  or  devo- 
tional feelings  awakened  by  this  spec- 
tacle, in  the  various  classes  who  are 
present,  it  would  be  impossible  to  deter- 
mine. What  they  were  intended  to  be 
I  2 


476 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


is  well  expressed  in  the  close  of  the 
short  preface  to  the  choral  songs,  which 
almost  every  spectator  held  in  his  hand : — 
"  May  all  who  come  to  see  how  the  Divine 
"  man  trod  this  path  of  sorrows,  to  suffer 
"  as  a  sacrifice  for  sinful  humanity,  well 
"consider  that  it  is  not  sufficient  to 
"contemplate  and  admire  the  Divine 
"  original ;  that  we  ought  much  rather 
"to  make  this  Divine  spectacle  an 
"  occasion  for  converting  ourselves  into 
"  His  likenesses,  as  once  the  saints  of 
"  the  Old  Testament  were  His  fitting 
"  foreshadowers.  May  the  outward  re- 
"  presentation  of  His  sublime  virtues 
"rouse  us  to  the  holy  resolution  to 
"follow  Him  in  humility,  patience, 
'gentleness,  and  love.  If  that  which 
'  we  have  seen  in  a  figure,  becomes  to 
'  us  life  and  reality,  then  the  vow  of 
'  our  pious  ancestors  will  have  received 
'  its  best  fulfilment ;  and  then  will  that 
"  blessing  not  fail  to  us,  with  which 
"  God  once  rewarded  the  faith  and  the 
"  trust  of  our  fathers." 

But  it  may  be  worth  while  to  sum 
up  the  reflections  of  a  more  general 
and  intellectual  character,  which  arise 
in  the  mind  of  an  educated  stranger 
who  may  have  been  present. 

(1.)  He  can  hardly  fail  to  have  an 
increased  idea  of  the  dramatic  nature 
of  the  sacred  story,  which,  amidst  all 
the  imperfections  of  this  rustic  spec- 
tacle, is  brought  out  in  so  unmistake- 
able  a  form.  It  is  a  saying,  quoted 
from  Lavater,  that  as  there  is  no  more 
dramatic  work  than  the  Bible,  so  the 
history  of  the  Passion  is  the  Drama  of 
dramas.  That  this  characteristic  pecu- 
liarity of  the  sacred  narrative  should 
thus  stand  the  test,  is  one  of  the  many 
proofs  to  those  who  will  receive  it 
rightly,  of  the  all-embracing  power  and 
excellence  of  the  Bible  itself. 

(2.)  Again,  if  he  be  a  sound  Protes- 
tant, it  cannot  hut  be  a  matter  of  theo- 
logical instruction  and  gratification,  to 
have  observed  how  entirely  Scriptural, 
and  even  in  a  certain  sense  unconsciously 
Protestant,  is  this  representation  of  the 
greatest  of  all  events.  The  biblical 
account  controls  the  whole  spectacle. 
The  words  of  the  Bible  are  studiously 


used.  Only  one  of  the  numerous  tableaux 
— (that  of  Tobias  and  his  parents) — is 
drawn  from  the  Apocrypha.  Only  one 
slight  incident,  (that  of  the  woman  offer- 
ing the  handkerchief  on  the  way  to  Gol- 
gotha,) is  taken  from  ecclesiastical  tra- 
dition. Even  in  cases  where  the  popu- 
lar sentiment  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  would  naturally  come  into  play, 
it  has  not  penetrated  here.  The  Virgin 
appears  not  more  prominently  or  more 
frequently  than  the  most  rigid  Protes- 
tant would  allow.  In  the  scenes  after 
the  Resurrection,  the  biblical  account  of 
the  appearance  to  the  Magdalene,  not 
the  traditional  one  of  the  appearance  to 
the  Virgin,  is  carefully  preserved.  The 
forcible  representation  of  the  predomi- 
nant guilt  of  the  Jewish  hierarchy,  and 
of  the  simplicity  of  the  Last  Supper,  (as 
already  noticed,)  are  directly  suggestive 
of  the  purest  Protestant  sentiments. 

(3.)  Nor  are  there  wanting  further  indi- 
cations how  a  natural  representation  of 
the  sacred  history  rises  into  a  higher  and 
wider  sphere  than  is  contained  within 
the  limits  of  any  particular  sect  or 
opinion.  The  exhibition  of  the  sacri- 
fice on  Calvary,  whether  in  the  actual 
representation,  or  in  the  didactic  exposi- 
tions of  the  chorus,  is  (with  the  possible 
exception  of  a  very  few  expressions) 
the  ancient  Scriptural,  orthodox  view, 
not  deformed  by  any  of  the  more  modern 
theories  on  the  subject. 

The  philosophical  as  opposed  to  the 
medieval  conception  of  human  character 
in  the  case  of  Judas  has  been  already 
noticed.  Of  the  two  great  virtues  which 
find  so  little  favour  with  sectarian 
polemics,  the  praise  of  truth  is  the  spe- 
cial subject  of  one  of  the  choral  odes  ; 
and  the  need  of  justice,  especially  justice 
in  high  places,  forms  the  special  theme 
of  another. 

There  are  those,  it  may  be  hoped,  to 
whom  it  is  a  pleasure  and  not  a  pain  to 
reflect  that  a  representation  of  such  a  sub- 
ject should  not  contain  what  is  distinc- 
tive of  any  peculiar  sect  of  Christen- 
dom ;  but,  as  if  by  a  kind  of  necessity, 
should  embrace  and  put  forward  what 
is  common  to  all  alike. 

(4.)  Again,  any  person  interested  in 


The  Ammergau  Mystery  ;  or  Sacred  Drama  of  1860. 


477 


national  religious  education  must  per- 
ceive the  effect  of  such  a  lifelike  repre- 
sentation of  the  words  and  facts  of  the 
Bible  in  bringing  them  home  to  the 
minds,  if  not  the  hearts,  of  the  people. 
To  those  who  believe  that  the  Bible, 
and  especially  the  Gospel  history,  has  a 
peculiarly  elevating  and  purifying  effect, 
beyond  any  other  religious  or  secular 
books,  it  will  be  a  satisfaction  to  know 
that  thousands  of  German  peasants  have 
carried  away,  graven  on  their  memories, 
not  a  collection  of  medieval  or  mytho- 
logical legends,  but  the  chief  facts  and 
doctrines  both  of  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
tament, with  an  exactness  such  as  would 
be  vainly  sought  in  the  masses  of  our 
poorer  population,  or  even,  it  may  be 
said,  with  some  of  our  clergy.  We 
may  fairly  object  to  the  mode  of  instruc- 
tion, but  as  to  its  results  we  must  rejoice 
that  what  is  given  is  not  chaff  but 
wheat.  Nor  need  the  most  fastidious 
taste  reject  the  additional  light  thrown 
by  this  representation  on  the  most  sacred 
page  of  the  book  which  all  Christians 
are  bound  to  study,  and  which  every 
clergyman  is  bound  to  expound  to  his 
flock,  though  by  totally  different  means 
from  those  employed  at  Ammergau. 

(5.)  For,  finally,  any  intelligent  spec- 
tator at  this  scene  will  feel  it  to  be  a 
signal  example  of  the  infinite  differences 
which,  even  with  regard  to  subjects  of 
the  most  universal  interest,  divide  the 
feelings  and  thoughts  of  nations  and 
Churches  from  each  other,  and  of  the 
total  absurdity  and  endless  mischief  of 
transposing  to  one  phase  of  mind  what 
belongs  exclusively  to  another.  We 
Englishmen  are  not  more  reverential 
than  an  audience  of  Bavarian  or  Tyrolese 
rustics.  Probably  we  are  much  less  so. 
But,  from  long  engrained  habit,  from  the 
natural  reserve  and  delicacy  of  a  more 
northern  and  a  more  civilized  people, 
from  the  association  of  those  outward 
exhibitions  of  sacred  subjects  with  a 
Church  disfigured  by  superstition  and  in- 
tolerance, we  naturally  regard,  as  impious 
what  these  simple  peasants  regard  as 
devout  and  edifying.  The  more  striking 
is  the  superstition,  the  more  salutary  its 
effect  on  those  for  whom  it  is  intended ; 


the  more  forcibly  we  may  be  ourselves 
impressed  in  witnessing  it,  so  much  the 
more  pointedly  instructive  does  the  lesson 
become,  of  the  utter  inapplicability  of 
such  a  performance  to  other  times  and 
places  than  its  own.  Sacred  pictures, 
sacred  sculpture,  sacred  poetry,  sacred 
music,  sacred  ritual,  must  all  be  judged 
by  the  same  varying  standard.  The 
presence  or  the  absence  of  any  one  of 
these  is  reverent  or  irreverent,  according 
to  the  intention  of  those  who  use  it, 
and  the  disposition  of  those  for  whom 
it  is  intended.  An  organ  would  be  as 
shocking  a  profanation  of  worship  in 
Scotland  or  in  Russia  as  a  crucifix  in 
England,  or  as  the  absence  of  a  ^  cru- 
cifix in  the  Tyrol  or  in  Sweden. 
Every  one  knows  what  disastrous  con- 
sequences have  flowed  from  the  attempt 
of  certain  High  Church  clergy  to  force 
upon  the  population  of  Wapping  a  ritual 
which,  to  those  who  introduced  it,  was 
doubtless  symbolical  of  reverence  and 
devotion,  but  in  those  who  were  to 
receive  it,  awakened  only  a  frenzy  of 
ribaldry,  fanaticism,  and  profaneness. 
The  case  of  the  Ammergau  mystery  de- 
cisively proves  the  futility  of  all  such 
forced  and  incongruous  adaptations. 
This,  beyond  all  dispute,  is  an  insti- 
tution which  cannot  be  transplanted 
without  provoking  sentiments  the  exact 
opposite  of  those  which  it  excites  in  its 
own  locality.  Even  an  extension  or 
imitation  of  it  in  the  country  of  its  birth 
would  go  far  to  ruin  its  peculiar  cha- 
racter. The  Archbishop  of  Salzburg 
was  probably  as  right  in  his  general 
prohibition  of  such  spectacles  in  southern 
Germany,  as  the  King  Max-Joseph  in 
his  permission  of  this  particular  one. 
Its  inaccessible  situation,  its  rude  ac- 
companiments, its  rare  decennial  recur- 
rence, are  its  best  safeguards.  Happily 
the  curiosity  which  the  representation 
of  this  year  may  have  roused  will  have 
been  laid  to  rest  long  before  its  next 
return ;  and  the  best  wish  that  can  be 
offered  for  its  continuance  is,  that  it  may 
remain  alone  of  its  kind,  and  that  it  may 
never  attract  any  large  additional  influx 
of  spectators  from  distant  regions  or 
uncongenial  circles. 


478 


TOM  BKOWN  AT  OXFORD. 

BY   THE   AUTHOR   OP    "TOM   BROWN'S   SCHOOL-DAYS." 


CHAPTEE  XXVIII. 

THE  END  OP  THE  FRESHMAN'S  YEAR. 

ON  the  morning  after  Commemoration, 
Oxford  was  in  a  bustle  of  departure. 
The  play  had  been  played,  the  long 
vacation  had  begun,  and  visitors  and 
members  seemed  equally  anxious  to  be 
off.  At  the  gates  of  the  colleges  groups 
of  men  in  travelling  dresses  waited  for 
the  coaches,  omnibuses,  dog-carts,  and 
all  manner  of  vehicles,  which  were  to 
carry  them  to  the  Great  Western  rail- 
way station,  at  Steventon,  or  elsewhere 
to  all  points  of  the  compass.  Porters 
passed  in  and  out  with  portmanteaus, 
gun-cases,  and  baggage  of  all  kinds, 
which  they  piled  outside  the  gates,  or 
carried  off  to  the  Mitre  or  the  Angel, 
under  the  vigorous  and  not  too  cour- 
teous orders  of  the  owners.  College 
servants  flitted  round  the  groups  to  take 
last  instructions,  and,  if  so  might  be,  to 
extract  the  balances  of  extortionate  bills 
out  of  their  departing  masters.  Dog- 
fanciers  were  there  also,  holding  terriers  ; 
and  scouts  from  the  cricketing  grounds, 
with  bats  and  pads  under  their  arms ; 
and  hostlers,  and  men  from  the  boats, 
all  on  the  same  errand  of  getting  the 
last  shilling  out  of  their  patrons — a 
fawning,  obsequious  crowd  for  the  most 
part,  with  here  and  there  a  sturdy  Briton 
who  felt  that  he  was  only  come  after  his 
due. 

Through  such  a  group,  at  the  gate  of 
St.  Ambrose,  Tom  and  Hardy  passed 
soon  after  breakfast  time,  in  cap  and 
gown,  which  costume  excited  no  small 
astonishment. 

"  Hullo,  Brown,  old  fellow  !  ain't  you 
off  this  morning  ? " 

"  No,  I  shall  be  up  for  a  day  or  two 

yet." 

"  Wish  you  joy.  I  wouldn't  be  stay- 
ing up  over  to-day  for  something." 


"  But  you'll  be  at  Henley  to-morrow?" 
said  Diogenes,  confidently,  who  stood  at 
the  gate  in  boating  coat  and  flannels,  a 
big  stick  and  knapsack,  waiting  for  a 
companion,  with  whom  he  was  going  to 
walk  to  Henley. 

"And  at  Lord's  on  Friday,"  said 
another.  "  It  will  be  a  famous  match  ; 
come  and  dine  somewhere  afterwards, 
and  go  to  the  Haymarket  with  us." 

"  You  know  the  Leander  are  to  be  at 
Henley,"  put  in  Diogenes,  "and  Cam- 
bridge is  very  strong.  There  will  be  a 
splendid  race  for  the  cup,  but  Jervis 
thinks  we  are  all  right." 

"  Bother  your  eternal  races  ;  haven't 
we  had  enough  of  them?"  said  the 
Londoner.  "  You  had  much  better 
come  up  to  the  little  village  at  once, 
Brown,  and  stay  there  while  the  coin 
lasts." 

"  If  I  get  away  at  all,  it  will  be  to 
Henley,"  said  Tom. 

"  Of  course,  I  knew  that,"  said  Dio- 
genes, triumphantly  ;  "  our  boat  ought 
to  be  on  for  the  ladies'  plate.  If  only 
Jervis  were  not  in  the  University  crew  ! 
'I  thought  you  were  to  pull  at  Henley, 
Hardy?" 

"  I  was  asked  to  pull,  but  I  couldn't 
manage  the  time  with  the  schools 
coming  on,  and  when  the  examinations 
were  over  it  was  too  late.  The  crew 
were  picked  and  half  trained,  and  none 
of  them  have  broken  down." 

"  What !  every  one  of  them  stood 
putting  through  the  sieve  ?  They  must 
be  a  rare  crew,  then,"  said  another. 

"  You're  right,"  said  Diogenes.  "  Oh  ! 
here  you  are  at  last,"  he  added,  as  another 
man  in  flannels  and  knapsack  came  out 
of  college.  "  Well,  good  bye  all,  and 
a  pleasant  vacation  ;  we  must  be  off,  if 
we  are  to  be  in  time  to  see  our  crew 
pull  over  the  course  to-night ;  "  and  the 
two  marched  off  towards  Magdalen 
bridge. 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


479 


"  By  Jove  !  "  remarked  a  fast  youth, 
in  most  elaborate  toilette,  looking  after 
them,  "  fancy  two  fellows  grinding  off  to 
Henley,  five  miles  an  hour,  in  this  sun, 
when  they  might  drop  up  to  the  metro- 
polis by  train  in  half  the  time  ?  Isn't 
it  marvellous  ? " 

"  I  should  like  to  be  going  with 
them,"  said  Tom. 

"Well,  there's  no  accounting  for 
tastes.  Here's  our  coach." 

"  Good  bye,  then  ;  "  and  Tom  shook 
hands,  and,  leaving  the  coach  to  get 
packed  with  portmanteaus,  terriers,  and 
undergraduates,  he  and  Hardy  walked 
off  towards  the  High  Street. 

"  So  you're  not  going  to-day?"  Hardy 
said. 

"  No  ;  two  or  three  of  my  old  school- 
fellows are  coming  up  to  stand  for  scholar- 
ships, and  I  must  be  here  to  receive  them. 
But  it's  very  unlucky  ;  I  should  have 
liked  so  to  have  been  at  Henley." 

"  Look,  their  carriage  is  already  at 
the  door,"  said  Hardy,  pointing  up 
High  Street,  into  which  they  now 
turned.  There  were  a  dozen  post- 
chaises  and  carriages  loading  in  front 
of  different  houses  in  the  street,  and 
amongst  them  Mr.  Winter's  old-fashioned 
travelling  barouche. 

"  So  it  is,"  said  Tom ;  "  that's  some  of 
uncle's  fidgettiness ;  but  he  will  be 
sure  to  dawdle  at  the  last.  Come  along 
in." 

"  Don't  you  think  I  had  better  stay 
down  stairs  ?  It  may  seem  intrusive." 

"No,  come  along.  Why,  they  asked 
you  to  come  and  see  the  last  of  them 
last  night,  didn't  they  V 

Hardy  did  not  require  any  further 
urging  to  induce  him  to  follow  his  incli- 
nation; so  the  two  "went  up  together. 
The  breakfast  things  were  still  on  the 
table,  at  which  sat  Miss  Winter,  in  her 
bonnet,  employed  in  examining  the  bill, 
with  the  assistance  of  Mary,  who  leant 
over  her  shoulder.  She  looked  up  as 
they  entered. 

"  Oh  !  I'm  so  glad  you  are  come. 
Poor  Katie  is  so  bothered,  and  I  can't 
help  her.  Do  look  at  the  bill ;  is  it  all 
right?" 

"Shall  I,  Katie?" 


"  Yes,  please  do.  I  don't  see  any- 
thing to  object  to,  except,  perhaps,  the 
things  I  have  marked.  Do  you  think 
we  ought  to  be  charged  half-a-crown  a 
day  for  the  kitchen  fire  ?" 

"  Fire  in  June  !  and  you  have  never 
dined  at  home  once  1" 

"No,  but  we  have  had  tea  several 
times." 

"  It  is  a  regular  swindle,"  said  Tom, 
taking  the  bill  and  glancing  at  it.  "  Here, 
Hardy,  come  and  help  me  cut  down  this 
precious  total." 

They  sat  down  to  the  bill,  the  ladies 
willingly  giving  place.  Mary  tripped 
off  to  the  glass  to  tie  her  bonnet. 

"Now  that  is  all  right!"  she  said, 
merrily  ;  "  why  can't  one  go  on  without 
bills  or  horrid  money?" 

"Ah!  why  can't  one?"  said  Tom, 
"that  would  suit  most  of  our  com- 
plaints. But  where's  uncle ;  has  he 
seen  the  bill  ?" 

"  No  •  papa  is  in  his  room  ;  he  must 
not  be  worried,  or  the  journey  will  be 
too  much  for  him." 

Here  the  ladies' -maid  arrived,  with  a 
message  that  her  father  wished  to  see 
Miss  Winter. 

"  Leave  your  money,  Katie,"  said  her 
cousin ;  "  this  is  .  gentlemen's  business, 
and  Tom  and  Mr.  Hardy  will  settle  it 
all  for  us,  I  am  sure." 

Tom  professed  his  entire  willingness 
to  accept  the  charge,  delighted  at  find- 
ing himself  re-instated  in  his  office  of 
protector  at  Mary's  suggestion.  Had 
the  landlord  been  one  of  his  own  trades- 
men, or  the  bill  his  own  bill,  he  might 
not  have  been  so  well  pleased,  but,  as 
neither  of  these  was  the  case,  and  he 
had  Hardy  to  back  him,  he  went  into 
the  matter  with  much  vigour  and  discre- 
tion, and  had  the  landlord  up,  made  the 
proper  deductions,  and  got  the  bill 
settled  and  receipted  in  a  few  minutes. 
Then  he  and  Hardy  addressed  them- 
selves to  getting  the  carriage  comfort- 
ably packed,  and  vied  with  one  another 
in  settling  and  stowing  away  in  the  most 
convenient  places  the  many  little  odds 
and  ends  which-  naturally  accompany 
young  ladies  and  invalids  on  their 
travels  ;  in  the  course  of  which  employ- 


480 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


ment  lie  managed  to  snatch  a  few  words 
here  and  there  with  Mary,  and  satisfied 
himself  that  she  bore  him  no  ill-will  for 
the  events  of  the  previous  day. 

At  last  all  was  ready  for  the  start,  and 
Tom  reported  the  fact  in  the  sitting- 
room.  "Then  I  will  go  and  fetch 
papa,"  said  Miss  "Winter. 

Tom's  eyes  met  Mary's  at  the  moment. 
He  gave  a  slight  shrug  with  his  shoulders, 
and  said,  as  the  door  closed  after  his 
cousin,  "  Really  I  have  no  patience  with 
Uncle  Robert ;  he  leaves  poor  Katie  to 
do  everything." 

"  Yes  ;  and  how  beautifully  she  does 
it  all,  without  a  word  or,  I  believe,  a 
thought  of  complaint !  I  could  never  be 
so  patient." 

"  I  think  it  is  a  pity.  If  Uncle 
Robert  were  obliged  to  exert  himself 
it  would  be  much  better  for  him. 
Katie  is  only  spoiling  him  and  wearing 
herself  out." 

"  Yes,  it  is  very  easy  for  you  and  me 
to  think  and  say  so.  But  he  is  her 
father ;  and  then  he  is  really  an  invalid. 
So  she  goes  on  devoting  herself  to  him 
more  and  more,  and  feels  she  can  never 
do  too  much  for  him." 

"  But  if  she  believed  it  would  be 
better  for  him  to  exert  himself  1  I  'm 
sure  it  is  the  truth.  Couldn't  you  try 
to  persuade  her  1 " 

"  No,  indeed ;  it  would  only  worry 
her,  and  be  so  cruel.  But  then  I  am 
not  used  to  give  advice,"  she  added,  after 
a  moment's  pause,  looking  demurely  at 
her  gloves  ;  "  it  might  do  good,  perhaps, 
now,  if  you  were  to  speak  to  her." 

"  You  think  me  so  well  qualified,  I 
suppose,  after  the  specimen  you  had 
yesterday.  Thank  you;  I  have  had 
enough  of  lecturing  for  the  present." 

"I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you, 
really,  for  what  you  said  to  me,"  said 
Mary,  still  looking  at  her  gloves. 

The  subject  was  a  very  distasteful  one 
to  Tom.  He  looked  at  her  for  a  moment, 
to  see  whether  she  was  laughing  at  him, 
and  then  broke  it  off  abruptly — 

"  I  hope  you  have  enjoyed  your 
visit  ? " 

"  Oh,  yes,  so  very  much.  I  shall 
think  of  it  all  the  summer." 


"  Where  shall  you  be  all  the  sum- 
mer 1 "  asked  Tom. 

"  Not  so  very  far  from  you.  Papa 
has  taken  a  house  only  eight  miles  from 
Englebourn,  and; Katie  says  you  live 
within  a  day's  drive  of  them." 

"  And  shall  you  be  there  all  the 
vacation  ? " 

"  Yes,  and  we  hope  to  get  Katie  over 
often.  Could  not  you  come  and  meet 
her ;  it  would  be  so  pleasant." 

"  But  do  you  think  I  might  1  I  don't 
know  your  father  or  mother." 

"  Oh,  yes,  papa  and  mamma  are  very 
kind,  and  will  ask  anybody  I  like. 
Besides,  you  are  a  cousin,  you  know." 

"  Only  up  at  Oxford,  I  am  afraid." 

"  Well,  now  you  will  see.  We  are 
going  to  have  a  great  archery  party 
next  month,  and  you  shall  have  an  in- 
vitation." 

"  Will  you  write  it  for  me  yourself  ?" 

"  Very  likely ;  but  why  ?"  ' 

"  Don't  you  think  I  shall  value  a  note 
in  your  hand  more  than — " 

"  Nonsense ;  now,  remember  your 
lecture — Oh,  here  are  Uncle  Robert  and 
Katie." 

Mr.  Winter  was  very  gracious,  and 
thanked  Tom  for  all  his  attentions.  He 
had  been  very  pleased,  he  said,  to  make 
his  nephew's  acquaintance  again  so 
pleasantly,  and  hoped  he  would  come 
and  pass  a  day  or  two  at  Englebourn  in 
the  vacation.  In  his  sad  state  of  health 
he  could  not  do  much  to  entertain  a 
young  man,  but  he  could  procure  him 
some  good  fishing  and  shooting  in  the 
neighbourhood.  Tom  assured  his  uncle 
that  nothing  would  please  him  so  much 
as  a  visit  to  Englebourn.  Perhaps  the 
remembrance  of  the  distance  between 
that  parish  and  the  place  where  Mary 
was  to  spend  the  summer  may  have 
added  a  little  to  his  enthusiasm. 

"  I  should  have  liked  also  to  have 
thanked  your  friend  for  his  hospitality," 
Mr.  Winter  went  on.  "  I  understood 
my  daughter  to  say  he  was  here." 

"Yes,  he  was  here  just  now,"  said 
Tom  ;  "  he  must  be  below,  I  think." 

"  What,  that  good  Mr.  Hardy?"  said 
Mary,  who  was  looking  out  of  the  win- 
dow ;  "  there  he  is  in  the  street.  He 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


481 


has  just  helped  Hopkins  into  the  rum- 
ble, and  handed  her  things  to  her  as  if 
she  were  a  duchess.  She  has  been  so 
cross  all  the  morning,  and  now  she  looks 
quite  gracious." 

"  Then  I  think,  papa,  we  had  better 
start." 

"Let  me  give  you  an  arm  down 
stairs,  uncle,"  said  Tom;  and  so  he 
helped  his  uncle  down  to  the  carriage, 
the  two  young  ladies  following  behind, 
and  the  landlord  standing  with  obse- 
quious bows  at  his  shop  door  as  if  he 
had  never  made  an  o'vercharge  in  his  life. 

While  Mr.  Winter  was  making  his 
acknowledgments  to  Hardy  and  being 
helped  by  him  into  the  most  comfort- 
able seat  in  the  carriage,  Tom  was 
making  tender  adieus  to  the  two 
young  ladies  behind,  and  even  suc- 
ceeded in  keeping  a  rose-bud  which 
Mary  was  carrying  when  they  took  their 
seats.  She  parted  from  it  half-laugh- 
ingly,  and  the  post-boy  cracked  his 
whip  and  the  barouche  went  lumbering 
along  High-street.  Hardy  and  Tom 
watched  it  until  it  turned  down  St. 
Aldates  towards  Folly  bridge,  the  latter 
waving  his  hand  as  it  disappeared,  and 
then  they  turned  and  strolled  slowly 
away  side  by  side  in  silence.  The  sight 
of  all  the  other  departures  increased  the 
uncomfortable,  unsatisfied  feeling  which 
that  of  his  own  relatives  had  already 
produced  in  Tom's  mind. 

"  Well,  it  isn't  lively  stopping  up 
here  when  everybody  is  going,  is  it1? 
What  is  one  to  do?" 

"  Oughtn't  you  to  be  looking  after 
your  friends  who  are  coming  up  to  try 
for  the  scholarships  ?" 

"  No,  they  won't  be  up  till  the  after- 
noon by  coach." 

"  Shall  we  go  down  the  river,  then  ?" 

"  No,  it  would  be  miserable.  Hullo, 
look  here,  what's  up  1" 

The  cause  of  Tom's  astonishment  was 
the  appearance  of  the  usual  procession 
of  University  beadles  carrying  silver- 
headed  maces  and  escorting  the  Vice- 
Chancellor  towards  St.  Mar/s. 

"Why,  the  bells  are  going  for  ser- 
vice ;  there  must  be  a  University  ser- 
mon." 


"  Where's  the  congregation  to  come 
from  1  Why,  half  Oxford  is  off  by  this 
time,  and  those  that  are  left  won't  want 
to  be  hearing  sermons." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know.  A  good  many 
men  seem  to  be  going.  I  wonder  who 
is  to  preach." 

"  I  vote  we  go.  It  will  help  to  pass 
the  time." 

Hardy  agreed,  and  they  followed  the 
procession  and  went  up  into  the  gallery 
of  St.  Mary's.  There  was  a  very  fair 
congregation  in  the  body  of  the  church, 
as  the  college  staffs  had  not  yet  broken 
up,  and  even  in  the  gallery  the  under- 
graduates mustered  in  some  force.  The 
restless  feeling  which  had  brought  our 
hero  there  seemed  to  have  had  a  like 
effect  on  most  of  the  men  who  were  for 
one  reason  or  another  unable  to  start  on 
that  day. 

Tom  looked  steadily  into  his  cap 
during  the  bidding  prayer,  and  sat  down 
composedly  afterwards ;  expecting  not 
to  be  much  interested  or  benefited,  but 
comforted  with  the  assurance  that  at 
any  rate  it  would  be  almost  luncheon 
time  before  he  would  be  again  thrown 
on  his  own  resources.  But  he  was  mis- 
taken in  his  expectations,  and,  before 
the  preacher  had  been  speaking  for  three 
minutes,  was  all  attention.  The  sermon 
was  upon  the  freedom  of  the  Gospel, 
the  power  by  which  it  bursts  all  bonds 
and  lets  the  oppressed  go  free.  Its  bur- 
then was,  "Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and 
the  truth  shall  make  you  free."  The 
preacher  dwelt  on  many  sides  of  these 
words  ;  the  freedom  of  nations,  of  socie- 
ties, of  universities,  of  the  conscience  of 
each  individual  man,  were  each  glanced 
at  in  turn;  and  then,  reminding  his 
hearers  of  the  end  of  the  academical 
year,  he  went  on — 

"  We  have  heard  it  said  in  the  troubles 
"  and  toils  and  temptations  of  the  world,1 


1  This  quotation  is  from  the  sermon 
preached  by  Dr.  Stanley  before  the  University 
on  Act  Sunday,  1859  (published  by  J.  H. 
Parker,  of  Oxford).  I  hope  that  the  dis- 
tinguished professor  whose  words  they  are 
will  pardon  the  liberty  I  have  taken  in  quoting 
them.  No  words  of  my  own  could  have  given 
so  vividly  what  I  wanted  to  say. 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


•  '  Oh  that  I  could  begin  life  over  again  ! 

:  oil  that  I, could  fall  asleep,  and  wake  up 

1  twelve,  six,  three  months  hence,  and 

;  find  my   difficulties   solved  ! '      That 

;  which  we  may  vainly  wish  elsewhere  by 

a  happy  Providence  is  furnished  to  us 

:  by  the  natural  divisions  of  meeting  and 

parting  in  this  place.     To  every  one  of 

us,  old  and  young,  the  long  vacation  on 

which  we  are  now  entering,  gives  us  a 

:  breathing  space,  and  time  to  break  the 

bonds  which  place  and  circumstance 

have  woven  round  us  during  the  year 

that  is  past.    From  all  our  petty  cares, 

and  confusions,  and  intrigues ;  from  the 

;  dust  and  clatter  of  this  huge  machinery 

;  amidst  which  we  labour  and  toil ;  from 

:  whatever  cynical  contempt  of  what  is 

generous  and  devout ;  from  whatever 

fanciful  disregard  of  what  is  just  and 

:  wise ;  from  whatever  gall  of  bitterness 

is  secreted  in  our  best  motives  ;  from 

whatever  bonds  of  unequal  dealing  in 

which  we  have  entangled  ourselves  or 

others,  we  are  now  for  a  time  set  free. 

We  stand  on  the  edge  of  a  river  which 

shall  for  a  time  at  least  sweep  them 

away ;    that  ancient  river,  the  river 

Kishon,  the  river  of  fresh  thoughts, 

and  fresh  scenes  and  fresh  feelings,  and 

fresh  hopes  :  one  surely  amongst  the 

blessed  means  whereby  God's  free  and 

loving  grace  works  out  our  deliverance, 

our  redemption  from  evil,  and  renews 

the  strength  of  each  succeeding  year, 

so  that  '  we  may  mount  up  again  as 

«agles,  may  run  and  not  be  weary,  may 

walk  and  not  faint.' 

"  And,  if  turning  to  the  younger  part  of 

my  hearers,  I  may  still  more  directly 

apply  this  general  lesson  to  them.     Is 

there  no  one  who,  in  some  shape  or 

other,  does  not  feel  the  bondage  of 

;  which  I  have  been  speaking  ?,  He  has 

something  on  his  conscience ;  he  has 

something  on  his  mind ;  extravagance, 

sin,  debt,  falsehood.    Every  morning  in 

the  first  few  minutes  after  waking,  it  is 

the  first  thought  that  occurs  to  him :  he 

.drives  it  away  in  the  day ;  he  drives  it 

off  by  recklessness,  which  only  binds  it 

more  and  more  closely  round  him.     Is 

there  any  one  who  has  ever  felt,  who  is 

at  this  moment  feeling,  this  grievous 


burthen  1  What  is  the  deliverance  ? 
How  shall  he  set  himself  free1?  In  what 
special  way  does  the  redemption  of 
Christ,  the  free  grace  of  God,  present 
itself  to  him  ?  There  is  at  least  one 
way,  clear  and  simple.  He  knows  it 
better  than  any  one  can  tell  him.  It 
is  those  same  words  which  I  used  with 
another  purpose.  '  The  truth  shall 
make  him  free.'  It  is  to  tell  the  truth 
to  his  friend,  to  his  parent,  to  any  one, 
whosoever  it  be,  from  whom  he  is  con- 
cealing that  which  he  ought  to  make 
known.  One  word  of  open,  frank  dis- 
closure— one  resolution  to  act  sincerely 
and  honestly  by  himself  and  others — 

;  one  ray  of  truth  let  into  that  dark  corner 
will  indeed  set  the  whole  man  free. 
"  Liberavi  animam  meam.  '  I  have 
delivered  my  soul'  What  a  faithful 
expression  is  this  of  the  relief,  the 
deliverance  effected  by  one  strong  effort 
of  will  in  one  moment  of  time.  '  I  will 
arise  and  go  to  my  father,  and  will  say 
unto  him,  Father,  I  have  sinned  against 
Heaven  and  before  thee,  and  am  no 
more  worthy  to  be  called  thy  son.'  So 

:  we  heard  the  prodigal's  confession  this 
morning.  So  may  the  thought  well 
spring  up  in  the  minds  of  any  who  in 
the  course  of  this  last  year  have 
wandered  into  sin,  have  found  them- 
selves beset  with  evil  habits  of  wicked 
idleness,  of  wretched  self-indulgence. 
Xow  that  you  are  indeed  in  the  literal 
sense  of  the  word  about  to  rise  and  go 
to  your  father,  now  that  you  will  be 
able  to  shake  off  the  bondage  of  bad 
companionship,  now  that  the  whole 
length  of  this  long  absence  will  roll  be- 
tween you  and  the  past — take  a  long 
breath,  break  off  the  yoke  of  your  sin,  of 
your  fault,  of  your  wrong  doing,  of  your 
folly,  of  your  perverseness,  of  your 
pride,  of  your  vanity,  of  your  weak- 
ness; break  it  off  by  truth,  break  it 
off  by  one  s^out  effort,  in  one  stedfast 
prayer ;  break  it  off  by  innocent  and 
free  enjoyment ;  break  it  off  by  honest 
work.  Put  your '  hand  to  the  nail  and 
your  right  hand  to  the  workman's 
hammer  : '  strike  through  the  enemy 
which  has  ensnared  you,  pierce  and 
strike  him  through  and  through. 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


483 


"  However  powerful  he  seems  '  at  your 
'  feet  he  will  bow,  he  will  fall,  he  will 
'  lie  down ;  at  your  feet  he  will  bow  and 
'  fall,  and  where  he  bows,  there  will 
'  he  rise  up  no  more.  So  let  all  thine 
'  enemies  perish,  0  Lord ;  but  let  them 
'  that  love  Thee  be  as  the  sun  when  he 
'  goeth  forth  in  his  might.'  " 

The  two  friends  separated  themselves 
from  the  crowd  in  the  porch  and  walked 
away,  side  by  side,  towards  their  college. 

"Well,  that  wasn't  a  bad  move  of 
ours.  It  is  worth  something  to  hear  a 
man  preach  that  sort  of  doctrine,"  said 
Hardy. 

"  How  does  he  get  to  know  it  all  ?" 
said  Tom,  meditatively. 

"  All  what  ?  I  don't  see  your  puzzle." 

"  Why,  all  sorts  of  things  that  are  in 
a  fellow's  mind — what  he  thinks  about 
the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  for  in- 
stance." 

"  Pretty  much  like  the  rest  of  us,  I 
take  it :  by  looking  at  home.  You 
don't  suppose  that  University  preachers 
are  unlike  you  and  me." 

"Well,  I  don't  know.  Now  do  you 
think  he  ever  had  anything  on  his 
mind  that  was  always  coming  up  and 
plaguing  him,  and  which  he  never  told 
to  anybody  ?" 

*'  Yes,  I  should  think  so  ;  most  of  us 
must  have  had." 

"Have  you?" 

"  Ay,  often  and  often." 

"  And  you  think  his  remedy  the  right 
one?" 

"  The  only  one.  Make  a  clean  breast 
of  it  and  the  sting  is  gone.  There's 
plenty  more  to  be  done  afterwards,  of 
course ;  but  there's  no  question  about 
step  No.  1." 

"  Did  you  ever  owe  a  hundred  pounds 
that  you  couldn't  pay?"  said  Tom,  with 
a  sudden  effort;  and  his  secret  had 
hardly  passed  his  lips  before  he  felt  a 
relief  which  surprised  himself. 

"  My  dear  fellow,"  said  Hardy,  stop- 
ping in  the  street,  "  you  don't  mean  to 
say  you  are  speaking  of  yourself?" 

"  I  do  though,"  said  Tom,  "  and  it 
has  been  on  my  mind  ever  since  the 
beginning  of  Easter  term,  and  has  spoilt 
my  temper  and  everything — that  and 


something  else  that  you  know  of.  You 
must  have  seen  me  getting  more  and 
more  ill-tempered,  I'm  sure.  And  I 
have  thought  of  it  the  first  thing  in 
the  morning  and  the  last  thing  at  night ; 
and  tried  to  drive  the  thought  away 
just  as  he  said  one  did  in  his  sermon. 
By  Jove,  I  thought  he  knew  all  about 
it,  for  he  looked  right  at  me  just  when 
he  came  to  that  place." 

"  But,  Brown,  how  do  you  mean  you 
owe  a  hundred  pounds  ?  You  haven't 
read  much  certainly ;  but  you  haven't 
hunted,  or  gambled,  or  tailored  much, 
or  gone  into  any  other  extravagant  folly. 
You  must  be  dreaming." 

"Am  I  though?  Come  up  to  my 
rooms  and  I'll  tell  you  all  about  it :  I 
feel  better  already  now  I've  let  it  out. 
I'll  send  over  for  your  commons,  and 
we'll  have  some  lunch." 

Hardy  followed  his  friend  in  much 
trouble  of  mind,  considering  in  himself 
whether  with  the  remainder  of  his 
savings  he  could  not  make  up  the  sum 
which  Tom  had  named.  Fortunately 
for  both  of  them  a  short  calculation 
showed  him  that  he  could  not,  and  he 
gave  up  the  idea  of  delivering  his  friend 
in  this  summary  manner  with  a  sigh. 
He  remained  closeted  with  Tom  for  an 
hour,  and  then  came  out,  looking  serious 
still  but  not  uncomfortable,  and  went 
down  to  the  river.  He  sculled  down 
to  Sandford,  bathed  in  the  lasher,  and 
returned  in  time  for  chapel.  He  stayed 
outside  afterwards,  and  Tom  came  up  to 
him  and  seized  his  arm. 

"  I've  done  it,  old  fellow,"  he  said ; 
"look  here;"  and  produced  a  letter. 
Hardy  glanced  at  the  direction,  and  saw 
that  it  was  to  his  father. 

"  Come  along  and  post  it,"  said  Tom, 
"  and  then  I  shall  feel  all  right." 

They  walked  off  quickly  to  the  post- 
office  and  dropped  the  letter  into  the  box. 

"  There,"  he  said,  as  it  disappeared, 
"  liberavi  animam  meant.  I  owe  the 
preacher  a  good  turn  for  that ;  I've  a 
good  mind  to  write  and  thank  him. 
Fancy  the  poor  old  governor's  face  to- 
morrow at  breakfast  !" 

"Well,  you  seem  to  take  it  easy 
enough  now,"  said  Hardy. 


484 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford, 


"  I  can't  help  it.  I  tell  you  I  haven't 
felt  so  jolly  this  two  months.  What 
a  fool  I  was  not  to  have  done  it  before. 
After  all,  now  I  come  to  think  of  it, 
I  can  pay  it  myself,  at  least  as  soon  as 
I  am  of  age,  for  I  know  I've  some 
money,  a  legacy  or  something,  coming 
to  me  then.  But  that  isn't  what  I  care 
about  now." 

"  I'm  very  glad  though  that  you  have 
the  money  of  your  own." 

"Yes,  but  the  having  told  it  all  is 
the  comfort.  Come  along,  and  let's  see 
whether  those  boys  are  come.  The  Old 
Pig  ought  to  be  in  by  this  time,  and 
I  want  them  to  dine  in  Hall.  It's  only 
ten  months  since  I  came  up  on  it  to 
matriculate,  and  it  seems  twenty  years. 
But  I'm  going  to  be  a  boy  again  for 
to-night ;  you'll  see  if  I'm  not." 


CHAPTEE  XXIX. 

THE   LONG   VACATION   LETTER-BAG. 

"JuneU,  184—. 

"  MY  DEAR  TOM, — "  YOUR  letter  came 
to  hand  this  morning,  and  it  has  of 
course  given  your  mother  and  me  much 
pain.  It  is  not  the  money  that  we 
care  about,  but  that  our  son  should 
have  deliberately  undertaken,  or  pre- 
tended to  undertake,  what  he  must 
have  known  at  the  time  he  could  not 
perform  himself. 

"  I  have  written  to  my  bankers  to 
pay  100?.  at  once  to  your  account  at  the 
Oxford  Bank.  I  have  also  requested 
my  solicitor  to  go  over  to  Oxford,  and 
he  will  probably  call  on  you  the  day 
after  you  receive  this.  You  say  that 
this  person  who  holds  your  note  of  hand 
is  now  in  Oxford.  You  will  see  him  in 
the  presence  of  my  solicitor,  to  whom 
you  will  hand  the  note  when  you  have 
recovered  it.  I  shall  consider  afterwards 
what  further  steps  will  have  to  be  taken 
in  the  matter. 

"  You  will  not  be  of  age  for  a  year. 
It  will  be  time  enough  then  to  deter- 
mine whether  you  will  repay  the  balance 
of  this  money  out  of  the  legacy  to  which 
you  will  be  entitled  under  your  grand- 
father's will.  In  the  meantime  I  shall 


deduct  at  the  rate  of  501.  a  year  from 
your  allowance,  and  I  shall  hold  you 
bound  in  honour  to  reduce  your  expen- 
diture by  this  amount.  You  are  no 
longer  a  boy,  and  one  of  the  first  duties 
which  a  man  owes  to  his  friends  and  to 
society  is  to  live  within  his  income. 

"  I  make  this  advance  to  you  on  two 
conditions.  First,  that  you  will  never 
again  put  your  hand  to  a  note  or  bill  in 
a  transaction  of  this  kind.  If  you  have 
money,  lend  it  or  spend  it.  You  may 
lend  or  spend  foolishly,  but  that  is  not 
the  point  here ;  at  any  rate  you  are 
dealing  with  what  is  your  own.  But  in 
transactions  of  this  kind  you  are  dealing 
with  what  is  not  your  own.  A  gentle- 
man should  shrink  from  the  possibility 
of  having  to  come  on  others,  even  on 
his  own  father,  for  the  fulfilment  of  his 
obligations  as  he  would  from  a  lie.  I 
would  sooner  see  a  son  of  mine  in  his 
grave  than  crawling  on  through  life  a 
slave  to  wants  and  habits  which  he 
must  gratify  at  other  people's  expense. 

"My  second  condition  is,  that  you 
put  an  end  to  your  acquaintance  with 
these  two  gentlemen  who  have  led  you 
into  this  scrape,  and  have  divided  the 
proceeds  of  your  joint  note  between 
them.  They  are  both  your  seniors  in 
standing,  you  say,  and  they  appear  to  be 
familiar  with  this  plan  of  raising  money 
at  the  expense  of  other  people.  The 
plain  English  word  for  such  doings  is, 
swindling.  What  pains  me  most  is  that 
you  should  have  become  intimate  with 
young  men  of  this  kind.  I  am  not  sure 
that  it  will  not  be  my  duty  to  lay  the 
whole  matter  before  the  authorities  of 
the  College.  You  do  not  mention  their 
names,  and  I  respect  the  feeling  which 
has  led  you  not  to  mention  them.  I 
shall  know  them  quite  soon  enough 
through  my  solicitor,  who  will  forward 
me  a  copy  of  the  note  of  hand  and  sig- 
natures in  due  course. 

"Your  letter  makes  general  allusion 
to  other  matters ;  and  I  gather  from  it 
that  you  are  dissatisfied  with  the  manner 
in  which  you  have  spent  your  first  year 
at  Oxford..  I  do  not  ask  for  specific 
confessions,  which  you  seem  inclined  to 
offer  me ;  in  fact  I  would  sooner  not 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


485 


have  them,  unless  there  is  any  other 
matter  in  which  you  want  assistance  or 
advice  from  me.  I  know  from  expe- 
rience that  Oxford  is  a  place  full  of 
temptation  of  all  kinds,  offered  to  young 
men  at  the  most  critical  time  of  their 
lives.  Knowing  this,  I  have  delibe- 
rately accepted  the  responsibility  of 
sending  you  there,  and  I  do  not  repent 
it.  I  am  glad  that  you  are  dissatisfied 
with  your  first  year.  If  you  had  not 
been  I  should  have  felt  much  more 
anxious  about  your  second.  Let  by- 
gones be  by-gones  between  you  and  me. 
You  know  where  to  go  for  strength,  and 
to  make  confessions  which  no  human 
ear  should  hear,  for  no  human  judgment 
can  weigh  the  cause.  The  secret  places 
of  a  man's  heart  are  for  himself  and 
God.  Your  mother  sends  her  love. 
"  I  am,  ever  your  affectionate  father, 
"JOHN  BROWN." 

"June  26th,  184— 

"  MY  DEAR  BOY, — I  am  not  sorry  that 
you  have  taken  my  last  letter  as  you 
have  clone.  It  is  quite  right  to  be  sen- 
sitive on  these  points,  and  it  will  have 
done  you  no  harm  to  have  fancied  for 
forty-eight  hours  that  you  had  in  my 
judgment  lost  caste  as  a  gentleman.  But 
now  I  am  very  glad  to  be  able  to  ease 
your  mind  on  this  point.  You  have 
done  a  very  foolish  thing ;  but  it  is  only 
the  habit,  and  the  getting  others  to  bind 
themselves,  and  not  the  doing  it  oneself 
for  others,  which  is  disgraceful.  You 
are  going  to  pay  honourably  for  your 
folly,  and  will  owe  me  neither  thanks  nor 
money  in  the  transaction.  I  have  chosen 
my  own  terms  for  repayment,  which  you 
have  accepted,  and  so  the  financial  ques- 
tion is  disposed  of. 

"  I  have  considered  what  you  say  as 
to  your  companions — friends  I  will  not 
call  them — and  will  promise  you  not  to 
take  any  further  steps,  or  to  mention 
the  subject  to  any  one.  But  I  must 
insist  on  my  second  condition,  that  you 
avoid  all  further  intimacy  with  them. 
I  do  not  mean  that  you  are  to  cut  them, 
or  to  do  anything  that  will  attract  atten- 
tion. But,  no  more  intimacy. 

"And  now,  my  dear  boy,  as  to  the 


rest  of  your  letter.  Mine  must  indeed 
have  failed  to  express  my  meaning. 
God  forbid  that  there  should  not  be  the 
most  perfect  confidence  between  us. 
There  is  nothing  which  I  desire  or  value 
more.  I  only  question  whether  special 
confessions  will  conduce  to  it.  My  ex- 
perience is  against  them.  I  almost 
doubt  whether  they  can  be  perfectly 
honest  between  man  and  man ;  and, 
taking  into  account  the  difference  of  our 
ages,  it  seems  to  me  much  more  likely 
that  we  should  misunderstand  one  ano- 
ther. But  having  said  this,  I  leave  it  to 
you  to  follow  your  own  conscience  in  the 
matter.  If  there  is  any  burthen  which 
I  can  help  you  to  bear,  it  will  be  my 
greatest  pleasure,  as  it  is  my  duty  to  do 
it.  So  now  say  what  you  please,  or  say 
no  more.  If  you  speak,  it  will  be  to  one 
who  has  felt  and  remembers  a  young 
man's  trials. 

"  We  hope  you  will  be  able  to  come 
home  to-morrow,  or  the  next  day,  at 
latest.  Your  mother  is  longing  to  see 
you,  and  I  should  be  glad  to  have  you 
here  for  a  day  or  two  before  the  assizes, 
which  are  held  next  week.  I  should 
rather  like  you  to  accompany  me  to 
them,  as  it  will  give  me  the  opportunity 
of  introducing  you  to  my  brother  magis- 
trates from  other  parts  of  the  county, 
whom  you  are  not  likely  to  meet  else- 
where, and  it  is  a  good  thing  for  a  young 
man  to  know  his  own  county  well. 

"  The  cricket  club  is  very  flourishing 
you  will  be  glad  to  hear,  and  they  have 
put  off  their  best  matches,  especially 
those  with  the  South  Hants  and  Lands- 
down,  till  your  return;  so  you  are  in 
great  request,  you  see.  I  am  told  that 
the  fishing  is  very  good  this  year,  and 
am  promised  several  days  for  you  in  the 
club  water. 

"  September  is  a  long  way  off,  but 
there  is  nothing  like  being  beforehand. 
I  have  put  your  name  down  for  a  licence ; 
and  it  is  time  you  should  have  a  good 
gun  of  your  own ;  so  I  have  ordered  one 
for  you  from  a  man  who  has  lately  settled 
in  the  county.  He  was  Purdy's  foreman, 
with  whom  I  used  to  build,  and,  I  can 
see,  understands  his  business  thoroughly. 
His  locks  are  as  good  as  any  I  have  ever 


486 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


seen.  I  have  told  him  to  make  the 
stock  rather  longer,  and  not  quite  so 
straight  as  that  of  my  old  double  with 
which  you  shot  last  year.  I  think  I 
remember  you  criticised  my  weapon  on 
these  points ;  but  there  will  be  time  for 
you  to  alter  the  details  after  you  get 
home,  if  you  disapprove  of  my  orders. 
It  will  be  more  satisfactory  if  it  is  built 
under  your  own  eye.  If  you  continue 
in  the  mind  for  a  month's  reading  with 
your  friend  Mr.  Hardy,  we  will  arrange 
it  towards  the  end  of  the  vacation,  but 
would  he  not  come  here  1  From  what 
you  say  we  should  very  much  like  to 
know  him.  Pray  ask  him  from  me 
whether  he  will  pass  the  last  month  of 
the  vacation  here  coaching  you.  I  should 
like  you  to  be  his  firs't  regular  pupil. 
Of  course  this  will  be  my  affair.  And 
now  God  bless  you,  and  come  home  as 
soon  as  you  can.  Your  mother  sends 
her  best  love. 

"  Ever  your  most  affectionate, 

"JOHN  BROWN." 

"ENGLEBOURN  RECTORY, 
"JuneZSth,  184—. 

"  DEAREST  MARY, — How  good  of  you 
to  write  to  me  so  soon !  Your  letter  has 
come  like  a  gleam  of  sunshine.  I  am 
in  the  midst  of  worries  already.  In- 
deed, as  you  know,  I  could  never  quite 
throw  off  the  fear  of  what  might  be 
happening  here,  while  we  were  enjoy- 
ing ourselves  at  Oxford,  and  it  has 
all  turned  out  even  worse  than  I  ex- 
pected. I  shall  never  be  able  to  go 
away  again  in  comfort,  I  think.  And 
yet,  if  I  had  been  here,  I  don't  know 
that  I  could  have  done  any  good  It  is 
so  very  sad  that  poor  papa  is  unahle  to 
attend  to  his  magistrate's  business,  and 
he  has  been  worse  than  usual,  quite  laid 
up  in  fact,  since  our  return.  There  is 
no  other  magistrate — not  even  a  gentle- 
man in  the  place,  as  you  know,  except 
the  curate,  and  they  will  not  listen  to 
him,  even  if  he  would  interfere  in  their 
quarrels.  But  he  says  he  will  not 
meddle  with  secular  matters ;  and,  poor 
man,  I  cannot  blame  him,  for  it  is  very 
sad  and  wearing  to  be  mixed  up  in 
it  all. 


"  But  now  I  must  tell  you  all  my 
troubles.  You  remember  the  men 
whom  we  saw  mowing  together  just  be- 
fore we  went  to  Oxford.  Betty  Win- 
burn's  son  was  one  of  them,  and  I 
am  afraid  the  rest  are  not  at  all  good 
company  for  him.  "When  they  had 
finished  papa's  hay,  they  went  to  mow 
for  farmer  Tester.  You  must  remember 
him,  dear,  I  am  sure  ;  the  tall  gaunt 
man,  with  heavy  thick  lips,  and  a  broken 
nose,  and  the  top  of  his  head  quite  flat, 
as  if  it  had  been  cut  off  a  little  above 
his  eyebrows.  He  is  a  very  miserly 
man,  and  a  hard  master ;  at  least  all  the 
poor  people  tell  me  so,  and  he  looks 
cruel.  I  have  always  been  afraid  of 
him,  and  disliked  him,  for  I  remember 
as  a  child  hearing  papa  complain  how 
troublesome  he  was  in  the  vestry ;  and 
except  old  Simon,  who,  I  believe,  only 
does  it  from  perverseness,  I  have  never 
heard  anybody  speak  well  of  him. 

"  The  first  day  that  the  men  went  to 
mow  for  farmer  Tester,  he  gave  them  sour 
beer  to  drink.  You  see,  dear,  they  bar- 
gain to  mow  for  so  much  money  and 
their  beer.  They  were  very  discontented 
at  this,  and  they  lost  a  good  deal  of 
time  going  to  complain  to  him  about 
it,  and  they  had  high  words. 

"  The  men  said  that  the  beer  wasn't  fit 
for  pigs,  and  the  farmer  said  it  was  quite 
good  enough  'for  such  as  they/  and  if 
they  didn't  like  his  beer  they  might  buy 
their  own.  In  the  evening,  too,  he 
came  down  and  complained  that  the 
mowing  was  bad,  and  then  there  were 
more  high  words,  for  the  men  are  very 
jealous  about  their  work.  However, 
they  went  to  work  as  usual  the  next 
morning,  and  all  might  have  gone  off, 
but  in  the  day  farmer  Tester  found  two 
pigs  in  his  turnip  field  which  adjoins 
the  common,  and  had  them  put  in  the 
pound.  One  of  these  pigs  belonged  to 
Betty  Winburn's  son,  and  the  other  to 
one  of  the  men  who  was  mowing  with 
him ;  so,  when  they  came  home  at  night, 
they  found  what  had  happened. 

"The  constable  is  our  pound-keeper, 
the  little  man  who  amused  you  so  much  : 
he  plays  the  bass-viol  in  church.  When 
he  puts  any  beasts  into  the  pound  he 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


487 


cuts  a  stick  in  two,  and  gives  one  piece 
to  the  person  who  brings  the  beasts, 
and  keeps  the  other  himself;  and  the 
owner  of  the  beasts  has  to  bring  the 
other  end  of  the  stick  to  him  before  he 
can  let  them  out.  Therefore,  the  owner, 
you  see,  must  go  to  the  person  who  has 
pounded  his  beasts,  and  make  a  bargain 
with  him  for  payment  of  the  damage 
which  has  been  done,  and  so  get  back 
the  other  end  of  the  stick,  which  they 
call  the  tally,  to  produce  to  the  pound- 
keeper. 

"  Well,  the  men  went  off  to  the  con- 
stable's when  they  heard  their  pigs  were 
pounded,  to  find  who  had  the  tally, 
and,  when  they  found  it  was  farmer 
Tester,  they  went  in  a  body  to  his 
house,  to  remonstrate  with  him,  and 
learn  what  he  set  the  damages  at.  The 
farmer  used  dreadful  language  to  them,  I 
hear,  and  said  they  weren't  fit  to  have 
pigs,  and  must  pay  half-a-crown  for  each 
pig,  before  they  should  have  the  tally ; 
and  the  men  irritated  him  by  telling 
him  that  his  fences  were  a  shame  to 
the  parish,  because  he  was  too  stingy  to 
have  them  mended,  and  that  the  pigs 
couldn't  have  found  half-a-crown's  worth 
of  turnips  in  the  whole  field,  for  he 
never  put  any  manure  on  it,  except 
what  he  could  get  off  the  road,  which 
ought  to  belong  to  the  poor.  At  last 
the  farmer  drove  them  away,  saying  that 
he  should  stop  the  money  out  of  the 
price  he  was  to  pay  for  their  mowing. 

"Then  there  was  very  near  being  a 
riot  in  the  parish;  for  some  of  the  men 
are  very  reckless  people,  and  they  went 
in  the  evening,  and  blew  horns,  and 
beat  kettles  before  his  house,  till  the 
constable,  who  has  behaved  very  well, 
persuaded  them  to  go  away. 

"  In  the  morning  one  of  the  pigs  had 
been  taken  out  of  the  pound;  not 
Betty's  son's,  I  am  glad  to  say,  for  no 
doubt  it  was  very  wrong  of  the  men  to 
take  it  out.  The  farmer  was  furious, 
and  went  with  the  constable  in  the 
morning  to  find  the  pig,  but  they  could 
hear  nothing  of  it  anywhere.  James 
Pope,  the  man  to  whom  it  belonged,  only 
laughed  at  them,  and  said  that  he  never 
could  keep  his  pig  in  himself,  because  it 


was  grandson  to  one  of  the  acting  pigs 
that  went  about  to  the  fairs,  and.  all  the 
pigs  of  that  family  took  to  climbing 
naturally ;  so  his  pig  must  have  climbed 
out  of  the  pound.  This  of  course  was 
all  a  story:  the  men  had  lifted  the  pig 
out  of  the  pound,  and  then  killed  it,  so 
that  the  farmer  might  not  find  it,  and 
sold  the  meat  cheap  all  over  the  parish. 
Betty  went  to  the  farmer  that  morning, 
and  paid  the  half-crown,  and  got  her 
son's  pig  out  before  he  came  home  ;  but 
farmer  Tester  stopped  the  other  half- 
crown  out  of  the  men's  wages,  which 
made  matters  worse  than  ever. 

"  The  day  that  we  were  in  the  theatre 
at  Oxford,  farmer  Tester  was  away  at  one 
of  the  markets.  He  turns  his  big  cattle 
out  to  graze  on  the  common,  which  the 
poor  people  say  he  has  no  right  to  do, 
and  in  the  afternoon  a  pony  of  his  got 
into  the  allotments,  and  Betty's  son 
caught  it,  and  took  it  to  the  constable, 
and  had  it  put  in  the  pound.  The  con- 
stable tried  to  persuade  him  not  to  do 
it,  but  it  was  of  no  use ;  and  so,  when 
farmer  Tester  came  home,  he  found  that 
his  turn  had  come.  I  am  afraid  that  he 
was  not  sober,  for  I  hear  that  he  behaved 
dreadfully  both  to  the  constable  and  to 
Betty's  son,  and,  when  he  found  that  he 
could  not  frighten  them,  he  declared  he 
would  have  the  law  of  them  if  it  cost 
him  twenty  pounds.  So  in  the  morning 
he  went  to  fetch  his  lawyer,  and  when 
we  got  home  you  can  fancy  what  a  scene 
it  was. 

"  You  remember  how  poorly  papa  was 
when  you  left  us  at  Lambourn.  By  the 
time  we  got  home  he  was  quite  knocked 
up,  and  so  nervous  that  he  was  fit  for 
nothing  except  to  have  a  quiet  cup  of 
tea  in  his  own  room.  I  was  sure,  as  we 
drove  up  the  street,  there  was  something 
the  matter.  The  hostler  was  watching 
outside  the  Red  Lion,  and  ran  in  as  soon 
as  we  came  in  sight ;  and,  as  we  passed 
the  door,  out  came  farmer  Tester,  looking 
very  flushed  in  the  face,  and  carrying  his 
great  iron-handled  whip,  and  a  person 
with  him,  who  I  found  was  his  lawyer, 
and  they  marched  after  the  carriage. 
Then  the  constable  was  standing  at  his 
door  too,  and  he  came  after  us,  and  there 


488 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


was  a  group  of  men  outside  the  rectory 
gate.  We  had  not  been  in  the  house 
five  minutes  before  the  servant  came  in 
to  say  that  farmer  Tester  and  a  gentle- 
man wanted  to  see  papa  on  particular 
business.  Papa  sent  out  word  he  was 
very  unwell,  and  that  it  was  not  the 
proper  time  to  come  on  business ;  he 
would  see  them  the  next  day  at  twelve 
o'clock.  But  they  would  not  go  away, 
and  then  papa  asked  me  to  go  out  and 
see  them.  You  can  fancy  how  disagree- 
able it  was ;  and  I  was  so  angry  with 
them  for  coming,  when  they  knew  how 
nervous  papa  is  after  a  journey,  as  well 
as  that  I  could  not  have  patience  to 
persuade  them  to  leave ;  and  so  at  last 
they  made  poor  papa  see  them  after  all. 
He  was  lying  on  a  sofa,  and  quite  unfit 
to  cope  with  a  hard  bad  man  like  farmer 
Tester,  and  a  fluent  plausible  lawyer. 
They  told  their  story  all  their  own  way, 
and  the  farmer  declared  that  the  man 
had  tempted  the  pony  into  the  allot- 
ments with  corn.  And  the  lawyer  said 
that  the  constable  had  no  right  to  keep 
the  pony  in  the  pound,  and  that  he  was 
liable  to  all  sorts  of  punishments.  They 
wanted  papa  to  make  an  order  at  once 
for  the  pound  to  be  opened,  and  I  think 
he  would  have  done  so,  but  I  asked  him 
in  a  whisper  to  send  for  the  constable, 
and  hear  what  he  had  to  say.  The  con- 
stable was  waiting  in  the  kitchen,  so  he 
came  in  in  a  minute.  You  can't  think 
how  well  he  behaved ;  I  have  quite  for- 
given him  all  his  obstinacy  about  the 
singing.  He  told  the  whole  story  about  the 
pigs,  and  how  farmer  Tester  had  stopped 
money  out  of  the  men's  wages.  And 
when  the  lawyer  tried  to  frighten  him, 
he  answered  him  quite  boldly,  that  he 
mightn't  know  so  much  about  the  law, 
but  he  knew  what  was  always  the  cus- 
tom long  before  his  time  at  Englebourn 
about  the  pound,  and  if  farmer  Tester 
wanted  his  beast  out,  he  must  bring  the 
tally  like  another  man.  Then  the  lawyer 
appealed  to  papa  about  the  law,  and  said 
how  absurd  it  was,  and  that  if  such  a 
custom  were  to  be  upheld,  the  man  who 
had  the  tally  might  charge  <£!  00  for  the 
damage.  And  poor  papa  looked  through 
his  law  books,  and  could  find  nothing 


about  it  all ;  and  while  he  was  doing  it 
farmer  Tester  began  to  abuse  the  con- 
stable, and  said  he  sided  with  all  the 
good-for-nothing  fellows  in  the  parish, 
and  that  bad  blood  would  come  of  it. 
But  the  constable  quite  fired  up  at  that, 
and  told  him  that  it  was  such  as  he  who 
made  bad  blood  in  the  parish,  and  that 
poor  folks  had  their  rights  as  well  as 
their  betters,  and  should  have  them 
while  he  was  constable.  If  he  got 
papa's  order  to  open  the  pound,  he  sup- 
posed he  must  do  it,  and  'twas  not  for 
him  to  say  what  was  law,  but  Harry 
Winburn  had  had  to  get  the  tally  for 
his  pig  from  farmer  Tester,  and  what 
was  fair  for  one  was  fair  for  alL 

"  I  was  afraid  papa  would  have  made 
the  order,  but  the  lawyer  said  something 
at  last  which  made  him  take  the  other 
side.  So  he  settled  that  the  farmer  should 
pay  five  shillings  for  the  tally,  which 
was  what  he  had  taken  from  Betty,  and 
had  stopped  out  of  the  wages,  and  that 
was  the  only  order  he  would  make,  and 
the  lawyer  might  do  what  he  pleased 
about  it.  The  constable  seemed  satisfied 
with  this,  and  undertook  to  take  the 
money  down  to  Harry  Winburn,  for 
farmer  Tester  declared  he  would  sooner 
let  the  pony  starve  than  go  himself. 
And  so  papa  got  rid  of  them  after 
an  hour  and  more  of  this  talk.  The 
lawyer  and  farmer  Tester  went  away 
grumbling  and  very  angry  to  the  Red 
Lion.  I  was  very  anxious  to  hear  how 
the  matter  ended;  so  I  sent  after  the 
constable  to  ask  him  to  come  back  and 
see  me  when  he  had  settled  it  all,  and 
about  nine  o'clock  he  came.  He  had 
had  a  very  hard  job  to  get  Harry  Win- 
burn  to  take  the  money,  and  give  up  the 
tally.  The  men  said  that,  if  farmer 
Tester  could  make  them  pay  half  a 
crown  for  a  pig  in  his  turnips,  which 
were  no  bigger  than  radishes,  he  ought 
to  pay  ten  shillings  at  least  for  his  pony 
trampling  down  their  corn,  which  was 
half  grown  ;  and  I  couldn't  help  think- 
ing this  seemed  very  reasonable.  In  the 
end,  however,  the  constable  had  per- 
suaded them  to  take  the  money,  and  so 
the  pony  was  let  out. 

"  I  told  him  how  pleased  I  was  at  the 


489 


way  he  had  behaved,  but  the  little  man 
didn't  seem  quite  satisfied  himself.  He 
should  have  liked  to  have  given  the 
lawyer  a  piece  more  of  his  mind,  he 
said,  only  he  was  no  scholar  ;  '  but  I've 
a  got  all  the  feelins  of  a  man,  miss, 
though  I  med'nt  have  the  ways  o' 
bringin'  on  'em  out.'  You  see  I  am 
quite  coming  round  to  your  opinion 
about  him.  But  when  I  said  that  I 
hoped  all  the  trouble  was  over,  he 
shook  his  head,  and  he  seems  to  think 
that  the  men  will  not  forget  it,  and  that 
some  of  the  wild  ones  will  be  trying  to 
pay  farmer  Tester  out  in  the  winter 
nights,  and  I  could  see  he  was  very 
anxious  about  Harry  "Winburn ;  so  I 
promised  him  to  go  and  see  Betty. 

"  I  went  down  to  her  cottage  yester- 
day, and  found  her  very  low,  poor  old 
soul,  about  her'son.  She  has  had  a  bad 
attack  again,  and  I  am  afraid  her  heart 
is  not  right.  She  will  not  live  long  if 
she  has  much  to  make  her  anxious,  and 
how  is  that  to  be  avoided  ?  For  her 
son's  courting  is  all  going  wrong,  she  can 
see,  though  he  will  not  tell  her  anything 
about  it ;  but  he  gets  more  moody 
and  restless,  she  says,  and  don't  take  a 
pride  in  anything,  not  even  in  his 
flowers  or  his  allotment ;  and  he  takes 
to  going  about,  more  and  more  every 
day,  with  these  men,  who  will  be  sure 
to  lead  him  into  trouble. 

"After  I  left  her,  I  walked  up  to  the 
Hawk's  Lynch,  to  see  whether  the  view 
and  the  air  would  not  do  me  good ; 
and  it  did  do  me  a  great  deal  of  good, 
dear,  and  I  thought  of  you,  and  when  I 
should  see  'your  bright  face  and  hear 
your  happy  laugh  again.  The  village 
looked  so  pretty  and  peaceful.  I  could 
hardly  believe,  while  I  was  up  there, 
that  there  were  all  these  miserable 
quarrels  and  heartburnings  going  on  in 
it.  I  suppose  they  go  on  everywhere, 
but  one  can't  help  feeling  as  if  there 
were  something  specially  hard  in  those 
which  come  under  one's  own  eyes,  and 
touch  oneself.  And  then  they  are  so 
frivolous,  and  everything  might  go  on 
so  comfortably  if  people  would  only  be 
reasonable.  I  ought  to  have  been  a 
man,  I  am  sure,  and  then  I  might, 
ISTo.  12. — VOL.  ir. 


perhaps,  be  able  to  do  more,  and  should 
have  more  influence.  If  poor  papa  were 
only  well  and  strong  ! 

"  But,  dear,  I  shall  tire  you  with  all 
these  long  histories  and  complainings. 
I  have  run  on  till  I  have  no  room  left 
for  anything  else  ;  but  you  can't  think 
what  a  comfort  it  is  to  me  to  write  it  all 
to  you,  for  I  have  no  one  to  tell  it  to. 
I  feel  so  much  better,  and  more  cheer- 
ful since  I  sat  down  to  write  this.  You 
must  give  my  dear  love  to  uncle  and 
aunt,  and  let  me  hear  from  you  again 
whenever  you  have  time.  If  you  could 
come  over  again  and  stay  for  a  few  days 
it  would  be  very  kind;  but  I  must  not 
press  it,  as  there  is  nothing  to  attract 
you  here,  only  we  might  talk  over  all 
that  we  did  and  saw  at  Oxford. — Ever, 
dearest  Mary,  your  very  affectionate 
cousin,  KATIE. 

"  P.  S.— I  should  like  to  have  the 
pattern  of  the  jacket  you  wore  the  last 
day  at  Oxford.  Could  you  cut  it  out  in 
thin  paper,  and  send  it  in  your  next?" 

"July—,  184—. 

"  MY  DEAR  BROWN, — I  was  very  glad 
to  see  your  hand,  and  to  hear  such 
flourishing  accounts  of  your  vacation 
doings.  You  won't  get  any  like  an- 
nouncement out  of  me,  for  cricket  has  not 
yet  come  so  far  west  as  this,  at  least 
not  to  settle.  We  have  a  few  pioneers 
and  squatters  in  the  villages ;  but,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  nothing,  yet  like  matches 
between  the  elevens  of  districts.  Neigh- 
bours we  have  none,  except  the  rector ; 
so  I  have  plenty  of  spare  time,  some  of 
which  I  feel  greatly  disposed  to  devote 
to  you ;  and  I  hope  you  won't  find  me 
too  tedious  to  read. 

"  It  is  very  kind  of  your  father  to 
wish  that  you  should  be  my  first  pupil, 
and  to  propose  that  I  should  spend  the 
last  month  of  this  vacation  with  you 
in  Berkshire.  But  I  do  not  like  to 
give  up  a  whole  month.  My  father  is 
getting  old  and  infirm,  and  I  can  see 
that  it  would  be  a  great  trial  to  him, 
although  he  urges  it,  and  is  always  tell- 
ing me  not  to  let  him  keep  me  at 
home.  What  do  you  say  to  meeting 
me  half  way  1  I  mean,  that  you  should 

K  K 


490 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


come  here  for  half  of  the  time,  and  then 
that  I  should  return  with  you  for  the 
last  fortnight  of  the  vacation.  This  I 
could  manage  perfectly. 

"  But  you  cannot  in  any  case  be  my 
first  pupil ;  for,  not  to  mention  that  I 
have  been,  as  you  know,  teaching  for 
some  years,  I  have  a  pupil  here  at  this 
minute.  You  are  not  likely  to  guess 
who  it  is,  though  you  know  him  well 
enough — perhaps  I  should  say  too  well 
— so,  in  a  word,  it  is  Blake.  I  had  not 
been  at  home  three  days  before  I  got 
a  letter  from  him,  asking  me  to  take 
him,  and  putting  it  in  such  a  way  that 
I  couldn't  refuse.  I  would  sooner  not 
have  had  him,  as  I  had  already  got  out 
of  taking  a  reading  party  with  some 
trouble,  and  felt  inclined  to  enjoy  my- 
self here  in  dignified  idleness  till  next 
term.  But  what  can  you  do  when  a 
man  puts  it  to  you  as  a  great  personal 
favour,  &c.  &c.  1  So  I  wrote  to  accept. 
You  may  imagine  my  disgust  a  day  or 
two  afterwards,  at  getting  a  letter  from 
an  uncle  of  his,  some  official  person  in 
London  apparently,  treating  the  whole 
matter  in  a  business  point  of  view,  and 
me  as  if  I  were  a  training  groom.  He 
is  good  enough  to  suggest  a  stimulant  to 
me  in  the  shape  of  extra  pay  and  his 
future  patronage  in  the  event  of  his 
nephew's  taking  a  first  in  Michaelmas 
term.  If  I  had  received  this  letter 
before,  I  think  it  would  have  turned 
the  scale,  and  I  should  have  refused. 
But  the  thing  was  done,  and  Blake  isn't 
fairly  responsible  for  his  relative's  views. 

"  So  here  he  has  been  for  a  fortnight. 
He  took  a  lodging  in  the  village  at  first ; 
but  of  course  my  dear  old  father's  ideas 
of  hospitality  were  shocked  at  this,  and 
here  he  is,  our  inmate. 

"  He  reads  fiercely  by  fits  and  starts. 
A  feeling  of  personal  hatred  against  the 
examiners  seems  to  -urge  him  on  more 
than  any  other  motive ;  but  this  will  not 
be  strong  enough  to  keep  him  to  regular 
work,  and  without  regular  work  he  won't 
do,  notwithstanding  all  his  cleverness, 
and  he  is  a  marvellously  clever  fellow. 
So  the  first  thing  I  have  to  do  is  to  get 
him  steadily  to  the  collar,  and  how  to 
do  it  is  a  pretty  particular  puzzle.  For 


he  hasn't  a  grain  of  enthusiasm  in  his 
composition,  nor  any  power,  as  far  as  I 
can  see,  of  throwing  himself  into  the 
times  and  scenes  of  which  he  is  reading. 
The  philosophy  of  Greece  and  the  his- 
tory of  Rome  are  matters  of  perfect 
indifference  to  him — to  be  got  up  by 
catch- words  and  dates  for  examination, 
and  nothing  more.  I  don't  think  he 
would  care  a  straw  if  Socrates  had  never 
lived,  or  Hannibal  had  destroyed  Rome. 
The  greatest  names  and  deeds  of  the  old 
world  are  just  so  many  dead  counters 
to  him — the  Jewish  just  as  much  as 
the  rest.  I  tried  him  with  the  story  of 
the  attempt  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  to 
conquer  the  Jews,  and  the  glorious  rising 
of  all  that  was  living  in  the  Holy  Land 
under  the  Maccabees.  Not  a  bit  of  it ; 
I  couldn't  get  a  spark  out  of  him.  He 
wouldn't  even  read  the  story  because  it 
is  in  the  Apocrypha,  and  so,  as  he  said, 
the  d — d  examiners  couldn't  ask  him 
anything  about  it  in  the  schools. 

"  Then  his  sense  of  duty  is  quite  un- 
developed. He  has  no  notion  of  going 
on  doing  anything  disagreeable  because 
he  ought.  So  here  I  am  at  fault  again. 
Ambition  he  has  in  abundance ;  in  fact 
so  strongly,  that  very  likely  it  may  in 
the  end  pull  him  through,  and  make 
him  work  hard  enough  for  his  Oxford 
purposes  at  any  rate.  But  it  wants  re- 
pressing rather  than  encouragement,  and 
I  certainly  shan't  appeal  to  it. 

"You  will  begin  to  think  I  dislike  him 
and  want  to  get  rid  of  him,  but  it  isn't 
the  case.  You  know  what  a  good  tem- 
per he  has,  and  how  remarkably  well 
he  talks ;  so  he  makes  himself  very 
pleasant,  and  my  father  evidently  enjoys 
his  company  ;  and  then  to  be  in  con- 
stant intercourse  with  a  subtle  intellect 
like  his,  is  pleasantly  exciting,  and 
keeps  one  alive  and  at  high  pressure, 
though  one  can't  help  always  wishing 
that  it  had  a  little  heat  in  it.  You 
would  be  immensely  amused  if  you  could 
drop  in  on  us. 

"  I  think  I  have  told  you,  or  you  must 
have  seen  it  for  yourself,  that  my  father's 
principles  are  true  blue,  as  becomes  a 
sailor  of  thg  time  of  the  great  war,  while 
his  instincts  and  practice  are  liberal  in 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


491 


the  extreme.  Our  rector,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  liberal  in  principles,  but  an  aris- 
tocrat of  the  aristocrats  in  instinct  and 
practice.  They  are  always  ready  enough 
therefore  to  do  battle,  and  Blake  delights 
in  the  war,  and  fans  it  and  takes  part  in 
it  as  a  sort  of  free  lance,  laying  little 
logical  pit-falls  for  the  combatants  alter- 
nately, with  that  deferential  manner  of 
his.  He  gets  some  sort  of  intellectual 
pleasure,  I  suppose,  out  of  seeing  where 
they  ought  to  tumble  in ;  for  tumble  in 
they  don't,  but  clear  his  pit- falls  in  their 
stride — at  least  my  father  does — quite 
innocent  of  having  neglected  to  distri- 
bute his  middle  term  ;  and  the  rector, 
if  he  has  some  inkling  of  these  traps, 
brushes  them  aside,  and  disdains  to 
spend  powder  on  any  one  but  his  old  ad- 
versary and  friend.  I  employ  myself  in 
trying  to  come  down  ruthlessly  on  Blake 
himself ;  and  so  we  spend  our  evenings 
after  dinner,  which  comes  off  at  the 
primitive  hour  of  five.  We  used  to 
dine  at  three,  but  my  father  has  con- 
formed now  to  College  hours.  If  the 
rector  does  not  come,  instead  of  argu- 
mentative talk,  we  get  stories  out  of  my 
father.  In  the  mornings  we  bathe,  and 
boat,  and  read.  So,  you  see,  he  and  I 
have  plenty  of  one  another's  company, 
and  it  is  certainly  odd  that  we  get  on  so 
well  with  so  very  few  points"  of  sym- 
pathy. But,  luckily,  besides  his  good 
temper  and  cleverness,  he  has  plenty  of 
humour.  On  the  whole,  I  think  we 
shall  rub  through  the  two  months  which 
he  is  to  spend  here  without  getting  to 
hate  one  another,  though  there  is  little 
chance  of  our  becoming  friends.  Be- 
sides putting  some  history  and  science 
into  him  (scholarship  he  does  not  need), 
I  shall  be  satisfied  if  I  can  make  him 
give  up  his  use  df  the  pronoun  '  you ' 
before  he  goes.  In  talking  of  the  corn 
laws,  or  foreign  policy,  or  India,  .  or 
any  other  political  subject,  however  in- 
teresting, he  never  will  identify  himself 
as  an  Englishman;  and  'you  do  this,'  or 
'you  expect  that,'  is  for  ever  in  his  mouth, 
speaking  of  his  own  countrymen.  I 
believe  if  the  French  were  to  land  to- 
morrow on  Portland,  he  would  comment 
on  our  attempts  to  dislodge  them  as  if  he 


had  no  concern  with  the  business  except 
as  a  looker-on. 

"  You  will  think  all  this  a  rather  slow 
return  for  your  jolly  gossiping  letter,  full 
of  cricket,  archery,  fishing,  and  I  know 
not  what  pleasant  goings-on.  But  what 
is  one  to  do  ?  one  can  only  write  about 
what  is  one's  subject  of  interest  for  the 
time  being,  and  Blake  stands  in  that 
relation  to  me  just  now.  I  should  pre- 
fer it  otherwise,  but  si  on  n'a  pas  ce 
gu'on  aime  il  faut  aimer  ce  qu'on  a.  I 
have  no  incident  to  relate ;  these  parts 
get  on  without  incidents  somehow,  and 
without  society.  I  wish  there  were 
some,  particularly  ladies'  society.  I 
break  the  tenth  commandment  con- 
stantly, thinking  of  Commemoration, 
and  that  you  are  within  a  ride  of  Miss 
"Winter  and  her  cousin.  When  you  see 
them  next,  pray  present  my  respectful 
compliments.  It  is  a  sort  of  consolation 
to  think  that  one  may  cross  their  fancy 
for  a  moment  and  be  remembered  as 
part  of  a  picture  which  gives  them  plea- 
sure. With  which  piece  of  sentiment  I 
may  as  well  shut  up.  Don't  you  forget 
my  message  now,  and — 

"  Believe  me,  ever  yours  most  truly, 

"  JOHN  HARDY. 

"  P.  S.  I  mean  to  speak  to  Blake, 
when  I  get  a  chance,  of  that  wretched 
debt  which  you  have  paid,  unless  you 
object.  I  should  think  better  of  him  if 
he  seemed  more  uncomfortable  about 
his  affairs.  After  all  he  may  be  more 
so  than  I  think,  for  he  is  very  reserved 
on  such  subjects." 

"ENGLEBOUBN  RECTORY,  July,  184 — . 
"  DEAREST  MARY, — I  send  the  coach- 
man with  this  note,  in  order  that 
you  may  not  be  anxious  about  me.  I 
have  just  returned  from  poor  Betty 
Winbum's  cottage  to  write  it.  She 
is  very  very  ill,  and  I  do  net  think 
can  last  out  more  than  a  day  or 
two ;  and  she  seems  to  cling  to  me  so 
that  I  cannot  have  the  heart  to  leave 
her.  Indeed,  if  I  could  make  up  my 
mind  to  do  it,  I  should  never  get  her 
poor  white  eager  face  out  of  my  head 
all  day,  so  that  I  should  be  very  bad 
K  K  2 


492 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


company  and  quite  out  of  place  at  your 
party,  making  everybody  melancholy 
and  uncomfortable  who  came  near  me. 
So,  dear,  I  am  not  coming.  Of  course 
it  is  a  great  disappointment.  I  had  set 
my  heart  on  being  with  you,  and  enjoy- 
ing it  all  thoroughly ;  and  even  at 
breakfast  this  morning  knew  of  nothing 
to  hinder  me.  My  dress  is  actually 
lying  on  the  bed  at  this  minute,  and  it 
looks  very  pretty,  especially  the  jacket 
like  yours,  which  I  and  Hopkins  have 
managed  to  make  up  from  the  pattern 
you  sent,  though  you  forgot  the  sleeves, 
which  made  it  rather  hard  to  do.  Ah, 
well ;  it  is  of  no  use  to  think  of  how 
pleasant  things  would  have  been  which 
one  cannot  have.  You  must  write  me 
an  account  of  how  it  all  went  off,  dear  ; 
or  perhaps  you  can  manage  to  get  over 
here  before  long  to  tell  me. 

"  I  must  now  go  back  to  poor  Betty. 
She  is  such  a  faithful,  patient  old  thing, 
and  has  been  such  a  good  woman  all  her 
life  that  there  is  nothing  painful  in 
being  by  her  now,  and  one  feels  sure 
that  it  will  be  much  happier  and  better 
for  her  to  be  at  rest.  If  she  could  only 
feel  comfortable  about  her  son,  I  am  sure 
she  would  think  so  herself.  Oh,  I  for- 
got to  say  that  her  attack  was  brought 
on  by  the  shock  of  hearing  that  he  had 
been  summoned  for  an  assault.  Farmer 
Tester's  son,  a  young  man  of  about  his 
own  age,  has  it  seems  been  of  late  way- 
laying Simon's  daughter  and  making 
love  to  her.  It  is  so  very  hard  to  make 
out  the  truth  in  matters  of  this  kind. 
Hopkins  says  she  is  a  dressed-up  little 
minx  who  runs  after  all  the  young  men 
in  the  parish ;  but  really,  from  what  I 
see  and  hear  from  other  persons,  I  think 
she  is  a  good  girl  enough.  .Even  Betty, 
who  looks  on  her  as  the  cause  of  most 
of  her  own  trouble,  has  never  said  a 
word  to  make  me  think  that  she  is  at  all 
a  light  person,  or  more  fond  of  admira- 
tion than  any  other  good-looking  girl  in 
the  parish. 

"  But  those  Testers  are  a  very  wicked 
set.  You  cannot  think  what  a  misfor- 
tune it  is  in  a  place  like  this  to  have 
these  rich  families  with  estates  of  their 
own,  in  which  the  young  men  begin  to 


think  themselves  above  the  common 
farmers.  They  ape  the  gentlemen,  and 
give  themselves  great  airs,  but  of  course 
no  gentleman  will  associate  with  them, 
as  they  are  quite  uneducated ;  and  the 
consequence  is  that  they  live  a  great 
deal  at  home,  and  give  themselves  up  to 
all  kinds  of  wickedness.  This  young 
Tester  is  one  of  these.  His  father  is  a 
very  bad  old  man,  and  does  a  great  deal 
of  harm  here  ;  and  the  son  is  following 
in  his  steps,  and  is  quite  as  bad,  or 
worse.  So  you  see  I  shall  not  easily 
believe  that  Harry  Winburn  has  been 
much  in  the  wrong.  However,  all  I 
know  of  it  at  present  is  that  young 
Tester  was  beaten  by  Harry  yesterday 
evening  in  the  village  street,  and  that 
they  came  to  papa  at  once  for  a  sum- 
mons. 

"Oh,  here  is  the  coachman  ready  to 
start ;  so  I  must  conclude,  dear,  and  go 
back  to  my  patient.  I  shall  often  think 
of  you  during  the  day.  I  am  sure  you 
will  have  a  charming  party.  With  best 
love  to  all,  believe  me,  ever  dearest, 
"  Your  most  affectionate 

"  KATIE. 

"  P.  S. — T  am  very  glad  that  uncle 
and  aunt  take  to  Tom,  and  that  he  is 
staying  with  you  for  some  days.  You 
will  find  him  very  useful  in  making  the 
party  go  off  well,  I  am  surel" 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

AMUSEMENTS   AT   BARTON   MANOR. 

"  A  LETTER,  Miss,  from  Englebourn," 
said  a  footman,  coming  up  to  Mary  with 
the  note  given  at  the  end  of  the  last 
chapter  on  a  waiter.  She  took  it  and 
tore  it  open ;  and,  while  she  is  reading  it, 
the  reader  may  be  introduced  to  the 
place  and  company  in  which  we  find 
her.  The  scene  is  a  large  old-fashioned 
square  brick  house,  backed  by  fine  trees, 
in  the  tops  of  which  the  rooks  live,  and 
the  jackdaws  and  starlings  in  the  many 
holes  which  time  has  worn  in  the  old 
trunks  ;  but  they  are  all  away  on  this 
fine  summer  morning,  seeking  their 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


493 


meal  and  enjoying  themselves  in  the 
neighbouring  fields.  In  front  of  the 
house  is  a  pretty  flower  garden,  sepa- 
rated by  a  haw-haw  from  a  large  pasture, 
sloping  southwards  gently  down  to  a 
brook,  which  glides  along  through  water- 
cress and  willow  beds  to  join  the  Kennet. 
The  beasts  have  all  been  driven  off,  and 
on  the  upper  part  of  the  field,  nearest 
the  house,  two  men  are  fixing  up  a  third 
pair  of  targets  on  the  rich  short  grass. 
A  large  tent  is  pitched  near  the  archery- 
ground,"to  hold  quivers  and  bow-cases, 
and  luncheon,  and  to  shelter  lookers-on 
from  the  mid-day  sun.  Beyond  the 
brook  a  pleasant,  well-timbered  country 
lies,  with  high  chalk-downs  for  an  hori- 
zon, ending  in  Marlborough  hill,  faint 
and  blue  in  the  west.  This  is  the  place 
which  Mary's  father  has  taken  for  the 
summer  and  autumn,  and  where  she  is 
fast  becoming  the  pet  of  the  neighbour- 
hood. 

It  will  not  perhaps  surprise  readers  to 
find  that  our  hero  has  managed  to  find 
his  way  to  Barton  Manor  in  the  second 
week  of  the  vacation,  and,  having  made 
the  most  of  his  opportunities,  is  acknow- 
ledged as  a  cousin  by  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Porter.  Their  boys  are  at  home  for  the 
holidays,  and  Mr.  Porter's  great  wish  is 
that  they  should  get  used  to  the  country 
in  their  summer  holidays.  And  as  they 
have  spent  most  of  their  childhood  and 
boyhood  in  London,  to  which  he  has 
been  tied,  pretty  closely  hitherto,  this  is 
a  great  opportunity.  The  boys  only 
wanted  a  preceptor,  and  Tom  presented 
himself  at  the  right  moment,  and  soon 
became  the  hero  of  Charley  and  Neddy 
Porter.  He  taught  them  to  throw  flies 
and  bait  crawfish  nets,  to  bat  fowl,  and 
ferret  for  rabbits,  and  to  saddle  and  ride 
their  ponies,  besides  getting  up  games  of 
cricket  in  the  spare  evenings,  which 
kept  him  away  from  Mr.  Porter's  dinner- 
table.  This  last  piece  of  self-denial,  as 
he  considered  it,  quite  won  over  that 
gentleman,  who  agreed  with  his  wife 
that  Tom  was  just  the  sort  of  companion 
they  would  like  for  the  boys,  and  so  the 
house  was  thrown  open  to  him. 

The  boys  were  always  clamouring  for 
him  when  he  was  away,  and  making 


their  mother  write  off  to  press  him  to 
come  again  ;  which  he,  being  a  very 
good-natured  young  man,  and  particu- 
larly fond  of  boys,  was  ready  enough  to 
do.  So  this  was  the  third  visit  he  had 
paid  in  a  month. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Brown  wondered  a 
little  that  he  should  be  so  very  fond  of 
the  young  Porters,  who  Avere  good  boys 
enough,  but  very  much  like  other  boys 
of  thirteen  and  fifteen,  of  whom  there 
were  several  in  the  neighbourhood.  He 
had  indeed  just  mentioned  an  elder 
sister,  but  so  casually  that  their  atten- 
tion had  not  been  drawn  to  the  fact, 
which  had  almost  slipped  out  of  their 
memories.  On  the  other  hand,  Tom 
seemed  so  completely  to  identify  him- 
self with  the  boys  and  their  pursuits, 
that  it  never  occurred  to  their  father 
and  mother,  who  were  doatingly  fond  of 
them,  that,  after  all,  they  might  not  be 
the  only  attraction.  Mary  seemed  to 
take  very  little  notice  of  him,  and  went 
on  with  her  own  pursuits  much  a? 
usual.  It  was  true  that  she  liked  keep- 
ing the  score  at  cricket,  and  corning  to 
look  at  them  fishing  or  rabbiting  in  her 
walks;  but  all  that  was  very  natural. 
It  is  a  curious  and  merciful  dispensation 
of  Providence  that  most  fathers  and 
mothers  seem  never  to  be  capable  of 
remembering  their  own  experience,  and 
will  probably  go  on  till  the  end  of  time 
thinking  of  their  sons  of  twenty  and 
daughters  of  sixteen  or  seventeen  as 
mere  children,  who  may  be  allowed  to 
run  about  together  as  much  as  they 
please.  And,  where  it  is  otherwise,  the 
results  are  not  very  different,  for  there 
are  certain  mysterious  ways  of  holding 
intercourse  implanted  in  the  youth  of 
both  sexes,  against  which  no  vigilance 
can  avail. 

So  on  this,  her  great  fete  day,  Tom 
had  been  helping  Mary  all  the  morning 
in  dressing  the  rooms  with  flowers,  and 
arranging  all  the  details — where  people 
were  to  sit  at  the  cold  dinner ;  how  to 
find  the  proper  number  of  seats  ;  how 
the  dining-room  was  to  be  cleared  in 
time  for  dancing  when  the  dew  began 
to  fall.  In  all  which  matters  there 
were  many  obvious  occasions  for  those 


494 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford, 


petits  soins  which  are  much  valued  by 
persons  in  like  situations ;  and  Tom 
was  not  sorry  that  the  boys  had  voted 
the  whole  preparations  a  bore,  and  had 
gone  off  to  the  brook  to  gropple  in  the 
bank  for  crawfish  till  the  shooting 
began.  The  arrival  of  the  note  had 
been  the  first  contre-temps  of  the  morn- 
ing, and  they  were  now  expecting  guests 
to  arrive  every  minute. 

"  What  is  the  matter  ?  No  bad  news, 
I  hope,"  he  said,  seeing  her  vexed  ex- 
pression. 

"  Why,  Katie  can't  come.  I  declare 
I  could  sit  down  and  cry.  I  shan't 
enjoy  the  party  a  bit.  now,  and  I  wish 
it  were  all  over." 

"  I  am  sure  Katie  would  be  very  un- 
happy if  she  thought  you  were  going  to 
spoil  your  day's  pleasure  on  her  ac- 
count." 

"  Yes,  I  know  she  would ;  but  it  is 
so  provoking  when  I  had  looked  forward 
so  to  having  her." 

,  "You  have  never  told  me  why  she 
cannot  come;  she  was  quite  full  of 
it  all  when  I  saw  her  a  few  days 
back." 

"  Oh,  there  is  a  poor  old  woman  in 
the  village  dying  who  is  a  great  friend 
of  Katie's.  Here  is  her  letter ;  let  me 
see,"  she  said,  glancing  over  it  to  see 
that  there  was  nothing  in  it  which  she 
did  not  wish  him  to  read,  "you  may 
read  it,  if  you  like." 

Tom  began  reading.  "  Betty  Win- 
burn,"  he  said,  when  he  came  to  the 
name,  "  what,  poor  dear  old  Betty ! 
why  I've  known  her  ever  since  I  was 
born.  She  used  to  live  in  our  parish, 
and  I  haven't  seen  her  this  eight  years 
nearly.  And  her  boy  Harry,  I  wonder 
what  has  become  of  him  ?  " 

"You  will  see  if  you  read  on,"  said 
Mary;  and  so  he  read  to  the  end,  and 
then  folded  it  up  and  returned  it. 

"  So  poor  old  Betty  is  dying.  Well, 
she  was  always  a  good  soul,  and  very 
kind  to  me  when  I  was  a  boy.  I  should 
like  to  see  her  once  again,  and  perhaps 
I  might  be  able  to  do  something  for  her 
son." 

"Why  should  we  not  ride  over  to 
Englebourn  to-morrow?  They  will  be 


glad  to  get  us  out  of  the  way  while  the 
house  is  being  straightened." 

"  I  should  like  it  of  all  things,  if  it 
can  be  managed." 

"  Oh,  I  will  manage  it  somehow,  for 
I  must  go  and  see  that  dear  Katie.  I 
do  feel  so  ashamed  of  myself  when  I 
think  of  all  the  good  she  is  doing,  and 
I  do  nothing  but  put  flowers  about,  and 
play  the  piano.  Isn't  she  an  angel 
now?" 

"  Of  course  she  is." 
"  Yes  ;  but  I  won't  have  that  sort  of 
matter-of-course  acquiescence.     Now,  do 
you  really  mean  that  Katie  is  as  good  as 
an  angel  ? " 

"As  seriously  as  if  I  saw  the  wings 
growing  out  of  her  shoulders,  and  dew 
drops  hanging  on  them." 

"You  deserve  to  have  some  things 
not  at  all  like  wings  growing  out  of  your 
head.  How  is  it  that  you  never  see 
when  I  don't  want  you  to  talk  your 
nonsense  1 " 

"  How '  am  I  to  talk  sense  about 
angels?  I  don't  know  anything  about 
them." 

"  You  know  what  I  mean,  perfectly. 
I  say  that  dear  Katie  is  an  angel,  and  I 
mean  that  I  don't  know  anything  in  her 
— no,  not  one  single  thing- — which  I 
should  like  to  have  changed.  If  the 

angels  are  all  as  good  as  she  " 

"  If/  why  I  shall  begin  to  doubt  your 
orthodoxy." 

"  You  don't  know  what  I  was  going 
to  say." 

"It  doesn't  matter  what  you  were 
going  to  say.  You  couldn't  have  brought 
that  sentence  round  to  an  orthodox  con- 
clusion. Oh,  please  don't  look  angry, 
now.  Yes,  I  quite  see  what  you  mean. 
You  can  think  of  Katie  just  as  she  is 
now  in  Heaven,  without  being  shocked." 
Mary  paused  for  a  moment  before  she 
answered,  as  if  she  were  rather  taken  by 
surprise  at  this  way  of  putting  her 
meaning,  and  then  said  seriously — 

"Indeed,  I  can.  I  think  we  should 
all  be  perfectly  happy  if  we  were  all  as 
good  as  she  is." 

"But  she  is  not  very  happy  herself, 
I  am  afraid." 

"  Of  course  not ;   how  can  she  be, 


Tom  Brown  at  Oxford. 


495 


when  all  the  people  about  her  are  so 
troublesome  and  selfish?" 

"  I  can't  fancy  an  angel  the  least  like 
Uncle  Eobeft,  can  you?" 

"  I  won't  talk  about  angels  any  more. 
You  have  made  me  feel  quite  as  if  I  had 
been  saying  something  wicked." 

"Now  really  it  is  too  hard  that  you 
should  lay  the  blame  on  me,  when  you 
began  the  subject  yourself.  You  ought 
at  least  to  let  me  say  what  I  have  to  say 
about  angels." 

"Why,  you  said  you  knew  nothing 
about  them  half  a  minute  ago." 

"But  I  may  have  my  notions  like 
other  people.  You  have  your  notions. 
Katie  is  your  angel." 

"Well,  then,  what  are  your  notions?" 

"  Katie  is  rather  too  dark  for  my  idea 
of  an  angeL  I  can't  fancy  a  dark 
angel." 

"Why,  how  can  you  call  Katie  dark  ?" 

"  I  only  say  she  is  too  dark  for  my 
idea  of  an  angeL" 

"  Well,  go  on." 

"  Then,  she  is  rather  too  grave." 

"  Too  grave  for  an  angel ! " 

"For  my  idea  of  an  angel — one  doesn't 
want  one's  angel  to  be  like  oneself,  and 
I  am  so  grave,  you  know." 

"Yes,  very.  Then  your  angel  is  to 
be  a  laughing  angel.  A  laughing  angel, 
and  yet  very  sensible;  never  talking 
nonsense  ?" 

*'  Oh,  I  didn't  say  that." 

"  But  you  said  he  wasn't  to  be  like 
you." 

"  He  !  who  in  the  world  do  you  mean 
by  Tie  9  " 

"  Why,  your  angel,  of  course." 

"  My  angel !  You  don't  really  sup- 
pose that  my  angel  is  to  be  a  man  ? " 

"  I  have  no  time  to  think  about  it. 
Look,  they  are  putting  those  targets 
quite  crooked.  You  are  responsible  for 
the  targets ;  we  must  go  and  get  them 
straight." 

They  walked  across  the  ground  to- 
.  wards  the  targets,  and  Tom  settled  them 
according  to  his  notions  of  opposites. 

"  After  all,  archery  is  slow  work,"  he 
said,  when  the  targets  were  settled  satis- 
factorily. "I  don't  believe  anybody  really 
enjoys  it." 


f.  "Now  that  is  because  you  men  haven't 
it  all  to  yourselves.  You  are  jealous 
of  any  sort  of  game  in  which  we  can 
join.  I  believe  you  are  afraid  of  being 
beaten." 

"On  the  contrary,  that  is  its  only 
recommendation,  that  you  can  join  in  it" 

"Well,    I   think   that  ought  to   be 

recommendation  enough.    But  I  believe 

it  is  much  harder  than  most  of  your 

•  games.     You  can't  shoot  half  as  well  as 

you  play  cricket,  can  you  ?  " 

"No,  because  I  never  practise.  It 
isn't  exciting  to  be  walking  up  and 
down  between  two  targets,  and  doing 
the  same  thing  over  and  over  again. 
Why,  you  don't  find  it  so  yourself.  You 
hardly  ever  shoot." 

"  Indeed  I  do  though,  constantly." 

"  Why,  I  have  scarcely  ever  seen  you 
shooting." 

"  That  is  because  you  are  away  with 
the  boys  all  day." 

"  Oh,  I  am  never  too  far  to  know 
what  is  going  on.  I'm  sure  you  have 
never  practised  for  more  than  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  any  day  that  I  have  been 
here." 

"  Well,  perhaps  I  may  not  have.  But 
I  tell  you  I  am  very  fond  of  it." 

Here  the  two  boys  came  up  from  the 
brook,  Neddy  with  his  Scotch  cap  full 
of  cray-fish. 

"Why,  you  wretched  boys,  where 
have  you  been  ?  You  are  not  fit  to  be 
seen,"  said  Mary,  shaking  the  arrows  at 
them,  which  she  was  carrying  in  her 
hand.  "  Go  and  dress  directly,  or  you 
will  be  late.  I- think  I  heard  a  carriage 
drive  up  just  now." 

"  Oh,  there's  plenty  of  time.  Look 
what  whackers,  cousin  Tom,"  said  Char- 
ley, holding  out  one  of  his  prizes  by  its 
back  towards  Tom,  while  the  indignant 
cray-fish  flapped  its  tail  and  worked 
about  with  its  claws  in  the  hopes  of 
getting  hold  of  something  to  pinch. 

"  I  don't  believe  those  boys  have  been 
dry  for  two  hours  together  in  daylight 
since  you  first  came  here,"  said  Mary  to 
Tom. 

"Well,  and  they're  all  the  better  for 
it,  I'm  sure,"  said  Tom. 

"Yes,  that  we  are,"  said  Charley. 


496 


Three  Weeks   "Loafing"  in  Arran. 


"  I  say,  Charley,"  said  Tom,  "  your 
sister  says  she  is  very  fond  of  shooting." 

"Ay,  and  so  she  is.  And  isn't  she 
a  good  shot  too  ?  I  believe  she  would 
beat  you  at  fifty  yards." 

"  There  now,  you  see,  you  need  not 
have  been  so  unbelieving,"  said  Mary. 

"Will  you  give  her  a  shot  at  your 
new  hat,  cousin  Tom  ? "  said  Neddy. 

"  Yes,  Neddy,  that  I  will ; "  and  he 
added  to  Mary,  "I  will  bet  you  a  pair  of 
gloves  you  do  not  hit  it  in  three  shots." 

"  Yery  well,"  said  Mary,  "  at  thirty 
yards."  • 

"  No,  no  !  fifty  yards  was  the  named 
distance." 

"No,  fifty  yards  is  too  far.  Why, 
your  hat  is  not  bigger  than  the  gold." 

"  Well,  I  don't  mind  splitting  the 
difference ;  we  will  say  forty." 

"  Very  well — three  shots  at  forty 
yards." 

"  Yes ;  here,  Charley,  run  and  hang 
my  hat  on  that  target."  The  boys 
rushed  off  with  the  hat — a  new  white 
one — and  hung  it  with  a  bit  of  string 
over  the  centre  of  one  of  the  targets, 
and  then,  stepping  a  little  aside,  stood, 
clapping  their  hands,  shouting  to  Mary 
to  take  good  aim. 

"  You  must  string  my  bow,"  she  said, 
handing  it  to  him  as  she  buckled  on  her 
guard.  "  Now,  do  you  repent  ?  I  am 
going  to  do  my  best,  mind,  if  I  do  shoot." 

"•I  scorn  repentance  :  do  your  worst," 
said  Tom,  stringing  the"  bow  and  handing 
it  back  to  her.  "  And  now  I  will  hold 
your  arrows ;  here  is  the  forty  yards." 

Mary  came  to  the  place  which  he  had 
stepped,  her  eyes  full  of  fun  and  mis- 
chief; and  he  saw  at  once  that  she 
knew  what  she  was  about  as  she  took 
her  position  and  drew  the  first  arrow. 
It  missed  the  hat  by  some  three  inches 
only,  and  the  boys  clapped  and  shouted. 


"  Too  near  to  be  pleasant,"  said  Tom, 
handing  the  second  arrow.  "  I  see  you 
can  shoot." 

"  Well,  I  will  let  you  off  still." 

"  Gloves  and  all?" 

"  No,  of  course  you  must  pay  the 
gloves." 

"  Shoot  away  then.  Ah,  that  will 
do,"  he  cried,  as  the  second  arrow  struck 
considerably  above  the  hat,  "  I  shall  get 
my  gloves  yet,"  and  he  handed  the  third 
arrow.  They  were  too  intent  on  the 
business  in  hand  to  observe  that  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Porter  and  several  guests  were 
already  on  the  hand  bridge  which  crossed 
the  haw-haw. 

Mary  drew  her  third  arrow,  paused  a 
moment,  loosed  it,  and  this  time  with 
fatal  aim. 

The  boys  rushed  to  the  target,  towards 
which  Mary  and  Tom  also  hurried,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Porter  and  the  new  comers 
following  more  quietly. 

"  Oh,  look  here — what  fun,"  said 
Charley,  as  Tom  came  up,  holding  up 
the  hat  spiked  on  the  arrow  which  he 
had  drawn  out  of  the  target. 

"  What  a  wicked  shot,"  he  said, 
taking  the  hat  and  turning  to  Mary. 
"Look  here,  you  have  actually  gone 
through  three  places — through  crown, 
and  side,  and  brim." 

Mary  began  to  feel  quite  sorry  at  her 
own  success,  and  looked  at  the  wounded 
hat  sorrowfully. 

"  Hullo,  look  here — here's  papa  and 
mamma  and  some  people,  and  we  ain't 
dressed.  Come  along,  Neddy,"  and  the 
boys  made  away  towards  the  back  pre- 
mises, while  Mary  and  Tom,  turning 
round,  found  themselves  in  the  presence 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Porter,  Mr.  Brown,  and 
two  or  three  other  guests. 

To  be  continued. 


THEEE  WEEKS'  "LOAFING"  IN  AEEAN. 

BY   CORNWALL   SIMEON. 


ON  the  13th  of  August  (the  12th  was 
Sunday)  instead  of,  according  to  our 
wont,  following  the  yet  unsuspecting 
grouse,  or  endeavouring  to  adapt  our 


fly  to  the  caprices  of  the  wily  salmon, 
we  found  ourselves  anchored,  or  at  least 
brought  up,  in  Arran.  We  had  hoped 
to  have  occupied  independent  quarters 


Three  Weelis  "  Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


497 


on  some  moor  on  the  N.W.  coast,  but, 
as  the  period  during  which  we  should 
have  occupied  them  would  probably 
not  have  exceeded  six  weeks  or  so,  and 
might  have  been  still  further  abridged, 
we  considered  that  le  jeu  ne  valait  pas 
la  chandelle  of  a  year's  rent,  particularly 
as  we  had  failed  to  hear  of  any  place 
which  exactly  suited  us.  We  therefore 
determined  to  come  northwards  on  a 
roving  commission,  not  tied  to  any  lo- 
cality, or  even  line  of  country,  but  with 
the  general  notion  of  coasting  along, 
making  inquiries  as*  we  went,  and  being 
ready,  like  a  vagrant  hermit-crab  in 
search  of  a  lodging,  to  adapt  ourselves 
to  any  shell  that  might  happen  to  suit 
us. 

"With  this  crude  and  indefinite  plan 
for  our  autumn  campaign  before  us,  we 
(a  friend  and  myself)  met,  by  appoint- 
ment, in  Greenock,  he  hailing  from  the 
west  of  Ireland,  where  he  had  been 
enjoying  some  enviably  pleasant  fishing, 
myself  from  London. 

As  all  the  world  was  thus  before  us, 
and  we  had  no  particular  opinion  as  to 
our  first  halting  place,  Arran  was  pro- 
posed ;  not  with  any  idea  of  finding 
there  what  we  were  in  search  of  in  the 
way  of  sport,  but  because,  in  the  first 
place,  it  was  very  easy  of  access  ;  in  the 
next,  because  we  had  heard  much  of  the 
natural  beauties  of  the  island ;  and  lastly, 
because,  judging  from  an  experience  of 
some  years,  we  knew  quite  well  that  if 
we  were  actually  bound  for  any  specific 
moor,  we  should  not  have  strength  of 
purpose  sufficient  to  devote  a  day  to  it, 
and  that  it  was  now  or  never  with  us. 
The  proposition  to  take  advantage  of  our 
leisure  thus  to  pay  Arran  a  visit  en 
passant  being  carried  nem.  con.,  we  came 
off  by  the  Juno,  one  of  the  fastest  of 
the  Clyde  steamers,  which,  conveniently 
enough,  leaves  Greenock  at  a  quarter  to 
four  P.M.,  four  or  five  hours  after  the 
arrival  of  the  9.15.  P.M.  train  from  the 
Euston  station,  and  from  which,  in 
about  three  hours  and  a  half,  we  disem- 
barked at  Brodick. 

The  Douglas  Arms  (better  known  as 
the  Invercloy  Inn),  distant  about  a 
couple  of  hundred  yards  from  the  land- 


ing place,  received  us — a  good  inri,  well 
situated,  and  possessing  within  itself 
most  of  the  attributes  which  conduce  to 
the  comfort  of  the  traveller  or  tourist. 
The  view  from  it  is  also  very  fine.  To 
the  north  (the  right  on  landing),  after  a 
spell  of  broken  conglomerate  rock, 
stretches  out  in  a  bold  sweep  the 
breadth  of  Brodick  Bay,  backed  by  a 
fringe  of  wood,  from  amidst  which  rise 
the  dull  red-sandstone  turrets  of  the 
Castle,  topped  in  their  turn  by  the  peak 
of  GoatfelL  and  its  neighbouring  heights. 
On  the  south  side  runs  along  the  shore 
a  continuation  of  rock  of  the  same  con- 
glomerate formation,  a  strange,  tufa-like 
substance,  into  which  (whatever  may  be 
the  fact)  many  of  the  pebbles  appear  to 
have  become  very  recently  cemented,  the 
whole  forming  together  solidified  masses 
of  exceeding  hardness.  These,  cut  into 
here  and  there  by  the  sea,  or  perhaps 
separated  by  early  intestinal  commotions 
of  the  earth,  present  at  intervals  deep, 
straight-sided  crevasses  of  rugged  and 
uninviting  aspect.  Every  now  and  then 
these  rocks  are  intersected  by  those  mys- 
terious trap-dykes,  which  are  believed 
to  have  welled  up  from  the  molten  sea 
beneath,  under  the  pressure  of  the  super- 
incumbent mass.  Occasionally,  again, 
they  are  succeeded  by  strata  of  sand- 
stone, which,  possessing  sub-strata  of 
different  degrees  of  hardness,  has  become 
water-worn  into  most  eccentric  shapes 
and  patterns — at  times  large  holes,  regu- 
lar and  deep  enough  to  step  a  mast  in, 
as  if  the  seals  or  mermaids  had  been 
rigging  up  an  awning  there  by  way  of  a 
change  from  sea-life;  at  others,  in  an 
intricate  and  delicate  tracery  of  honey- 
combed or  reticulated  work,  altogether 
as  though  the  waves  had  occupied  their 
spare  time  and  exercised  their  ingenuity 
in  tooling  out  on  it  the  most  fantastic 
figures. 

At  a  distance  of  about  a  hundred  and 
fiffrjj  yards  from  the  present  line  of  coast 
runs  what  was  the  sea-boundary,  before 
had  taken  place  that  upheaval  of  the 
land  or  subsidence  of  the  sea,  which  has 
thus  added  perhaps  ten  miles  to  the  cir- 
cumference of  the  island.  This  in-lying 
shore,  constantly  displaying  throughout 


498 


Three  Weeks'  "  Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


its  entire  extent  evident  marks,  in  cave 
and  hollow,  of  the  former  action  of  the 
water,  though  now  very  generally  clothed 
with  wood,  rises  to  perhaps  a  hundred 
and  eighty  feet  above  the  sea-level,  and 
then,  after  yielding  up  some  hundred 
yards  of  its  upper  surface-level  to  the 
plough,  rises  again,  somewhat  abruptly, 
to  form  the  range  of  hills,  which  mark 
from  a  distance  this  extremity  of  the 
island.  On  ascending  these  a  good  view 
is  obtained  of  the  south-western  side. 
Below,  on  the  left,  rises  conspicuously 
the  bluff  height  of  Holy  Island ;  oppo- 
site to  it  lies  Lamlash  (the  Brighton  of 
the  island  as  it  has,  in  mockery,  been 
called,)  with  its  bay — the  tout-ensemble 
of  these,  by  the  way,  forming  from  the 
road  between  Brodick  and  Lamlash,  a 
little  below  the  highest  point,  as  strik- 
ing and  perfect  a  landscape  as  it  is  well 
possible  to  imagine — and  then  to  the 
northward  rise,  peak  cut  by  peak,  the 
tops  of  the  Chior-Mvor  and  Goatfell 
ranges,  while  on  either  side,  in  the  dis- 
tance, the  eye  wanders  far  away  to 
Oantire,  Argyllshire,  Lanark,  and  Ayr- 
shire. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Brodick  enjoys 
certain  features,  which  would  probably 
render  it  in  the  eyes  of  many  persons 
preferable  to  other  parts  of  the  island, 
such  for  instance  as  the  view  along  the 
north  shore,  which  is  indisputably  very 
beautiful,  the  vicinity  to  Goatfell,  the 
ascent  to  the  top  of  which  is  considered 
by  many  tourists  (the  majority,  we  be- 
lieve we  may  say)  as  the  one  great  thing 
to  be  "  done  ; "  and  last,  but  not  least, 
we  suspect,  the  influx  of  visitors,  whose 
.arrival  and  departure  by  the  steamers  is 
daily  viewed  with  a  vacant  wondering 
interest  by  the  residents,  and  imparts  an 
air  of  what  a  Frenchman  would  call 
"mouvement"  to  the  place.  Whatever 
may  be  the  attractions,  it  is  very  certain 
that  they  are  such  as  induce  those  who 
resort  thither  for  health  or  pleasvujp  to 
stow  themselves  away  in  holes  and  cor- 
ners which  it  would  probably  be  difficult 
to  get  them  to  believe  they  could  occupy 
elsewhere.  It  would  indeed  be  no  easy 
matter  to  find  another  place  where  the 
British  tourist  is  driven  to  adopt  such 


small  proportions  as  the  Isle  of  Arran. 
House-room  being  exceedingly  limited, 
in  consequence  of  restrictions  as  to 
building  imposed  by  the  owner  of  the 
soil,  houses  are  crammed  to  a  degree 
which  it  must  be  pleasanter  to  imagine 
than  experience,  and  many  are  the  shifts 
made  to  receive  those  who  are  deter- 
mined, accommodation  or  no  accommo- 
dation, to  remain  and  "enjoy"  them- 
selves. Bathing-boxes  at  Lamlash  are 
said  to  be  considered  luxuries  at  a  shil- 
ling a  night,  and  one  roomy  pigsty  to 
be  annually  cleared  of  its  legitimate 
occupants,  whitewashed,  and  let  out  as 
"  Lodgings  for  three  people."  But  in 
spite  of  all  these  inconveniences  many 
thousands  annually  come,  and  sun  them- 
selves on  the  shore,  and  look  at  the 
steamboats,  and  "do"  Goatfell,  and  gain 
pleasure  and  health  thereby,  and  are 
happy.  "  Small  blame  to  them  for  that 
—if  any  " — let  every  man  enjoy  himself 
his  own  way,  and  the  more  of  such 
innocent  enjoyment  he  can  get  in  due 
season  the  better. 

There  are,  however,  some  people  so 
peculiarly  constituted  that  these  features 
are  not  all  accepted  by  them  as  attrac- 
tions. The  view  from  Invercloy  cer- 
tainly possessed  a  great  charm ;  but  the 
other  two — the  vicinity  of  Goatfell 
(having  peculiar  notions  of  our  own  as 
to  the  comparative  advantages  and  dis- 
advantages of  going  up  hills),  and  the 
continual  influx  of  fresh  tourists,  all  full 
of  the  romantic,  and  bent  on  "  doing " 
the  island  in  the  shortest  possible  tune 
— we  "  didn't  seem  to  care  about."  The 
fact  that  we  were,  comparatively  speak- 
ing, habitues,  seemed  to  be  instinctively 
arrived  at,  and  we  being  in  consequence 
generally  pitched  upon  as  proper  sources 
from  which  to  derive  all  the  information 
which,  it  was  thought,  we  must  have 
amassed  with  regard  to  Goatfell,  &c.  &c., 
the  answers  which  we  were  in  honesty 
compelled  to  give,  evinced  an  amount  of 
ignorance  with  regard  to  the  points  in 
question,  which  must  have  subjected  us, 
it  is  feared,  to  remarks  expressive  at 
once  of  wonder  and  contempt.  In  fact, 
the  repetition  of  these  questions,  and 
the  succeeding  exclamation,  "What !  not 


Three  Weeks  "  Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


499 


been  up  Goatfell!"  became  somewhat 
tedious,  not  to  say  aggravating,  as  not 
being  wholly  destitute  of  personal  re- 
flection. 

There  was  also  another  point,  which 
was  a  sine-qitd-twn  with  us,  namely, 
bathing ;  and  in  this  Brodick  certainly 
does  not  shine.  On  the  southern  side 
of  the  landing-place,  to  a  considerable 
distance,  the  shore  is  fenced  in  by  a 
series  of  peculiarly  rugged  rocks,  formed, 
as  mentioned  before,  of  conglomerate 
and  sandstone.  From  these  it  is  pos- 
sible that,  when  the  tide  is  up,  a  pass- 
able bathing- place  might  be  looked  out; 
though,  by  the  way,  it  may  be  as  well  to 
take  the  bearings  of  the  place  at  low- 
water,  or  the  swimmer  may  find  his  legs 
skinned  on  an  out-lying  rock,  when  he 
thought  himself  well  in  the  open,  and 
out  of  harm's  way.  When  the  tide  is 
out,  however,  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
find  a  more  uninviting  place,  or  one 
proving  on  trial  more  eminently  unsatis- 
factory. The  rocks  are  rough,  jagged, 
broken,  and  precipitous,  rarely  affording 
even  the  moderate  amount  of  room  re- 
quired by  the  bather  for  his  toilet ;  and, 
supposing  him  to  have  been  deluded 
into  making  an  essay,  he  too  frequently 
finds  beds  of  sea-weed  of  most  luxuriant 
growth ;  some  with  their  long  waving 
streamers,  or  broad  fans  of  amber; 
others  of  more  delicate  texture,  like 
threads  of  the  finest  unravelled  silk,  red, 
white,  and  yellow,  contrasting  each  with 
each,  yet  blending  together  in  perfect 
harmony,  lovely  to  look  at  in  the  clear 
water,  but  to  the  swimmer  unpleasant 
to  the  last  degree.  He  half  swims  over, 
half  wades  through,  this  tangled  garden, 
at  length  begins  to  congratulate  himself 
on  having  overcome  this  difficulty,  and 
stretches  himself  out  in  earnest  for  his 
work,  when  he  is  brought  up  by  the 
interminable  strings  of  the  chorda  filum 
first  catching  him  by  the  neck,  then  the 
arms,  then  the  legs.  He  tries  to  free 
himself  from  them,  much  as  Laocoon  is 
represented  as  doing  by  the  snakes;  but 
thicker  and  thicker"they  become — so 
thick  at  last,  that  the  attempt  has  to  be 
resigned  as  hopeless,  and  the  unfortunate 
swimmer  paddles  back,  as  best  he  may, 


to  his  extremely  uncomfortable  dressing- 
place  among  the  angular  rocks,  some- 
what fresher,  it  is  true,  but,  like  the 
boy  with  the  Latin  Grammar,  decidedly 
under  the  impression  that  it  is  hardly 
worth  going  through  so  much  to  gain  so 
little.  This  is  no  exaggerated  account 
of  the  first  and  only  bathe  which  I  en- 
dured on  the  south  side  of  the  inn. 

The  next  morning  I  fared  even  worse. 
Thinking  that  there  must  be  some  better 
ground  further  on,  I  prosecuted"  my 
search  yard  by  yard,  until  I  got  nearly 
or  quite  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  inn. 
Instead  of  getting  better,  however,  it 
appeared  to  become  gradually  worse  and 
worse,  and  at  last  I  had  to  give  it  up  as 
a  bad  job,  and  return  re  injectd.  To 
improve  my  temper,  it  came  on  to  rain 
as  soon  as  I  turned  homewards,  and  I 
got  back  perfectly  drenched,  and  with  a 
thorough  determination  never  to  attempt 
to  bathe  on  that  side  of  the  inn  again.  • 

The  coast  continues  thus  rock-bound 
for  about  a  third  of  a  mile  oh  the 
other  (the  northern)  side  of  the  inn  and 
landing-place,  when,  as  you  enter  upon 
Brodick  Bay,  its  character  suddenly 
changes,  and  a  long  stretch  of  a  fine, 
broad,  white-sanded  beach  preserits  it" 
self,  separated  through  the  greater  part 
of  its  extent  from  the  main-land  by 
pools  of  water,  communicating  with  the 
burn  which  flows  into  the  sea  on  the 
further  side.  In  the  centre  of  this  bay, 
the  only  part  of  it  sufficiently  distant 
(qud  decency)  from  the  fringe  of  houses 
which  skirt  it,  and  so  far  as  a  purely 
sandy  beach  can  afford  good  bathing,  it 
is  good ;  but,  to  my  mind,  this  class  of 
shore  can  never  thoroughly  satisfy  an 
Epicurean  in  the  art,  diversion,  or  what-, 
ever  it  may  be  called.  It  is  difficult, 
too,  to  forget  that  your  position  is  com- 
manded, though  at  a  long  range,  by  a 
large  admiring  population — to  say  no- 
thing of  the  fact  that  this  beach  (the 
southern  side  of  it  at  least)  is  the  place 
where  the  lady  visitors  are  wont  to  take 
their  dips  ;  the  accommodation  reserved 
for  them  consisting  of  one  wretched  little 
sentry-box,  apparently  just  big  enough 
to  stand  upright  in,  whence,  having 
suited  their  toilet  to  the  business  in 


500 


Three  WeeJcs   "  Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


Land,  they  walk  down  into  the  water. 
To  make  bathing  perfect,  a  man  should, 
as  is  happily  expressed  in  dough's 
Eothie,  at  any  rate  be  "  alone  with  him- 
self and  the  goddess  of  bathing."  Boats 
are  procurable  at  the  landing-place,  and, 
on  a  calm  sunny  day,  there  is,  perhaps, 
no  way  of  bathing  more  thoroughly  en- 
joyable than  a  header  off  the  stern  of  a 
well-appointed  boat  into  the  deep,  open 
sea ;  but  during  our  short  residence  at 
Brodick,  the  rain  was  so  constant,  and 
the  weather  generally  so  coarse,  that  on 
that  account  alone  a  boat  would  have 
"been  anything  but  desirable,  even  had 
one  not  entertained  a  suspicion  that, 
these  particular  boats  being  commonly 
employed  for  purposes  of  fishing,  they 
might  not  unnaturally  have  contracted 
somewhat  of  an  ancient  and  a  fish-like 
smell. 

While  therefore  fully  admitting  the 
attractions  of  Invercloy  and  Brodick,  we 
were,  for  the  reasons  before  mentioned, 
fastidious  enough  to  fancy  we  might 
elsewhere  find  quarters  which,  so  far  as 
bathing  and  quiet  were  concerned,  might 
suit  us  better ;  so,  by  way  of  an  experi- 
ment, we  chartered  a  cart  (the  postman's 
"gig"  being  that  day  taken  up  with 
sheep  and  cheeses),  put  our  belongings 
into  it,  and  walked  across  to  the  Corrie 
Inn,  kept  by  Mrs.  Jamieson,  about  six 
miles  from  Brodick,  the  road  running 
along  the  level  formed  by  the  interval 
between  the  former  and  the  present  lines 
of  shore. 

"We  very  soon  after  our  arrival  there 
found  that  we  had  made  a  change  (to 
our  minds)  for  the  better.  The  expe- 
rience of  the  first  two  or  three  days' 
trial,  during  which  we  partook  of  "  neigh- 
bour's fare  "  in  the  public  room,  having 
satisfied  us  that  we  might  do  worse  than 
bring  up  there  for  a  week  or  so,  we 
entered  upon  the  occupation  of  a  snug 
little  room  on  the  ground-floor,  where, 
in  addition  to  the  advantage  of  being 
freed  from  the  necessity  of  exposing  our 
ignorance  to  the  British  tourist,  we  could 
indulge  hi  the  combined  luxuries  of  pri- 
vacy and  tobacco,  unknown  in  the  public 
room.  Here  did  we  most  thoroughly 
"take  our  ease  in  our  inn;"  for  the 


scrupulous  tidiness  and  quiet  of  tho 
house,  the  care  and  attention  of  our 
worthy  hostess,  and  the  unremitting  zeal 
of  her  excellent  parlour-maid,  really  left 
little,  if  anything,  to  be  desired  which 
could  contribute  to  our  comfort. 

The  view  from  the  inn  is  perhaps 
not  so  fine  as  that  from  Invercloy  ;  for, 
though  its  range  is  wider,  inasmuch  as 
it  commands  the  whole  length  of  the 
coast  down  to  Holy  Island,  whose  bold 
outline,  in  some  degree  reminding  one 
of  the  rock  of  Gibraltar,  shuts  it  in  on 
the  southward,  yet  it  wants  the  sym- 
metrical beauty  of  that  afforded  by 
Brodick  Bay  and  its  noble  mountain 
background.  This,  however,  we  con- 
sidered to  be  more  than  made  up  for  in 
other  ways — one  great  point  hi  its  favour 
being  that  the  house  stands  (occupying 
a  position  at  the  southern  extremity  of 
the  range  of  houses  which  form  the 
village  of  Corrie)  close  to  the  sea-beach, 
which  meets  the  green-sward  running 
down  to  it.  Eight  pleasant  was  it  here 
to  sit  and  watch  through  a  glass  the 
movements  of  the  water-birds,  and 
particularly  of  those  grand  fellows  the 
gannets,  as  they  cruised  along,  pro- 
bably from  their  home  on  Ailsa  Crag,  on 
their  daily  business  of  fishing.  How 
different  is  this  bird's  mode  of  setting 
to  work  from  that<  of  all  others  of  his 
class !  What  a  purpose  and  a  dash 
there  is  about  him  !  Easily  distinguish- 
able by  his  earnest  flight,  his  otherwise 
snow-white  plumage,  and  black-capped 
wings,  from  the  gulls  which  are  desul- 
torily careering  about,  on  he  comes  with 
his  spare,  gaunt-looking  head,  steadily, 
about  forty  or  fifty  yards  above  the 
water,  on  which  his  hungry,  eager  eye  is 
constantly  intent.  Of  a  sudden  he 
spies  a  fish.  Not  an  instant  is  lost. 
Quick  as  thought  he  is  round,  and, 
heading  down  straight  and  perpendicu- 
larly as  a  lump  of  lead  would  fall, 
making  the  spray  fly  in  all  directions, 
and  with  a  splash  that  on  a  still  day 
may  be  heard  for  near  half  a  mile,  he  is 
upon  him.  A  quarter  of  a  minute  or 
more  may  elapse  before  he  again 
emerges,  the  interval  having  afforded 
him  sufficient  time  not  only  to  capture 


Three  Weeks'  t(  Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


501 


his  prey,  but  apparently  to  bolt  it ;  for 
it  is  but  by  his  postprandial  gulps  to 
get  it  well  down  and  settle  it  in  his  in- 
satiable maw  that  his  success  can  be 
generally  ascertained.  This  process  satis- 
factorily completed,  a  few  long  flaps  on 
the  water  serve  to  get  him  under  way, 
and  he  is  again  on  wing  steadily  pur- 
suing his  former  course,  and  eagerly 
looking  out  for  another  fish.  Three  or 
four  of  these  birds  might  thus  not  un- 
frequently  be  seen  fishing  together  in 
company,  one  after  another  taking  his 
downward  plunge,  and,  after  it,  again 
falling  into  the  general  line  of  flight. 

I  could  not  help  drawing  a  comparison 
between  these  birds  and  some  others  of 
an  allied  class,  who  by  their  ceaseless 
importunities  constantly  obtruded  them- 
selves on  our  notice,  and  whose  habits 
were  certainly  as  far  removed  from 
theirs  as  they  well  possibly  could  be. 
These  others  were  simply  common 
domestic  ducks.  There  were  thirteen  of 
them,  this  number  being  made  up  of 
five  independent  ducks,  accompanied  by 
a  monstrous  obese  over-grown  drake 
(weighing  no  less  than  seven  poiinds, 
his  owner  told  me),  and  another  duck 
with  a  brood  of  six  half-grown  duck- 
lings. Such  sensual,  lazy  brutes,  so 
utterly  devoted  to  gormandising,  and  so 
helplessly  indolent  I  never  saw.  One 
would  have  thought  it  would  have  been 
natural  for  ducks,  living  not  twenty 
yards  from  the  sea,  occasionally  to  take 
a  bath,  particularly  as  they  had  no  pond 
in  which  they  might  besport  themselves, 
being,  indeed,  so  short  of  water  that  I 
have  repeatedly  seen  them  drinking  the 
rain-drops  off  one  another's  backs  ;  but 
only  on  one  occasion  did  I  ever  see  any 
of  them  attempt  to  go  down  to  it.  The 
five  independent  ducks  did  then,  indeed, 
one  high  tide,  do  so,  one  or  two  of  the 
more  courageous  of  them  venturing  in 
far  enough  to  wet  their  feet,  and  then 
back  they  immediately  came  with  as 
much  gossiping  and  parade  as  if  they 
had  performed  a  mighty  feat.  Another 
day,  after  a  rainy  night,  I  heard  them  in 
a  great  state  of  excitement  by  the 
piggery.  The  occasion  of  this,  on  going 
to  see  what  was  the  mcitter,  I  found  to 


be  that  in  this  piggery,  which  was  stone- 
faced  and  sunk  about  a  foot  and  a  half 
below  the  level  of  the  soil,  a  small  pond 
had  been  formed  by  the  rain,  by  the 
edge  of  which  some  fowls  were  busily 
engaged  in  pecking  up  the  waifs  and 
strays  of  the  pig's-trough.     Now  this 
pond  was  to  the  ducks   evidently  the 
perfection  of  a  place  to  paddle  in,  and 
greatly  were  the  fowls  to  be  envied ;  but 
how  was  this  precipice,  which  kept  them 
from  their  anticipated  pleasures,  to  be 
descended  1     They  went  all  along  the 
edge,  quacking  loudly  and  looking  down 
wistfully  as  they  went,  one  every  now 
and  then  stopping,  when  she  thought 
she  had  discovered  a  feasible  place,  and 
trying  to  make  up  her  mind  for  the 
desperate  leap ;    but  it  was  too  much. 
They  might  indeed  have  continued  their 
attempts  to  descend,  had  not  an  incident 
occurred  to  divert  them  from  their  rash 
enterprise.     One  of  them,  in  measuring 
the  depth,  actually  got  one  of  her  legs 
over  upon  a  smooth  sloping  stone  ;  and, 
only  succeeding  in  withdrawing  it  after 
a  desperate  struggle,  in  which  she  seemed 
to  be  as  much  alarmed  as  a  man  might 
when  toppling  over  a  rock  a  hundred 
feet  high,  she  gave  up  the  further  pro- 
secution of  the  attempt  as  hopeless  and 
hazardous,  and,  turning  away  from  the 
pond,  was  followed  by  the  others,  all 
quacking  loudly  in  evident  disappoint- 
ment at  being  debarred  from  so  charm- 
ing a  place  of  entertainment,   and   in 
envy  of  the  fowls,  whose  lighter  build 
enabled  them  to  revel  in  its  delicacies. 
The  general  character  of  the  lives  led  by 
those  ducks  brought  back  to  my  recol- 
lection "  The  JSTotorious  Glutton,"  in  the 
Miss   Taylors'    clever    Original   Poems, 
and  I  could  not  but  think  that  to  this 
place  might 

"All  little  ducklings  be  brought  by  their  friends 
To  see  the  disgrace  in  which  gluttony  ends." 

The  only  feature  in  tame  ducks  which 
does  not  appear  to  partake  in  the  general 
demoralization  induced  by  their  indolent 
and  gormandising  habits,  is  the  eye.  How- 
ever much  they  may  in  other  respects  have 
become  hebetated,  aud  whatever  power 
they  may  have  lost  in  wing  and  leg  (for  all 


502 


Three  Weeks'  "Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


these  ducks  generally,  and  the  ducklings 
almost  invariably,  sat  while  grazing  on 
the  sward),  the  acuteness  of  eye  still 
appears  to  -remain  unaffected  ;  and  what 
keenness  and  subtlety  of  expression  is 
there  not  in  that  long,  angular  eye  of  a 
duck  !  Ever  on  the  watch — quick  to 
observe  and  ready — they  seem  in  this 
respect  far  beyond  all  other  denizens  of 
the  poultry-yard.  Make  but  an  unusual 
whistle  or  chirrup,  while  others  continue 
to  pursue  their  avocations  regardless  of 
it,  every  duck's  head  is  at  once  turned 
up,  on  the  watch  for  the  winged  enemy 
from  whom  they  imagine  it  may  possibly 
proceed. 

The  bathing  places  at  Corrie,  though 
not  quite  what  might  be  wished,  are  yet 
sufficiently  good.    Close  to  the  inn,  just 
under  the  flagstaff,  where  a  cutting  along- 
side the  ledge  of  rock  which  projects 
there,  affords  a  harbour,  partly  natural, 
partly  artificial,  for  the  boats  which  wait 
upon   the   steamers,    there  is  a   corner 
affording  ample  room  to  dress,  perfectly 
screened  from  observation,  and^  whence 
a  few  strokes  will,  when  the  tide  is  up, 
take  you  into  deep  water,  the  principal 
thing  to  be  guarded  against  being  an 
outlying   rock,    projecting   beyond   the 
reef,  upon  which,  unless  you  have  pre- 
.viously  noted  its  position,  you  are  ex- 
tremely  Likely  (experto  crede)  to  leave 
more  ,  of  your  epidermis  than  is  at  all 
pleasant.     About   a  hundred  and   fifty 
yards  from  this  place,  on  the  north  side, 
a  mass  of  white  sandstone  projects  into 
the  sea,  hog-backed  near  the  shore,  but 
broadening  out  towards  its    extremity, 
from  the  smooth  sides  of  which  could  be 
taken  a  header  of  any  height,  up  to  six 
or  eight  feet,  into  ten  or  fifteen  feet  of 
the  clearest  water.     This  is,  in  itself, 
almost  as  perfect  a  bathing- place  as  it  is 
possible  to  conceive,  but  it  is,  most  un- 
fortunately,   deficient     in     one    point, 
namely,  seclusion,  the  upper  part  of  the 
rock  being  uncomfortably  exposed   to 
the  inn  and  other  houses  which  skirt 
this  part  of  the  shore.  At  low- water,  how- 
ever, the  upper  part  of  the  rock  affords 
a  sufficient  shelter  to  any  one  bathing 
from  the  lower  shelf  of  the  extremity, 
while  he  can  still  get  his  header  into  the 


open  water.  A  few  pounds  laid  out  in 
the  erection  of  a  screen,  and  in  cutting 
away  the  rock  a  little  into  dressing 
stages,  to  suit  the  different  times  of  tide, 

would   render  this  a  glorious  bathinR- 
,  ° 

place. 

A  walk  of  a  couple  of  miles  takes  you 
from  the  Corrie  Inn  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Sannox-burn — the  road  continuing 
along  the  shore  in  character  much  like 
that  between  Corrie  and  Brodick,  the 
adjacent  level  being  redolent  of  the 
fragrant  bog-myrtle,  and  not  sparingly 
dotted  with  the  delicate  grass  of  Parnas- 
sus, two  plants,  perhaps  as  much  as  any 
others,  characteristic  of  Scotland. 

The  crystal  Sannox-burn  (the  name 
being  a  corruption  from  Sandy  Oaks,  it 
is  said),  after  passing  through  some  of 
the  finest  scenery  in  the  Island,  empties 
itself  into  the  sea  in  the  centre  of  a  fine 
sandy  bay  (in  character  a  good  deal  like 
that  of  Brodick),  the  northern  extremity 
of  which,  where  it  abuts  on  the  rocky 
ledge  which  succeeds  it,  generally  formed 
our   afternoon  bathing  ground,   by  no 
means  ill  suited  for  the  purpose,  com- 
bining, as  it  does,  the  merits  of  fine 
sand   and   tolerably   smooth  rocks   for 
dressing  on.     When  on  this  errand  we 
had  repeatedly  seen  here  a  ring-dotterel, 
who  seemed  always  to  have  particular 
business  at  some  thirty  yards  from  us, 
endeavouring  thus  to  inveigle  us  further 
along  the   coast.      We   shrewdly   sus- 
pected from  these  movements  of  hers 
that  the  cause  which  led  her  to  make 
them   was   in  reality  in    an    opposite 
direction,    and  one   day,  happening   to 
cross  the  burn,  instead  of  going  round  by 
the  bridge,  sure  enough,  we  came  upon 
it.     There    it   was — scuttling    up    the 
beach  among   the   sand   as   hard  as  it 
could  go,   making  excellent  use  of  its 
legs — her  young  one.     We  gave  chase 
to  it>  when,  on  finding  itself  detected,  it 
immediately  squatted  down  in  a  hole  in 
the  sand,  and,  on  our  coming  up,  allowed 
itself  to  be  taken   up,    as   if  it   were 
perfectly   helpless    and    had    not    yet 
learnt  to  walk.     A  pretty  little  mottled 
puff-ball  it   was   with   its   white    ring, 
bright  eye,  and  stumpy  tail.    It  made  no 
attempt  to  escape  from  our  hands,  and 


Three  Weeks'  "Loafing"  in  Arran. 


503 


on  being  released  nestled  down  again  in 
the  sand,  perhaps  to  be  complimented 
by  its  mother  on  the  successful  way  in 
which  it  had  played  its  part. 

From  just  above  this  bathing-place  is 
obtained  one  of  the  finest  of  the  fine 
views  up  Glen  Sannox,  and  grand 
indeed  it  is.  The  mass  of  Chior-Mvor 
shuts  in  the  back-ground.  Next  in  the 
range,  on  the  right,  comes  Ceim-na- 
Cailliach  (the  Carlin's  step).  Then  rise 
the  battlemented  tops  of  Caistael  Abhael 
(the  fortress  of  the  Ptarmigan) — a  name, 
by  the  way,  more  poetical  than  accurate, 
inasmuch  as  there  are  no  ptarmigan  on 
the  Island — while  on  the  nearest  crest 
old  Fergus  lies  supine  with  his  Eoman 
nose  and  heaven-directed  countenance, 
dreaming,  may-be,  of  the  maiden,  whose 
bosom  (Ciod-na-Oich),  exposed  in  some- 
what unmaidenly  fashion,  shows  con- 
spicuously on  the  opposite  portal  of  the 
Glen. 

Continuing  the  coast  line,  we  come, 
in  about  a  mile  or  rather  less,  to  the 
North  Sannox  burn,  passing  on  our  way 
the  remarkable  "  blue  rock,"  which  rises 
to  a  height  of  about  thirty  yards,  and 
extends  for  perhaps  a  hundred,  almost 
as  smooth  and  perpendicular  as  chisel 
and  plummet  could  have  rendered  it ; 
while  the  space  from  its  very  base  to 
the  sea  is  occupied  by  a  meadow  level 
and  smooth  enough  for  a  bowling- 
green. 

The  stepping-stones  of  the  North 
Sannox  burn  having  been  crossed  (rather 
an  awkward  job  when  the  water -is  in 
spate),  a  very  pleasant  walk  of  a  couple 
of  miles  or  so  brings  us  to  the  "  Fallen 
Rocks,"  great  masses  of  the  conglome- 
rate, which,  loosened  from  the  hill-side 
by  some  convulsion  of  nature,  have  been 
precipitated  to  their  present  resting- 
place,  where  they  lie,  some  in,  some 
out  of,  the  water  in  broken  confusion. 

Those  who  are  fond  of  foraging  for 
themselves  will  have,  from  the  blue 
lock  northward,  as  wejl  as  in  many 
other  places,  abundant  opportunities  for 
exerting  their  talents  on  a  profusion  of 
raspberries,  the  under  branches  of  which 
may  be  found,  weighed  down  by  the 
fruit,  among  the  fern  through  which  the 


comparatively  sterile  upper  branches 
force  their  way,  and  also  some  straw- 
berries, while  the  rills  afford  a  plentiful 
supply  of  fine  water-cress.  To  these 
may  be  added,  for  those  who  remain 
somewhat  later  in  the  season,  nuts  and 
blackberries,  both  this  year  in  extraor- 
dinary quantities,  besides,  as  we  were 
informed,  generally,  an  abundance  of 
mushrooms. 

Were  we  to  pursue  our  walk,  four  or 
five  miles  further  would  bring  us  round 
the  point  to  Loch  Eanza ;  but  it  is  time 
to  turn  back,  varying  our  route,  if  you 
please,  by  a  turn  a  little  way  up  the 
side  of  the  North  Sannox  burn.  It  is 
a  sparkling  quick-flowing  stream,  run- 
ning down  too  rapidly  from  the  hills  to 
afford  any  but  very  diminutive  brown 
trout,  though  every  now  and  then  a  few 
small  sea  trout  find  their  way  a  short 
distance  above  the  sea.  Some  of  the 
pools  would  do  well  enough  for  the  fly 
(though  the  banks  are  throughout  the 
lower  parts  of  its  course  a  good  deal 
overgrown),  but  it  is  better  suited  for 
the  worm,  with  which  a  good  many 
may,  when  the  water  is  in  a  proper 
state,  be  taken.  They  are,  however,  of 
such  minute  proportions,  that  we  were 
not  tempted  to  take  our  rods  out  of 
their  cases.  One  pool,  from  its  depth, 
breadth,  and  the  transparent  clearness 
of  its  water,  offers  itself  invitingly  for 
a  bathe ;  but  few,  we  suspect,  would, 
with  the  sea  within  such  easy  reach, 
deliberately  prefer  fresh  water,  unless 
indeed  they  might  be  of  the  same  mind 
as  a  gentleman  whom  we  met  at  Inver- 
cloy,  and  who,  when  the  respective 
merits  of  sea  and  fresh-water  bathing 
were  under  discussion,  delivered  his 
opinion  in  favour  of  the  latter,  inas- 
much as  he  was  able  to  clean  himself  so 
much  more  easily  in  it. 

In  one  or  two  of  the  streams  on  the 
other  side  of  the  island — the  Macra 
burn  and  Blackwater,  for  instance — (as 
might  have  been  suspected  from  their 
general  character,  and  the  richer  nature 
of  the  soil  through  which  they  flow 
during  the  latter  portions  of  their  course) 
the  trout  are  said  to  run  somewhat 
larger.  Salmon  are  occasionally  caught 


504 


Three  WeeJcs'  "  Loafing  "  in  Arran. 


near  the  mouth  of  the  Macra  burn, 
where  there  is  a  very  promising  looking 
pool  close  to  the  foot-bridge ;  a  few  sea- 
trout  also  ascend  them,  but  we  fancy 
that  most  of  them  would  repay  the 
angler  more  by  the  lovely  scenery 
through  which  they  would  lead  him 
than  by  their  actual  contributions  to  his 
basket. 

The  sea-fishing,  too,  seems  to  be  ge- 
nerally indifferent.  Round  the  southern 
shores  of  the  island  they  get  enough 
fish  (of  the  ordinary  kinds)  to  make  it 
worth  their  while  to  go  out  for  pleasure, 
if  not  for  profit,  but  off  Corrie  there  is 
but  little  to  be  done  in  this  way.  We 
only  tried  it,  it  is  true,  for  a  couple  of 
hours  one  day,  but  the  result  was  abso- 
lutely nil,  and  the  boatmen  were  too 
honest  to  press  us  to  make  a  second 
attempt.  Trailing  a  white  fly  along  the 
shore  (from  a  boat)  for  whiting  pollock, 
seemed  to  be  there  the  most  successful 
mode  of  fishing. 

So  far  as  shooting  is  concerned,  the 
general  tourist  may  leave  his  gun  be- 
hind him;  for  though  there  is  plenty 
of  game  on  tbe  island,  it  is  strictly  pre- 
served, and  the  only  objects  which  he 
would  probably  find  to  discharge  it  at 
would  be  some  useless  and  unoffending 
gulls,  which  he  may  just  as  well  leave 
in  peace. 

Although  the  weather  during  the 
earlier  part  of  the  summer  had  been  so 
cold  and  ungenial  that  the  swallows 
evidently  considered  it  was  time  for 
them  to  be  off,  and  were  already  con- 
gregating for  their  winter  migration,  yet 
a  favourable  change  took  place,  of  which 
we,  together  with  a  couple  of  friends 
who  happened  to  be  domiciled  in  the 
neighbourhood,  fortunately  took  advan- 
tage, to  make  a  three  days'  tour  of  the 
island, — that  being  sufficient  to  give  a 
general  notion  of  the  coast  scenery.  As 
it  was  perfectly  successful,  a  slight 
sketch  of  it  (though  it  is  far  from  our 
intention  to  infringe  on  the  handbook 
department)  may  not  be  unacceptable 
to  others,  who  may  be  inclined  to  do 
likewise. 

We  chartered  a  dog-cart  for  the  con- 
veyance of  our  small  impedimenta,  taking 


a  lift  in  it  ourselves  down  hill  and  over 
good  level  ground,  while  we  walked  the 
rest.  The  first  morning  brought  us  to 
Lamlash,  where,  though  crammed,  as 
we  expected,  into  somewhat  confined 
quarters,  we  luckily  escaped  both  the 
bathing-machines  and  the  pigsty.  This 
being  but  a  short  drive  (only  ten  miles), 
we  took  out  our  leisure  afternoon  in  a 
visit  to  and  bathe  from  Holy  Island. 

Next  morning,  having  been  joined  by 
an  outlying  member  of  our  party,  to 
suit  whose  convenience  we  had  pulled 
up  at  Lamlash,  we  proceeded  to  Lag 
(fifteen  miles  by  the  shore  road,  ten  by 
the  hilly  one  across  country),  enjoying 
by  the  way  a  delicious  bathe  just  be- 
yond Whiting  bay.  The  inn  at  Lag, 
universally  well  spoken  of,  appears  to 
be  in  excellent  hands,  and  its  tidiness 
and  the  attention  of  the  landlord  and 
his  wife,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kennedy,  made 
us  regret  that  we  were  obliged  to  halt 
for  the  night  further  on.  But  the  thing 
which  made  the  most  indelible  impres- 
sion on  our  minds  was  the  appearance 
at  luncheon-time  of  a  Hebe  and  a  bowl 
of  potatoes.  Such  a  specimen  of  a  High- 
land Hebe,  and  such  potatoes  !  The 
reader  may  remember,  in  Landseer's 
"  Bolton  Abbey,"  the  figure  of  a  lassie 
with  a  dish  of  fish.  Let  him  picture  to 
himself  the  former  as  she  there  appears, 
and  for  the  latter  substitute  a  bowl  of 
perfect  potatoes — heaped  up,  ripe,  mealy, 
smoking,  bursting  through  their  skins 
as  though  they  had  fairly  split  their 
sides  with  laughing,  and  he  will  have 
some  notion  of  the  figure  that  is  graven 
on  our  memories. 

That  evening  took  us  on  (about  ten 
miles)  to  Shedoe,  a  small  and  not  very 
interesting  inn,  whence  starting  (with 
no  great  reluctance)  next  morning,  we, 
after  devoting  an  hour  en  route  to  a 
visit  to  King's  Cove,  going  aver  the  hill 
and  returning  round  ii,  so  as  to  meet 
the  cart  by  the  shore  (a  walk  of  itself 
worth  taking,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
Cave),  we  baited  and  bathed  at  Imo- 
chair,  a  small  roadside  public,  seven  or 
eight  miles  further  on,  where  the  slaty 
rocks  afford  at  low  water  most  perfect 
aquariums,  well  stocked  with  animal 


History  and  Casuistry. 


505 


and  vegetable  life.  A  lovely  walk  and 
drive  of  eight  or  nine  miles  brought  us 
to  Loch  Eanza,  where  a  delay  of  nearly 
a  couple  of  hours,  in  consequence  of 
"some  .gentlemen"  (as  we  were  told, 
with  a  stress  on  the  word  "  gentlemen  " 
as  we  fancied)  having  ordered  dinner, 
whilst  we  "had  ordered  only  tea  and 
herrings,"  gave  us  plenty  of  time  to 
inspect  the  herring-boats,  which,  it 
being  Saturday,  were  all  drawn  up  in 
line,  bows  to  shore,  with  a  tall  dark 
screen  of  nets,  perhaps  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  long,  stretched  before  them — a 
very  striking  sight.  They  are  fine  cheery 
fellows  those  herring-fishermen.  The 
other  day  at  Corrie  a  boat  came  in  late, 
after  a  coarse  wet  night,  the  men  having 
been  delayed  from  their  nets  getting  all 
"  harled  up  "  by  a  sudden  shift  of  wind, 
and  consequently  almost  wholly  unsuc- 
cessful, while  other  boats,  in  before 
them,  had  done  comparatively  well. 
One  would  have  thought  that  if  any- 
thing could  have  soured  their  temper  it 
would  have  been  this.  But  not  a  bit 
of  it.  There  they  were,  cracking  jokes 
with  their  more  fortunate  friends  on 
shore,  describing  the  mess  they  had 
got  into,  and  telling  how,  while  they 
were  hung  up,  the  herrings  were  "  all 
in  a  boil  round  them,  like  a  gale  of 
wind,"  just  as  jolly  and  good-humoured 


as  if  the  luck  had  been  all  on  their 
side. 

"We  left  Loch  Eanza  as  the  sun  was 
setting  over  the  castled  bay  and  its 
fleet  of  herring-boats,  and  in  a  couple 
of  hours  found  ourselves  back  in  our 
snug  quarters  at  the  Corrie  Inn. 

That  scant  justice  has  been  done  in 
this  cursory  sketch  to  the  beauties  and 
charms  of  this  lovely  island  will  be 
felt  by  those  who  are  acquainted  with 
her,  and  particularly  by  those  who  avail 
themselves  of  the  varied  fields  which 
she  opens  to  the  artist,  geologist,  or 
botanist;  but  it  is,  after  all,  no  slight 
proof  that  they  must  be  considerable, 
when  their  lotus-like  influence  induced 
us  to  abandon  the  original  purpose  of 
our  expedition,  and  atibrded  us,  desul- 
tory "loafers  "  as  we  were — there  is  no 
more  expressive  term — without  any  de- 
finite object  of  interest  before  us,  such 
great  and  continuous  enjoyment  as  we 
derived  from  them. 

Circumstances  obliging  me  to  return 
a  few  days  afterwards  (August  29th) 
to  England,  I  did  so  in  the  hope 
that  it  might  again  be  my  good  for- 
tune to  spend  as  pleasant  a  three 
weeks  as,  having  come  northwards  for 
sport,  I  had  thus  passed  without  it  in 
Arran. 


HISTOKY    AKD    CASUISTEY. 

BY   THE   REV.    P.    D.    MAURICE. 


THERE  is-  a  note  at  page  266  of  Mr. 
Froude's  sixth  volume  which  is  of  more 
interest  to  the  ethical  than  even  to  the 
historical  student ;  of  more  interest  to 
the  man  who  has  to  live  and  act  in  the 
world  than  to  any  student.  I  have 
heard  severe  comments  upon  it.  I  think 
it  may  lead  those  who  adopt  its  senti- 
ments, without  weighing  them,  to  dan- 
gerous conclusions  and  to  an  unsound 
practice.  I  think  those  who  simply 
reject  the  doctrine  of  it  as  false  and 
immoral  will  be  guilty  of  great  injustice 
No.  12. — VOL.  ii. 


to  the  author,  will  miss  some  valuable 
truth  which  he  might  teach  them,  will 
be  in  peril  of  the  very  error  into  which 
they  suspect  him  of  falling.  Having 
spoken  of  the  history  generally  with 
much  admiration,  I  should  not  have  a 
clear  conscience  if  I  did  not  express  my 
mind  on  this  passage  of  it. 

The  subject  of  the  chapter  in  which 
the  note  occurs  is,  "  The  Eeconciliation 
of  England  with  Eome."  The  occasion 
of  the  note  itself  is  the  part  which  Sir 
"William  Cecil  took  in  that  transaction. 

L   L 


506 


History  and  Casuistry. 


The  Queen  was,  of  course,  most  eager 
for  it.  Her  council  resisted  long. 
Even  Gardiner  would  have  preferred 
that  Protestant  doctrine  should  be  put 
down  by  the  regal  power,  than  by  a 
foreign  Bishop.  At  last,  however,  even 
the  moderate  or  latitudinarian  party 
yielded.  Pole,  under  certain  conditions, 
was  to  be  received  as  a  legate  to  Eng- 
land, that  he  might  accomplish  the 
object  of  his  life.  Lord  Paget  and  Sir 
Edward  Hastings  carried  the  commu- 
nication of  the  council  to  him ;  Sir 
William  Cecil  accompanied  them. 

"  Cecil  had  taken  no  formal  part  in  Mary's 
government,  but  his  handwriting  can  be  traced 
in  many  papers  of  state ;  and  in  the  Irish 
department  he  seems  to  have  given  his  assist- 
ance throughout  the  reign.  In  religion,  Cecil, 
like  Paget,  was  a  latitudinarian.  His  con- 
formity under  Mary  has  been  commented  upon 
bitterly;  but  there  is  no  occasion  to  be  sur- 
prised at  his  conduct ;  no  occasion,  when  one 
thinks  seriously  of  his  position,  to  blame  his 
conduct.  There  were  many  things  in  the 
Catholic  creed  of  which  Cecil  disapproved; 
and,  when  his  opportunity  came,  he  gave  his 
effectual  assistance  for  the  abolition  of  them ; 
but,  as  long  as  that  creed  was  the  law  of  the 
land,  as  a  citizen  he  paid  the  law  the  respect 
of  external  obedience. 

"  At  present  religion  is  no  longer  under  the 
control  of  law,  and  is  left  to  the  conscience. 
To  profess  openly,  therefore,  a  faith  which  we 
do  not  believe,  is  justly  condemned  as  hypo- 
crisy. But  wherever  public  law  extends,  per- 
sonal responsibility  is  limited.  A  minority  is 
not  permitted  to  resist  the  decisions  of  the 
legislature  on  subjects  in  which  the  legislature 
is  entitled  to  interfere;  and  in  the  six- 
teenth century  opinion  was  as  entirely  under 
rule  and  prescription  as  actions  or  things.  Men 
may  do  their  best  to  improve  the  laws  which 
they  consider  unjust.  They  are  not,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  to  disobey  them  as 
long  as  they  exist.  However  wide  the  basis  of 
a  government,  questions,  nevertheless,  will  ever 
rise  between  the  individuals  and  the  state — 
questions,  for  instance,  of  peace  or  war,  in 
which  the  conscience  has  as  much  a  voice  as 
any  other  subject ;  where  nevertheless,  indi- 
viduals, if  they  are  in  the  minority,  must 
sacrifice  their  own  opinions ;  they  must  con- 
tribute their  war  taxes  without  resistance; 
if  they  are  soldiers,  they  must  take  part  as 
combatants  for  a  cause  of  which  they  are  con- 
vinced of  the  injustice.  That  is  to  say,  they 
must  do  things  which  it  would  be  impious  and 
wicked  in  them  to  do,  were  they  as  free  in 
obligations  as  citizens  as  they  are  now  free  in 
the  religion  which  they  will  profess. 

"  This  was  the  view  in  which  the  mass  was 
regarded  by  statesmen  like  Cecil,  and  generally 


by  many  men  of  plain,  straightforward  under- 
standing, who  believed  transubstantiation  as 
little  as  he.  In  Protestantism  as  a  constructive 
theology  they  had  as  little  interest  as  in 
Popery ;  when  the  alternative  lay  between  the 
two,  they  saw  no  reason  to  sacrifice  themselves 
for  either. 

"  It  was  the  view  of  common  sense.  It  was 
not  the  view  of  a  saint.  To  Latimer,  also, 
technical  theology  was  indifferent — indifferent 
in  proportion  to  his  piety.  But  he  hated  lies 
— legalized  or  unlegalized — he  could  not  tole- 
rate them.  The.  counsels  of  perfection,  how- 
ever, lead  to  conduct,  neither  possible,  nor, 
perhaps,  desirable  for  ordinary  men." — Froude, 
vol.  vi.  p.  266. 

The  general  reflections  which  this  note 
contains  are  likely  to  make  us  forget 
the  special  circumstance  which  has 
given  occasion  to  them.  I  must,  how- 
ever, observe,  that  if  we  admit  Mr. 
Froude's  apology  for  Cecil's  conformity 
during  the  reign  of  Mary,  it  will  be  no 
justification  for  his  concurrence  in  the 
work  of  reconciliation.  He  cared  more 
about  the  interests  of  the  state  than 
about  dogmas.  Why  then  did  he 
sacrifice  what  he  and  the  politicians  of 
his  school  believed  to  be  the  interests 
of  the  State?  Why  did  he  help  to 
replace  a  foreign  dogmatist  upon  a 
throne  from  which  he  had  been  cast 
down  ?  It  was  a  question  specially 
concerning  national  government  and  in- 
dependence. Mary  and  Philip  were  sur- 
rendering to  these  religious  maxims 
about  which  Cecil,  by  the  hypothesis,  was 
indifferent.  I  do  not  say  that  he  may 
not  have  found  excuses  for  himself  in 
the  thought  that  he  was  merely  a 
subordinate,  or  that  better  terms  might 
be  made  for  the  nation,  if  he  and  the 
moderates  took  part  in  the  measure. 
One  may  imagine  a  number  of  such 
pleas  for  which  allowance  should  be 
made  in  the  case  of  other  men,  though 
it  is  safer  not  to  meddle  with  the  like 
ourselves.  But  the  historian's  argument 
in  mitigation  is  likely  to  make  the  sen- 
tence, even  of  favourable  judges,  on 
Cecil,  more  severe. 

This,  however,  was  an  exceptional 
violation  of  principle.  I  agree  with 
Mr.  Froude  that  Cecil's  general  conduct 
during  Mary's  reign  ought  not  to  be 
tried  by  the  rules  of  a  divine,  or  to  be 


History  and  Casuistry. 


507 


treated  as  incompatible  with  the  pro- 
bity which  we  demand  from  a  states- 
man. I  arrive  at  my  conclusion  in  this 
way.  There  are  certain  statesmen  of  the 
19th  century,  to  whom,  without  respect 
of  party  feelings  or  private  predilec- 
tions, we  ordinarily  attribute  more  than 
an  average  measure  of  honour  and  high 
feeling,  men  who  have  proved  by  their 
acts  that  they  were  willing  to  sacrifice 
their  own  interest  to  what  they  regarded 
as  the  public  interest  I  ask  myself  what 
these  statesmen,  judging  from  their  acts 
and  words  in  our  time,  would  have  done 
if  they  had  been  in  the  position  of 
Cecil.  I  see  no  proof  whatever  that  they 
would  have  behaved  as  he  behaved  in 
the  question  of  the  reconciliation.  But 
I  see  strong  proofs  that  they  would 
have  been  as  little  induced  as  he  was, 
by  any  consideration  of  the  superior 
dogmatical  worth  of  Protestantism,  to 
refuse  compliance  with  the  belief  of  the 
Sovereign,  or  to  fight  against  one  that 
had  established  itself  in  the  land. 

I  will  take  three  examples  of  what  I 
mean.  They  are  not,  perhaps,  the  best, 
and  many  more  might  be  added.  But 
they  are  selected  from  different  schools. 
Those  of  whom  I  speak  were,  through 
the  greater  part  of  their  lives,  either 
openly,  or  in  spirit  and  temper  opposed 
to  each  other  ;  they  were  as  unlike  as 
possible  in  character  and  in  education  ; 
they  were  alike  in  the  qualities  of 
which  I  spoke  before.  These  asser- 
tions will  be  admitted  when  I  name 
Mr.  Canning,  Sir  Francis  Burdett,  the 
Duke  of  Wellington. 

In  one  of  the  debates  on  the  Eoman 
Catholic  disabilities,  Mr.  Canning  said 
he  had  no  doubt  that  justification  by 
faith  was  the  right  doctrine,  but  that  he 
should  suppose  the  idea  of  justification 
by  works  would  be  more  conducive  to 
ordinary  civil  morality.  He  spoke  no 
doubt  as  an  advocate.  The  Roman 
Catholics  were  at  the  time  his  clients. 
Had  he  been  in  the  position  of  a  judge, 
or  had  he  been  calmly  reviewing  histo- 
rical facts,  he  might  have  owned  that 
the  hope  of  securing  the  forgiveness  of 
Heaven  by  good  deeds  had  prompted  many 
evil  deeds  ;  had  often  led  to  a  contempt 


of  common  mundane  honesty ;  often  to 
a  rebellion  of  the  priest  against  the 
magistrate.  He  might  have  owned  that 
Luther  had  done  something  with  Ms 
discourses  about  faith,  however  strange 
and  mystical  they  might  be,  to  get  rid 
of  these  mischiefs.  But  though  these 
observations  would  have  worked  upon 
him  powerfully  when  he  saw  any  actual 
danger  of  a  return  to  papal  ascendancy, 
he  would  never  have  been  able  to  trans- 
late his  thoughts  into  the  dialect  of 
theologians ;  he  would  never  have  under- 
stood what  they  meant. 

The  inference  is  inevitable.  He 
thought  essentially  as  Sir  William 
Cecil  thought.  Not  from  cowardice, 
not  from  any  concession  to  expediency, 
but,  in  obedience  to  his  ordinary 
maxims,  he  would  have  acted  as  Sir 
William  Cecil  acted. 

He  was  born  and  bred  a  statesman. 
Sir  Francis  Burdett  was  an  English 
country  gentleman  by  nature,  whatever 
he  became  through  the  lore  and  wit  of 
Home  Tooke.  When  that  influence 
had  in  some  degree  subsided,  and  he 
had  passed  into  his  second  phase  of 
advanced  Whiggism,  he  undertook,  it 
will  be  remembered,  the  charge  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  claims,  which  had  been 
before  entrusted  to  Mr.  Plunket.  In 
opening  the  question,  I  think  in  1828, 
he  used  words  to  this  effect  (I  doubt  not 
they  may  be  read  in  "  Hansard,"  but  I 
happened  to  hear  them,  and  the  tone 
and  bearing  of  the  speaker  were  a  com- 
mentary upon  them  which  I  cannot 
forget.)  "It  seems  to  me,  Mr.  Speaker, 
scarcely  a  gentlemanly  thing — I  own 
'  I  do  not  like  it — after  one  has  been  in 
'  friendly  intercourse  with  some  Catho- 
lic, to  go  up  to  the  table  of  this 
'  house  and  say  that  he  is  holding 
abominable  and  damnable  tenets." 
That  language  expressed,  I  should  sup- 
pose, the  very  heart  of  the  man.  Tran- 
substantiation  was  a  long  word,  cover- 
ing a  difficult  subject.  The  intercourse 
between  man  and  man,  at  the  dinner- 
table  and  on  the  hunting-field,  was  a  real 
thing.  One  meant  something  to  him, 
the  other  almost  nothing.  Some  men 
in  this  day  who  have  learat  a  difficult 


508 


History  and  Casuistry. 


language  may  call  his  worldly.  I 
fancy  it  was  less  worldly  because  more 
sincere  than  some  of  that  which  has 
displaced  it.  He  had  a  moral  standard, 
if  not  the  highest ;  one  is  not  always 
sure  whether  those  who  affect  a  higher 
have  any  at  all. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  is  a  still 
stronger  instance.  He  became  a  states- 
man ;  he  had  many  of  the  qualities  of 
the  English  country  gentleman ;  but 
he  was  formed  in  the  camp.  Notions  of 
military  discipline  determined  to  a  great 
degree  his  thoughts  of  civil  policy,  of 
ordinary  morality,  and  of  divinity.  We 
all  know  how  he  felt  and  acted  in  refer- 
ence to  one  great  question  of  his  day. 
He  had  no  notion  of  admitting  Roman 
Catholics  to  any  civil  privileges,  from 
which  the  law  had  excluded  them, 
merely  on  some  general  theory  or 
dogma  of  toleration.  People  ought  to 
keep  step  and  preserve  marching  order. 
If  they  would  not,  he  cared  little  about 
the  particular  scruples  which  were  the 
excuses  for  their  irregularity.  The 
thing  that  existed  should  be  upheld. 
The  Government  must  be  carried  on. 
But  if  the  State  was  endangered  by 
withholding  civil  privileges  from  Roman 
Catholics,  the  Prime  Minister  must  not 
let  his  own  crotchets,  his  liking  to  be 
thought  consistent,  his  party,  anything 
whatever,  stand  in  the  way  of  his  con- 
ceding them.  Such  was  the  unvarying 
maxim  of  the  Duke's  life,  leading  of 
necessity  to  some  variable  acts,  but  in 
itself  entitling  him  to  the  name  of  a 
man  of  principle,  warranting  the  belief 
which  his  countrymen  formed  of  him, 
that  he  worshipped  duty  with  a  pro- 
found and  habitual  worship.  It  is  clear, 
I  think,  that  he  would  have  considered 
it  a  part  of  that  worship  to  support 
the  Queen's  Government,  whether  the 
Queen  was  Mary,  Elizabeth,  or  Victoria ; 
any  points  of  doctrine  in  which  they 
might  differ  from  each  other  in  any 
wise  notwithstanding. 

If  I  extended  this  observation  so  as 
to  make  it  include  the  late  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  bred  though  he  was  under  Oxford 
divines,  and  in  Oxford  Protestant  dog- 
matism, I  believe  a  majority  of  those 


who  observed  his  course  of  action  would 
agree  with  me.  So  that  Mr.  Froude 
may  have  a  stronger  case  in  defence  of 
his  hero  than  he  has  himself  made  out. 
But  then,  what  would  become  of  hia 
second  paragraph,  wherein  he  draws  a 
distinction  between  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  nineteenth,  and  affirms 
that  what  would  be  hypocrisy  in  one 
time  was  not  hypocrisy  in  the  other? 
"  Religion,"  he  says,  "  is  no  longer  under 
"the  control  of  the  law,  but  is  left  to 
"the  conscience."  If  he  means  that 
lawgivers  and  statesmen  have  not  as 
much  hope  of  coercing  religious  opinions 
by  law  in  the  nineteenth  century  as 
some  of  them  had  in  the  sixteenth,  he 
is  maintaining  a  proposition  which  few 
will  dispute.  But  how  does  that  propo- 
sition affect  the  subject  ?  We  are  not 
speaking  of  the  means  which  men  took 
to  bring  those  who  differed  from  them 
into  conformity  with  one  opinion  or  ano- 
ther, but  of  the  principles  on  which 
they  regulated  their  own  conformity. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington  did  not  care 
to  persecute ;  neither  did  Cecil.  One 
as  much  as  the  other  conceived  of  reli- 
gion as  an  instrument  for  making  men 
well-behaved  and  orderly,  disliked  any- 
thing passing  under  the  name  which 
they  supposed  led  to  ill -behaviour  or 
disorder.  I  cannot  perceive  the  differ- 
ence. Neither  do  I  understand  as  a 
general  principle  what  is  meant  by  reli- 
gion being  under  the  control  of  law  in 
one  age,  and  left  to  the  conscience  in 
another.  Religion  is  a  Roman  word,  not  a 
word  of  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament. 
It  must  be  interpreted  by  Roman 
rules  and  Roman  habits.  So  inter- 
preted, it  will  always,  I  conceive,  in- 
volve the  idea  of  obligation,  of  obliga- 
tion to  some  authority  or  some  law.  It 
may  be  an  obligation  to  the  highest 
authority  or  to  a  secondary  authority; 
to  the  highest  law,  or  merely  to  a  state 
law.  It  may  be  an  obligation  to  a  good 
power,  or  to  an  evil  power.  It  may  be 
an  obligation  on  the  senses  or  the  fears, 
or  upon  the  conscience,  the  will,  the 
reason.  But  whichever  be  its  force  I 
cannot  give  any  distinct  meaning  to 
Mr.  Froude's  antithesis.  His  compa- 


History  and  Casuistry. 


509 


rison  cannot  be  one  of  periods  ;  it  must 
be  one  of  corresponding  classes  in  those 
periods.  There  are  many  in  our  time 
who,  like  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
habitually  regard  the  preservation  of 
the  established  order  of  a  society 
as  their  paramount  duty.  There  are 
those  who  would  sacrifice  the  order  of 
society  to  tastes,  notions,  habits,  preju- 
dices of  their  own.  There  are  those 
who  believe  that  there  is  a  permanent 
eternal  order,  which  ascends  above  the 
existing  established  order,  and  therefore 
transcendently  above  all  their  own 
fancies,  judgments,  opinions  ;  who  reve- 
rence the  order  of  the  State  for  the  sake 
of  that  higher  order,  and  as  a  witness  of 
it;  who  would  never  offend  the  one 
except  when  they  feel  that  they  are 
under  a  stern  necessity  of  asserting  the 
other.  There  were  men  answering  to 
all  these  classes  in  the  England  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  No  one  has  shown 
this  more  clearly  and  powerfully  than 
Mr.  Froude.  He  has  exhibited  to  us 
the  man  of  crotchets,  of  private  judg- 
ments, who,  for  the  sake  of  an  opinion 
about  a  surplice,  would  disturb  a  nation 
and  perplex  men's  moral  principles. 
He  has  shown  us,  as  he  expresses  it  so 
well  in  this  note,  men  who  hated  "lies, 
"  legalised  or  unlegalised,  who  could 
"not  tolerate  them,  who  died  rather 
"  than  seem  to  tolerate  them  ; "  men, 
I  will  add,  who  hated  lies  because  they 
believed  in  a  truth  which  neither 
they,  nor  all  the  states  in  the  world, 
could  alter  in  the  least  degree.  Mr. 
Froude  has  told  us  facts  which  are 
even  more  consolatory.  He  has  shown 
us  how  men  like  Hooper,  who  carried 
with  them  some  of  the  bad  leaven  of 
the  one  class,  were  purified  in  the  fire 
till  they  were  made  real  witnesses — not 
for  their  opinions,  but  for  God.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  shows  how  some  of  those 
who  had  been  most  pertinacious  in  their 
zeal  for  points  either  of  doctrine  or  of 
behaviour,  who  had  most  denounced 
their  brethren  as  temporisers,  were  the 
first  to  apostatize  in  the  day  of  trial,  the 
first  to  show  that  they  had  really  be- 
lieved nothing.  It  is  most  important 
that  a  phrase  like  that  by  which  Mr. 


Froude  has  divided  the  sixteenth  from 
the  nineteenth  century  should  not  de- 
prive us  of  these  encouragements  and 
these  warnings ;  should  not  lead  us  to 
think  that  we  live  under  a  different 
dispensation  from  the  statesmen  and 
Churchmen  in  the  days  of  the  Tudors. 

If  our  historian  has  supplied  a  cor- 
rection of  his  own  ethical  statements  in 
his  narratives  of  facts  and  his  biographies 
of  men,  he  has  made  that  correction 
still  stronger  and  more  valuable  by  an. 
analogy  which  at  first  we  might  ba 
disposed  to  treat  as  unfortunate  and 
dangerous.  He  has  referred  us  to  those 
numerous  questions  concerning  which 
the  judgment  of  the  individual  is  not  at 
one  with  the  judgment  of  the  State  of 
which  he  is  a  member  and  which  he 
serves.  The  most  striking  of  these 
questions  concerns  the  duties  of  a 
soldier.  A  man  is  pledged  to  fight 
for  his  country,  whatever  wars  his 
country  may  engage  in.  Some  of  them 
seem  to  him  unjust.  Mr.  Froude  pro- 
nounces that  soldiers  are  bound  to  do 
as  they  have  engaged  to  do,  but  that 
it  would  be  "impious  and  wicked"  for 
them  to  take  this  course  "  if  they  were 
"  as  free  in  their  obligations  as  soldiers 
"as  they  are  now  free  in  the  religion 
"  which  they  will  profess." 

Every  reader  Avill  be  startled  by  these 
words  when  he  first  meets  with  them. 
He  will  feel  as  if  they  had  brought 
before  him  a  tremendous  practical  con- 
tradiction.    He  will  be  apt  to  say  to 
himself,  "  I  may  be  very  free  in  the 
'  religion  which  I  profess  ;  but  that  reli- 
'  gion  which  I  profess,  whether  I  am  a 
'Koman  Catholic,  an  English  Church- 
'  man,  or  Protestant  Dissenter,  will  not 
'  leave  me  free  to  do  a  wrong  thing.    If 
'  it  is  wrong  for  me  to  fight  in  a  certain 
'  cause,  it  tells  me  that  I  must  not  fight 
'  in  that  cause  ;  if  it  is  right  for  me  to 
'fight,  it  tells  mo  that  I  must  fight. 
'  How  then  can  I  separate   this   reli- 
'  gious  profession  from  these  civil  or 
'military  obligations?"      Here  is  one 
difficulty  which  is  sure  to  present  itself 
to  a  man  some  time  in  the  course  of  his 
life.     It  is  the  very  difficulty  which  has 
led  many  British  officers  to  fear  the  in- 


510 


History  and  Casuistry. 


troduction  of  any  instruction,  but  more 
especially  of  strong  religious  instruction, 
among  their  men.  May  not  questions 
be  raised  by  this  instruction,  which 
would  greatly  interfere  with  their  mili- 
tary obedience  1 

Mr.  Froude's  own  words  force  these 
thoughts  upon  us.  "  Wicked  "  and 
"impious"  are  religious  epithets.  They 
presume  a  man  to  be  recognising  some 
religious  authority  or  principle.  On  the 
other  hand  the  corresponding  phrase  is 
ambiguous.  What  is  meant  by  being 
free  in  our  obligations  as  citizens  ?  Be- 
fore a  citizen  is  at  liberty  to  make  his 
own  judgment  the  rule  of  his  actions 
he  must  be  free  from  his  obligations  as 
a  citizen.  Introduce  that  slight  and 
necessary  emendation,  and  the  whole 
argument,  as  Mr.  Froude  has  stated  it, 
becomes  a  reductio  ad  absurdum.  A 
man  freeing  himself  from  the  obligations 
of  a  citizen  is,  ipso  facto,  an  impious  and 
wicked  man.  A  man  who  will  acknow- 
ledge no  authority  .but  his  own  is  an 
enemy  of  the  human  race  ;  and  he  is  no 
greater  enemy  of  any  man  than  of  him- 
self. Is,  then,  the  condition  to  which 
we  have  "now"  come,  in  respect  of 
our  religious  profession,  one  which  be- 
comes utterly  ridiculous  and  monstrous 
when  it  is  applied  to  any  subject  except 
that  1  Does  the  freedom  which  we  have 
acquired  in  our  religious'  profession 
render  that  profession  utterly  inopera- 
tive upon  any  moral  acts '  except  to  con- 
fuse them  and  make  them  utterly  incon- 
sistent 1 

Mr.  Froude  has  done  us  an  im- 
mense service  in  leading  us  to  face  this 
difficulty.  We  have  been  tampering 
with  it  and  playing  with  it,  and  the 
effect  upon  our  conduct  and  character 
has  been  most  disastrous.  If  we 
begin  from  •  the  case  of  the  soldier, 
I  think  we  shall  find  that  the  first 
conclusion  of  the  simplest  man  accords 
with  the  last  conclusion  of  the  most 
thoughtful  and  reflecting  man.  The 
soldier  enlists  in  the  service  of  his 
country,  belie  vring  it  to  be  a  good  ser- 
vice ;  not  doubting  that  he  ought  to 
fight  for  his  country ;  leaving  to  wiser 
men  the  decision  of  what  the  country 


should  do  or  should  not  do.  He  ac- 
quires more  light ;  doubts  are  excited 
in  his  mind  which  were  not  there  be- 
fore. "  Governments  do  very  wrong 
'  things  sometimes.  Will  his  eonsci- 
'  ence  let  him  do  what  Governments 
'  prescribe  1  Must  .he  not  resolve  for 
'  himself  whether  we  are  right  in  hold- 
'  ing  India  or  attacking  China  1 "  This 
is  an  unhappy  condition  of  mind.  I  do 
not  wonder  :that  that  those  who  ob- 
serve all  the  mawkishness  and  uncer- 
tainty which  accompany  it, — who  see  the 
worse  than  weakness  which  may  follow 
from  it — should  dread  any  influences 
that  may  possibly  lead  to  it.  But  let 
them  be  sure  that  it  is  a  transitional 
state  of  mind ;  that  only  hasty  measures 
for  crushing  it  can  fix  it  into  a  perma- 
nent one ;  that  the  dangers  of  it  will 
always  be  counteracted  by  the  very 
causes  which  have  excited  them ;  that 
the  true  remedy  for  it  lies  in  a  more 
enlarged  education  and  .a  stronger 
faith.  There  is  always  bewilderment 
in  the  awakening  of  any  man's  con- 
science. The  visions  of  the  night 
mingle  with  the  voice  which  announces 
that  it  is  morning.  The  half-sleeper  fan- 
cies that  all  are  sleeping  and  dreaming 
except  himself.  Conscience  becomes 
strangely  mingled  with  conceit  ;  his 
judgments  are  infallible.  When  his 
conscience  speaks  more  distinctly,  it  re- 
bukes nothing  so  much  as  this  very 
conceit.  It  whispers  no  lesson  to  him 
so  certainly  as  that  he  is  a  fool.  It 
tells  him  that>  till  he  has  risen  out  of  his 
own  private  separate  judgment,  he  can 
do  nothing  that  is  right,  think  nothing 
that  is  right.  It  reminds  him  of  his 
relation  to  other  beings  ;  of  his  depend- 
ence upon  them.  It  tells  him  of  a 
truth  which  is  theirs  as  well  as  his  ; 
which  is  infinitely  precious  to  all  men  ; 
for  the  sake  of  which  each  man  must 
be  content  to  sacrifice  himself. 

How  do  these  lessons  present  them- 
selves to  the  mind  of  the  soldier  1  You 
fancy  he  must  make  some  fine  meta- 
physical division  of  himself;  that  he 
must  say,  "As  soldier  I  think  and  act 
"  so  and  so ;  as  a  man  I  think  and  act 
"  quite  differently."  J^o  such  miserable 


History  and  Casuistry. 


511 


refinement  will  enter  into  his  mind 
unless  you  put  it  there.  His  work  as  a 
soldier  is  his  work  as  a  man.  It  is 
the  work  which  he  is  called  to  do. 
If  he  were  a  legislator,  he  must  do  the 
work  of  legislation.  He  must  shrink 
from  no  toil  to  find  out  what  the  duty 
of  England  is  to  China  or  India ;  he 
must  be  drawn  aside  from  the  task  of 
resolving  by  no  traditions,  party  feel- 
ings, personal  feelings,  by  no  engage- 
ment in  tasks  which  are  not  his.  He 
who  would  desert  his  post  as  a  soldier 
to  speculate  about  India  or  China  would 
desert  his  post  as  a  legislator,  to  per- 
form some  freak  in  India  or  China.  In 
each  case  the  deserter  from  his  rank  is  a 
deserter  from  the  cause  of  truth.  In 
each  case  he  who  serves  his  country 
most  zealously  in  his  vocation,  serves 
Truth  best.  He  has  faith  in  a  true 
God.  He  can  commit  his  judgments 
to  Him.  If  they  are  right,  He  will 
give  effect  to  them.  Nothing  can  be 
done  to  establish  them  by  neglecting 
a  plain  obvious  duty.  He  cannot  change 
his  country's  mind,  if  it  is  a  wrong 
mind  ;  he  will  only  make  it  worse  by 
doing  wrong  himself.  On  then,  with 
a,  clear  heart,  for  life  or  death.  The 
origin  of  the  battle  is  not  his ;  the 
result  is  not  his.  All  he  can  do  is  to 
fulfil  his  trust,  and  throw  himself 
away. 

These  are  no  fancies  or  refinements. 
This  is  the  process  by  which  the  plain 
brave  citizen  and  soldier  is  led  out  of 
fancies  and  refinements  into  the  honest 
performance  of  his  task.  He  does  not 
perform  it  better  because  he  is  a 
machine,  he  performs  it  worse.  There 
is  nothing  to  rouse  the  energy  of  a 
machine.  He  must  pass  into  something 
else  before  he  can  respond  to  any  true 
war-cry.  An  appeal  to  his  hearth  and 
home  would  be  utterly  lost  upon  him,  if 
it  did  not  rouse  him  to  know  that  he 
is  not  a  machine.  Whilst  he  still  half- 
suspects  himself  to  be  one,  he  is  liable 
to  all  those  sudden  and  bewildering  im- 
pressions to  which  I  have  alluded  ;  those 
from  which  he  only  escapes  when  he 
begins  to  forget  himself  in  the  belief 
and  worship  of  the  God  of  his  fathers. 


It  has  been  impossible  to  speak  fully 
of  this  subject  without  intruding  upon 
the  other;  so  artificial  is  the  barrier 
which  Mr.  Froude  has  raised  between 
the  man  in  his  two  characters  of  a 
citizen  and  a  worshipper;  so  obvious 
would  that  impossibility  be  if  for 
worshipper  he  had  not  substituted  the 
phrase  of  one  who  professes  a  reli- 
gion. 

The  confusion  between  the  conceits  of 
our  own  mind  and  the  conscience  which 
bears  witness  for  an  immutable  law  that 
governs  them,  has  become  very  serious 
in  our  Protestant  community.  That  so 
clear-sighted  a  man  as  Mr.  Froude 
should  have  yielded  to  it  is  a  great 
proof  of  its  power  and  prevalency.  But 
it  is  beginning  to  be  shaken  in  those  who 
have  entertained  it  most.  Protestants 
are  discovering  that  very  inconvenient 
private  judgments  may  be  exercised  in 
favour  of  the  vestments  and  practices  of 
the  Scarlet  Lady  as  well  as  against  them. 
They  are  appealing  impatiently  to  State 
authority,  to  ecclesiastical  authority,  to 
mob  authority,  against  those  private 
judgments.  Bystanders  who  do  not 
concur  in  these  appeals — who  adhere 
strictly  to  the  maxim  that  private 
opinions,  however  much  they  may  in- 
terfere with  public  peace  can  never  be 
reached  by  the  public  sword — feel,  never- 
theless, that  the  man  of  any  school  who 
habitually  confounds  his  own  opinions 
with  truth  will  cease  to  believe  in 
truth,  will  lose  all  power  of  distinguish- 
ing between  the  accidental  and  the  es- 
sential, the  temporary  and  the  perma- 
nent ;  will  become  the  slave  of  trifles, 
and  if  opportunity  enables  him,  a  perse- 
cutor on  behalf  of  them  ;  will  indemnify 
himself  for  the  insecurity  of  his  conclu- 
sions, by  injuring,  so  far  as  in  him  lies, 
those  who  do  not  adopt  them.  In  fact, 
the  noble  assertion  of  a  right  to  think, 
the  right  to  be  human,  which  our  ances- 
tors made,  is  rapidly  passing  into  the 
right  not  to  think,  but  simply  to  hold 
an  opinion,  because  it  is  ours,  against  all 
invasions  of  thought,  against  all  com- 
munion with  other  minds.  That  right 
no  doubt  belongs  to  the  free-born 
Englishman;  but,  as  was  once  re- 


512 


History  and  Casuistry. 


marked  in  reference  to  the  kindred 
and  equally  inalienable  right  of  talking 
nonsense,  the  seldoraer  he  exercises  it 
the  better. 

That  apparent  opposition  between  the 
strongest  convictions  of  the  statesman 
and  the  strongest  convictions  of  the 
Churchman,  upon  which  I  have  dwelt 
in  this  article,  is  leading  our  minds  in 
the  same  direction  as  these  observa- 
tions. Mr.  Froude,  considering  that 
opposition  as  belonging  peculiarly  to  the 
sixteenth  century,  takes  Cecil  as  adopt- 
ing "  the  view  of  common  sense,"  Lati- 
mer  as  following  "  the  counsels  of  per- 
fection." I  believe  that  this  language 
is  very  misleading,  and  that  it  is  not  in 
harmony  with  the  facts  from  which  it  is 
deduced  I  should  say  that  just  so  far  as 
the  statesman  of  either  period  understood 
his  own  position,  he  was  bearing  witness 
for  plain  morality  and  political  order 
against  all  which  seemed  to  him  to  stand 
in  the  way  of  either,  whether  that  pro- 
ceeded from  mere  animal  lawlessness  or 
from  spiritual  subtleties.  If  he  sees 
almost  nothing  beyond  the  law  and  the 
customs  of  the  State  in  which  he  is 
living,  these  he  is  determined  at  any 
price,  against  any  persons  whatsoever, 
to  uphold.  This  may  be  called  the 
view  of  common  sense.  I  do  not  object 
to  the  phrase.  Common  sense  is  the 
opposite  of  private  sense,  of  idiotic 
sense,  which  some  will  affirm  is  no  sense 
at  all.  But  then  I  say  that  Latimer 
and  such  as  he  were  the  asserters  of  this 
common  sense  more  perfectly  than  the 
statesman  was.  I  say  that  they  per- 
ceived a  point  at  which  the  common 
sense  of  the  statesman  became  a  partial 
and  narrow  sense  ;  and  that  they  ap- 
pealed to  something  more  common,  more 
universal,  less  capable  of  being  limited  by 
private  tastes  and  judgments.  I  say  that 
they  did  this  because  they  followed  no 
counsels  of  perfection,  aspired  to  be  no 
saints ;  but,  seeing  that  the  question 
before  them  was  whether  they  should 
worship  God  or  the  devil,  swore  in  God's 
strength  that  they  would  worship  Him 


and  not  the  dtvil,  whichever  way  their 
private  judgment  might  incline. 

If  this  be  so,  the  man  who  takes 
Latimer's  course  and  the  best  English 
statesman,  whether  they  understand  one 
another  or  not,  are  working  for  the  same 
end,  and  each  is  necessary  for  the  sup- 
port and  correction  of  the  other.  If 
the  William  Cecil  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
reign  was  nobler  in  his  policy,  nobler 
even  as  a  man  than  the  same  Cecil  in 
Queen  Mary's  reign,  he  had  Latimer  and 
the  martyrs  to  thank  for  his  elevation. 
They  had  taught  him  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  truth,  and  that  whatever  were 
his  temptations  as  a  politician  and  a 
diplomatist  to  lie,  he  must  in  some 
sort  in  his  own  vocation  aim  at  truth 
and  try  to  be  true.  The  Eobert  Cecil 
whom  he  begat  had  been  brought  up 
amid  no  such  lessons.  Therefore  he 
became  a  cleverer  and  a  poorer  states- 
man than  his  father,  fit  to  aid  the  state- 
craft of  a  Stuart  king,  totally  unfit  to 
cope  with  the  earnest  convictions  of  the 
Stuart  period.  In  our  day,  I  believe, 
the  other  side  of  the  truth  comes  out. 
The  maxims  of  the  statesman  may  de- 
grade the  Churchman,  may  lead  him  to 
think  that  there  is  nothing  better  for  him 
than  to  become  a  tool  of  the  State,  and 
to  receive  its  hire.  But  they  may  cure 
him  of  some  of  his  own  delusions,  they 
may  break  in  pieces  some  of  his  peculiar 
idols.  The  common  sense  of  such  a  man 
as  the  Duke  of  Wellington  may  teach 
us  that  if  we  have  not  common  sense — 
that  if  we  are  only  pursuing  some  partial 
technical  sense — we  are  worthy  of  his 
scorn,  even  if  we  dignify  that  partial 
technical  sense  as  a  counsel  of  perfec- 
tion. It  may  teach  us  that  there  is 
need  in  this  day,  as  much  as  there  was 
in  Mary's  days,  of  men  who  look  to  a 
higher  judgment  than  their  own,  or 
than  all  the  judgments  upon  earth.  If 
we  have  not  such  men,  I  believe  that 
statesmanship  will  wither,  almost  as 
rapidly  as  churchmanship ;  that  Pro- 
testantism and  Catholicism  will  alike 
terminate  in  Atheism. 


END  OF  YOL.  II. 


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